Taj Burrow’s Fijian Vacation

Here’s the first in a three-part series of vignettes by Riley Blakeway. They feature Taj Burrow, Kelly Slater, Chris ‘Chippa’ Wilson and Jay Davies. All were filmed during a trip to Fiji that was originally gonna be a gift to Taj’s parents but eventually turned into a holiday for he and his pals. And it ain’t ’cause he’s cruel – Pops Burrow fell off his skateboard! As an accompaniment, below is the story we ran in Stab issue 52. Immerse yourself! Taj Burrow: “Originally, it was a trip for my parents. Just my mum, my dad and me. I’d been wanting to take them on a trip as a Christmas present for a while and I had this amazing, luxurious boat locked in for mid February. It was like something you would see cruising the Mediterranean. They were so excited. We were planning to cruise to a couple different places in Fiji and have the best time. A couple of days into the New Year dad bought this skateboard over the Internet, an old wooden carve board. It turned up in a box and he ran to the door like a little kid, put it together and just started bombing hills around our house. He had just turned 61 and my mum and I were, like, what is he thinking? He said he just wanted to do some carves. His third day of bombing hills he went to the biggest slope around, starts hacking away down this massive hill and the inevitable happens. He gets wild speed wobbles and eats shit, properly smashed. It took all the skin off of him, broken rib, broken arm, fully mangled. Obviously, they couldn’t make the Fiji trip. Dad was pissed for being such an idiot. Now I had this sick boat booked and no parents, so I rounded up a bunch of mates and we just hit it. “Every day we would wake up, get a mango smoothie, a couple of barrels at Cloudbreak, spoil ourselves with big meals and just surf our asses off all day” “It was Jay Davies, Chippa Wilson, and me. It was in between contests so I had this tiny window of time that I could go. We got so lucky, just happened to connect with this pumping swell. It was six-to-eight foot Cloudbreak and just the three of us. The boat we were on was over the top, an 86-foot powerboat, fully decked out. We were anchored just outside the break, got served breakfast with anything we wanted, even mango smoothies, literally waited on hand and foot. Even the cabins were luxurious. I was in one with a double bed and there was a bathroom on each side of the room, just in case a couple didn’t want to share the same toilet or something. I shared the room with Jay Davies so I guess it was a good thing.