Cover photo: Olones triple overhead entering the Pendorcho. On the sand, Iturria dealing with the jet ski. All photos by Gastón Tournier

In a span of five days, absolutely opposite and historic situations occurred for Uruguayan surfing: The real swell of the year arrived with triple overhead green waves breaking at Punta del Este's Pendorcho on Saturday, and a cyclone hit Montevideo hard on Tuesday, making it possible to surf the capital's brown waves for three days in a row.  

A country that does not have many events in terms of surfing, experienced intense activity of all kinds; the first related to what it is like to ride real waves, lots of seven feet in the water, lots of eggs, few people lying down, many watching from outside. The second is rather anecdotal, novel and descriptive of what is a subculture that vibrates with passion for surfing close to home.

This medium had done justice by portraying the second, but not the first.  

The threads were tied together to find the photos of Gastón Tournier and two of the best writers in Uruguayan and Latin American surfing, Rodrigo Caballero and Martín Aguirre.  

The result, I humbly think, does justice.

A BEER THAT DOESN'T FIT

By Rodrigo Caballero

While drinking mate, standing in front of the altar with a little virgin that is located on the other side of the stone point of Boca de la Barra, together with my friends Gastón Tournier, Pablo Zanocchi and Javier Lestido, I saw a series of five waves falling straight down on the sandbar, about 50 or 60 meters from the shore. Five black coconut shells that sounded like thunder as they threw lips that looked like concrete blocks falling from a fifth floor.

With that image in my eyes, I didn't hesitate to bet a beer that the skinny guy who was about to jump into the water with a bodyboard wouldn't get in even with the help of the Most Holy Lord Jesus Christ who lives on high. The boys, to contradict me, also took my bet and lost like in a war. After no less than ten minutes of entering the liquid medium, the bodyboarder was waving his arms and frog legs wrapped in an uncontrollable chaos of foam, which dragged him towards the shore with the same violence with which it made him drift towards Punta del Este, as if he were a paper boat. We must recognize his unbreakable will and the immense self-love that he knew how to demonstrate, since he didn't stop fighting for a second until the sea ended up spitting him out over the rocks of Pendorcho, some 580 meters from where he entered, as the tool that Google Earth has to measure distances tells me now, with great precision.

The guy in the bodysuit was so stubborn that my friends admitted defeat and gave me credit for the beer for a while before the guy gave in and offered his buttocks to the foam that would finally return him to solid ground.

Believe me, reader, if Del Morey had been a sensible person, during the whole time he was pedaling against the slope, he should never have entertained even the slightest chance of achieving his goal. He still gave it to him with all his might. Therefore, if the good man wants to claim half of the beer I won, I will gladly give it to him. If my mental files do not fail me, the hard-working moribuguista is Agustín Conserva. Cheers, my friend! This beer is for you!

Just as I began to celebrate my victory, another guy fell. It was a certain Pisano, according to Zanocchi, and he was riding a board that was clearly not for that sea. He also had a conviction that seemed to have been passed on to him by the spooner. He waved as he passed, ran down the little dune and jumped into the water without waiting too long. It seems that he had seen it before and had already figured out the timing of the series. The other possibility is that it was an unconscious person who had no idea what he was doing. We would soon find out.

The thing is that Javier, neither slow nor lazy, doubled my previous bet.
- If this guy gets in, you get two.
- It doesn't go in. -I assured him, facing up to the challenge-. No way it goes in.

Minutes later, with all eight of our eyes fixed on his back, a huge set was about to fall on him and earn me another two beers. But he narrowly escaped. Another one came behind him and, with a desperate sprint, he also managed to scrape past it. Fortunately for him, it was the last of the set. Pisano had made it. He was inside, going up and down some championship waves. We soon lost sight of him and I only saw him again about an hour later, while I was analyzing the possibilities at the Pendorcho with two other friends.

