Do you remember when Natxo Gonzalez found a wave in the desert that rivaled Mick Fanning’s Snake? The year was 2017, and the footage blew up the internet. It’s rare in this day and age to find a perfect wave that hasn’t been shouted about from the roof tops. But like they say, sharing is caring—and that pays off if you’re friends with Natxo, because he is a very caring friend. He took Aritz Aranburu, Adrian Fernandez, and Aletxu Giron to his little slice of secret perfection because the only thing better than surfing a perfect wave by yourself is surfing it with your best friends.
“When I was here for the first time with my good friend and filmer Jon Aspuru, I was really scared at times,” Natxo explained. “The wave breaks in really shallow water, we were all alone. After catching a couple of waves, I stopped surfing. Not because I was tired or the waves stopped, it was simply too dangerous. There was no one around, it is a long drive to the nearest town and an even longer one to the nearest hospital.”
Like all good things, the wave wasn’t an easy thing to come by. “Four years ago, I found a place where I thought there could be one of the best waves in the world,” Natxo said in 2017. “For years I had been studying the conditions of this place; I wanted to know how swell worked there.” When they showed up, though, they weren’t exactly sure what to expect. “I saw a really massive, long-period swell on the forecast that I thought could be perfect for this place. I called my good friend and filmer, Jon Aspuru, and we just went. What we found was a perfect right hander running along a super long sandbar with no one around, really crazy.”
Well, now that he’s got the place wired, all it took was a close eye on the forecast and a quick trigger finger to book tickets. It’s a dangerous place. Thick, hollow tubes running over a few inches of water and hundreds of miles away from any real form of medical assistance can be a little rattling, but a slight shift in swell direction and a few friends made all the difference. “I decided to take some of my best friends on the next big swell and it was completely different,” Natxo said. “Not only was the angle of the swell a little easier, to have your best friends around makes you feel safer and charge harder. It’s just the best thing in the world if you can share perfect waves with your best friends.”
See more from Natxo on Instagram@natxogonzalez1
