Nómad-A is a project which came together through passion for surf, skate, snowboarding and travel, and it is a journey to spread the spirit of following your dreams throughout the world. Visit nomad-a.com.

It’s refreshing to visit towns like this – it seems that everyone you meet is into the outdoors, and fishing, surfing, hiking and yoga play a big part in most people’s lives here. And because their leisure time is so dependent on their natural surroundings, locals look after more than just their own backyards. The town has even introduced bylaws that minimise the colonisation of the town by global brands, so hopefully this means the likes of Starbucks and McDonalds will be kept firmly at arm’s length for years to come.

The road into town is long and winding; we meandered through snow-capped peaks and passed bright blue lakes before reaching the Pacific Rim National Park Reserve – 511 square kilometres of rugged coastline and dense forest. Tofino nestles at the northern end of Long Beach, the most accessible of the Reserve’s three sites. The surf here is predominantly beach break waves; recognisable spots include Chestermans (which hit the global surf scene when local pro Pete Devries took the top spot here at the recent WQS O’Neill Cold Water Classic), Cox Bay and sections of Long Beach itself, depending on the swell and winds.

The isolation, minimal transport routes and relatively long drive from serious civilisation make Tofino a weekend destination at best for the city crowds of Victoria and the surrounding suburbs. Saying that, surfing’s pretty massive in Canada, and as I paddled out on my first morning at Chestermans, I was greeted by a relatively large crowd already in the water.

If you’ve got a boat and some local knowledge, there’s no doubt that a bit of seabound exploration would turn up some secret spots, and with literally miles of beach and shifting peaks, it’s always possible to find a quiet place to surf. It’s the kind of area where you have to keep checking the banks along the bay – similar to the south of France, where certain spots are susceptible to tidal changes and alterations in sand banks – so a taking a little time to explore really pays off. Tofino is exposed to huge, relentless swells, and as a result there is usually somewhere to find a wave. Water temperatures drop to around 9-10C during the winter, and remain relatively low year-round, which tends to deter the less hardy surfer, but I never found it that traumatic. A good winter suit’s all you really need.

I hit on a nice little left, breaking off a finger of rock, that wedged up in the corner and peeled its way onto the beach. I had the peak all to myself, or so I thought. It was only my girlfriend waving frantically from the beach that alerted me to the grey whale calming navigating around the rocks next to me.

Despite the rugged beauty of this area and the potential for quality waves, development in Tofino has remained relatively controlled, and a little solitude still exists on this portion of the wild west coast. Cold water might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but perhaps that’s a good thing.

Curiosity.

It’s your curiosity that has taken you there, so it’s only natural that this curiosity is returned.

Adults will often be more restrained, perhaps out of politeness or because they’ve seen your type before, maybe just because they’re not all that surprised; but it’s children who have that real insatiable sense of “who, what, where, how, why?” when they see a stranger in their midst, one who looks radically different and may be dragging a big funny-shaped plank around with them.

But there’s one important thing to remember if you’re seeking or the subject of curiosity: it doesn’t happen if you distance yourself from experience – a nice hotel, restaurants, taking a taxi.

It happens when you’re immersed in the experience – trying to load your boardbag on, in or under the chicken bus, buying food from a market or from a roadside stall, making a mess of trying to speak the local language, bartering, mucking in and getting amongst it.

Curiosity is how we learn. Mine, yours, and theirs. Embrace it – it may have killed the cat, but it enhances humans and it’s a prerequisite for being a surfer.

http://www.driftsurfing.eu/?p=4698 Surfing and surf-related travel provide a natural interaction with the environment. But being aware of the environment when surfing doesn’t necessarily come naturally.

Today, journeying to remote areas is comparably easy. Our travel decisions – how we travel, where we stay, and which businesses we support – shape the local environment and community and can ultimately determine whether we leave with more of a realistic view of the area or something further from the truth.

Take the Mentawai Islands – currently the most-hyped surf destination in the world, and rightly so. What surfer doesn’t dream of world-class waves set to a backdrop of white sandy beaches and clear blue seas? Boat charters enable easy access to all the famous breaks, and many visitors never set foot on shore.

There’s an argument that keeping surf tourism apart from the local economy may be beneficial in the long term, and that keeping tourists away from terrestrial developments will reduce the impact on the local landscape. Whether or not this is true, the fact is that most people visiting the Mentawais in this way will come away from the region with a false perception, and will fail to recognise the environmental and social issues that are defining this area. And whether or not a surf-based economy is wise in the long run, it also means that the huge incomes mined from these boat charters will likely remain ‘off-land’ and will have little benefit to the local people.

When I graduated with a Masters in Environmental Management, I wanted to combine my passion for surfing with my strong interest in the environment. Back in 2007 I took a trip to the isolated island of Siloinak. Leaving behind the bustle of Padang, I caught the overnight ferry to Siberut, and once there noticed the recent destruction of numerous building, caused by the series of earthquakes that had occurred in the previous months. Residents seemed unfazed by the damage, and while it may be a little extreme to suggest that earthquakes were a part of life in Western Sumatra, it was evident that the recent activity hadn’t dented their morale.

