“Is there anywhere where you can be alone with a few friends, searching for new waves and exploring with no one else around?” asks Matt Rode in Episode 4 of Maps to Nowhere. That’s what the series is all about: trying to find hidden breaks in a world where everything seems to have been explored.
“I knew we’d want to bring surfers who were comfortable in anything, from two-foot ramps to 12-foot tubes,” says Rode. To accomplish that, he recruited South African tour veteran Jordy Smith and Australian surfer Soli Bailey on a 30-hour trip to a forgotten beach.
“We soon found ourselves in an isolated region full of rugged headlands and rocky bays,” narrates Rode after a lengthy trek. They set up camp far away from civilization, on a cliff overlooking a nearby beachbreak. Most of them are roughing it, but Jordy opts to glamp, with a mattress in the back of his SUV.
The next morning, the crew suits up to tackle the frigid surf. What they found there had Jordy frothing the whole time. “I think that’s really what the essence of surfing is about,” he says afterwards, “finding locations where there’s no one and just having you and your friends out scoring good waves.”
“I’d probably travel this far no matter what to score uncrowded waves,” agrees Soli. “It’s pretty special, no matter how far you travel, to score something like that.”
The next day takes them to a nearby slab, but the conditions never quite line up the way they hoped. In the end, the beachie proves enough for the rugged adventurers. “Well worth all the hard work we put in to get here” says Soli. Definitely looks like it.
