West Africa.

This story first appeared in 'Surfers Path' magazine in 2000

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"Originally my people came from the south, I have always lived here though" I glanced around, at the land this man now called home, it was a desperately poor place, the desert was encroaching, killing off any future the town may have had. I asked him what he did out here for a living, "Me, I am Haratin." He almost said it with pride, I could know longer meet his gaze and could think of nothing to say, this man was a slave.

This vast Continent has inspired wonder, curiosity and fear in Europeans for hundreds of years, at first they ventured into its huge landscapes under the promise of great wealth, delivered in the form of slaves and gold. Even by the start of the 20th century the "dark continent" still held many mysteries and many unknown places, but the last hundred years have seen most of these mysteries solved, the riches drained away and every corner explored and charted. Unless that is you're a surfer, in which case Africa is still as dark and unknown as it was for the great explorers of yesteryear and just like these earliest explorers I too had found myself drawn to Africa's huge landscapes by a promise of wealth, but it wasn't the treasure of gold and slaves that I was searching for. For years I had had a map in my head marked with all the surf spots I knew in Africa, there were pitifully few. Of course, I knew all about the barrels of South Africa and the points of Morocco, but in between and beyond was an empty space covering thousands of kilometres of rugged coastline, almost all of which I was sure would have waves breaking onto lonely beaches and reefs. It was this thought that had led me to a remote desert town in Mauritania and a conversation with a slave.

My journey had begun a few weeks earlier, back up in the known world of southern Morocco. It wasn't my first time in this country and I doubt if it'll be my last, every visit has left me ever more impressed with its huge surf possibilities and welcoming people, and as I headed southwards down the coast on buses and in taxis I found myself scoring waves at all those famous points we've heard so much about, but then, one hot morning I woke to find that I'd reached the end of the map. From here on I was entering the uncharted, the unknown, the blank space on a surfers map. And my first taste of these undiscovered lands took place whilst I was sat in an overloaded share taxi, a few hours south of Anchor point, climbing ever so slowly to the peak of some scrubby hills, from the summit of which, myself and the nine other passengers in the taxi gazed south out over the sand and gravel plains, blank red mountains and towering apricot dunes that stretched onwards for millions of square kilometres. The Sahara desert, the greatest desert on earth, its scale is overwhelming and it leaves you feeling dwarfed and insignificant.

The road took us on an inland detour before rejoining the coast in the busy and colourful town of Tan-Tan. The desert completely surrounds Tan-Tan, it is all pervading and never allows you to forget its presence. Its influence shows up in the people of the town, who appear to have arrived from Timbuktu that very day, their veils and turbans covering sun beaten faces. Beside such an exotic backdrop, the thought of being near the sea, let alone surf, seemed strange, but sure enough at the nearby beach I found long left handers peeling onto a beautiful stretch of sand, and though the waves were slightly fat on the outside section, they quickly turned into a fast and hollow shore break.

Access to the ocean became far harder after Tan-Tan, distances between towns and villages unimaginably vast and the high coastal cliffs meant that many thousands of reefs and beaches would remain forever unridden. Occasionally I'd see reefs, but they'd be the wrong shape and the waves closing out, though every now and then I'd see a truly classic wave and conveniently these were as often as not where ancient river beds and gullies had carved through the cliffs and out into the sea, producing deep water channels and reef passes with easy access from the road to the beach. Surfing along this coastline is an incredibly intense and spooky experience. Few spots have ever been ridden, medical help would be a long time coming, the sea life tends to be abundant and on the giant side and massive swells can arrive in the space of an hour and as a final spooky extra are the large shipwrecks that line many of the beaches ; everything from small inshore trawlers to ocean going tankers, washed up by some of the most ferocious swells on earth.

The long disputed border of Morocco and the Western Sahara was fast approaching. Since the Spanish pulled out of this country in 1975 the Moroccans and Mauritanians have been embroiled in a vicious war with both claiming historical rights to the territory, but standing in between them are the Polisario guerrillas, representing the native Sahrawis. With Algeria's backing they're fighting to reclaim the land for themselves. In the last few years a fragile UN-brokered cease-fire has been keeping a tentative peace, and Morocco has effectively taken control of the country. With a much postponed vote between the Moroccans and the Sahrawis over who will gain official control over the country due very soon, the possibilities for any travel at all in this region may come to a grinding halt. An ex-Polisario guerrilla that I later met in Mauritania told me that if the vote is canceled by the Moroccans again, or if the vote doesn't go the Sahrawis way, then they will once again pick up their guns. All this should be borne in mind by anyone wishing to travel in this region. And be warned ; the going gets decidedly harder after crossing the border into the Western Sahara. Distances between towns become ever greater and you appear to make little impression on a map of the desert. The heat, even in mid-winter is draining and flies cover everything. Access to the ocean continues to become harder, with the road often running way inland and suspicious military check points are everywhere, constantly reminding you that you are traveling in a war zone. The scenery down here becomes extremely monotonous; hundreds of kilometres can pass by with not a single sign of life or the slightest change in the landscape from that of a dead flat gravel plain. I was frequently left wondering what it was that so many people had been willing to die for down here.

