What We Learned At The World Surf Cities Network Meeting

Unleash Founders John and Amy were invited to the World Surf Cities Network meeting to talk about what we look for in a location. We were wined and dined and met some soul-surfers doing great things for their communities.

Here’s what we learned:

We met reps from Montanita, Durban, Santos, Ericeira, San Sebastian and Chile — but it was the places that we hadn’t heard of that really captured our imagination: Viana in Portugal and New Plymouth in New Zealand. From our googling they’re both spectacular, wave-rich and off-the-beaten path. Things we adore at Unleash…

Wine-cocktails overlooking an expansive ocean oasis, a gourmet lunch of shellfish foraged and cooked by a local spear-fisherman, they put us up in a stylish hotel on the beach and provided us with the absolute best tour guide who helped us to understand the archeological goldmine that is Arica. The entrepreneurial organizers of Arica Activa sure know how to take care of visitors.

Their Mayor came and wowed us all with the investments this World Surf Reserve has made in their sea-side opportunities. Including a start-up incubator and co-work space for ocean-related businesses.

It’s true. We tested it out by passing around our baby Delmar at the various WCSN events. We found out that surfers who represent their cities are damn good at entertaining babies.

Or at least the most soulful surfers we’ve met are. Cisco, who started the first surf school in Santos, has been a pioneer in adapted surfing in South America for more than 20 years. He and longboarding extraordinaire Bruno brought along one of his famous adapted surf boards as a gift for the city of Arica and dished up kindhearted stoke wherever they went.

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