Latin America Insertion
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Scott
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Latin America Insertion
Just one week away until the four of us depart on our first ever trip “somewhere way down there” for one week. Sworn to secrecy with me are Southpeak Brad, his brother Craig, and Mmanners (Mark). The South Pacific is alive and kickin’, and the swell forecast looks verrryyyyy promising, 84 degree water. We are stoked and awash in daydreams!
I'm not influenced by the past; I change it!
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Eric Carson
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MARK MY WORDS 
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Scott
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Sitting at the airport now, waiting for the 12:20 am flight down south. Prepaid my board fee, at the advice of Mark Manners, which was a good idea. No one opened my board bag to count if there was more than one...
I'm super excited, and have had some trouble focusing at work the last few days. Well, more like the last month, I guess. The forecast is still looking very promising and I decided to bring one board for larger, faster surf.
Thanks, Randy. You and the orange kneeboarder get some of the best travel surf of anyone I know--I hope we score the same.
I'm super excited, and have had some trouble focusing at work the last few days. Well, more like the last month, I guess. The forecast is still looking very promising and I decided to bring one board for larger, faster surf.
Thanks, Randy. You and the orange kneeboarder get some of the best travel surf of anyone I know--I hope we score the same.
I'm not influenced by the past; I change it!
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Scott
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- Posts: 1244
- Joined: Mon Mar 10, 2003 5:36 pm
- Location: San Jose, CA
Back from our first trip down to Latin America. Southpeak Brad, Mmanners (Mark), Craig (Brad’s brother and a great standup guy—literally) and I were tired of hearing all these stories of our friends getting great Mexico, or Panama, or Nicaragua, or Costa Rica, or El Salvador, and we had to see for ourselves. So with restless dreams of reeling point waves and peeling beachbreaks we booked our trip last fall for this first week of June. As three of us were kneelos, we all packed two boards apiece to handle a variety of conditions.
We were very fortunate that there was good south swell running that weekend we arrived. Surfline—bless their little inaccurate hearts—also had a forecast for head high plus waves for much of the week, but that didn’t come to pass. Perhaps it is indeed true, as the rumor goes, that they hype swells just to drive people to their website; maybe it’s more accurate that they don’t know much about forecasting outside of the U.S. and Hawaii. Others probably know the answer to those complex questions better than I.
We stayed with a local surf company to feed and house us, and to take us to breaks each day in their 4-wheel drive SUVs. In truth, it happened to just be one certain break to which they took us each day, because it picked up the swell the best. And, as it broke a lot like Rincon (in 84-degree water), rolling down the point for about 300 – 400 yards, that wasn’t such a bad place to be “trapped” every day. If the swell was just a bit bigger, the guides told us, then a lot of other area breaks would have also turned on and the crowd would be dispersed over many different spots, all firing. So they regaled the four of us with amazing stories of past swells and endless, tubing waves, following by long, peaceful walks back up the point to the lineup. “Isss perfecto!” they would chime in! So that will have to be our next trip…
As it was, the head high plus swell coming out of deep water into a pitching takeoff was shared consistently among 15 – 40 surfers. These were mostly international traveling surfers so they were pretty good, rarely missing waves, rarely falling. And there were about 10 or so local guys out at various times. And that included the surf guides getting their waves at various times. Mark and I would sit on the outside, taking our turn with everyone else (cool that they were all “following the rules” and keeping the vibe pleasant). Brad and Craig most often followed the smart strategy of waiting a 100 yards or so further inside and picking off the good ones that just passed by the outside takeoff, or picking up some gems after a rare wipeout by another surfer. The “taking turns” rule did pretty well each day until a group of Brazilian surfers would invariably flail into the lineup and then paddle right past everyone to try to sit deeper and take whatever set waves they wanted (good luck, BTW, sitting deeper than a couple of kneelos!), and tensions would rise rapidly until a lot of yelling by everyone else would put them in their place. Eventually, they would end up sulking together on the beach in their Speedos.
