donpedro, Donnerstag, 15. Mai 2008, 13:36
Monster waves and zero crowds - Yemen is surf's new frontier. Catch it before it breaks.
Surfing in Yemen is not for the casual amateur, and you won't be finding surf schools, Sex Wax and hang-five dudes crowding out Yemeni beaches any time soon.
It's the noble quest of surfers the world over: perfect, undiscovered waves. Located at the bottom end of the Arabian Peninsula and sharing the neighbourhood with such hot-spot companions as Ethiopia and Somalia, Yemen's not the first place to spring to mind when surfing's mentioned - but the word on the grapevine is that it's about to become the Next Big Thing. Its secret? An intense low-pressure system tied to the Indian Ocean monsoon. Between May and September it sends giant waves to pummel the Yemeni coast on a daily basis. I touched down in Yemen with my friends Toby and Brandon (a professional body-boarder) to check it out.

Surfing a new and unknown spot always fills me with nerves, but Brandon was made of sterner stuff; unperturbed by the enormous waves shattering across the offshore reefs and the curtains of spray hurtling across the ocean, he set off to get amongst it.

Surfing in Yemen is not for the casual amateur, and you won't be finding surf schools, Sex Wax and hang-five dudes crowding out Yemeni beaches any time soon. In fact, so far only a handful of people have ridden the waves breaking along this Indian Ocean coastline. If you're considering joining this elite group, be warned: this is not a trip you want to approach lightly. You'll need ample time, determination and money; but for the experienced wave rider looking for quality surf spots and empty beaches, Yemen is the ultimate adventure playground. The mainland has a number of gentle points, some good-quality beach breaks and one world-class wedge that, day after day, chucks out massive barrels with a predominantly offshore wind.

A huge hammerhead shark surfaced just a metre away from him, circled him once, poked its head out of the water to look at him and then disappeared from view.
Meanwhile, Suqutra, Yemen's largest island, sits in the wave-lashed Arabian Sea and has the kind of exposed ocean setting and contorted coastline that could one day make it the destination of choice for Yemeni surf explorers. There's just one tiny problem.

It can't have been more than a minute after Toby said, 'Any second now we'll see a dark shadow go towards him,' that we saw a dark shadow go towards Brandon. Heedless of our cautions, he had trotted out into what were, undeniably, excellent waves. But the second he hit the take-off zone the monster came lurching out of the depths towards him. A huge hammerhead shark surfaced just a metre away from him, circled him once, poked its head out of the water to look at him and then disappeared from view.

His face a rictus of terror, Brandon positively walked on water back to the beach, where the local children laughed at him. 'That's only a baby shark,' the children mocked. 'Please, we can't fish at this time of year, so swim back out there with our nets and catch it for our dinner!'

If circling hammerheads and the risk of terrorism aren't enough to put you off, you could be among the first to blaze a trail to this top-class surfing destination. Local tour operators are only just starting to latch onto what they've got. For the moment independent surf travel is all but impossible - you'll need to employ a tour company to source jeeps, guides and permits. Though this all adds up, making a Yemeni surf trip anything but cheap, you'll be getting some dream waves in return.

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