blown away

i saw this video on artificial reefs over at brownfish, whose handplanes i've been drooling over for months. and you can check out the web page for the company that designed the project here. one of the most inspiring things i've seen in an awfully long time.

the thursday morning blog roundup...

via q peeps, secret forts has old photos from life magazine. i just hope they are hailing the waves in that one photo, not some madman. a friend's dad was once snapped by life in a raft in a river in borneo. how dope is that? spinalsurfer talks about love on the waves, and jair has some sharp photos up of mike vallely in bertioga, brazil, where i used to buy fish from the fishmongers. nothing like a beachside halfpipe made of concrete! pix courtesy of dezzert magazine in japan...

surfen and baden verboten, achtung baby!

photos below from a dispatch by our special envoy to the bundesland, who has been stranded for the last few days by volcanic ash from iceland, subsisting on little more than wieners and bier...
in all seriousness, big ups to my man CD, and thanks for keeping the InkaWaves spirit alive. these cats in full neoprene merit loads of respect for taking surfing to new places and innovating when real waves aren't within reach...

asu!

a shot of chilca taken by the famed ernesto b. on a big day a week or so ago. he described it as a 5 meter (15 foot) beachbreak. ouch! i lightened the photo in an editor and by chance noticed that now you can see the beast sucking up sand! oh man that is intimidating. it makes you wonder if this wave is shaping up to be peru's puerto escondido, famous for breaking just about everything...

neglected spot or famous spot?

i surfed saturday at a neglected wave in punta hermosa, one that years ago had a nice tube, then fell apart, and more recently is reforming. i surfed with two other guys. it was great: a drop that can be tricky, a short paddle, and a wall that is steep enough to put you in those jams where you ask "should I pump down the line to make the section, or do I have enough time to make some turns?" I then went to have lunch overlooking caballeros and ate fish soup while watching 40 people crawl over each other for waves, which were really good. sunday was puerto viejo, a bit crowded but mostly manageable. the take off can be awfully messy and fat, so i sat a bit on the inside and picked off some nice waves. the last one was one of those classic walls at puerto viejo, where you just barely make it through a series of sections in a kind of perfect rhythm, throwing a turn, then pumping, repeating...

chilca

people started talking about chilca last year as a new wave, one that hadn't been surfed before. a bodyboard contest was put on, and then last week quiksilver sponsored a surfing contest, in which mainly peruvians were invited. the waves were 11 foot that day, and people who attended told me it was the nastiest beach break they'd ever seen. the one time i went there i had trouble seeing how it would be surfable, but apparently they were towing in, either for the contest or the day after, not sure which. in any event, check out the photos here. the fourth one is easily the best shot i've seen in peru...

punta roquitas, i have missed you...

punta roquitas, which i've neglected during the last few weeks of big swells, settled down today into perfection: glassy waves, with feisty lips jutting forward, the makings of tiny barrels, and only about 5 people in the water. most people thought it was closing out and went a bit further south to pampilla this morning, but they were wrong. punta roquitas today was screaming, loads of fun, gobs of waves good enough to make me forget that i missed the 11' foot swell on sunday.

drift on africa

i strongly recommend reading the article on africa in drift magazine, which you can find here. some wonderful writing on what it's like to drop in on a powerful and fast break... not sure i've read anything better...

"I put my head down and paddle, eyes fixed on the water ahead of me as it begins to draw off the reef. The ocean begins to warp around the shallow rock, visible beneath the surface, covered in barnacles and disconcertingly close. I paddle hard as the wave begins to grow, down the line the wall stands up and horseshoes as the bottom begins to drop. I pop, grab my rail and pray, freefalling to the bottom and grasping for the wall with my free hand as I feel my fins bite and I guess at a line. The wave curls over my head and I’m enveloped by a soft roar. The light recedes and the moist air is thick with water droplets until suddenly I am in the channel. The crowd is now distant, I am alone in a moment of euphoria with a barrel under my belt at last. I paddle back slowly, with more confidence, enjoying the moment."

chop top at sunset

 

 

breaky break

had this drink post surf at a old sandwich joint in lima. it's milk, algarrobina (which is a strange little shrub that grows in the desert and produces a sweet sap full of vitamins) plus ground up maca (which is an andean root chock full of just about everything you need to live on). the old man who runs the place told me it would make me strong.
today's first meal was a blend of kiwicha and quinoa, yogurt, almonds and pecans, topped with yogurt, maca, honey and raspberries. word.

the first surf rig?

there is a point in the late days of summer in lima when people let it all hang out. the eight months of fog become a distant memory, the sun shines from sunrise to sunset, and you can almost convince yourself that the weather is going to be this perfect all year long. san diego or mexico? hey, we have it right here, or so the thinking goes. this surf rig has appeared in the last few days at pampilla, parked there all day, the old longboard is always on the car, not in the water. the back windows are full of grateful dead stickers and obscure hawaiian surf stickers. a necklace of sea shells hangs from the rearview mirror, a sentimental touch. but it's not overdone, one of the windows was rolled down and a rumpled tabloid paper was on the driver's seat. the thing still works, has been restored but not too much, it's the real deal, i'd say. who is the owner? i know not. i assume it's a guy from the first generation of peruvian surfers who lived in hawaii way back in the day and brought the duke over to lima...