Spain: Gomera (Canary Islands)
Vargas is not my thing: desolate terrain, unclean waves, fringed by a beach with horrible pebbles and a shorebreak that breaks the bones of even the worldcuppers before they are battered by the brutal wind. It is April 2003 on Gran Canaria. The first stage of the World Cup is a total failure. I've actually come to photograph the action. Instead, I drown my boredom in black coffee in the well-worn van of Barth, a Belgian waverider who has lived in El Medano on Tenerife for decades. Next to us, Jonas Ceballos, Dario Ojeda and his friend, whose name I don't even know yet, are also sipping the black drug. I'm daydreaming absently about spots with turquoise water when the provocative question slips past my lips: "Is there a spot on Gomera?"
Jonas smiles at me pityingly, Dario doesn't think it's necessary to lift his nose out of his steaming coffee cup and his Canarian mate snorts the answer in my face: "Ahi solo hay alacantilados" - there are only rocks there! Dead silence. The stupor is interrupted by Barth's voice: "There's a spot on La Gomera. It works with a north-easterly trade wind and waves from the north. But the swell has to be big for the break to work. The wind there is ultra-strong and sideshore.
A year later, Gilles Calvet is at the spot Punta Llana, the flat point, on Gomera It is the only point on the island that is flat.
You can find out more about this adventure trip in the free PDF download.
