There are a lot of reasons surfers have the urge to travel long distances for their waves. The most selfish of all those reasons is plain and simply to get a few gems to yourself – no angry locals, no enduring bad vibes to get them and sprinkle in some beautiful scenery if you’re really lucky. Timmy Metcalf, Jordan Kudla, Noah Salazar are three Americans who just lucked into that formula on New Zealand’s South Island.
New Zealand’s South Island is a different universe from the more populated North Island. Te Waipounamu is physically larger than its northern counterpart but is home to only a fraction of the people. To be exact, just a little over a million people live here and even though I haven’t met them all I can vouch that you’d be hard pressed to find one who isn’t going to greet you with a smile. Maybe it’s that they live in one of the most beautiful places in the world, and rather than wanting to hide it from the rest of us they’re eager to share a little bit of their home with visitors. Either way the people are great, the drives are long, the Polynesian culture is cherished and pretty much everywhere you turn you’ll think you’re seeing something out of a travel brochure. Plus, with only a million people on an island full of waves it’s one of the few places in the world where you can still have more than a few to yourselves.
You’ll just need to rely on the (somehow always happy) locals to find them.
Perfect
