By Guillermo Satt. Photos: Xabier Azcarate del Valle

It all started when I was surfing a secret spot in the north of Chile, where I spent about six days without internet connection. On Sunday, June 24, we returned to Arica and all the shots of the tubes in Namibia from the most recent swell started to appear.

So I went to see if there was any swell on the way so I could go, and this swell of June 28 and 29 just happened to be coming. I had three days to get organized and get to Namibia.

I spent all Sunday afternoon making the decision of whether to go or not, the next day I woke up and bought the tickets without thinking much about it, I just said: “Okay, let's go, the swell is going to be epic.”

I spoke to Natxo González and Nic Von Rupp, who were already there, and they told me it was a good, large swell.

After buying everything, around noon, I realized that I needed a visa to enter Namibia. I did all the paperwork, but I was traveling the next day, the 26th. Luckily, the person who gave out visas told me that he would help me get it the next day and we did.

Getting to Namibia is not that expensive, buying the flights overnight cost me 1.500 dollars. I flew from Santiago to Johannesburg and then to Walvis Bay. This is the quickest option and I think the cheapest.

Walvis Bay is similar to Arica, it's all desert, even the airport is similar to Arica. Natxo recommended a good and cheap place to stay. It cost about 10 dollars a night. I also had to rent a car, because the access to the beach is only for 4x4s and it's half an hour from Walvis Bay.

To get to the beach we got up at 5:00am to have breakfast and leave early, because the best thing is to surf the glass all morning.

There I met up with Tomás Tudela, Miguel Pupo and Víctor Bernardo, and together we went in a caravan to the beach. When we arrived, the wave was incredible, just like we had seen in the videos.

The swell was coming in the morning of the first day I arrived, so it wasn't that big. We still went headfirst into the water.

The wave is on a sand peninsula behind the city. It's really weird where it is. I never imagined it like this. It's like a 30-kilometer sand bar. It's full of flamingos, sea lions, and foxes.

It's a nightmare to film. The wave is so long that it's very difficult to connect with the filmer, you have to be very lucky. The best thing to do is to go in with a GoPro camera or a drone.

Sometimes it is also difficult to find the wave if you don't know the spot well, because early in the morning there is a fog that doesn't let you see anything, not even in the water. We had to go out for a while because we didn't know where to surf.

The best wave I surfed was that afternoon, when I got a tube, I think it was the best wave of my life because this wave has so many sections.

It's a tube that runs for two kilometers and it's not very easy to get out of all the tubes. You get into a very long tube and the wave is so fast that you go forward and forward and you don't get out until the foamball grabs you, but there are other tubes that last forever and you manage to get out.

All the waves were amazing. In fact, the biggest waves were too double, so it was very difficult to get down. It was very steep and you couldn't get into the wave properly, you were going down in the air.

The boards break a lot, about 30 boards broke easily that day. I broke a board on the first day when I hit a closed tube. It was one of the big waves and I didn't manage to get down the drop and it closed.

Besides all this, you have to bring food to be there all day. I surfed all day, from seven to six in the evening we were in our wetsuits. We went out, drank water, ate and did everything there to be able to surf all day.

There was also too much current, you get to the spot and you have to catch a good wave right away, otherwise the current will take you. After catching a good wave, you have to walk for ten to fifteen minutes to get back to the spot.

There was one day when there were a lot of people because there was a swell. Almost all the pros who competed in the Ballito Pro were there. But despite this, I never felt that crowd vibe because there was so much current and the wave was so long that after riding it you had to walk back and it was really cool. Everyone respected each other, you never bumped into anyone in the water, you were always entering the spot, grabbing tubes and walking. It was like an amusement park for us, we were all hallucinating with the wave.

Regarding the country, I didn't find it dangerous at all, it's a very peaceful place. We only had one situation in a national park that we went to on a day when there were no waves. In Etosha, one of the largest safaris in the world, where you can see elephants, giraffes, lions and all that kind of thing. We had our filming equipment and drones in the car and when we were leaving the park, one of the policemen saw the drone. We knew that they are prohibited because hunters use them to look for rhinos and for that reason we didn't fly it. But the policemen just saw it and became aggressive, they shouted at us and gave us a fine because you can't have the drone even in the car. That was the only problem we had, but apart from that the people are super cool.

Namibia has many places to visit, there are many national parks that you can't see everything in one day. In fact, we only saw a quarter of the national park we went to. You have to do it in three days, at least, and there are many more parks like that and giant dunes to visit.

The best thing that happened to us was definitely surfing this wave and being the first Chilean to ride it.