Honestly, the only thing your girl knows about big wave surfing is the name Kai Lenny. So, one of the first questions I asked Mauricio was: what kind of board are you taking into waves that size?
“9 foot,” he said. And then, after watching my jaw hit the floor, his friend, Mando, added “sometimes an 11-footer”.
It seems the kind of surfing I thought I’d have nothing in common with, I actually do. We both love big boards. The only difference is I like cruising them in two-foot waves to the rhythm of Banana Pancakes, and they like running them down a ten-meter face to the theme song of Jaws.
After a quiet week in a beach house tucked into the arms of Infiernillo, I drove down to Punta de Lobos to learn a bit more about big wave surfing in Chile. At the top sits a house belonging to Mauricio. He met me in the car park outside, signed “for friends and family only.”
Later, he told me that when he was 29 and bought the place, he picked up a rock and said, “it’s mine.” Now, the car park feels like a small offering, a way to share a slice of otherwise insane real estate. Honestly, it’s pretty generous. It would be a nightmare trying to park up there every day to surf. I’m sure his family and friends bless him for it every morning.
The house is stunning. I really did try to hold it in, but I must’ve told him at least twenty times. Each time, he brushed it off, “you should see Mando’s place, it’s even nicer.” I probably should. Really, I should. Invite me, please.
But the house isn’t really the point. The Punta is.
Mauricio has a long history with this place. He grew up spending summers here; his grandparents lived in Pichilemu, there’s a portrait of them in his living room (last mention of the house, promise).
Surfing in Chile is relatively young, with Mauricio part of just the second generation of Chilean Surfers. The wave itself was ‘discovered’ only in the early ’80s. Surprisingly recent, considering the infrastructure and reputation it’s built since. The first generation of Chilean surfers largely came from the Viña del Mar area and then four guys began exploring the coastline, with Punta de Lobos as one of their finds.
Back then, he said, “you’d see a board strapped to the roof of a car on the highway and think, that’s him.” You knew everyone who surfed in Chile. Then again, there were only enough of them to fill a couple of tables at a coffee shop the week before. I’d just missed a legendary meet-up of first and second-gen Chilean surfers. I was quietly kicking myself when he told me.
Gear wasn’t easy to come by either – wetsuits, boards, everything had to be sourced with effort. And we were all on the same page that a hoodie was mandatory to enter. You could feel the chill off the water blocks away. My toes curled and my face winced thinking about stepping in. But the wave makes you paddle, at least it’s trying to keep you warm.
There was a time when no one surfed Punta de Lobos. People stuck to Pichilemu; the rocks here were too intimidating. Until Greg Anderson squared up to them. Now, those same rocks are the main, heavily trafficked entry point into the break.
Mando laughed about how it used to be when you’d see a gringo on the street and try to pull them into the water: “oh, it’s a gringo, come on, come in.” There was no one out. Now? You see them and think, nah mate, get out of here.
It wasn’t just a scarcity of people there were no inflatable vests, no jet skis. “This kind of surfing is really a team sport,” Mauricio told me. It couldn’t exist in its current form without that support. I believe him. I can’t even begin to imagine the paddle strength it would take to catch one of those waves solo.
Today, Punta de Lobos sits in a unique position, among the broader surf-destination bubble. In many places, big hotel corporations move in and try to claim the break in front of their land. The Corporación Parque Punta de Lobos was born out of the need to protect this stretch of coast from exactly that.
In 2013, two invasive real estate projects were approved for development along the cliffs. By early 2014, with support from the Save The Waves Coalition, a local committee formed to protect the area. They successfully pushed to modify the regulatory plan, restricting development and designating adjacent coastal land, including the Mirador, as protected green space.
By the end of 2017, with backing from Patagonia, the Marisla Foundation, the Packard Foundation, the Waitt Foundation, and over 900 individual donors, more than $750,000 had been raised to acquire the Mirador guaranteeing its protection and free access to perpetuity.
Mauricio now sits as a director of the foundation still, in his own way, picking up a rock and saying: this is ours.
At the edge of Punta de Lobos, it’s easy to see how it all stuck. A wave found not that long ago, a coastline explored by a handful of surfers, and a place that, somehow, grew without completely giving itself away. It’s bigger, busier, louder, and more well-known now but it still carries that feeling of something shared rather than claimed. And that’s what makes Punta de Lobos position in this bubble so unique. Not just the wave, or the history, but the fact that the people’s fight to keep it open, to keep it everyone’s was won.
