moorea
#12. Moorea, Society Islands: Tahiti's sister island, lying just over the Sea of the Moon from Tahiti, Moorea excels in a lower-key kind of surf tourism. There are no big contests and no massive waves, but scattered casual accommodation places with a French flavor and long paddles over the interior lagoon to where Pacific groundswells peel through the passes. Moorea has some of Polynesia's best reef waves just waiting for the right swell to throw long, grinding tubes over shallow coral. As everywhere in Polynesia, the unwritten rules of time spent and respect for the locals are the keys to acceptance - learn those concepts well and you will do fine for new friends and great waves. Image: Callahan/surfEXPLORE
Surf is everywhere. It rolls past our coastlines, whipped up by storms off shore, held up by offshore winds, and can go from playful to terrifying the blink of an eye. Sometimes it’s blue, sometimes green, sometimes gray. Whatever it looks like, it’s always beautiful. Islands have some of the best waves, and this gallery shows twenty of the world’s best surfing islands. From India to Indonesia, there’s a wave for everyone.