Too true man, too true!

You know you’ve made it big if you can go by only one name.  Polly.  In fact Polly encompasses everything that is big. Like Prince, Cher, Madonna, Bono, Pocahontas and Sophie Ellis Baxtor, Polly is at the top his game.  Now, we know what you’re thinking… “If he’s at the top of his game, why have I never seen him?”.  Well the truth is, you probably have! Be it on the cover of  Holding Your Kayak magazine or running all the way across town in his socks with his shirt tied around his head in the middle of the night, chances are you’ve come across the Big Guy. You might have even found him sleeping in the back of your bakkie. These are just a few of the things that have taken Polly from an ordinary one-namer to athlete status. Here at Fish Munga we take pride in bringing people the real world; going behing the scenes, which is why we’ve decided to bring you the inside story of Polly: the myth, the man, the legend.

Ironically, Polly’s natural habitat in not on some distant river or at some remote surf spot. It’s not even at Johnny’s Rotti. Sure, he does do these things. What we mean to say is; he somehow manages to find time to do these things when he’s not behind his computer. It’s not possible to love a human baby as much as Polly loves his computer.

We’ve seen Polly take his computer to the movies.  He’s literally connected to the Internet from an aeroplane, mid-flight. In fact, Polly might be the first person to ever suffer from Death by Double-Click. There’s no cure for that!

When it comes to fashion, Polly’s kind of a big deal! Who else could possible pull off getting bounced from a club for wearing slops, only to return wearing the same slops completely covered in duct tape? Not only did they let him in but there are now a pair of shoes that look remarkably similar with a Nike tick on the side. If NASA saw those, they’d sneeze in their pants! We’ve seen Polly at the bar wearing a high visability reflective jacket complete with neck-tie and a pen in the top pocket. Another time Polly went out in a skin-tight rash vest with his name on the back, only the body trunk was completely missing. The list just goes on, as Polly cruises the scene breaking ground and hearts all along the way.

Polly is a loving man. He’ll cuddle you to death, and thats no euphemism! If you’re feeling a little down, or if you haven’t seen Polly in a while, or even if theres just been a longish silence, you will hear the words “come in for the real thing” followed by a generous hug. We were sitting around one night when we heard a russle in the bushes. We all thought there might be someone there so we started to prepare ourselves for the ensuing onslaught only the see Polly disappearing into the bush saying “hey come on… who needs a hug. lets just show some love here.”

Don’t worry, you’ll be forgiven for assuming that Polly is one of Sweden’s finest. Your mistake would not be the first. The truth is, Polly is more Jew than Nazi.  Whatever the case may be, make no mistake that when Polly gets onto the water, he thrives. We’ve always said that Polly thinks only about three things: sleeping, eating and kayaking. Now, Polly is passionate about the first two, especially eating. If he’s ever in your area, get him to whip you up one of his delicious wraps or even a stew, but when he’s in his kayak, Polly is always looking for the biggest waves to throw on and the biggest drops to stomp. Polly loves kayaking. And mangoes.

Check this clip for some fresh insight behind Polly’s success with the ladies…

So… not too long ago, on a day that was made with nothing but good intentions and wild designs, Fish Munga decided to round up some boys and hit the road. Not just any boys, i might add, and not just any road either.  We brought in the legen – dary Fisher bro’s;  Steve and Dave and of course Polly The Athlete who is known worldwide for his boundary-pushing athlete status. We can honestly say there is no athlete in the world like Polly! With a good crew on board, Jeep wanted on the bandwagon too and out of the kindness of their hearts lent us a vehicle fresh out of their stables. Not wanting to be left out, Aquarius Inflatables insisted we take one of their hottest racing ducks. We felt good knowing that the motor they gave us had just been raced in the world cup. With huge smiles on our faces and a little bit of pooh in our pants we affectionately named this gunner The Heat!  Fluid kayaks made sure we had all the right toys and gave us a couple of new Elements.

Boys *check*. 4×4 *check*. The Heat *check*. Kayaks *check* … only one place to go…

THE WILDCOAST

Armed with all our favourite music and a bottle of Old Brown Sherry, we left the roads of tar with one main agenda: find waves. You see, it’s no secret that most of the fairest waves in the land are hidden in the confines of this treacherous coastline, disguised by a maze of untamed roads and guarded by man-eating sharks! In the old days ships would run aground on dark silhouetted shores, thrashed by growling seas onto jagged rocks only to have their survivors met by snarling savages.  The house tunes pumping out of our ‘GP’ number-plated Jeep might suggest that times have changed since then, but we assure you, some things never change. The Wildcoast has gracefully been left behind by progress; the hills just keep rolling while herdsmen walk their cows on beaches that look the same as the did when those unfortunate survivors met their captors two hundred years ago.

Once on the ‘road’ we hit all our favourite spots or just roamed the countryside until we found a place that was beautiful enough for our now very high standards, pitched our tents, launched The Heat and went on the search for waves. The Heat was enough fun just by itself. We even let Polly drive it once. He managed to get about five metres of air when he decided to keep the throttle wide open over a biggish wave. Needless to say Steve smacked him accross head with the fuel tank once they landed, and Polly’s drivers licence was suspended.

This entire blog could be dedicated to the love of The Heat. We filmed off it, fished off it, whale-watched off it, Dave fell off it once when he was driving, Steve even got rescued by it when he swam at a particularly rocky point in huge swell. Polly even slept in it once just becaused he missed it during the night. Dave literally cried when he had to give it back. He almost sold Doug’s kidneys to keep it.

