Surfing Tropical Beats
In this much anticipated sequel to Surfing Brilliant Corners, Sam Bleakley and the surfEXPLORE team take us on a rollercoaster ride through Gabon, India, Vietnam, Algeria, China and Haiti, drumming up a tropical beat.
Combining ‘Deep Travel’, John Callahan’s incredible photography and Sam’s performance writing, they capture the spirit of these turbulent coastscapes, blood racing, running on saltwater fuel. The wide belt around the Equator – the tropics – has become an alluring path for travel, but a region often steeped in war and environmental disasters. Sam and surfEXPLORE go off the regular route, carving a niche, collaborating with locals, documenting the occasion poetically and with precision. Where ‘waves transform from green glass to white foam, the surfboard is the frozen double of that transition – a rainbow bridge that allows you to step in the blink of an eye from inertia to adrenaline-fuelled ecstasy to the fear of the water-wrestling hold-down.’ The paradoxical red hot and cool blue of surfing, and the often icy logic of preparation for challenging travel, form a matrix from which springs a distinctive kind of writing as performance. By turns, surfEXPLORE gather their wits at the crossroads where ‘lovers part and souls get taken by the lost highway, lured down the wrong route.’
Sam and John have a combined work ethic that eclipses any sense that surf travel is an easy living. When they go to work, they go to work!
1 surfEXPLORE
2 Getting Traction in Haiti
3 Gabon to the Point
4 India Multikulti
5 Vietnam Hot and Cool
6 Algeria Under the Rainbow
7 China Cat Sunflower
8 Haiti Post Quake
9 Haiti Apocalypso
10 Infusion Surfing
