It was March of 2010. My brother, Julian Azulay, and I were working at an architecture exhibition in Los Angeles. We worked 14-16 hours per day for two weeks straight on that project, barely surfing a lick. One afternoon, however, we managed a session at Manhattan Pier. Looking back, that's when the trip really started.
Julian, 25, initially planned on flying to Hawaii to catch the late- season surf, which was still pumping due to it being an El Niño year. Suddenly, he decided to come to work in California in order to buy a car and drive back home to Argentina. I'm 23 without giving
another thought to my academic obligations, or even how we were going to be able to finance the adventure, I joined my Julian. It was a fantastic, insane idea: exploring the American Pacific coastline with my own flesh and blood.
On July 5th, 2010 a solid six to eight-foot swell hit Malibu. We parked in front of the wave and slept in our truck for two days. We surfed non-stop, but as to be expected, it was packed. We wanted these kinds of waves to ourselves. So three days later, after buying some basic amenities (stove, pans, plates, etc.), we left the United States and entered Baja through Tijuana. Our adventure was on.
We had no plan, no idea of where to go or where to sleep, but plenty of motivation to surf our way back home to Argentina. In Baja, we camped on beaches or near cliffs with idyllic setups, every day meeting generous people who gave us lobsters and fish while we surfed their lonely pointbreaks. After a rain-less month and a half we crossed into Mainland Mexico. The first day it rained. The second day it rained. And so on... Persistent downpours didn't take away from all the empty, barreling pointbreaks and beachbreaks we found over the next two months. Some days my brother and I actually yearned for some company to share the perfection. But the surfers never appeared.