If you do it right — and very, very carefully — you can do a surf trip in a pandemic. Photo: Author Supplied
Times are strange right now. The world is a drastically different place than it was at this time last year. Coronavirus shackled the world’s population to their homes, for the most part, and the tourism industry suffered from it. Tourism only exists, though, because people love to travel, and if you surf, you likely love to travel more than most people. Whether it’s traveling to a place with swaying palms, white sand, and firing reef breaks or somewhere with towering, snow-capped mountains above a freezing lineup, travel is almost as much a part of surfing as the actual act of riding a wave is. Travel IS still possible — you just have to be prepared to put up with more inconveniences than ever before, and it has to be done within the local safety guidelines. Wear a mask, wash your hands, keep your distance, and please, please, if you even suspect you might be sick, self-isolate. Right now, a surf trip to somewhere with perfect, empty waves is — hopefully, at least — a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
A few months ago, back in September, an idea popped into my head. As a surfer, what I was missing the most was travel. My work as co-founder of BLDG Active hasn’t ever stood in the way of surfing, and I was feeling frustrated. Professionals seemed to be the only ones going on surf trips, and surf media was full of those pros surfing wildly empty lineups. Sets stacked to the horizon while just a handful of people paddled frantically for them, gorging on the endless buffet. It was too much. The Maldives were still open, so I, along with a few friends, Dave, Symon, Tim, and Winston, decided to throw caution to the wind, follow all the necessary protocols, and book tickets.
We’re back now — we returned home in mid-October — and the trip was an absolute blast. The surf was fun, the crowds were minimal, and I was surrounded by a small group of some of the best humans I know. It was a fantastic few weeks, and one of the things that I miss the most, I think, is the bubble that a surf/boat trip creates. Being unplugged and not hearing about any of the horrible things going on in the world right now was a much-needed break from reality. With a few months in the rearview to process the trip, here are six things I learned from a surf trip to the Maldives in the middle of a pandemic.
1. Missing your connecting flight is WAY worse during a pandemic.
Since flights are few and far between, if you’re sitting in an airport restaurant thinking about the trip you’re about to embark on when your flight is boarding… well, you’re in for a bad time. A friend of ours found that out first-hand when he missed a connecting flight in Istanbul. His layover went from an easy 8-and-a-half-hours to a nearly impossible 80 hours.
2. Whether you’re there or not, the waves will be pumping.
It’s pretty much a guarantee that if you or any of your friends miss a connection, the waves will be absolutely pumping for the days they miss out on. That friend who was stuck in Istanbul? He missed four of the most epic days of the trip.
3. Pandemics are bad, but there is a silver lining, albeit a relatively tiny one.
Since almost no one is traveling, the crowds aren’t an issue anymore. Not just in the lineup, either — almost everywhere we went was eerily empty. At North Male Atoll, which is generally one of the more crowded waves in the Maldives, we managed to get a few sessions entirely to ourselves. LAX, normally one of the busiest airports in the world, was a ghost town. Our boat, which usually runs with 16 guests, only had six.
4. Masks are a good thing, but they sure do make it hard to communicate with someone who speaks English as a second language.
Or, for that matter, for them to understand my broken attempts at a different language. I hadn’t realized just how much of understanding speech is visual until I was all ears. When it came to different accents, the masks turned airport security into a comedy of errors. But still, a few hiccups in communication are better than not wearing a mask and risking lives.
5. Travel in a pandemic is not to be trusted.
You might have tickets that say you’ll be somewhere at a certain time. You might have tickets that say you’ll be home on a certain date. But they don’t mean anything until you’re either at that somewhere at that certain time or you’re at home on that certain date. We met so many people whose trips were extended by canceled flights that we gave them a nickname: “Pandemic +”. And if you’ve got nothing else to do, being stuck in paradise for a few extra days isn’t the worst thing in the world.
6. The feeling you get from a good surf trip is one of the best things in the world.
While the pandemic is impacting everyone’s lives in horrific ways, I got many of the same feelings from this trip as the trip I did to the Maldives back in 2016. Paradise is still paradise. Still, though, I need to stress the importance of following your local guidelines and doing everything by the book. Self-isolate if you even suspect you might need to. Wash your hands. Wear a mask. Because no surf trip is worth someone’s life.
