Kepa Acero is, without a doubt, one of surfing’s most interesting people. That’s because he’s not known so much for being a surfer as he is for being a traveler. He has spent years on the road, traveling–for the most part, at least–on his own.
It all started by accident. Early in his surfing career, he was slogging through the WQS, hoping to make it to the big stage. Then, as young men will do, he met a girl. Traveling to compete quickly took a backseat to traveling to see her. “I visited her, and I realized that the trip was better for me than any contest I’d ever traveled to,” he said to Surfer Magazine. “A lot of it was because I went alone—it was a vital experience.” Then he found stories. Jack London, John Muir, Henry David Thoreau–tales of adventure and individualism. “All I wanted was to apply this knowledge to the surf, to recover my spirit of adventure,” he continued. “So, with just my bags and my boards I decided to start traveling alone in the world, and to document as much of it as I could. This was in 2010. I haven’t looked back.”
Surfing is the thread that stitches together his journeys, but it’s the stuff in between that’s shaped Kepa’s outlook on life. “Traveling is a way of getting to know new places, horizons, borders and people,” he says. “But once we get back home, it also helps us appreciate our culture, language, people, landscapes, and all the little things from a new perspective.”