THE PLACE

The Pendorcho was salty. But it was the best place by far. The lefts broke like in the surfing movies that you see on Youtube: There at the bottom, really big, full of water. And throwing some tremendous tubes. In one of those, the good one of the series, was that I identified Pisano. He was crouching, backside, grabbing the rail and looking for the shade provided by the roof of the green room. Gato Tournier spotted him through the lens and, as he is not one-handed, here is the photo that does not let me lie.

We arrived at Pendorcho after having gone from one end to the other of all the possible options, exchanged fifteen hundred calls and text messages with other guys who were on the same little lap of death and after having railed against the innate impossibility of these fucking coasts to turn a big swell into quality waves.

The best part was certainly there, in front of us, on that rocky point that marks the end of the long Brava beach. But the entrance seemed impassable. The waves, at times, seemed like they were never going to stop and the foam swept away everything in front of them. At the peak, facing the rocks, there were four or five surfers and two motorbikes with their respective pilots. We noticed that neither of the two was towing the surfers in the waves. They were all taking the waves with their arms. The one who was surfing the most waves was a tall, skinny guy with a long, green board. He was riding on the back and it was obvious that he knew what he was doing out there.

Later I found out that he was Felipe Ferreira, a surfer who looks more like the ones from before than the ones from now, the kind that when a sea like this comes, he is waiting for it. Then I also found out that he had arrived at the beach before anyone else, that he had taken his time to get in and position himself at the peak, and all this information helped me understand the reason for his gain. Days like this are not for improvising. On the contrary, the more and better prepared the surfer is, the more waves he will catch and the better time he will have. A board with the right dimensions, good physical condition and a sincere desire to surf waves of these characteristics make the difference. Say what you want, but the photos of the guy with the green board back up each one of these words.

LUCK MUST BE HELPED

The story that follows is that of a surfer whose luck changed radically three times in less than an hour. He appeared to him like a ghost, then abandoned him at the worst moment and then hugged him again like a baby.

In Uruguay, when the seas are big, things are not easy. They are not easy anywhere, you will say, having been tossed around by big seas on the coasts of other countries. And you would be right. How could you not be? Although in the opinion of this columnist, everything here is usually more difficult. There is always a bit of weight missing. The swell is not in the right direction, the wave is closing, the wind is a bit crooked, the current takes you out or puts you in the peak... In short, whenever there are more than two meters in Uruguay, the sea becomes too demanding. As the tour operators say: Uruguay is expensive.

Days like Saturday are characterized by a lot of effort and few waves. Luisma Iturria said this in a video he uploaded to his Instagram. He also said that for this reason the motorcycles are a great ally to get more out of the few powerful swells that occur throughout the year. To surf more and hang out less.

 

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A post shared by luisma iturria (@luismaiturria)

As I said before: At the peak there were two bikes. Who knows if in a few years, when engines become more common in the lineups, this article will not be taken as a reference to a time when mechanical assistance was not yet established. Perhaps we are at the dawn of a new era of Uruguayan surfing.

So, around 10 o'clock in the morning, there were a few of us who had gathered on the dune to look at the sea. We looked and looked but nobody decided to jump in. In almost two hours only three surfers had entered the sea: the Lorenti brothers - Martina and Alfonso - and Nacho Arufe.

But a series of four almost perfect waves, which wound for more than a block from the point to the sand, passing by the little school of Tato Eiris, convinced Javier, standing next to me, that he could not continue to hang around, dry from the salt water. Suddenly, he announced that he was going to take the risk and, under the disapproving gaze of the person writing this, he disappeared among the dunes, on the other side of which we had left the car with the boards and the wetsuits.

In the meantime, a motorbike came out of the water and docked on the sand, right in front of us. It was Luisma Iturria driving the Capi Tarallo motorbike, the one from the popular Capi Bar brewery.

- It's not like Javier's big ass had asked for a taxi - said someone next to me, shaking his head in disbelief at my friend's fortune.

