From Fear to Exploitation: “Extreme Surfers” Change Small Portuguese Fishing Village | “It was like finding the Holy Grail. I’d found the elusive wave.”
We once went to Nazare, the now big wave capital just north of Supertubes in Portugal. It was 2011 or so and it was still more or less a fishing village. Garrett McNamara had already arrived, but his hundreds of followers hadn’t yet. It was a clean swell with walls of water easily reaching 50-feet top to bottom. Only G-Mac and Andrew Cotton were in the water where as today there’d be many, many more. On land maybe 15 people stood cliffside watching the action. Not the hundreds or thousands of today. But you could see it coming. Garrett might as well have already been town mayor. There were Mercedes trucks driving all over with his face plastered on them larger than life. Elderly people spoke of his name in native tongue in the town square. Babies were brought to him to be blessed. What would become of this town after their god had put it on the map? The New York Times dove in….
Sample:
NAZARÉ, Portugal — At the market in the ancient fishing village of Nazaré, Portuguese pensioners shopped for their fruit and vegetables. Retired fishermen chatted over coffee. And a record-breaking American surfer sipped on a cucumber and celery smoothie.
It was Garrett McNamara, a 51-year-old from Hawaii who until recently held the world record for the highest wave ever surfed. And who, for most of his life, had never visited Europe and had to take some time to find Portugal on a map.
“I never envisaged this,” said Mr. McNamara, who tended to surf in the Pacific Ocean. “Portugal was never a destination.”
For centuries, Nazaré was a traditional seaside town, where fishermen taught their children to avoid the huge waves that crashed against the nearby cliffs. But over the past eight years, those same waves have turned the place into an unlikely draw for extreme surfers like Mr. McNamara, their fans and the global companies that sponsor the athletes.
Click to THE NEW YORK TIMES to see how surfing changes a small fishing village
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