Alena Ehrenbold, Big Wave challenge in the Basque Country

As I already told you in another post, I had the opportunity to document with my pictures a cool project with a Swiss crew of filmmakers and surfers.

Surfer Alena Ehrenbold together with the Swiss television are working together in a TV Series called “winter challenge” where viewers experience extreme sport adventures by the hand of athletes in breathtaking scenery.

The “winter challenge” series showcases athletes dedicated to their sports that are crazy enough to try something spectacular proposed by the program, and that essentially no one ever tried before.

The series are six athletes with one goal: To conquer a long cherished challenge during the winter. The heroine of the moment, in the SRF series “Winter Challenge” Alena Ehrenbold, has to surf XXL waves and challenging low temperatures to run a race against time to gigantic rock faces and deep gorges. This challenge develops in the Basque Country at the North of Spain, where Alena, was trained by big wave surfer, Ibon Amaitrain.

After this project, Alena is one of the first Swiss women to try to surf big waves, and one of the few European to dare along French surfer Justine Dupont

The program will be on air on the Swiss Channel SRF2, and also retransmitted online in their site around March 2015; so be sure to don’t miss this challenge if you can.

Here are the pictures I took of the project a few weeks ago. I hope you enjoy them!

When we arrived waves in Playa Gris were pumping perfectly..

Alena preparing herself in the port of Getaria 

Breath in

Ibon's getting ready

Alena struggling with her jacket

The beautiful colors of Getaria's port. Ibon setting up the jet sky

They arrived in Playa Gris and searching for something to catch 

They decided to change the spot, by the time Roka Puta started tu pump better

Perfect waves, sun, and perfect light... I'm so stoked to be here!

Many came to see this mother nature's spectacle

This is her 3rd attempt

She finally catches her first big wave

The Orrúa spot, next to Roka Puta had some amazing sets too. Only for the bravest!

Orrua panorama

While we wait another attempt, other free surfers are successfully catching some other sets

Huge drop

Perfect right

Watching so many water breaking like this, is just insane

Alena and Ibon, so happy after the good results

It was big everywhere.. here the Getaria panorama 

The Akela Surf family

In my way to Nicaragua I spent a few days in Miami visiting friends, and I had the opportunity to meet with the Akela Surf family in Cocoa beach.

Akela Surf is a rad clothing brand specially for the surf needs of us girls. Annie, the fashion designer, along with her husband and business head, Servio, just moved from Montreal (where they met and married) to Miami in search for better opportunities in the surfing scene.

This punkie surf brand was born as they explained to me, when Annie gets pregnant of Kaiku, the youngest member of the Akela surfing family, and as a need of create a family business in order to spend real time with the new born.

These are some of the pics I took of this cool family.

Girls, be sure to check out their online store and get some goodies for the upcoming summer.

Also, if you’re around Cocoa beach, visit their new launched store just in downtown.

Servio, wants to show me his backyard

Kaiku, he's so young, but already love pictures ;)

The sweet designer boss Annie, in a cool poncho by her

It wasn't a perfect day of surf, but Servio didn't care much

Mother and son

Cold surf, warm heart

And I got my share of goodies for the offshore days in Nicaragua

Loving the pants very much!

And the jacket is so rad!

Mediterranean Stoke

Whoever says that Barcelona has no waves to surf, haven’t certainly experienced how is the vibe of the Mediterranean surfing scene.

I have successfully lived and surfed in Barcelona for 6 consecutive years not long ago, and now that I live in the Basque Country, I seemed to forget for a moment the particular stoke of surfing in such places as Barcelona.

A few weeks ago, just before leaving for Nicaragua, I spent one weekend in Barcelona with my surfer buddies.

Living in a place that has waves all year long, I wasn’t expecting to surf during this visit. I just wanted to see my friends, share with them a nice time and take their pictures.

I don’t remember the last time I was up that early to go surf. I forgot about the difficulties of living in a big city, struggling with traffic and drive one hour or more to enjoy one day of surf.

Very naïve of me, I thought I will be free by the afternoon to do another stuff, but once again I forgot that in Barcelona, when you have swell, you forget about everything else and you just dedicate to surf during the whole weekend.

We arrived very early, but a good amount of people was already surfing in actually very decent swell conditions, bright sun and warm temperatures.

I shot for a couple of hours, but of course, as everybody was taking all the fun, I couldn’t stay out of the water and I finally picked an old wetsuit of Diego, and borrowed Fran’s long board.

At the end I spent around 2 hours surfing, just for the sake to enjoy the time with a nice crew of surfing friends. 

In San Sebastian I have friends who surf, but I don’t have a crew of surfing people where we all go together to catch waves. I suppose that, as waves are regular in the North of Spain, is more difficult for people to dedicate a whole weekend to the so called “surf, eat, sleep, repeat”.

After this morning session we shared a cool picnic together along with a couple of beers, checking out the waves for a later session.

These are the pictures of how a surfing weekend is in the Mediterranean. 

The surf season has just begun for them, and these guys are ready to enjoy waves for once, at home.