All it took was a call from Robby Swift telling me that the swell-of-the-year was hitting in a few days. I was on a plane the next morning bound for Santiago, Chile to try to windsurf one of South America’s most iconic big wave spots – Punta De Lobos.
Story By Jason Polakow Photos Alfredo Escobar, Diego Figueroa, Nico Orrego & Pablo Berrios
(This story originally appeared in the October 2012 issue of Windsurf Magazine. Print and digital subscriptions for readers worldwide are available HERE.)
No windsurfer had ever sailed this heavy surfing location before. It was the perfect antidote I needed to jump-start my heart after a flatline start to the Hawaiian summer and a failed trip to Fiji earlier in the year…
ROCK HARD
Chile is home to some of the largest swells in the world. That, coupled with freezing water temperatures, makes Chile a magnet for the fanatical few that are willing to endure the harsh conditions to get a true taste of cold water adrenaline. It had been a 30-hour plane trip and a night’s rest before I got my first glimpse of this famous wave. The landscape and the way Punta de Lobos breaks are truly amazing. The land juts out to a very narrow point practically looking over the top of the break. It feels like you could jump off the point and with a few short strokes be sitting in the line-up. Two large majestic peaks of rock, known locally as the ‘rocas’ sit just to the right of the take-off zone. Large sea birds continually soar around them before perching themselves on top of these majestic pillars with the perfect view of the line-up. With all this unique landscape set around one of the best big wave left-handers in the world Punta De Lobos is a photographer’s dream.
