If my nerve would just double or triple in size, like the Grinch's heart after "Welcome Christmas" chimes up from Whoville, I'd be addicted to Puerto Escondido. I devoted 20 years to what we call the "shorebreak" at Ocean Beach, San Francisco (as distinct from the much better known outside sandbars), and Puerto is the same high-handed Dominatrix of a surf break, but on a larger scale. Much larger. OB shorebreak maxes out at what someone like Shane Dorian would call four-foot, which, wouldn't you know it, as far as pulling into seriously hard-breaking tubes, is right at the bottom level of my red zone. Puerto Escondido at eight-foot, 12-foot, 20-foot? Bring me a beach chair and umbrella.

I am to Greg Long, in other words, what my enfeebled 18-year-old rescue cat is to Scar the Lion. I will never bury my face in the warm arterial blood of a water buffalo. But in a relative way, my mouse kill is the same thing.

Strategy and tactics, and all the joy to be found therein, is a big part of why surfers chase huge barrels. Teahupoo is mostly about fine-caliber positioning. Pipe brings in a broader field of play; First Reef, Second Reef, left, right, and holy 

 what's Kala doing back out here?!? Puerto lifts things up to an even higher plane. More choices, more decisions, more terrain to cover. More traps to avoid, in the form of riptides, closeouts, and heat stroke.

The best tube you get at Puerto will not be measurably or categorically better than the best one you get at Pipe or Teahupoo. But you will work harder for it. You will paddle harder, wait longer, wear more waves on the head, spend more time underwater. Sand rinsed from your head and ass crack will form a Lawrence of Arabia diorama on the floor tiles of your hotel shower. The layers of high-zinc-content sunscreen will eventually be removed only the aid of steel wool. 

And thus your Puerto Escondido tube—not in spite of all these things, but because of them—will be the sweetest.

PUERTO ESCONDIDO AND THE PSYCHOLOGY OF 20-FOOT SHOREBREAK

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