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I was in a daze, still spinning with jetlag and was pretty much unaware of where I was. In fact it wasn't until a snow capped volcanic cone passed by my rattling bus window, that it began to sink in. I was in Ecuador South America, at the start of a two month trip to explore the surf possibilities of this countries remote north western coastal provinces and more especially, as much of neighboring Colombia's virtually untapped Pacific coastline as possible. The goal of the trip.......a new G-Land or maybe another Kirra! I am, if you like, the advance party, testing the ground. For this past fortnight I've been putting out feelers and keeping an ear alert to rumours, hoping to gain some clues as to where we should be looking. All this so that today, (Dec 6th), when my fellow two wave hunters, James Thomas and Jonathan Howell arrive in Quito, (capital of Ecuador), I can meet them straight off the plane and we can head off almost immediately in search of empty waves.

Of course, arriving here two weeks before the other two has meant that I have had the chance to warm up in some Pacific juice....or so I thought! Ecuador's central coast is a fairly well worn stop on the surfers South American surfari, and as such it seemed a good place to wile away a fortnight and gather information. Montanita is the focus of attention in this region, a small village of thatched wooden huts that has become a major hang out for surfers and backpackers. At the far end of the dirty beach, (poor quality close-outs), is a right point, a consistent wave that is rumoured to be world class. However it seems that the El Nino events of a couple of years ago have had a negative effect on the wave having drastically altering the bottom contour. In my opinion at least, this is far from a world class spot, I found it to be sectiony, slow, fat, weak and crowded, not to mention that it blew onshore constantly day and night!

The frustration and boredom of riding this wave caused me to take a couple of trips along the coast, just two days ago myself, another English surfer and an Ozzy found a super sketchy right hand reef, a fall on the take off meant landing amongst exposed finger shaped rocks coated with steriod fueled six inch barnacles. Unfortunately this spot, like the long left point we found a week earlier, really needed more than the 2-3ft, (1m), swells that have been about the maximum in Montanita. It would be fair to say that the central Ecuadorian coast has a fair number of decent spots, but the best only turn on when the swell wakes up a little. As for the rumours, well it's been a mixed bag, that has really got us know closer to where in Colombia we should be looking, if at all! Dozens of local and foreign surfers have been keen to offer up advice on Pacific coast Colombia, but it always turns out that none of them have actually been there. The opinion of many is that there is no surf in Colombia - it's just too sheltered by both Central America and the bulge of Peru in the south to receive any swell. However their is a small minority who feel optimistic for us, one guy has a friend who has actually surfed there and found a couple of excellent spots. We even had there supposed location pinpointed on a map for us. So it seems that Colombia really is South Americas great unexplored!

My other interest has been in gathering information on safety in Colombia and in this case the story has been unanimous. South Colombia, particularly along the Ecuadorian border and the main Pan-American Highway, has in the last  six weeks become an extremely dangerous place. US planes have been spraying the Coca crops in an attempt to stamp out the traffic of Coke to the west, (Colombia is the worlds largest supplier). Naturally the drug cartels are non to happy about this and have dramatically stepped up their guerilla war, which has made the main growing regions virtual no go zones.

This is definitely a problem for us, as to reach the most interesting areas of coast involves passing through this zone. We are now left with three options .One, we can take the risk and travel overland across the border, many people have told us that the chances of being stopped by Guerillas is very high, and if they decide that we are Americans or journalists then we're in big trouble! Two, I have heard rumours that it is possible to catch a boat from Ecuador's most north westerly town to Colombia's most south westerly. This option would give us the advantage of being dropped directly onto the beach, but the disadvantage that as soon as we try and leave we are going to find ourselves in the heart of the main trouble area. Three, we can fly from Ecuador to the major southern Colombian city of Cali, which at the moment at least is out of the danger zone and from there continue our way overland to a safer area of coastline.

This is a decision that we will have to make between the three of us, at the last possible moment so that we can have the most up to date news. In the mean time we are going to head to the jungle fringed coastline of north west Ecuador and see what points we can uncover. Whilst this area is far better known than Colombia, there are still vast tracts that have seen no more than a handful of surfers, it is these areas that we intend to explore now.

Read Stuarts 2nd Report: 20th December 2000 >>>> 

All words & photos © Stuart Butler 2000/2001