april-2012

Siargao’s
endless
summer
Once the stuff of legend among intrepid
adventurers and hardcore surfers
around the world, the perfect swell
in Siargao Island is now the star of an
annual surfing competition. Lui Tortuya
recalls his first time on Cloud 9.
THE YEAR was 2000. My friends and I, and perhaps
thousands of other surfers in their own little corners around
the world, had just seen pictures in a surf magazine of
a secret surf spot somewhere in the Philippines, a thenunknown
little island in the far south of Luzon — on the
northeastern tip of Mindanao, to be precise. This inspired a
frenzied and dogged Internet search for more pictures of what
was quickly becoming a legendary wave, a perfect swell
rising into a perfect curl. There had been talk of it for several
years, but except for the rare magazine feature that came few
and far between, that perfect wave rose and crashed largely
in our imagination.
All that changed in 2003, when the Quiksilver
International Invitational at Cloud 9 took a little surfi ng
competition, along with the nascent Philippine surfi ng
industry, to the next level — bringing some of the world’s
best tube riders to compete for a US$10,000 prize. The
international event has transformed a once sleepy corner
of Surigao del Norte into party central during the peak
surf months of August and September, when the
wind blows across the Pacifi c and makes little
giddy children out of grown surfers.
It’s quite shocking that, these days, there are
hundreds of thousands of pictures documenting
this little island’s coming of age, taking its
place this year as the 8th best global surfi ng
destination according to lifestyle website CNNGo.
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