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Tahupoo / French Polynesia
Welcome to the Billabong Pro 2008 (Wed, 30 Apr 2008 Posted at 02:30:00 PM)
TRANSPORTATION: Rent a car and have a boatman lined up. Good distance between the airport and the end of the road, and from there, it’s either a two mile paddle or a two minute boat ride - you decide.
ATTITUDE: Don’t bother bringing any because the wave is the one with the attitude here. Half the surfers are shaking in their shorts, the other half are shaking their heads in disbelief, and those in the channel are happy as clams - unless of course one of the sets swings wide, then they’re all buggered.
THE WAVE: Breaking 700 metres out to sea, “Chopes”, as the break is affectionately known, is one of Mother Nature’s masterpieces. The old lady reckoned placing a 100 metre drop-off just 50 metres away from a half-moon-shaped reef would create a phenomenon� and she was right. This treacherous, left to right peeling reef-break boasts thick, bone-crushing barrels accessible only via a very-vertical takeoff. Once standing upright all surfers need to do is survive being spat out of the tube 50 metres later and then avoid the teeth of the razor sharp reef which sits high and dry directly in front of the wave.
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