THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES – SAVED BY THE GALAPAGOS

So there we were, me and my girlfriend Julie, sitting in dusty old Pacasmayo in central Peru watching one of the longest left hand points in the world deliver nothing but one foot dribblers for the fourth day in a row. After a month of no waves in South America I was starting to lose it. How could the South Pacific be so flat?

“Ding”
‘Renny, my son, come to the Galapagos and be saved,’ read the email from my friend Eddie Salazar. Eddie runs surf tours throughout Ecuador and out to the Galapagos. His immortal words were going to guide me out of the doldrums.

With 40 foot swell forecast for the Hawaiian islands and the Billabong Odyssey crew planning another trip out to the Cortes Bank, things were looking very promising.

Within a day at the Hostel Tangara in Guayaquil in Ecuador, we had everything arranged for a three week trip to the island of San Cristobal in the Galapagos. The Galapagos Islands are a national park and so the whole area is fiercely protected (including a 40 mile exclusion zone for fishing boats). San Cristobal is the only island you’re really allowed to surf on; fortunately enough it has the most surf spots of all the islands. To experience this exceptional place a fee of US$100 is paid on arrival, but believe me it's well worth it and ensures the future protection of the island.

San Cristobal

Coming into land on San Cristobal I was blown away to see a handful of reefs and bombies breaking in light offshore winds up and down the coast. After weeks of the desert and cold murky waters of northern Peru it was magical to watch these waves explode on the reefs in the clearest water I have ever seen. To me they all looked surfable but in particular I was trying to guess which one was El Carola, the fabled righthand barrel that South American surfers will travel thousands of miles to surf.

We had arranged to meet Eddie at the airport and true to his word within 25 minutes he had us booked into a decent guest house, was explaining which break was which, what stage of tide they broke on and what the swell was doing. The wave closest to town is El Canon and my first view of it was of a four to five foot offshore blue barrel with a handful of guys getting some sweet tubes. Five minutes later Eddie had arranged for a boat to take me out there and I was into some of those tubes myself. My salvation had begun.

There are three main breaks on San Cristobal; two within easy walking distance from the main town Puerto Baquerizio Moreno and one a five minute taxi drive away.

El Canon, the closest to town, is a classy little lefthander, not super hollow, not super long but super whackable. It breaks from three feet up to about six feet and is generally as clean as a whistle - the trade winds blow offshore there. I had some great afternoons out there enjoying some long walls with the handful of locals who have learnt to surf there. Quite impressive as the wave breaks about 20 feet from the rocks when it's a comfortable size to learn in.

El Carola

The primo wave of the Galapagos, El Carola, is about 10 minutes walk from town. The other waves on the island are fun, but El Carola is classic. At six to eight feet it packs the punch of a Hawaiian wave, has a couple of great barrel sections and will give you a sound beating if you let it!

La Loberia is a five minute taxi ride from town, it faces south and always has a wave, though unless the trades are light it will be a bit messy. To compare it to any other wave in the world I would say it does a fair impression of Lakey Peak though not quite as hollow.

On that first day I surfed El Canon for a couple of hours, grabbed a bite to eat and then dashed out to El Carola for an hour before dark, which with a rapidly increasing swell was producing some very grunty four to six foot rights. They were hitting the reef a bit square on but still there were plenty of heavy barrels and screaming 300 metre walls. El Carola breaks along a ridge of rock boulders. You jump off a natural rock groyne into a deep water lagoon with an easy paddle along the reef watching the waves break on the outside and then disappear as they hit the deeper inside. It's a dry hair paddle out. During my first surf there with the skies starting to bruise with equatorial dusk, it took me a while to suss out where to take off and what the waves were going to do. Although I didn’t get any memorable waves, it was good to get a feel for the spot as with each set increasing in size and number of waves per set, it was obvious that these waves were created by the same storm that had given Hawaii 40 foot surf.

Sea-lions

This session and every other session I had in the Galapagos were shared with a handful of very inquisitive and playful sea-lions. They would tear through the lineup, going from surfer to surfer to do a few doughnuts under your board before shooting off to the next guy. They would pop up right next to you or lie under your board and blow bubbles, then show up everyone by getting the longest and best rides of the day. Not only the waves are shared by humans and sea-lions here, but the town is to, they sit around on park benches along the side of the road. They bark and fool around all day long and entertained Julie and I from the moment we arrived to the moment we left.

I was up before dawn the next day and on the beach at El Carola at first light. The swell had jumped to solid eight foot sets, eight waves or more in each set, with one bloke already out there. The warm offshore trade winds were blowing straight into these beautiful waves, like a machine each wave broke in the same place and every lip landed with pinpoint accuracy. With the sea temperature in the high 20’s, turtles popping up in the lagoon, marine iguanas casting a suspecting eye as I waxed up and sea lions welcoming me as I paddled out, I was in paradise.