We lived like kings on the Wildcoast – like kings who were on the road for most of their lives most probably on their way between battles living out of their tents and make-shift structures to try keep out of the rain and howling wind. We had our fair share of fair weather but we had the cold fronts too. This is what we wanted though, in fact we timed our entire trip on the likelyhood of this bad weather because this is what brings the massive waves we came to this part of the world in search of. We certainly got what we wanted and sessions in 15 – 25ft surf were our battles, the kind only kings fight.

Jokes aside though,  Polly and Dave had found a bay straight out the Secret Paradise Manual a few years ago and were eager to return there once the giant swell had died and the weather gone calm again. They found their opportunity right at the end of the trip and we spent the last days doing nothing but snorkling in crystal clear waters eating nothing but fresh fish and crayfish. Crayfish straight, crayfish salad, crayfish sandwiches, crayfish stirfry… you name it. We set our camp in the trees just above our pristine beach where The Heat lay and waited for the next outing.

So after much fun and adventure, and admittedly more than only one bottle of Old Brown Sherry we called it a successful roadtrip and headed back to civilisation, a little town called Durban, where we celebrated at the annual Durban July – SA’s top horse racing event – and of course… self portrait barrel shots at the Wavehouse!

*be sure to watch The Wildcoast HEAT trailer right here. The full show will be available soon as a download as well as on TV

Just the other day we received a bunch of accolades at Showreel, our Film & Television School’s prize giving.

Lloyd cleaned up the second year prizes winning “Excellence in Music Video”, “Excellence in PSA”, and the coveted “Best 2nd year Drama” which is the big one. These are the very same awards Dave received when he was in 2nd year and so now Dave and Lloyd both have their names engraved on the silverware. Now that’s some Fish Munga legacy!

Dave completed his Honours degree this year and took home awards in “Excellence in Cinematography” and the trophy for “Best Production”, another big one.

Well done! That almost calls for a air punch.

Since Dave has now finished his studies and might become a hobo, we rounded up a few “behind the scenes” photos of him over the last year:

On Location: Canada

On Location: Lesotho

On Location: Norway

On Location: Uganda

On Location: Nile River

On Location: Wildcoast

On Location: Gonubie

Not only is the Wavehouse a great venue for a first date but it’s a good place to meet all your fears and deepest desires all at once.  So every Tuesday we round up the boys (and sometimes the girls) and head out to the world famous Gateway Theatre of Shopping in Uhmlanga Ridge, Durban, South Africa 90210. We’ve found this to be the best way to get our minimum weekly dosage of getting barrelled off our tits.

The wave was built in the late eighteen hundreds and was know as “El Mochonoco” which in anglo saxon means “The Mighty One” but was later adapted by the Zulu’s to the “D-Rex”. (http://www.waveloch.com/history). We won’t mention what the “D” stands for because you’ll get bummed about it even if you’re not gay. This is our only let down about the whole set up. Other than that it’s all good, consistant barreling mayhem regardless of the weather. Even if the real waves are good we sneak off to the Wavehouse every Tuesday and sometimes on Friday’s when it’s half-price if you have a student card. We’ve heard there’s even a Flow League on Wednesdays where a deal is cut and you can ride sweet hours for your money’s worth.

If you like to get down and boogie,  we mean some low down and dirty belly gut sliding,  there’s options for all members of the family.  Here at Fish Munga we don’t judge. It’s like we always say, we don’t… judge. Hell, we’ve seen these flappers come in their thousands, hundreds even.

Being the men we are,  here at Fish Munga we don’t go both ways. That’s why we sometimes bring in a specialist from far out East to go against the flow and deal with the left hand viper. That’s right folks, the mayhem goes both ways and on any given sunday the folks at the Wavehouse put the middle section on (and if they don’t, they should)  joining the left to the right making it a kaleidoscope of sexual ambivalence.

When Polly came to the wavehouse, he tried everything. He even tried lunging the poor girl behing the desk. Dispondant, tired and flatulant he sat down next the wave. Now being the opportunists that we are, we swiftly shoved him back onto the wave. Our faces dropped and our smiles turned to frowns when Polly didn’t wipe out but instead sprouted a grin and looked more at home than ever. He looked as if he was about to crack open a cold one and start flipping channels. Victoriously he had found yet another activity to do while remaining sitting, adding this to the list of  Sitting Whilst: Cooking, Showering, Kayaking, Dancing, Running, Skyping and Snoozing… all under the heading of “Athlete”. Since we technically invented this, we’re going to say ‘style’ for lack of a better word, we insisted we got to name it. Enter: Butt-skiing

Inevitably there’s the occasional 9 and 1/2 time out of 10 wipeout.  Not to scare you or anything but Dave literally once cracked his head open here, blood flowing and stitches flying. Yes, there are ijuries. This is not to say you’re going to die, but it is possible.  But hey, die or don’t die, it’s up to you. One thing you can’t control though, is that you will have truck loads of a good time.

Regular rider Rich took some time out to ride the bench and take some some photos. We assure you he’s awesome though!

So the truth is we’re still amateurs. We know this guy who’s half goat, half mullet, half vampire. He was actually the stunt double for Wikus van der Merwe and now works at Jimmy’s Killer Prawns, but he’s a pretty good flow rider too.  We managed to catch him untamed in his natural habitat. Watch this clip, it’ll add two weeks to your life and might just help you quit smoking!

Our only advice is to get up early and go to the Wavehouse.  Sure, it might mean cutting into some bathroom time, but at the end of this you won’t even need a bath!

We’ve squandered the million so now all we have left is stuff to write about. Don’t worry yourself too much, your eyes are in good hands here so come back regularly and tune in to the latest ‘behind the scenes’ of the wonder that is Fish Munga!