Universal Currency

Smiles:  Internationally accepted and recognised the world over, regardless of language barriers and the availability of a working ATM or Western Union branch.  The value of a smile will not fluctuate at the mercy of global economic scares or due to changes in the price of a barrel of oil.  You don't need to stash a smile in your socks or even consider wearing one of those highly questionable money belts, in fact they weigh nothing and take up no space in your bag.  Smile and at the very least you will get a smile back in return, and probably a great deal of goodwill and kindness to boot.  A smile won't buy you material trappings beyond your immediate needs, but they are solid currency for a more worthwhile experience.  Always pack a smile.

• Top image:  Exchanging meticals for a bunch of bananas and a smile for a smile, Mozambique.
• Middle image:  When shooting portraits of people in traditional dress, particularly if you can't speak the language, I find that a smile will often be of great help.  Asakusa Temple, Tokyo.
• Bottom image:  Kids seem to have few opinions and preconceptions about other people and will usually react to a smile, a wave and a toot of the car horn with laughter and big friendly waves.  If I remember rightly these kids persuaded their Dad to do a lap of the block to come around for a second round.  Al Ashkharah, Oman.  Used previously to demonstrate the benefits of smiling in the Ten Tips To Take With You post.

  

Hitting Paydirt

"Twenty years from now

you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do

than by the ones you did do.

So throw off the bowlines.

Sail away from the safe harbour.

Catch the trade winds in your sails.

Explore. Dream. Discover."

Mark Twain

The phrase "If you don't go, you'll never know" gets bandied around a lot, particularly in the "action sports" (I hate that label) arena. But in fairness there is a truth in there.

These days it's difficult to search out novel experiences; in almost every endeavour you can bet you bottom dollar that somebody else has already been there, done that and posted it on the interweb. But not always, and even if they have, that doesn't mean you can't come a close second. Surfing-wise, you'd struggle to find a rideable wave that's yet to be ridden because in the past 60 years surfers have scoured just about every nook on every coast and checked every kink in every reef. When they find a wave then sometimes they'll tell, but if it's good then they generally won't. But secrets out over time and so the surfing map slowly grows. It's nice to think though that there are still mystery spots out there, or fickle, rarely surfed stretches of coast that rarely see a wave and even more rarely see a surfer. It gives me hope that perfect, uncrowded waves are still out there if you can get the stars to align.

I have a bit of a thing these days with that faint possibility that I might find an as-yet un-surfed or un-named or unknown place to catch a wave. I scour maps, study swell charts, tear photos and articles out of newspapers and magazines and relentlessly pester friends or acquaintances for information on far flung coastlines.

Sometimes I hit paydirt.

So the past few years I've tried to follow up on some of my hunches and research and gone looking. Now, I'm not so devoted that I'd risk hauling my boards around on a surf trip with a high risk that I might not find any surf. I still want to catch waves. Instead I've tried to tie my inquisitive forays into slightly bigger trips, either as an aside or as part of an extended stopover on the way to or from a wave-rich destination. I guess if I had more time, more money, and a 4x4 then I'd be able to indulge my curiosity but alas this is the best I can manage.

In August of 2011 I headed back to Jeffreys Bay in South Africa to visit some friends and scratch my Supertubes itch. From there I had two choices: West to the cold Southern Atlantic and the cold, sharky left-handers that peel along the base of the sand dunes of Namibia, or East up the coast of the Indian Ocean to look for warm, equally sharky right-handers in Mozambique and up towards Tanzania.

From the images of the flawless right-handers rolling down tropical points above and below, you can see which option I chose. I have to admit that my decision was mainly down to my desire to surf in boardshorts and my preference for surfing on my forehand.

I'm not saying where these photos were taken, the only clue that I'll give is that they are on the East Coast of the African Continent. The few people whom I managed to prise information about surfing up here from warned me that I ought to take a good thick book with me because I was most likely to find a flat ocean devoid of swell, whipped up by strong winds and teeming with sharks. The stars aligned however and I lucked in, but there were still plenty of X's on my map that I didn't/couldn't make it to where I'm sure I might've found equally good waves but without the handful of other surfers that I ended up sharing the water with. Those other surfers weren't a bad thing though; despite my desire to find solo perfection, it's nice to reduce the odds when there're that many big grey fishies swimming around beneath you.

So next time you wonder whether or not there might be waves there, or have an extended stopover some place strange, or even just want to run the risk and go looking for adventure as well as waves, pack your board and do it. You might just hit paydirt too.

Go looky,

Get lucky.