Paddling out, I watched the lone surfer out there push himself over the ledge, bottom turn on his back hand, choose his line and then without a moments hesitation grab his outside rail and pull into a thick, grinding, wide open tube. He came flying out on the shoulder next to me, this goofy foot ripper turned out to be my long-time mate and Pipe charger Dave. The last time I had seen him we were being thrown out of the Sugar Shack Bar on the North Shore.

The swell was thumping, I let a couple go past watching them bowl and pitch before choosing one of the bigger and last waves in the set. Paddling with arms still stiff from the day before, I got into this eight foot wall a bit late but still with time to pull my 6'8" through a swift bottom turn and up into a deep, but totally makable barrel, then out onto a curved wall for a few turns, the likes of which I hadn’t done since the last time I was snowboarding, and then into the flats for a last few turns and a deep water paddle back out.

Cali boys

The pattern was set for the next few days: me, Dave, Eddie (who knows the break like a local) and a handful of friendly Brazilians. The routine would be ten minute long lulls then sets of ten to fifteen waves, so if the crowd was small it was possible to get two waves in a set. Four days into the swell me and Dave were having a great mid-morning low tide session, getting heaps of super clean barrels with Julie sitting in the channel watching the sea lions and turtles, when Eddie turned up in a boat with four other guys who turned out to be Californian pros Josh Mulcoy, Barney Baron, Joe Curren and photographer Patrick. Patrick had his camera pointed at the lineup straight away as the three pros joined us. Of the four of them, I had met three at various places around the world over the past 12 years, Barney in Puerto Escondido on his first trip outside of the states, Patrick in Jersey and Joe in Bundoran a couple of years ago. I had read of Josh's father Harbour Bill Mulcoy and heard about Josh's solo sessions at various mysto reefs in the infamous shark-infested waters of northern California.

The three of them are super cruisy guys, they added to the mellow vibe in the lineup and blew us away with their polished and powerful styles. Joe cut his teeth on Rincons long perfect walls and his smooth top turns were a pleasure to watch, Barney's aerial forays were futuristic and Josh's tube riding was inspirational.

After most evening sessions, with the wind dropping off and the swell holding in there, we would stroll into town and settle into a few beers at Emmie's bar. Emmie, being a Frenchman, produced great food and kept the beers cold and constant, closing around midnight or once he’d got us slaughtered enough to have some hair-raising drunken walks home across the beach, dodging huge male sea lions sleeping on the beach or under the palm trees.

South side

After four or five days the north swell started to ease so we headed over to the other side of the island to La Loberia, which cops any swell around and pumps on a south swell. The trades blew the place out by mid-morning, but from first light (around six am) we had some classy glassy waves. The wave jacks up out of deep water onto a pretty gnarly lava reef with a few heads popping up here and there on the rights and the lefts. It finishes on dry rock but by picking the right wave and not riding it to far it becomes a great spot. The biggest I surfed it was around the five foot mark, it gets huge pretty often during the summer south swell months.

Once it gets out of control a spot called Tongo Reef kicks off, a long hollow left reef well protected from the trade wind and probably the most perfect wave on the island. I was hanging to get a day there but as often seems to be the case the day we were leaving was the day it pumped, catching everyone except Dave by surprise. Together with the three pros we checked Loberia too late in the day to head round to Tongo. La Loberia was ten feet with the occasional 12 foot bomb set. I had a boat to catch and the four Californians had to be back in the States for other commitments, but I caught up with Dave a week later and he told me that Tongo was unreal, six foot G-Land like lefts, clean as a whistle, no crowd. Bugger!!

I felt really lucky to surf in the Galapagos, it's not a cheap surf trip but its incredibly rewarding. The waves can be unreal, the wildlife on the land and in the sea is quite simply incredible, it's a very safe place with none of the hassles of most other surf destinations, the locals know they have something special and are happy to share it with the few travelling surfers who go there and so the place seems to breed a feeling of friendliness which was such a breath of fresh air - being more used to being hassled by 'locals' in other lineups around the world.

If you plan on a surf trip to South America, try to save a couple of hundred extra and buy yourself a ticket out to the Galapagos. You may never be down that way again, but if you find yourself sitting on the corn white sand of El Carola beach watching a set of fifteen perfect six foot right handers peeling across the shelf, turtles bobbing in the lagoon and sea lions bodysurfing, believe me you’ll thank yourself. Julie and I sat there many an evening and thanked each other!

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