Watch: Aritz Aranburu and Friends Return To Natxo’s Desert Diamond!

Last night, Rip Curl sent over a clip featuring Mick Fanning and Tyler Wright, returning to The Snake—the right-hand sand-bottom running tube that blew minds in 2017 when it was unveiled. 

Remember?

A few months after Mick’s initial clip dropped, Stab got its mitts on what we claimed might be the best wave since—bigger, squarer, but perhaps not as perfect. But still…

So you can imagine we were quite impressed to see Jon Aspuru drop this three-minute edit, featuring Natxo Gonzalez and a hand-selected crew, back at the wave Natxo found, this time with a little more size and one of the best tuberiders in the world, Aritz Aranburu. 

Here’s Jon Aspuru on the clip:

When Natxo first found this wave, he was by himself, and even though he charges the biggest waves on the planet (now also on the WSL Big Wave World Tour), it’s altogether different when you have to surf hollow sand-spitting barrels exploding in ankle deep water a couple feet from shore, hundreds of kilometres away from the nearest hospital.

Says Natxo: “When I was here for the first time with Jon, I was really scared at times. The wave breaks in really shallow water, we were all alone. After catching a couple of waves, I stopped surfing. Not because I was tired or the waves stopped, it was simply too dangerous. There was no one around, it is a long drive to the nearest town and an even longer one to the nearest hospital. So I decided to take some of my best friends on the next big swell and it was completely different. Not only was the angle of the swell a little easier, to have your best friends around makes you feel more safe and charge harder. And as they say: sharing is caring. It’s just the best thing in the world if you can share perfect waves with your best friends.”