Surfer and Creator by Mitchell Milbauer

I am a surfer and a creator.

 

These two defining characteristics of myself sometimes feel as though they’re mutually exclusive and make it hard to find that balance of happiness on each end. I sometimes don’t know what to focus on when its offshore and firing. Do I grab my board, or do I take my overpriced clicking device? During these sessions I obviously opted for the latter.

 

I’m currently living in the land of the lefts, which is a generally understood term in the surf world for Chile. A long strip of rugged coastline featuring horrendously scary currents, slabby waves and endlessly peeling left-hand pointbreaks.

 

Life down here is slow and late. But the Chileans generosity and welcoming personalities counteract how long they made you wait for your ride. Insofar, the abundance of waves is so ridiculous its dreamlike.

 

You stop at the panaderia, grab some freshly made bread, restock on mate, and maybe grab an extra pino empanada for the road. You begin driving and you and your mates decide which group of sand dunes to go towards or to keep on driving to the next wave. You realize you’re going to have to stop at some point because the country is over 4,000km long so you pick something.

 

Aside from the Santiago and Valparaiso-Vina Del Mar area you can be driving for hours alongside farmland filled with cows and horses and small convenience stores (best way to describe them) displaying a ‘Coca-Cola’ sign on the roof. 

 

Here in Chile it’s quite bizarre that you can almost always surf a good day without a crowded lineup. This is due to a multitude of factors that include things such as the vast number of waves, a current state of political turmoil, a messy and unfathomably unfair economic hierarchy and a surf culture that is just leaving its fetal stages.

 

This images below were taken at the Punta de Lobos area in Chile. A world-class left guaranteeing you 15 second minimum ride every time. It’s a place that a 5/4 and booties are highly recommended in the summer and is first stop towards a cold-water surf exploration towards the Antarctic.