Everybody's Gone Surfing, Surfing Na-zar-e

The  largest waves in the world are not in fact in California or Hawaii, but here in the sleepy seaside town of Nazare Portugal. The summer throngs with families and locals and visitors who hang out on the fabulous demerara-like sandy beach, but between October and March, the world's surfers come here in throngs to catch a record breaking wave.

Heights of nearly 100 feet have been recorded. The waves are so large that the surfers must be towed out by seadoo.

But what causes these waves is possibly a scarier proposition than the the thought of leaping off a ten-storey moving building made of water - the underwater Nazare canyon. It a 230 km long, 5,000 metre deep - that is almost as deep as the Andes mountains are high! - canyon perpendicular to the Portuguese coast. It abuts the shore at Nazare with a slight northward turn meaning that a huge volume of water moves parallel to the Nazare north beach at enormous velocity sending it into the air squished by Atlantic currents in a massive watery cannonball.

Experienced and legendary Brazilian surfer Marcio Freire died this very January surfing a giant wave here at Nazare.

There is an odd coalescence of surfing, fishing (the traditional Nazare occupation, and a 12 century of a nobleman hunting a deer on a foggy September morning in the year 1182 - yes that is over 800 years ago - when a heavy fog rose up from the sea. Suddenly the deer disappeared, and, realizing he was a the top of the cliff  he cried out to the Virgin Mary to help him. His horse miraculously stopped in time to prevent going over the cliff to certain death. 

He immediately built a small chapel in the spot to give thanks to Our Lady. (I hope he also gave some thanks to his horse!) This chapel is still there, as is a large church built in 1377 to accommodate all the visiting pilgrims.

The cliffs also host a fort (first built in 1577 and added to), from which surfing audiences come to get the best view of the incredible winter waves. The fort also houses donated surfboards from surfing greats, looking odd standing by stone walls used as fortifications for several centuries.  

Given Jenny and my history with surviving ocean sinkholes over the Tongan trench, we were keen to see Nazare - but not from the ocean. While we were there, lovely 1-2 metre swells whooshed over the sands. Clearly April is too late. However, even now the water remains dangerous on a balmy April day. Red flags identify when no one is to go into the water and no one did on the days we saw them fluttering on the beach. People being washed out to sea is an annual occurrence. 

So all we did was paddle in the chilly waters and sit on the sugar sands watching the waves crash. No more near-watery-graves for us.