I was travelling with the owner of Mentawai Foundation, and together we came up with ways we could harness the opportunity to combine environmental and community programmes on Siloinak with surf exploration. And so SWAP was born, with the aim of working with local communities, rebuilding homes, and promoting environmental opportunities within the Mentawais. In my experience, surfers are an adventurous bunch. But they’re also incredibly environmentally and socially aware, and I wanted to make it easier for everyone to connect those two passions. Now with SWAP, you can easily find volunteer opportunities at exotic surf spots, making for a much more interesting – and rewarding – holiday.

When I returned home, I explored the possibilities for connections and collaborations all around the world, and now SWAP has a global network of opportunities combining surf travel and volunteer programmes. This year, my girlfriend Jess and I will be travelling from North to South America, visiting some of the key organisations that SWAP has partnered up with, highlighting the work and progress that these guys have made and continue to make.

Our journey begins on the isolated and wild coastline of Vancouver Island… You can follow us over the coming months through our blog here on Drift.

For more information on SWAP and opportunities visit www.swaptravel.org or contact us at mail@swaptravel.org

I like making photographs. Almost as much as I like surfing and tripping the globe looking at stuff.

So I stumbled across Drift a while back and a few months ago I summoned up the courage to offer up my portfolio for use as stock images – which has since developed into this… so you’ll be hearing (or seeing and reading) a bit more from me in the future.

I’ve spent the best part of my twenties so far lugging surfboards and camera gear around the world on an overly extended surfing, work and photography trip. Like many surfers who keep a camera by their side, much of my photographic output is directed more at the things that I see along the way, a result of either travelling for waves or embedding myself in surf locales; looking in on this lifestyle of ours from somewhere out on the periphery despite being well and truly in the thick of it. I shoot on film using a range of old and semi-broken SLRs, a few vintage medium-format cameras and a holga. I dig analogue. I have a far from fancy and often inadequate kitbag but it gets me through – my money tends to go on flights and surfboards before replacing camera gear if the truth be told.

I draw a lot of inspiration from surf photographer/adventurers, and relate most to work by photographers such as Jeff Johnson, Joe Curren and Dustin Humphrey and Jon Rose as well as those from outside the world of surfing, most notably Chris Searl, Mike O’Meally and Andrew Paynter.

Cut to today, and I’ve been shivering my way through this snowy Cornish winter distracting myself from proper work putting together a tatty and rather bulging “surf trip scrapbook”. It’s just a glorified manila folder full of ideas, newspaper clippings and mud maps drawn on scraps of paper, the result of plenty of map gazing and those surfing secrets that people let slip once a few post session beers have lubricated their tongues. Hopefully at least some of these ideas will see their way to fruition and keep me inspired and on the road, both at home and abroad.

So here goes, I hope you like my pictures and my angle on this life of ours.

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Photographing waves and people riding them is a bit of a sticking point for me. I’d rather be surfing, which reduces my ‘surf’ photography to the moments when I’m doing a run up the point or taking a pit stop on the boat for water and sunscreen. Cloudbreak, shot on Fuji Velvia with a broken old Minolta camera, October 2007.

The beauty of living in South Africa is that you are never far from wide open spaces and unknown new places. It’s really important to me to make time, even when I’m at my busiest, to get out and about. To go near, far, anywhere and where I am from, one never has to stray far from home to end up in some small part of paradise.

Saturday morning, 6am, I was heading west – a reliable source had given me a heads-up on surf along the coast. Two and a half hours later I found myself driving down a long and winding tar road that became a winding gravel track, only to end in a dead end. One little house with the ocean for a lawn and towering mountains as its backyard. It was quiet and peaceful. I unpacked and unwound.

I came across a coastline of empty waves, majestic mountains and endless roads – I surfed, I walked, I wandered. I stood in awe, I surfed some more. I swam in rock pools and chased my own shadow until my heart was satisfied. There was no-one in sight, and I could see for miles. The ocean, the mountains, the swallows, the sky – all so clear, so content.

On day two the ocean woke me early – it was time for photo exploration. Countless empty little bays, the ocean and its creatures their only visitors. The birds and sun beetles, background music, the sunshine my only company. In only 24 hours my cup was overflowing and it was time to return home.

Little travels are never out of reach. There are very few things in life that excite, exhilarate and restore more than a quick trip somewhere – anywhere. As a designer there are very few things that inspire more than a change of routine, a change of scenery, a change of mind. As a traveller there is only one thing that satisfies, and that my friend is travelling – to see, to explore and to discover. To inspire and be inspired.

So go – near, far, somewhere, anywhere.