It is possible to reach the surf in all three major coastal towns and in one or two other places. The best spots when I was there were a right point to the north of Dakhla, and several good reefs and points on the Dakhla peninsula, which is the southern-most town it's possible for foreigners in the Western Sahara to visit without a permit and military escorts, fortunately I had been lucky enough to get the relevant paper work. Twice a week the Moroccan military escort a convoy of vehicles south from Dakhla to the Mauritanian border and onwards to the city of Nouadhibou. This was to be the first stage of a journey that is widely regarded as one of the toughest desert crossings on earth, and would eventually lead me a thousand kilometres to the Mauritanian capital of Nouakchott. There is no public transport for the two-day journey from Dakhla to Nouadhibou, so I had to rely on hitching. Surprisingly quickly I got a lift on an overland truck carrying a group of tourists across Africa. The first day of the journey passes along a relatively good tarmac road and the going is easy. Day two and the tarmac peters out to be replaced by soft sand and numerous checkpoints. We only had thirty kilometres to cover on this second day, but it took sixteen hours of digging cars out of sand drifts and dealing with self-important border guards after bribes. The coast along this stretch
revealed some stunning set-ups for surf, dozens of points and reefs and miles of beaches, yet potentially hundreds more spots were hidden away out of my sight. The best of the spots that I saw was a bay containing a reef, producing square, spitting barrels and a long and hollow point. I though, wasn't going to be lucky enough to surf any of these waves and neither will you, the reason being that this is a highly sensitive border zone and scattered amongst the sand dunes are countless land mines, laid by all sides in the war. The road to Nouadhibou is littered with the twisted remains of vehicles that strayed off the main track and now serve as grisly reminders of the very real danger these mines present.

Mauritania is a country few people have ever heard of and it does little to attract positive attention, the opening description of Mauritania in my guide book reads: "Much of Mauritania forms part of the Sahara desert - a region of shifting sand dunes, rugged mountain plateaux and rocky outcrops. Life in this harsh land is affected by overwhelming poverty, lack of resources and ethnic conflicts. Few travelers visit and one could almost suggest that it is the one country to avoid. To some this place is the pits ; sand and an overwhelming sense of revulsion." Two weeks later I stood in a sand blasted village under a dying tree and spoke to a slave and all of a sudden the guidebook made perfect sense. Despite being outlawed in 1981, slavery still continues on a relatively large scale in the country's remote interior.

Mauritania is a no bullshit kind of country, you have to want to be there and be able to appreciate that things are going to be a little different to what you may be used to back home. Yet despite all of this, Mauritania turned out to be one of the most rewarding and interesting places I've ever been lucky enough to visit.

Nouadhibou has to be the only major city in the world with no real road connections to anywhere. In fact in a country that is twice the size of France, there are only three surfaced main roads. Like Dakhla, Nouadhibou is located at the end of a pencil thin peninsula, the western side of which has several small bays along its length. One contains the village of La Gouira with a good right point and a beach break. Unfortunately to reach this village involves considerable risk. The border between the Western Sahara and Mauritania runs the length of this peninsula and there is no road to the village, so you have to trek for three hours over the desert to get there. Aside from the obvious and very high risk of getting caught by the authorities in the middle of an illegal border crossing, you have the added excitement of knowing that this is one of the heaviest mined areas of the country.

