Sabbatical Adventures

Because of my love of (watching) surfing, I’ve been very interested to visit Nazare. Nazare was a pretty typical beach and fishing town until a local businessman had the vision to promote its huge winter waves to ‘big wave’ surfers and thus extend the tourist season long past August. In prior years, locals only saw the waves as the fishermen’s torment and, at first, the vision was met with lots of local skepticism. Also surfers he approached asked, “How was it possible that there were waves that big and nobody knew?” But his persistence, the enormity of the waves, and a Netflix documentary, all came together to make his vision reality. Now September through April, especially December, can be just as crowded as summer and Nazare is known all over the world. 🌊 No surfers today. But it was really fun to be there in person and picture the sometimes 100 foot waves.Read more