The Legend of chico

We spent an eerie couple of days in the tiny ghost town/surf spot of Porto fino. The only permanent inhabitant being the loco chico christian, who after a few beers made us lunch and fed us beers from 9:30 in the morning. He was a great host, if not a little wild, along with his troop of 5 dogs, i spent 3 days with waves all to myself.. and a few for chico.


Porto fino is a classic right hander, that can have rides of 500m or more, this is really similar to mangamanu style wave back in NZ.. scored this place at 3-6ft over a couple of days, and ther is tonnes, of other epic spots minutes from here..

enjoying the peaks all to myself


whos hiding inside there?

chico dropped in for a few of the bigger ones

this spot was insane, 8ft at least..

a left just round the corner

Logriding in chile..

We have been travelling around the north of argentina, bolivia and peru, so it was a welcome sight when we hit chile to see and smell the ocean.

Not so many shots of arica, but scored Iquique at a good solid 4ft with perfect barreling peaks 100m from where we are staying.

Iquique is like wave paradise, ther is about 10km of reef coastline with perfect breaks and sunny days CONSISTANTLY all year. Our hostal didnt even have a roof, thats how frequently it rains.

These are a few shots from what has become known as "toms reef". ´Nick named after one of the californians i have been surfing with who took his first nasty reef beating. Props to the veggie sam for surfing this place on a fun board with only one fin left... It was a ganrly right over shallow rock bottom..







The next few days we surfed the actual surfers spot, toms reef, is pretty much a body board wave.. This other one, is pretty famous in front of the Vertical surf shop and competition tower ,a punchy left that has spitting barrels that swallowed me occaisionally.

It doesnt look it but the set waves were easily stand up overhead classic blue barrels..

Arica

Home of the famous chillean pipeline "El Gringo" and big wave spot "El buey".

We manage to find the beautiful town of Arica, at a time when thankfully the swell was only a measly 6ft or somthing? This spot usually holds up to 20 ft, so i dont think i would be tackling that. The place we were staying at was as epic as the waves, and funny enough the guy who ran it was a big wave charger. His smallest board was a 6´6" gun. Actually he didnt own any other boards than guns.

heres a shot of el gringo doing its thing, there wasnt a wave that came through that didnt have a frothing spitting barrel. It was soo intense, and i read after that, its dangerous to surf it when its too small as this is a board breaking shallow beast.

Taking it to extremes, 100 on the other side of the tiny island that this wave breaks on, the swell pilters out and wraps around to La Isla with long perfect lefts peeling off into the bay.