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SEARCHING FOR SURF IN THE STRANGEST OF PLACES
The ocean has no bias, no chosen people. Reaching to even the darkest corners of the world, its crashing waves call to all who are willing to listen. And that call is often answered in the strangest of places.
RUSSIA
the most incredible surf trips are RARELY THE most obvious ones...
The surfing world’s most reluctant superstar, Tom Curren. Zat Mir, Russia.
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01 “As a nation races full-throttle into a new era of shadowy capitalism, disquiet and danger simmer in many quarters of the Federation, murderous plots brew. At around 8pm, roughly halfway through our journey from the airport to a downtown hotel, a young woman coolly walks into Moscow’s Rizhskaya Metro station in the north of the city and blows herself up, killing 10 other people and injuring 50” – Paul Evans. {{ted grambeau : : elsewhere PAGE 01
C
“Outside the steps of our impressive hotel lobby a taxi pulls up. As she got out, the mini-skirt fell back showing flashes of delicious thigh above the stockings, the world’s greatest work of art. Something inside me died as she disappeared into the crowd. I roamed the streets for days searching for her, snot and tears running down my face, heart snapped. Right now she and thousands of others are still out there somewhere on the mean streets of Moscow, torturing men for their sins.” – Paul Evans.
“the world’s greatest work of art. Something inside me died as she disappeared into the crowd.”
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thickskulled, nonsmilers with the demeanour of
Our blacked-out mini-van speeds along one of many enormous boulevards that flow in the veins of the sprawling metropolis heart that is Moscow, Russia. It’s dusk, the massive urban expanse flickering into artificial light. Searchers Curren and Brian Toth peer out of our windows as gigantic advertising boards, flashing neon signs blur past, as do hurtling BMWs, Mercedes and the like, chauffeured by thick-skulled, non-smilers with the demeanour of assassins. – Paul Evans.
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This ex-Russian military Mi-8 chopper has seen better days. Sooty exhaust fumes consume its yellow flanks, while the interior shudders with a range of sounds from engine roar to the unsettling rattle of loose screws. Nevertheless, the flight is breathtaking.
We beat past endless beaches, coves and rocky points, fjords backed by snow-capped mountains. Tom Curren is riding shotgun alongside the pilots, eyes peeled for Rincon. A small-southerly groundswell lights up the beaches and is trying to wrap around some points, sparkling brilliantly in the afternoon cross-shore, but nothing is screaming out potential, a few too many offshore rocks and awkward angles of cliffs. – Paul Evans
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B
C-Z has been described as a festering urban sore of a town. a stark contrast to the beauty of the land in which it is situated. We drove past expanses of stark, unpainted, Stalinist apartment blocks; endless tenement slums stretching all the way to decaying dockyards alongside the bay
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As our flight-path cuts inland to miss a cape we don’t have enough fuel to take a coastal route around. The chopper banks around a steep interior ridge to reveal a mother and cub brown bear running through dense shrubbery below, the wind combing waves through thick brown fur.
zat mir peninsula
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THIS LAND IS SERVED BY NO ROADS, NO SIGNS OF HUMAN LIFE EXIST, JUST MOUNTAIN RANGES, FUMING PEAKS, STEEP VALLEYS AND BUBBLING-HOT MINERAL SPRINGS EXTENDING BEYOND MYSTERY HORIZONS. THE HELI DROPS US AT A DESERTED BLACK SAND BEACH SOMEWHERE IN THE NORTH. BEHIND A GRASSY COASTAL PLAIN, ENORMOUS VOLCANOES FLASH MAJESTICALLY. WE SET UP A CIRCLE OF TENTS, GATHER FIREWOOD AND WAIT PATIENTLY FOR SWELL.
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