Images, top to bottom:

• Ponta
• One of the handful of other surfers whom I shared waves with, doing a pro-lap up the point.
• Local Lady on her way back from market.
• Dawn launch, in lee of another point.
• Well, it was offshore.
• Well worth the risk.
• Sunset swaying.
• I dare you to pour some of this on your food.
• Back beach barrels.

P.S.

If any of you read The Surfer's Path then you may well have noticed that an article about wooden surfboard maker James Otter and mine's "The Storyboard" project has made it into print. It's in the Jan/Feb issue (#88) and we're dead stoked about it. The Storyboard exhibition is also due to go on display at the Scarlet luxury eco-hotel at Bedruthan Steps, Cornwall, for the rest of the winter and into Spring, please go check it out if you're in the area.

There's Lots to See Under the Sea

"THARE SHE BLOWS!"

We were out on the boat to take scientific samples of whale sharks. I was fully aware of the amount of sea life swimming around underneath us but I really wasn’t expecting a humpback whale calf to almost jump into the boat.

Friends who I’d spoken to about looking for waves in this part of East Africa wished me luck then told me to take a good thick book and that I’d probably end up in Tofo snorkeling with whale sharks by day and drinking the local moonshine rum by night.

I hadn’t realized that Tofo is centrally placed on a stretch of coastline that’s world renowned for the high concentration of large marine creatures swimming around under the surface there, although it didn’t take me long to work out after spending ten minutes on the headland looking out to sea. No more than twenty seconds would go by without a whale breaching somewhere out in the vast Indian Ocean leaving spray lingering over the Ocean in the distance.

But there’re more than just migrating humpbacks here. It turns out that Tofo is the base for The Foundation for the Protection of Marine Megafauna run by two experts in their respective fields. Dr. Andrea Marshall from the States who is the world’s leading expert on manta rays and giant rays (she was the subject of a recent BBC wildlife documentary “Andrea Queen of The Rays”), whilst Kiwi marine biologist Dr. Simon Pierce is a leading scientist in the field of whale shark research. Both giant rays and whale sharks (the world’s largest fish) are found in surprising concentrations almost year round on the reefs off Tofo so it’s the perfect location for a research base. Both Andrea, Simon and their resident PhD student present weekly lectures (Manta Mondays, Whale shark Wednesdays and Fauna Fridays) open to the general public and sending them away with probably more knowledge on those individual species than many of the world’s top marine biologists have.

This was how I ended up on a boat with Dr. Pierce and a group of volunteers from All Out Africa helping to collect samples. We’d jump off the boat and snorkel alongside the whale sharks, through and under the various boatloads of bobbing “ocean safari” tourists and then when we’d left them behind, dive down and use a Hawaiian sling to fire a capped spear into the giant fish, collecting a plug of skin as it was pulled free that could be analysed to determine the fish’s diet, and thus, where in the great blue it had been. Another, sturdier, sling is then use to fire a tag into the whale shark that trails a little sonar tracker which allows it’s movements to be followed by satellite. Underwater photos are taken to identify them as each whale shark’s spotted pattern is unique like a fingerprint and they can be logged into an international database and then tracked long-term by various dive operations around the world.

A happy humpback family

That was it, nature done for the day I thought. Nature wasn’t done though, as on our way back a family of humpbacks surfaced near us; Mum, Dad and a calf who was keen on showing off. The calf was learning how to breach, the acrobatic jumps, slaps and splashes that mature whales use to display their virility, and came up so close to us at one point that it nearly filled my entire viewfinder on my camera. Once he decided we’d seen enough, the family slowly swam off and then a larger lone, slow and ponderous humpback drifted along. Doc Pierce decided that this whale was mellow and slow enough to allow him to do something he’d never done before and jump overboard with a waterproof movie camera to try and film it as it swum past. I don’t think he expected it to dive under, double back and come check him out a second time. The thing was the size of a bus, one slap of its tail would’ve been the end for the curious Kiwi.

Humpback populations worldwide are back from the brink, having been hunted to the brink of extinction there are now about 80,000 individuals. These humpbacks were visiting the tropics to breed and give birth before returning to the Southern Ocean off Antarctica to feed for the summer months.

Dolphins. Old news.

We also saw dolphins on the way back too, I don’t think they realized what they had to live up to though in order to impress. We motored on to get our samples back to the lab.

This was taken by a real nice Aussie guy called Crewe Dixon, a volunteer with All Out Africa. He was on a dive looking for giant rays, looked up and saw this. Wow.

The Foundation for the Protection of Marine Megafauna are looking for two volunteers to assist with their valuable research in Mozambique, a whale shark research and admin assistant and a manta ray research and admin assistant. Check their facebook page for further details on the positions and how to apply.