Stab Edit Of The Year: The Most Barreled Man Of 2023, Surely

Peru hasn’t had the competitive success in surfing as their South American neighbor, Brazil –
but don’t let contest rankings fool you: the country has a strong and rich surf culture and
has bread more hard-charging tuberiders than we can count.

“I think that attitude is rooted in Peruvian surfers,” explains Alonso Correa, 25. In the past two years, Alonso made it his mission to find and surf — many times alone — perfect waves at home. Add to that an
impressive Pipe showing and you have the ingredients for “Foncho” — the newest entry to Stab’s Edit of The Year.

Stab: You spend an impressive time in the tube in your edit. Looks like the locations are Peru, Chile, Indo and Hawaii, correct? Was it all shot this year?

Alonso Correa: It all started about two years ago, when I went to Indo for the first time. I scored some really fun waves, but it was crowded and it was hard to get the best waves. That got me thinking: I knew that if I applied myself, I could score good waves in Peru – just as good as Indo, perhaps even better, with very few people out.

So for the last two years, I’ve been doing strike missions every time a swell hits northern Peru. I mean, I surfed over there every opportunity I had, ‘cause I’m also doing the QS. But if I was home during a swell, I was up there chasing new waves. A lot of times I got skunked, but a few sessions really paid off all the time and energy invested. That was my whole motivation: to get really good waves at home, in Peru.

The Chilean part was shot in Arica. I flew down there once the swell hit, surfed it for two days and then flew straight to northern Peru to surf the same swell, that was pretty epic. I’m glad I had my friend Jose Plaza with me, he shot everything — and he also edited my video, “Foncho”.

What does Foncho mean?

[Laughs] It’s just one of my nicknames…

It sure does look like you got more barrels at home than in Indo… must be hard leaving Peru to surf QS events around the world.

Yeah, that’s true. But, on the other hand, it’s harder to score in Peru, compared to places like Indo, for example. You have to drive a lot; you have to know what swell direction hits better in which location; and especially, the sand bottoms keep changing, so you have to know where the good banks are. It’s hard work! But like I said, when we do score at home, it’s amazing. People travel all around the world to get waves like that.

Is it true you left dozens of barrels out of the edit?

Yeah, ‘cause it was getting too long and repetitive, we had 12+ minutes of Peru, alone. So we cut quite a bit to keep it more interesting. I wanted to try different songs too and keep the action right up there, like non-stop action, that was our goal.

Have you always lived in Lobitos (northern Peru)?

I live in Punta Hermosa (central Peru), but my family is from Lobitos. I gravitate between the
two spots.

Your dad, Augusto, is a bit of legend of Peruvian surfing, right?

He took me and my brother surfing everywhere in Lobitos since we were little kids. We have a guesthouse, Buena Vista, and my father knows everyone and yeah, he’s known for getting the waves he wants, so to speak [laughs].

Back to your edit, the Hawaii part is really impressive. I was wondering how a haole was getting such crazy bombs, but then I realized you were part of the Peruvian team at Backdoor Shootout. How was that experience?

I’ve been going to Hawaii for 10 years now and I remember watching the Backdoor Shootout the very first time I was there and it was a crazy event. It seems like they always get the best waves of the season for that contest. And I always dreamt of one day being there and wondered what it would be like. All we would talk about in Hawaii was “how cool would it be if we had a Peruvian team in the event?”. And after years of trying, we made it happen. When we got the chance, we were so stoked and we embraced it with everything we had. My mindset was “I gotta go all in, this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity”. So yeah, most of the waves on the Hawaiian part are from the Backdoor Shootout. Those were some of the best sessions of my life: surfing Pipe with no crowds, your friends yelling at you to go… it was absolutely epic.

Why are Peruvians so good in heavy, hollow waves?
I feel it’s part of our surf culture. Growing up I had rolemodels like Gabriel Villaran and Alvaro Malpartida, guys who charged and got huge crazy barrels. My brother is a little older than me, and he charges too. He would take me out when it was big and I had to go with him no matter what. So that was how I got into good waves. I call them (hollow and heavy waves) good waves (laughs). I think that attitude in rooted in Peruvian surfers.

If you won SEOTY, what would you do with the prize (1 Bitcoin, roughly USD 33K)?
I would travel! Probably do a bigger project. There are a few places I wanna go. I really wanna go to Tahiti, I have never been there and Teahupo’o is a wave I really want to surf – so yeah, I’d probably use the money to do more surf trips [laughs].