One of the first things I had been told when I arrived in Jeffreys Bay was to not, under any circumstances, be alone on the beach at night.

As I rocketed down the bay on two rogue horses tied together, I looked down at my feet and thought maybe I could even pull this off in flip flops.

I was standing up in the stirrups at a full-speed gallop, watching a rabbit rise in the sky ahead of me. It lit up Supertubes, rounded the point to Boneyards, past Magna Tubes, and hung to the side as I passed along Main Beach. The rabbit in the moon was a new acquaintance. In the Northern Hemisphere, the moon has the face of a man, but at the southern tip of the African continent, I always fall down the hole like Alice to follow its white tail. To put that simply: everyone here is a nutcase.

It was July of 2016 – my first time in J-Bay and the first of three chapters there. I was 21 years old and travelling solo through Africa with loose plans. I began in Malawi on a scholarship from my university to shoot a documentary in the city of Blantyre. Roundtrip airfare from Los Angeles was covered, with the understanding that I’d be back by September for post-production. I did not make it back for the autumn semester. Nor did I get any further west in my idea to surf-meander my way to Cape Town over the next month. I was an American surfer who had never done a surf trip abroad before.

I arrived right before the start of the J-Bay Open. I met a local on my first night who said, “ah, welcome to Africa!” and without pause, grabbed my waist, flipped me upside ...