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He who does not travel does not know the value of men. – Moorish proverb
This place is a pretty remote part of the bloody world.
I’ve been raised in such a tropical island ghetto which is probably why I like enduring the horrifying long travels to these far-off corners of the globe. There’s room for valuable insights here in the face of compulsive materialism and raging narcissism that have become the appalling standards of our modern living.
I knew that the counterpart of the expensive travel to reach this place was to keep on a budget stay meaning actually to share a dorm room in a cheap surf/dive resort. The trouble is I became tired of socializing with surfers a fucking while ago.
In theory the unique combination of skills that surfing demands in the close interplay with harsh elements should promote accomplished characters in the same way as for explorers, divers, climbers or whatever.
Beyond the horizon of appearances lies the horizon of disappearance. It turns out most surfers are mere caricatures of that, formatted with a shallow mindset and dopey lifestyle ideal proceeding from a purely superficial and fabricated image of sea, surf and fun fitting perfectly for the mindset of wealthy spoiled westerners. Indeed surf companies have sucked the soul out of the billion dollar business of this “surfer dreamlife”. Add years of corporate advertisement bulshit, extensive exposure too close of a television screen, alienation from reality which reflects by the great rock’n roll star fever on Facebook/Twitter/Youtube/Instagram… what else to expect from this crap?
With this background in mind it’s likely to end up tiresome after only a short period of time. So I was rather pleased on the first days to be by myself in this nearly empty resort isolated in the middle of nowhere.
Shortly after, a friendly guy from Kauai showed up in the dorm room. He was a longstanding surfer but did not really come here for the waves. The long story was that he went to these islands a long time ago and had been one of the very early guys who uncovered and surfed a spot that had since been considered one of the best waves on the planet. Needless to say he surfed it a lot and there was not a soul in sight at the time.
He liked the place to the point of marrying a native girl and buying land with a ridiculous view on the offshore barrier reef where the wave breaks. The dream of a lifetime for a surfer. But at this point ongoing instability eventually led the country to invite him to leave. It was only twenty seven years later that he came back to exercise his ownership of land and build a house with the help of local people in the nearby village.
Today I’m a guest for lunch with a family helping to build his house.
There is a longstanding tradition in their culture for special occasions, so we’re going to chill out for hours of drinking, storytelling and socializing.
Local people never cease to surprise me. They are valuable persons which express their feelings and emotion through natural, unelaborated ways. The parents are rural characters living in a marginal house built of their own in a sparsely populated valley sheltered from the violent storms that can sweep the region. They have three teens, two girls and a boy who all finished school and have been working hard to help their family from well before reaching the age of majority. There is little employment outside from the hard labour of plantations. There’s no job prospect from inexistant higher education. Most people live in a precarious periphery, without an infrastructure, without basic sanitation, without almost anything. The islands suffered the consequences of severe political instability in the past leading to a deterioration in the social situation, so there’s a little hope for improvement from the upcoming democratic elections.
Those are the usual hardships afflicting the life of billions of people in the less advantaged world who, simply by virtue of being born somewhere, can never aspire to the secure life we live in comparison.
Life here is tough but it does have one advantage. Life is real.
There’s no point deluding ourselves about the shock of civilizations, in the face of west culture where fakery and self-interest pulverize reality at every corner.
While spending time with other guests in the resort, it’s striking to observe how well-off brats, the standard profile seen on the roads, fit stuck up superficial stereotypes in comparison. They are too pleased about themselves to be truly perceptive and respectful of others, starring in their own movie and navel-gazing with the self-delusion of blurring the void of their existential bulshit. It doesn’t take much time to uncover the dirt. Look beneath the façade of seamless well-adjustment and what you often find are toxic levels of ego, inabilty and lack of self confidence to face reality, flaws in the personality sometimes until sheer excessiveness and borderline situations.
