Five Minutes Of A-Grade Foamhopping At A Few Of NZ’s Most Fickle Rock Shelves

“You guys got a lot of waves that I think people don’t know about,” grinned Kelly Slater, as he spoke to Kiwi filmmaker Damon Meade during the filming of Under The Weather.

It’s a sentiment that photographer Rambo Estrada agreed with when he spoke to us about the release of his new book.

“If you’re prepared to drive, you can surf every day of the year in New Zealand,” explained Rambo. “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.”

Damon Meade’s latest film, Days Between, displays some of the North Island’s apex predators packing shallows orbs at a few of NZ’s most fickle setups.

The first half of the clip depicts a reef finger which has notoriously hospitalized multiple pro-surfers, while the second half is a masterclass in ice-cold, deep water jet-ski positioning.

“I was actually sitting beside Rambo quite high up a hill for that last session, and we noticed a big set march in, much bigger than the rest,” explains Damon, on Good Surf Now. “Then, that set just didn’t stop, and within 10 minutes the size had doubled. I would say what followed was a historic hour of NZ surfing.”

According to the two, the wave Damon Gunness hurtled through at 4:12 may be one of the best waves ever ridden in NZ history (that’s been captured on film).

Click here for a guide to road tripping through NZ