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What’s SUP!?!? SUP is ‘Stand Up Paddle Boarding’ and it is AWESOME! This new watersport craze is now available to try in nearby Bayahibe and here you can read all about it! Always on the look out for new and exciting activities to try in and around Casa de Campo, we were thrilled to discover ‘Bayahibe SUP‘ and jumped at the chance to ‘review’ this new and exciting sport – for the good of our Casa de Campo Living readers of course! According to Yumiko owner of Bayahibe SUP, ‘SUP’ is “the new, eco-friendly way to get out on the water and have fun. It’s easy and quick to learn and anyone can do it.” And we couldn’t agree more! We loved it – it’s a lot like canoeing or kayaking except that you stand and paddle about on a ‘SUP’ board – it requires slightly more concentration and balance….the boards may look stable in our photos, but we all fell in more than once!

To start our lesson we had a brief 5 minute introduction on the beach, which encompassed how to get on the board, how to stand up and how to paddle, and then with a splish and a splash we were out on the water! To begin with we all knelt on our boards to practice paddling about and as soon as we felt confident we stood up and that was it we were SUP-ing! Having seen the photos of SUP on Facebook I thought the hardest part must be the actual paddling, it didn’t occur to me that keeping your balance might be slightly challenging – for some reason (maybe because I’m blonde) I assumed it would be as straight forward as standing on the floor……..of course that turned out not to be the case! Once up on your board, although not difficult, keeping balance did prove a bit of a challenge and as we were paddling on an unusually blustery day, there were some small waves in the normally calm bay of Bayahibe, which I admit, knocked me (and the boys) off balance a few times! But it was great fun and made me feel a bit like a surfer!

Leo shows us how it’s done!

A little later on, the sea calmed down and we got to experience a little SUP on perfect clear blue calm waters – a totally different experience altogether. When the water was flat, keeping balanced required almost no concentration and it was so relaxing to paddle along, looking down into the water, where you can enjoy watching the fish swimming around below your board. During our lesson we also learnt a few other variants of SUP: • Lazy SUP – sitting on the board (one of my favorites and great for when you get a bit tired….all that’s missing is a beer holder) • Nervous SUP – kneeling on the board, perfect if you think you might fall off! • Sunbathing SUP – lying on the board soaking up the rays! • Surfer Spin SUP – in a ‘surfers’ stance you spin your board around in a circle, the boys (especially Leo) loved this trick – I guess they imagined it was ‘manly’

We SUP-ed underneath this catamaran!

After our lesson we spent the rest of the day in Bayahibe, enjoying the chilled atmosphere, a few beers and some garlic lobster. A few other places you can go visit whilst you’re in Bayahibe are: • Mare Nostrum Seafood Restaurant – click here to read our review! • Barcobar – click here to read our review! • Capitan Kidd’s Pirate Bar – click here for photos! We had a fantastic time, I totally fell in love with SUP – its fun, relaxing and is great for your CORE stomach muscles and arms! The whole experience was made better by our instructors Yumiko and Lamont who were friendly, fun and professional – thank you Bayahibe SUP, we will be back very very soon! Here are a few more photos of our experience:
Learning to SUP is super simple – you only need one lesson and after that you can rent a board and go SUP! Contact Bayhaibe SUP on: bayahibesup@gmail.com or 809-399-9473