Don't despair though, at the very tip of the peninsula I found a much more accessible wave that doesn't involve any illegal border crossings, only another long hike along a lightly marked track with a few land mines thrown in for good measure. The wave is a strange two part set-up, the take-off is a fast right hand shore break wedge, ideal for bodyboarders, the wave folds its way along the beach before wrapping around the east side of the peninsula and turning into a hollow right point break. In the winter at least, the northerly desert winds always blow offshore. The swell was small when I was there, and I think that on a bigger swell the first section of the wave wouldn't work properly, but the point could be perfect. The cold ocean here is one of the richest fishing grounds in the world and is teeming with massive creatures including what is possibly the world's last remaining colony of Monk Seals. Because of these seals the peninsula has been declared a national park and you need permits to enter. Don't do what I did and enter without them ; after twenty minutes in the water, police and park officials turned up wanting to see my papers. From the top of the cliffs they shouted down to me, threatening me with arrest if I didn't immediately produce my documents. I escaped from them by running off over the desert for two hours!

If you look at a map of Mauritania, you'll see that the area directly south of Nouadhibou contains an intriguing mix of headlands and islands that will set a surfers pulse racing, you will also notice that no road winds down this forgotten coastline and that to get there involves considerable effort. A knowledgeable guide is essential ; to attempt this route without one would be suicidal. It is a journey through a landscape stripped to the basics of sand, sky and rock, and though largely barren and lifeless it is an intensely moving and spiritual experience. As it turned out the maps were deceiving and the ocean here is very shallow, preventing much swell from ever reaching the shoreline. Halfway between Nouadhibou and Nouakchott the coastline changes to a never-ending beach with the occasional offshore reef, that stretches all the way to Dakar in Senegal. The water becomes relatively deep again, offering typical beach break waves. The most obvious place to base yourself for surfing along this coast is Nouakchott, where I finally left the overland truck and paused to gather my breath before the next stage of my journey and black Africa.

St. Louis is the northern most town of Senegal. It is a beautiful, decaying French colonial town with an overriding atmosphere of torpor. It is also the point where the Sahara and its influence finally end, in an explosion of colour and music that welcomes you to the whole new world of "Black" Africa. It's an unforgettable transformation.

Dakar the capital of Senegal is back in the known surf world; it's a large, modern and cosmopolitan city, with some of the best nightlife on the continent, but a high rate of petty crime. The city is located on the Cap Vert peninsula, the most westerly point in Africa. The Almadies point area is the place to head for, it's the home of half a dozen quality reefs, a couple of beach breaks and the first surf shop and board repairer since Casablanca. The line-ups are relatively empty, with just a few local surfers and French expatriates and tourists. Depending on the season you'll either surf the north or south side of the peninsula and be guaranteed offshore winds all day. The south side offers the better quality reefs, but needs a bigger swell and the north side has the spot featured in the Endless Summer film.

South of Dakar and the surf becomes a bit more of a hit and miss affair. Most of the coastline faces away from the swell and only breaks occasionally. One bonus of down here though is that the water temperature rises dramatically meaning that it's finally possible to surf in board shorts. My next destination was the Gambia, a bizarre British colonial creation that follows no particular tribal lines and is entirely surrounded by Senegal. To be quite honest I very much doubted that I would find any waves here, but I headed to the resort town of Kololi, as the beaches here appeared to have the biggest swell window. Gambia though had a surprise in store for me, in the form of empty beach break waves of a reasonably good quality and interestingly, whilst I rode a five-day long two to four foot swell, the more exposed Dakar area remained flat. One strange thing about surfing here were the wind patterns, unlike the normal tropical wind systems of offshore mornings and onshore afternoons, the wind here tended to be strong onshore from first light until around mid morning, it would then fall calm or light offshore until late afternoon, before going onshore again.

Since leaving Mauritania things had, I felt, been getting a little too easy, it was time to liven stuff up a bit. South of Senegal and Gambia is the almost totally unknown ex Portuguese colony of Guinea-Bissau. In 1998, Guinea-Bissau fell apart as a functioning country after a coup left it tangled up in a painful civil war, the capital Bissau became a city under siege, and thousands of refugees poured out of the city. In May 1999 the military Junta entered Bissau city, disarmed its opponents, many of them child soldiers as young as ten, and took control of the country. Amazingly they then set about preparing for democratic elections, these took place just five days before I entered the country, and the land borders only reopened the day before I arrived. Needless to say the only western foreigners I was to meet in the country were a few journalists in Bissau city covering the elections.

On arriving in Bissau city the signs of war were plain to see, tanks abandoned on roadsides untouched since the day their crews died and buildings ripped to pieces by shells and bullets. For most of my stay in the city the military enforced a general strike on all city transport and businesses in protest over a lack of pay, which left a ghostly silence hanging in the air. After finding a space on the floor of one of the roughest and most expensive hotel / brothels I've ever had the misfortune of staying in, I set off to look for a boat to take me to the waves.