Interestingly, our tour operator is no longer taking Brazilian groups of surfers because of their ongoing effrontery (not the wearing Speedos, but the snaking of everyone in the lineup…)
The swell peaked the morning of our third day and coughed up a few very thick bombs. I personally had the worst lip launch in about my last two years on one wave (maybe sitting too deep, I suppose), got bounced around pretty good, finally came up sputtering and turned just in time to see Mark getting pile driven to the bottom as the lip fell right on him on his subsequent takeoff. Brad watched the whole carnage perched atop a rock on the point and had a good laugh. We sheepishly paddled to the back of the line to await our next turn… But Mark got plenty of set waves and late takeoffs, followed immediately by some critical under-the-lip snaps or over-the-lip hacks that seemed quite difficult to me, yet he made them look effortless. Brad worked on flowing, connecting moves across the middle and inside faces, and was always alert to sniff out an inside tube. Speaking of “faces”, if you’ve ever surfed with Brad, he’s always got this happy, Mr. Rogers grin while he surfs—no one shows his joy surfing quite like Brad. A number of guys commented on it out in the lineup, “did you see that kneeboarder over there? He’s got the biggest smile on every wave—that is so cool!” So he also got into lots of super-friendly conversations out of the water, too…
How do you surf a 300 – 400 yard long wave? You just turn, turn, turn. It took about 60 seconds of very active surfing to complete an entire ride there, and that’s about 20 turns to a wave (and in the warm water, no cramps from turning too much!!). Many of the turns you could repeat exactly or intensify compared to the previous one, so it was almost like surfing in a simulator—very cool! In the middle section the wave slowed down a bit from the faster outside, and you could roundhouse to your heart’s content. The inside would speed up again and mix increasingly fast turns linked into lip hits, ending invariably with a closeout whack over a shallow sand bank. The only thing missing on this trip was a consistent, grinding barrel.
Negatives? Surfing twice a day for a week rubbed our knees raw on our ribbed kneepads (not wearing nice protective wetsuits in this warm water) and that actually got painful with lots of cuts. We had two special kneepads with us that you could slide up your leg, and we rotated them between the three of us to place over a damaged knee, but in the future I’ll always travel with two thin ones for regular protection. And our muscles were screaming all week for relief from the constant paddling—we just ignored their cries and surfed on. Ben-Gay type ointments came in handy getting out of bed in the mornings. But it was all worth it as now our shoulders are so massive we have to turn sideways to walk through doors.
Toward the end of the week, the swell dropped to just a few feet; we missed not packing along a mush board instead of that big wave kneeboard. In the dwindling surf, we reduced our sessions to once a day, and spent more time having the guide show us other breaks. Not that there were ridable waves at these spots—there weren’t—but it helped us see more of the potential for the area to light up in a good swell. The last day, on the way to the airport, he took us to a more distant spot from our home base and we scored some last great shoulder high glassy waves spinning down yet another picturesque point. And another two truckloads of Brazilians pulled up simultaneously to paddle out and give us their proper sendoff.
As a sort of support-the-local-kids service, we planned in advance and brought a few suitcases of donated or purchased baseball gear to support one of the local Little Leagues. Our head guide knows the mayor of a small community who is working hard to create local baseball, and took us to their field—it was just a dry pile of dirt and weeds, with a scrawny burro walking around on it! But they’ll get a lot of great use out of the stuff, I’m sure.
Brad just emailed me a few minutes ago, and said he only need look down at his scabbed knees and all the memories of the trip come rushing back! Isn’t that the truth—we’re often defined in our surfing by our injuries! But we feel so blessed to have the means to travel and to experience this diverse world, and its many wonderful people, and great waves. And then we can come back to the amazing, clean, safe USA, and our loving families!
I’m putting some pics of our trip up in the Album this evening, then maybe a few more in a week or so.
We were very fortunate that there was good south swell running that weekend we arrived. Surfline—bless their little inaccurate hearts—also had a forecast for head high plus waves for much of the week, but that didn’t come to pass. Perhaps it is indeed true, as the rumor goes, that they hype swells just to drive people to their website; maybe it’s more accurate that they don’t know much about forecasting outside of the U.S. and Hawaii. Others probably know the answer to those complex questions better than I.
We stayed with a local surf company to feed and house us, and to take us to breaks each day in their 4-wheel drive SUVs. In truth, it happened to just be one certain break to which they took us each day, because it picked up the swell the best. And, as it broke a lot like Rincon (in 84-degree water), rolling down the point for about 300 – 400 yards, that wasn’t such a bad place to be “trapped” every day. If the swell was just a bit bigger, the guides told us, then a lot of other area breaks would have also turned on and the crowd would be dispersed over many different spots, all firing. So they regaled the four of us with amazing stories of past swells and endless, tubing waves, following by long, peaceful walks back up the point to the lineup. “Isss perfecto!” they would chime in! So that will have to be our next trip…
As it was, the head high plus swell coming out of deep water into a pitching takeoff was shared consistently among 15 – 40 surfers. These were mostly international traveling surfers so they were pretty good, rarely missing waves, rarely falling. And there were about 10 or so local guys out at various times. And that included the surf guides getting their waves at various times. Mark and I would sit on the outside, taking our turn with everyone else (cool that they were all “following the rules” and keeping the vibe pleasant). Brad and Craig most often followed the smart strategy of waiting a 100 yards or so further inside and picking off the good ones that just passed by the outside takeoff, or picking up some gems after a rare wipeout by another surfer. The “taking turns” rule did pretty well each day until a group of Brazilian surfers would invariably flail into the lineup and then paddle right past everyone to try to sit deeper and take whatever set waves they wanted (good luck, BTW, sitting deeper than a couple of kneelos!), and tensions would rise rapidly until a lot of yelling by everyone else would put them in their place. Eventually, they would end up sulking together on the beach in their Speedos.
