The Azores in FullHD.
It’s an easy guess: we fell in love with São Miguel. And even though we haven’t seen the other islands yet, we can tell we fell in love with the Azores.
And we want to share the love (and the stoke) with you! So here’s the full collection of films shot on São Miguel during our two trips in late 2015 and spring 2017. Lean back, enjoy and be prepared to find yourself again searching for the next flight to Ponta Delgada. If you feel like, you find everything you need to know for your Azores surf trip on our website here.
Our first encounter with the Azores
On our first trip to São Miguel, it felt impossible to capture the beauty of the island, making me running and driving around the island like a maniac, always with at least one camera on me. We immediately knew that we have to come back for a longer period of time. Two weeks is nice, but if you don’t wanna end up hustling and bustling around, you can only see a glimpse of what the main island of the archipelago has to offer. Here’s the edit I made that, in fact, was the founding piece and reason to start gravityking.ch at all.
Arriving in paradise
Everything was prepared, the house rented and ready for us and we were just a little bit excited to spend a month on São Miguel. Here’s the edit of our arrival and first impressions.
A little bit of everything
In the first week, we had it all: waves, wind, weather, delicious food, our first surf sessions and lots of fun with our first guest.
A lot of weather
If you’re on an island in the middle of the north atlantic ocean, you get a lot of weather. Almost any storm system that hits Europe visits the Azores a few days prior. It makes for difficult surf conditions, you gotta know where to go. The upside is that it is almost anytime the same: south winds on the front of the system, rather calm conditions when it’s right above the islands and north winds on the back. Same, same but different and pretty reliable.
Abandoned places and wipeouts
It was time to show our newly arrived guests the best parts of the island. And one thing you can’t miss out is Sete Cidades and the abandoned hotel Monte Palace. Only being in service for little more than a year, this place is just unreal. Later in the week we were lucky enough to hit one of my favorite spots working: Ribeira Quente, a pretty nice lefthand point in the southeast of the island.
Partywaves with friends
After two very good weeks with our guests, surf in abundance and nice BBQ’s in the backyard, we hit perfect conditions on the last day. Monte Verde was delivering machine-like headhigh righthanders and a perfect sunset to end this awesome surf trip.
You gotta work for empty waves
Santa Iria is a beautiful lefthand pointbreak below a huge cliff that makes access tricky. It’s a long walk down and along the cliffside that is only possible during lower tides. And that’s exactly what makes this places so special. No crowds and no signs of civilization (except the plastic pollution that infected almost every beach around the globe). Please help to keep our oceans clean and take your garbage back home!
Memories of a beautiful island
Back home after getting through all my footage, I just couldn’t get around making an edit with the best b-roll and nature-shots I made during the time on the island. It’s just too beautiful!