tome
#17. São Tomé: Deep in the heart of the Gulf of Guinea, the tropical island of São Tomé was a Portuguese colony for 500 years. Arranged around a huge extinct volcano, slave labor plantations with a brutal reputation for violence cultivated and exported high quality São Tomé coffee and sugar to Europe for hundreds of years. The island lapsed into obscurity after independence in 1975 and is only recently being visited by adventure travelers, including surfers and rock climbers. The long-period groundswells of the South Atlantic winter arrive at the Equator on the island of Rolas and filter through to the points and reefs of the east coast of São Tomé with long rights at Porto Alegre and Radiation Point, mostly unridden other than the occasional visiting surfer. 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.