Pantone numbers swimming round my head as the eternal dance progresses and light particles penetrate the pulsating water. Mesmerised yet mindful of my locale, I keep an eye on the horizon for the tell-tale darky, inky smears that bleed from the horizon warning of approaching rogue sets. As I scrambled down the rocky hillside from our campsite the beckoning, shimmering waves rolling in to the wide sandy bay were unruffled by wind and peeling left and right from several distinct peaks, yet as I paddled out I realised the distance from which I had originally been bewitched was deceiving. These waves were bigger than anticipated, probably four to five feet, and powerful. On the outer rim of limited capability and experience, but if you time your paddle out with the lulls between waves and sit just seaward of their breaking point waiting for your moment then it’s no problem… except, that is, for those sly sets of waves which emerge at irregular, unpredictable intervals a foot or two bigger and harnessing even more of the latent storm energy than their more disciplined cousins.

As these six-, maybe seven-, foot waves – with faces soaring almost 12 feet above the prone surfer – pitch beyond vertical and the seething apex is launched out beyond the face, the explosion as the two water masses collide impacts on all of my senses to produce a solitary, survival emotion – fear.

At the first signs of these delinquent undulations the skirmish begins. I paddle toward the horizon, hoping that my timing is fortunate and I manage to scrabble over the back of the beasts, travelling in packs of four or five increasing in size.

To be caught just inside the breaking wave with its tumbling, towering, impenetrable wall of whitewater is to be spun and tumbled underwater, limbs flailed in unfeasible directions like a rag-doll, until it releases its grip, allowing you to surface 30 yards back toward shore gasping for air.

Worse still is to get the timing absolutely, utterly wrong and for the pitching lip of the wave to smash onto you at the point of impact, adding a winding body-blow to the mix… But sometimes, and to be fair to myself more often now than not, the timing of the paddle-out combines, to quote Hansen, with “Pace, power and technique”, and I dive the nose of the board under the water a few feet before the lip crashes down. I dig deep enough with all the might I can muster to get under the turbulence and the centrifugal forces that are pitching the lip forward work in my favour and suck me under the wave and out of the back, to momentary safety before the next wave approaches…

The next few days the ferocity of the ocean subsided, but we stayed on in Zarautz in the Basque region of Spain. We played in the calmer waters and enjoyed the warm, still evenings and the awesome, widescreen skies created as the ocean meets the mountains.

Arriving late we found a place to park by an Auberge on the side of a mountain and had a cowbell-symphony accompaniment to our omelette making.

We woke with the light and a striking reminder of our location as we drew the curtains back and the Pyrenees slid into view. The ever-changing bedroom window view that defines campervan life is a joy to behold. We’ve enjoyed dunes, ocean, forest, mountains, panoramic countryside vistas, cornfields, widescreen epics and errr… carparks.

We gathered provisions in the local village and drove up the valley to Borce, the home of the last few remaining wild Pyreneean bears. Parking by the church we walked up winding tracks and found a picnic spot looking up the valley and shared a couple of hours lunching and snoozing with some mountain eagles in the heat of the sun.

After lunch we headed west again, ambling towards the Atlantic once more as the promise of waves were on the horizon. The route we took was much steeper, treacherous and breathtaking than we had imagined, and the sharp, winding inclines were almost more than poor Neil could take. Dragging his weary frame over these peaks left him hot, bothered and smelling unwell. I can’t quite put my finger on it but the burning, metallic smell reeks of worry.

Our unplanned destination that evening, St Jean Pied-de-Port, was aptly an ancient pilgrims’ rest and recuperation site and we followed tradition and recharged in a carpark on the outskirts of town, throwing caution beyond the wind as we purchased two alcoholic beverages in the town’s hostelries, another first for this trip!

Our Crew
Ed Templeton & Sofie Radecki

Our Itinerary
16th September — 10th November
France, Spain & Portugal aboard ‘Neil’ the ’91 Nissan Urvan Nomad

14th November — 31st January(ish)
India: Karnataka, Kerela, Tamil Nadu

1st February — 1st April(ish)
Indonesia: Bali, Java, Lombok, Sumbawa

1st April — 15th April(ish)
Australia

16th April — 1st May
Tonga

1st May — 3rd May
USA: Los Angeles

3rd May — 30th June
Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua

1st July
Brighton, England

Our Mission
Do less, but do it better

This time we have him taking on no less of an epic journey as he leaves Porthcawl in search of hurricane surf up the East coast of the United States. Once over there he meets up with a childhood friend and it is the dynamic between the two which takes this book well beyond an ordinary travelogue. In many ways it reads more like a novel and the humour in Anderson’s voice keeps the pages turning as he covers issues ranging from growing up and friendship to the obsession that is surfing and the moral issues this can raise, particularly when you’re chasing waves that come from such a destructive source. It’s definitely a classic and should appeal not only to surfers but to anyone who enjoys a cracking yarn well told.

‘Chasing Dean’ is out now in paperback, published by Summersdale.

Tim Kevan is the author of ‘Why Lawyers Should Surf’ and ‘BabyBarista and the Art of War’. Find out more at www.timkevan.com.