Interestingly, our tour operator is no longer taking Brazilian groups of surfers because of their ongoing effrontery (not the wearing Speedos, but the snaking of everyone in the lineup…)
The swell peaked the morning of our third day and coughed up a few very thick bombs. I personally had the worst lip launch in about my last two years on one wave (maybe sitting too deep, I suppose), got bounced around pretty good, finally came up sputtering and turned just in time to see Mark getting pile driven to the bottom as the lip fell right on him on his subsequent takeoff. Brad watched the whole carnage perched atop a rock on the point and had a good laugh. We sheepishly paddled to the back of the line to await our next turn… But Mark got plenty of set waves and late takeoffs, followed immediately by some critical under-the-lip snaps or over-the-lip hacks that seemed quite difficult to me, yet he made them look effortless. Brad worked on flowing, connecting moves across the middle and inside faces, and was always alert to sniff out an inside tube. Speaking of “faces”, if you’ve ever surfed with Brad, he’s always got this happy, Mr. Rogers grin while he surfs—no one shows his joy surfing quite like Brad. A number of guys commented on it out in the lineup, “did you see that kneeboarder over there? He’s got the biggest smile on every wave—that is so cool!” So he also got into lots of super-friendly conversations out of the water, too…
How do you surf a 300 – 400 yard long wave? You just turn, turn, turn. It took about 60 seconds of very active surfing to complete an entire ride there, and that’s about 20 turns to a wave (and in the warm water, no cramps from turning too much!!). Many of the turns you could repeat exactly or intensify compared to the previous one, so it was almost like surfing in a simulator—very cool! In the middle section the wave slowed down a bit from the faster outside, and you could roundhouse to your heart’s content. The inside would speed up again and mix increasingly fast turns linked into lip hits, ending invariably with a closeout whack over a shallow sand bank. The only thing missing on this trip was a consistent, grinding barrel.
Negatives? Surfing twice a day for a week rubbed our knees raw on our ribbed kneepads (not wearing nice protective wetsuits in this warm water) and that actually got painful with lots of cuts. We had two special kneepads with us that you could slide up your leg, and we rotated them between the three of us to place over a damaged knee, but in the future I’ll always travel with two thin ones for regular protection. And our muscles were screaming all week for relief from the constant paddling—we just ignored their cries and surfed on. Ben-Gay type ointments came in handy getting out of bed in the mornings. But it was all worth it as now our shoulders are so massive we have to turn sideways to walk through doors.
Toward the end of the week, the swell dropped to just a few feet; we missed not packing along a mush board instead of that big wave kneeboard. In the dwindling surf, we reduced our sessions to once a day, and spent more time having the guide show us other breaks. Not that there were ridable waves at these spots—there weren’t—but it helped us see more of the potential for the area to light up in a good swell. The last day, on the way to the airport, he took us to a more distant spot from our home base and we scored some last great shoulder high glassy waves spinning down yet another picturesque point. And another two truckloads of Brazilians pulled up simultaneously to paddle out and give us their proper sendoff.
As a sort of support-the-local-kids service, we planned in advance and brought a few suitcases of donated or purchased baseball gear to support one of the local Little Leagues. Our head guide knows the mayor of a small community who is working hard to create local baseball, and took us to their field—it was just a dry pile of dirt and weeds, with a scrawny burro walking around on it! But they’ll get a lot of great use out of the stuff, I’m sure.
Brad just emailed me a few minutes ago, and said he only need look down at his scabbed knees and all the memories of the trip come rushing back! Isn’t that the truth—we’re often defined in our surfing by our injuries! But we feel so blessed to have the means to travel and to experience this diverse world, and its many wonderful people, and great waves. And then we can come back to the amazing, clean, safe USA, and our loving families!
I’m putting some pics of our trip up in the Album this evening, then maybe a few more in a week or so.
I'm not influenced by the past; I change it!
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MWROBERTSON
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TRIP
Scott and boys, Sounds like a great trip for you all. You deserve the break!
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Man O' War
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