- He's going to arrive just in time to get in with Luisma and come in with his hair dry. Damn, that's what made him look like. - I added, and I started to think about the possibilities I had of running out to the car and changing like a pig to get in the car. While I was doing that, Javier appeared, already changed and with a 6'6 under his arm.

- Hurry up, the bus is leaving - shouted another one who was smoking, already decided not to get on, a little further to the side. When Javier realized the stroke of luck he had just received, he smiled from ear to ear and accelerated his run towards the shore.

A few minutes later I was riding at full speed on the motorcycle, sitting behind Luisma, with another surfer clinging like a tick to the handles of the stretcher that is attached to the back of jet skis and that the gringos call a sledge. It was the recently appointed Tato Eiris from the H2O school.

A wise man from ancient China once said: When the alms are great, even the blind man distrusts. And he said it for a reason. In the middle of the trip to the peak, an unfortunate decision by the pilot caused the three of them to fly through the air when they jumped over a wave full of foam. What followed is useless to write about, as it is shown in detail in the video shared here. A setback that almost ended in catastrophe.

 

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A post shared by DUKE (@duke_surf)

The truth is that both Luisma and Lestido shouldered the burden and rescued the motorcycle, which had washed ashore. They swam three or four blocks against the current, to meet up with the vehicle at stop 27 or 28, who knows. The motorcycle started without any problems and the boys resumed their initial plan of going to surf the lefts of Pendorcho, as if nothing had happened.

And fortune, which had turned in Javier's favor, was once again on his side. This is irrefutably proven by the sequence 21A that accompanies these lines.

As the title says, luck has to be accompanied. The man got Luisma's carona only because he decided to take a chance and do the heroic deed of rowing in. Otherwise, none of this, neither the slop nor the tube, would have happened.

WHY DON’T WE JUMP?

Written by Martin Aguirre

I would start this text by saying: “It’s hard to live in Montevideo to surf.” And you would reply: “Chocolate for the news.” But it was rarely clearer than on May 14, when from the dunes in front of Punta del Este’s X peak, we watched with a motley group the best sea of ​​the year throwing bomb after bomb, with just a couple of people in the water.

Well, the bomb thing is always relative here. What would it be? Six feet? Eight? I wouldn't dare to go that far.

But he was fighting. The entrance was a Cinco de Oro against him, with sets that hit heads, and waves from top to bottom, the kind that guarantee that a bad timing will surely spit you out. If you went in, there seemed to be quite a current, the lucky ones who had passed the break, spent a while without taking, and when they caught one, few went past the drop. But there was one, I think it was Felipe Ferreira on a green board that must have been about 7, that opened up kilometers for him.

And we were outside, staring at the glass, without making up our minds. Mind you, it wasn't because of impressions or anything. In general, they were all experienced people, and with days that were quite a bit heavier on their backs. In the case of the one who writes, with an aggravating factor: He had just gotten off a plane, after a whirlwind trip where he had hooked up with big Pavones, the best days of the season according to the locals, and he came surfed and with good training. But that wasn't it either.

We kept looking and looking, and nobody was going. In the end, most of us ended up going to the classic peak further east, to spend time rubbing elbows and fighting with 200 other guys (and girls), in waves that were good… But nothing like that.

Why don't we go for it? All year long you've been hoping for a great day, one of those that filter out the funboards and the barbershop mustaches, and in the end, you don't take advantage of it. Did you think the entrance was hard fought for? Did you think there were only a few waves? Did you go for it and catch two before the current sweeps you away? And yes! But that happens here, and everywhere. Or do you think you can spend a solid day somewhere else and catch 20 waves chatting and without paying a price?

But of course. It's one thing to do that, if you go to another peak and keep surfing. Either you surfed yesterday, or tomorrow. But the real issue is when you get up at 5 am in Montevideo, you spend some "matrimile" bills and work credit, you drive two hours, you make all that effort, and you take the risk knowing that you might end up paddling for life, eating foam like a champion, with the probable chance of grabbing two coconuts and out you go?

I won't hesitate next time...

Yes of course.