Rambo Estrada And The Art Of The (Kiwi) Road Trip

All featured imagery by Rambo Estrada.

If you’ve ever had your tiny brain blown by a line-up shot of New Zealand, there’s almost a 100% chance it was taken by Rambo Estrada.

The Kiwi lensman has built a successful career, and a huge social media following, with his unique ability to compose the country’s incredible waves with the raw beauty of the coastline that frames them.  

Estrada has bottled that lightning in a new hardcover book titled Unbound Vol. 1 — it’s a 304-page tome of pure surf beauty described as the most ambitious surf culture book New Zealand has ever seen. Rambo has spent the last 18 months taking road trips, meeting influential characters and documenting an Aotearoa surf road trip that will now be preserved forever. 

When it comes to Kiwi surf road trips, or road trips in general, it would be hard to find anyone who has covered more territory, driven more kilometres, surfed more waves, taken more images or eaten more toasties than Rambo. So, we thought we’d grill him on what makes a successful (Kiwi) road trip, look at his lessons learned on the road, the keys to creative success and how to make the surf look way better than it is.

Below, Rambo spills his golden rules for surviving life on the road in NZ.

A Half Tank Is Empty

My first rule is that I always treat a half tank of gas as being empty. When you’re heading to some remote places, especially in New Zealand, you can often be more than half a tank away from the next gas station. It’s a simple rule, but it can take a lot of stress out of your road trips.  

Off Grid Maps

A fail to plan, is a plan to fail. Before you hit the road in New Zealand, or anywhere remote, you want to download offline maps to your phone. In places with patchy phone service, which is quite a lot of parts of the country, if you take a wrong turn you can be screwed without a map. It can save you a lot of time and a load of stress. 

The Long Haul

If you’re prepared to drive, you can surf every day of the year in New Zealand. You just have to commit and you’ll find quality. Because the drives are long and the windows of opportunity are short, most people don’t make the effort. If you risk it, that’s when you can get half days or full days of real gold with very few people in the water. At the start of the book, I decided to do a 10-day trip and see how much surfing I could get in. I did way more driving than shooting and surfing, but I found fun waves every day. 

Less Is More

When I’m on a road trip I’ll downsize from the van to a 4WD. I converted the back of a Landrover Discovery into a mini camper and that’s good for one person to sleep in; the exact number I like to roll with (more on that next). For my camera gear and kit, I’ll keep it relatively small so that it is easy to carry on hikes. And I insure everything for all over the world. Then, if it is stolen or lost, it would be a bummer, but at least you won’t take a massive financial hit. 

Free Solo

As soon as you add another person to the equation, there are too many distractions. I want to be on the beach before sunrise every day and might wait three or four hours for the right combination of swell, wind and light. You can’t expect people to stick to that strange schedule and be an oddball like me. And if you are shooting with a surfer, it’s really on them to create the images. When I’m alone and it’s just me and the waves, then it’s all on me, and I find that even more satisfying.

Crack of Dawn

I like to get up early and that’s usually because I’m excited about what the day will bring. A road trip means you’re out of your normal routine, and in New Zealand, because everything’s so wild, you never really know what you’re going to get that day. Often, the first 20 minutes of light is the best of the whole day and you wanna be there for that. Just before dawn, before the birds wake, there’s a certain type of quiet that makes you feel like you’re the only person in the world.

Keeping It Locked Down

I don’t name the surf spots, either on social media or in the book. The goal is to keep it mysterious so that people might think there’s a load of cool stuff out there and so they go exploring themselves. And if someone has taken so much trouble to keep a quality wave locked down, I will always respect that.

The Long Haul

The long drives can be brutal on your own. If I know the South Island is going to be good, then I’ll do a 24-hour drive to get there. Around the 14-hour mark, you can start to question your decision-making. I stockpile the Stab and Ain’t that Swell podcasts for those long drives. I don’t think you could fall asleep listening to Jed and Vaughan; their enthusiasm is too infectious. I also do what I call Ride The Lightning: I’ll put on some old-school Metallica and play it as loud as I can handle. That’s got me through some long nights. 

It’s Not All About The Waves

Maybe the best advice I have is don’t think about it too much and just go. You might not find good waves, but you’ll definitely find a good time. In New Zealand, if you come for two weeks, you can expect good-to-really- good waves for four of those days. You can use the rest of your time to explore. If you come just for the surf, you could leave disappointed. If you come to have an adventure as well as surf, you’ll go away stoked. 

To get your hands on a copy of Rambo’s book, click here.