Hey all,
so perhaps a few observations about travelling to Patagonia and trying to catch waves:
1) Patagonia is really really windy - so much that several locals told me that wind generators routinely break
because they can't handle the onslaught.
2) Because of the winds, goo d surf conditions were measured in hours, not days.
3) The locals are extremely friendly. Surfing is such a niche sport there, and the area is so sparsely populated, that
everybody was happy to see us -- and it was easy to strike up friendly conversations in our broken Spanish.
Travel details:
We flew into Viedma and stayed a few nights in "Balneario El Condor". While the scenery is stunning (there's 30k burrowing parrots nesting right in the cliffs, constantly flying around in the gusty wind and causing a ruckus), the surfing on the beach break in front was not very good -- the wind was almost permanently onshore, and the few waves we saw were not terribly appealing.
We then begun travelling down the coast on Highway 1 - which turns into a gravel road after "La Loberia" (one of the largest sea lion colonies in the world) for the next 250km. A little bit west of El Condor there's a small surf spot called "El Espigon" on which we got to surf for 2 days (
http://www.surf-forecast.com/breaks/Espigon). The description of "beach break" in the previous link isn't quite accurate, the beach really is a rock shelf with a 1cm layer of sand over it. The paddle-out was surprisingly difficult, but there was a peaky (albeit not very long) righthander starting on the western part, and a (shorter and less consistent) left on the other side of the beach / shelf. The view from the water (facing the cliffs) was quite stellar - I took a wave on my head at one point because I was too fascinated staring at the cliff. The locals were super happy to see people from abroad, and a great time was had. See pictures:
- View from the board to the coast
- Local guy having fun
- Locals preparing Patagonian lunch on the beach
Getting in & out during high tide can be a bit sketchy as the sand-covered shelf disappears completely.
The guys / girls hanging out on that beach are from the "Asociacion Rionegrina de Surf y Bodyboard", and were generally awesome.
We continued our trip down the coast, which is stunning scenery-wise, and seems to contain a few waves that are rarely if ever surfed. Unfortunately, we had to make our way to Trelew, so we didn't stop much on the way to try any of them. One pic is this:
We had planned to reach Playa Doradas (which I had heard can be a good break), but on the road to the Playa our rental car's tire burst -- and closer inspection revealed that our spare had almost no pressure, and the other 3 tires were in very bad shape. So we had to skip Playa Doradas :-/. We arrived in Puerto Madryn, hoping to find waves in Rawson or on the ocean-facing side of the Peninsula Valdes -- but after we arrived, we got news of an health crisis / imminent death in the close family, so the trip was aborted and we had to head back to Europe. So the places we did not get to surf that we had wanted to try are:
- Playa Doradas
- Rawson
- Cabo Raso (an abandoned old village a few hours south of Rawson, very remote)
Summary: Patagonia is not a destination to go to if you want to maximize time spent on a wave, but it's got a few things going for it:
Friendly locals, superb beef/lamb, great wine - and a population density that is essentially "empty". If you want to spend time on a beach that goes to the horizon with no soul to be seen, it's a great place to visit.
I will definitely try to go back, but next time - given fickle conditions and the remoteness of it all - I will go in a campervan and bring more time.
Hope this is helpful to some,
Cheers,
Thomas
Posted: Tue Dec 15, 2015 1:23 am
