Gabriel Pastori found the elusive Pororoca barrel. Photo: Gabriel Pastori//Screenshot
Gabriel Pastori says he’s gotten barreled thousands of times in his life, but the location of his latest tube was particularly special. Miles up the Mearim River in northern Brazil, Pastori found a barrel section on Brazil’s Pororoca tidal bore.
Many surfers have ridden the Pororoca — including Gabriel Medina, Carlos Burle, Ross Clarke-Jones, Dylan Graves, and Lucas Fink — but few find the correct positioning to ride the fleeting barrel sections.
Before taking off, Pastori screams into his handheld camera, “I’m going to try to get barreled!” The wave prophetically hit a sandbar that made it tube, and Pastori was in the right spot.
“I did it!” he celebrates as it exits the barrel.
The Pororoca “usually happens three days during full or new moon, and the wave lasts for three hours along the river,” Pastori, who also co-hosts the popular Brazilian surf vlog Uaradei, wrote on Instagram. “The barrel section happens for five to 10 seconds in a specific part of the river, and it’s extremely hard to be in the right position because it changes a little bit every day and every moon.”
“I was so lucky to be there exactly in the right spot at the right time!” he added.
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