Just a short distance off Guinea-Bissau's mainland (which due to bad swell exposure and continuous mangrove swamps probably never gets surf) is a group of thickly forested islands called the Bijagos Archipelago, many I was sure were too sheltered to get surf, but a couple left me intrigued, particularly one called Caravela island. This island was probably the most remote of the entire archipelago, but I was convinced that on a meaty swell, unfound waves would be breaking there. Getting to the island proved far easier than I expected, within one day I'd found a large canoe making the fifty kilometer journey, it wasn't until we were two hours out of port that I discovered that this was the first boat to Caravela in three weeks. Early the next morning Caravela appeared from out of the mist and I found myself entering an Africa I thought had disappeared a hundred years ago. It owed nothing to the west or even to this century, except for me standing there gawping. From under the branches of huge jungle trees emerged men with bows and arrows returning from hunting in the forest, and women wearing nothing but grass skirts, many of whom had never left this tiny island, let alone used a phone, driven a car or drunk a coke. I was often left wondering what they thought when they looked up into space and saw a satellite flying through another century. This island was one of the most untainted places I've seen in several years of travel through the remoter areas of four continents, money was an unknown concept, instead people trade for things through barter, and to enter any village I had first to gain the village headman's permission. Known locally as Ethiopia, due to a chronic lack of food, my diet on Caravela was limited to one plate of plain rice a day and whatever I could find in the bush.

I stayed with a man called Denis on the opposite side of the island to where I thought the surf might be, it took Denis two days to clear it with all the village heads for me to pass through their villages and get to the waves, but eventually I could go and see if the journey here had been worthwhile. The trip to the beach was an adventure in itself, a hard three hour trek through thick jungle teeming with wildlife, the track took me through large areas of swamp where I would sink to my knees in rancid black mud while thousands of insects feasted on me. (Thoughtfully, these insects gave me a souvenir in the form of a heavy dose of malaria, that on my return to Europe left me laid out in hospital.) At other times the vegetation would be growing so low and dense that I would be forced to crawl on my hands and knees under it whilst brushing away countless spider webs, the occupants of which were six inch black and red monsters. I was joined occasionally by other walkers, including an old man who carried with him two large knives, an axe of the type only seen in horror movies and a bunch of fetish figures that looked far too much like voodoo dolls. It was a relief to finally emerge on the island's north shore and be greeted by, yes you guessed it, the flattest ocean I have ever seen. It seems that the water around this island was extremely shallow, in-fact at low tide the sea was a kilometer away across estuary like mud flats, and it is I feel, safe to say that Caravela never gets any surf.

The next day I begun the long, tiring journey back to the mainland, because of no direct transport I had to hop between islands on small canoes with local fishermen. It was an eventful few days during which I found myself stranded for a day and night on an uninhabited island, after we stopped there to eat and our canoe drifted off out to sea. Another time a drunken canoe ride came close to disaster when we managed to fill it with water where upon it promptly sunk. I spent one night in a village hut using a dead crocodile as a pillow, and on another island managed to get myself arrested for not having the necessary permits for my camera! On my final boat ride we stopped to do some fishing and on hauling in the nets the boat crew discovered a huge turtle, they manhandled it on board, grabbed it by the neck, twisted it round and slit its throat, it was then carved up, thrown in a pot and cooked up for our dinner, except for its penis which was saved to be sold as a traditional sex aid in one of Bissau's markets! Most interesting though was one island I visited (I don't know its name), that had waves, it wasn't very big and was only a beach break and also quite weak, but I know that the swell all over West Africa at that time was only small. Although it was only possible for me to spend a short time here it was enough for me to feel that the journey hadn't been a total waste of time surf wise and that maybe a big swell would produce some good waves.

Guinea-Bissau was as far as I was heading, south of here and the swells come from the South Atlantic and the European summer is the best season. As I sat back in my aeroplane seat I reflected back over the last couple of months. Despite the Atlantic being at times less than co-operative, I had achieved my goal of riding good quality, unknown waves and could go home happy. Africa provided its first European visitors with vast wealth in the form of slaves and gold, it also provided them with the knowledge to start to fill in the blanks of the map, it would take many years though to complete theses maps, as it will to fill in the surfers Africa map. I only scratched the surface of the huge potential of this continent, it's going to take many more people, many more years to discover and map all of its treasures.