It’s the outmost feature of narcissistic characters to show an unlimited sense of disrespect for the others and the ways in which they do things, of superficial individualities to deal with an obsessive “looking cool” disorder, of inflated western ladies to push the limits of shallow insipidness, of arrogant caricatures to reflect poor personal standards and lack of true life experience. It’s actually in the far end of Switzerland in a famous elite academy full of entitled little shits that I have learned the most about this prodigious discovery, but that’s another story. Experience teaches that the theory can be easily generalized on a large scale.
“Character is like a tree and reputation like its shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.” – Abraham Lincoln
Too bad so much people have lost the real thing.
But why should we care about the problems of so many fucking idiots?
As I sat exhausted from a few hours in solid surf sleepily watching those big lefts peeling down the reef like freight trains, time had also come for me to face some truth. After all these years I still suck at surfing.
This time of year is at the peak of the swell season. Travelling so hard to some of the best waves in the world is with the little idea to push some limits in mind. I was about to be well served.
Massive swells hit the islands consistently, waves rarely fall under the six foot range at 15 to 20 seconds period. Wave power is proportional to the wave energy period and in major storms, the largest waves offshore have a period of about 15 seconds. There are not so many places in the world holding this energy.
But surfing big is a tough stepwise process. When the shit goes down, you’d better be ready. I humbly declined what I would set to a really big day on my personal scale.
A few days later, the stormy Southern Ocean machine delivers a smaller ten foot swell. The spot is slowly clearing up because massive double size sets fills in every now and then, coming out of nowhere. After watching a moment from the boat I decide to paddle out.
It is usually one thing to estimate the size of the waves from a distance and a different story from close sea-level perspective. I have already surfed waves that size but it didn’t come close to this power. In their march towards the reef, faces are slowly extending vertically nearly limitless, preceding a ton of water, then loosing one fraction of the size as they folder projecting everything far ahead in a huge amount of energy. It’s all about an absolute drop into the pit and hitting the gas straight from inside endlessly expanding caverns across a distance that can exceed 300 meters. There’s no time to bottom turn. Being too slow or finding yourself in front of an exploding section is not an option. Being caught by an outside double up set neither.
I have to admit that I’ve been shitting my pants on a couple of waves. I’ll give an arm to surf the same shit frontside.
Everyone in the crew is regular (surfing their back facing this wave) and a bit of frustration starts to emerge from surfing exclusively big lefts for quite some time.
There’s actually a world class righthander at a nearby reef pass but it has been blown out with the incessant succession of depressions. Finally the windless day long awaited ended up happening and we all agreed for the extra boat ride to check it out.
Outcome of the operation: perfect barrels, six guys out. Muy bueno.
The bowl starts on a shallow piece of sharp reef where the wave is too fast, so it’s better to take off a little bit inside. However it’s a kind of a free fall take off to find yourself directly racing a long and super fast barrel. It took a few wipeouts to understand the process when I finally spotted this perfect looking set from a distance gradually moving towards my direction. Being the very early one paddling in the pack, there was my name on the first wave.
I remember having often noticed the singular nature of the flow of events from this precise moment: there’s no room for thinking anymore, everything goes mechanical from the instant we start paddling, we turn into crazy machines.
The sea starts opening wide just below my board making the reef visible underneath as I’m still paddling hard like if it was to save my life. I quickly angle my board to avoid end up projected and peeled off like a snake skin on the coral. Micro bottom turn. Heavy kick in the ass quickly followed by a detonating load of water chasing me on my left side. An hypnotic crystal blue wall is endlessly arching at an insane speed ahead of me.
The show is unreal. I can remember now what I came here for.
Pumping conditions right at the end is the best possible finish for a trip. After a few weeks it’s easier to leave when forecasts let no hope for another good swell anytime soon.
Jumping off the boat back from a last perfect session, just enough time to pack my boards before heading to the airport, at least I can leave satiated with no fear of missing too much of this perfection.
Because what awaits now might be less fun. Four days straight of air travel madness to get back home.
Welcome back to the real.
