In South Africa, at the start of the Garden Route just an hour’s drive from Port Elisabeth, lies the stunning town of Jeffrey’s Bay: an uncontested Mecca for surfers worldwide in the search of freedom. Here the waves pulse like a heart-beat and to quote those who’ve experienced it, it’s pure adrenaline.
What do you think? Has the non-stop sunshine and the dream-like beaches in December, helped me launch myself into the blue?
I met a real surfer or rather, tracked one down, whilst he was giving lessons to two young Spanish girls, more interested in him than the surfboards they were standing on ‘Just imagine that it’s Santa’s sleigh!’ Mick repeated over and over to the girls, in a slang all of his own – but even the magic of Christmas isn’t enough to conquer the waves.
With a brazen aerial (*) I get up close and I manage to grab him for a coffee. All things considered I was there too, looking for the perfect wave… for hair though.
We meet at the Tasty Table, a hippie coffee shop with an ocean view, flooded with music by the Beach Boys. He asks me if I’m a groupie, one of the surf film-maker fans who follow the faces and dreams of those who have chosen life on a surf-board, from beach to beach all over the world. No, I tell him and I explain that I’m a beauty spy and that my mission is to discover the beauty secrets ‘to becoming a non-surfing surfer’.
Sea air blows through the open window and messes up my hair, but is it enough to get the much sort after surfer look?! To tell the truth the Bregaglio lab team, had already given me some pointers slipping a soft and flawless texture spray for fake waves (even better that the original ones!) into my bag. The formula: pure seawater by Agrimer, remineralised with trace elements for XL volume and Pellicer L-30 by Asahi Kasei to enhance a parallel undercut (**) and stay on top of the curly wave.
I’m right on form for my date sporting a golden suntan thanks to self-tanning with an added glow effect (for those who really understand what the holiday look is all about) and getting it just right with Mahakanni STLC extract by Campo; an active extracted from Eclipta alba, a herb that grows in Brasil, China and Thailand. I’ve brought summer forward bit by bit with this self-tanning agent and avoided the carrot look so typical of DHA whilst reducing TEWL.
Sitting on tribal art surfboards we each order a pomegranate spritz and I discover that he is also vegan: so it’s not just his eyes that are green. Mick, South-African of English origin, successful Cape Town lawyer subsequent to a career crisis and the end of a relationship, decided to throw in the towel and start over to follow his dream: surf, photography and a fascination for the nomadic life (what a shame!). He shows me a ‘me before’, photo as he calls it. The difference is remarkable: the tailored suit –‘Made in Italy’, he points out, has vanished to be replaced by romantic mood shorts and a fluorescent t-shirt. The former short yuccie style hair is now soft, long and a perfect blonde colour. It smells of coconut and I have to admit that there aren’t any balayage highlights to match: it looks healthy and shiny – who needs to spend hours at the hairdresser’s?! I want to run my hands through it and I swear that his sexiness and cuteness has nothing to do with it!
It’s probably down to the glitter reflections all over his tattooed arms and legs – but the combination of sun and saltiness is a magnet for hands and eyes! So when he looks at me as if he is going to share something important it reminds me of when I was a little girl admiring the bright Christmas lights in town.
Under the Bregaglio Christmas tree I want to find a present that will make me radiant and hypnotic too … Creastar® Usa FM Intense Sweetorbit WL 20 by The Innovation Company®, is synthetic mica coated with Lauroyl Lysine to make golden adventures come alive in jelly fun, from head to toe. Extremely light to the touch, shimmering instantly on skin contact: a party for cheekbones and hair with the addition of the blur effect thanks to light reflecting correctors.
He did in fact want to share something with me: the three most important lessons that he has learnt from this sport: (contemplative and athletic, he has to have some bad points otherwise what’s going to make me want to go home)
- happiness walks into your life at the most unexpected moments like a wave (take note!!!)
- life, like the sea has no limits and if you don’t have fun you might as well be dead because it amounts to the same! (look out)
- a surfer doesn’t have a routine and lives life dancing with nature accepting whatever comes his way day after day (romantic)
Looks can be deceptive I keep telling myself, I’m 10 thousand miles from home with my feet in the sand and I meet a surfer, a hippie with a karma that lights up the room – but as we well know there is an ocean between saying and doing so starting with the polished waves (***) look could be the booster towards a beauty & spiritual rebirth.
The 25th of December has come around and I’m waiting at the gate for my plane but already I’m riding a new wave: I’m humming surfer tunes to myself whilst I flick through Osho’s book ‘Intuition: Knowing Beyond Logic – insights for a new way of living’.
It’s a start, I’m certain…
Happy Christmas to all!
(*)aerial= is one of the most spectacular maneuvers that can be done with a surf board on a fast enough wave. The surfer takes off from the lip of the wave using it as a launch ramp landing again at the end of the maneuver.
(**)parallel undercut= a cut inspired by surfer hair it has two distinct layers: in the bottom part the cut is horizontal and straight whilst in the top sections the hair gets a deeper ‘point-cutting’ for a layered finish.
(***)polished waves= are created loosening curls with your fingers or re-energizing their natural consistency with a specifically formulated spray. Hair is then air dried or dried using a diffuser. To finish off apply a drop of shiny oil.
