Huge surf, shark-free, with lashing of scones and piping hot tea – the Poms wax lyrical about Cornwall’s surf scene, but Jade Richardson smells a crusty wetsuit somewhere in the story. When lying back and thinking of England it is perfectly normal to edit out things like sun – let alone surf, ripped Adonis-like figures silhouetted … More Better than Bondi ~ surfing the Mother Swell
Aussie Tsunami surfer Ross Clarke Jones is a man who rides waves that eat surfers. He tells Jade Richardson why. It was standing on its haunches, biting at the sky. A swelling, growling wall of water; a snarling slice of sea. The biggest wave ever ridden; a freak wall of liquid thunder churned out by El Nino … More The Devil Inside
Today I met a rich man. He was packing up his 4WD after a long weekend at the country house, over-looking the ocean, nextdoor. His face was heavy with several decades of Camembert and expensive Shiraz. He seemed embarrassed about his dog. He shook my hand as if he were going for a home run, … More Letter to a rich man at dusk.
How Charles Darwin’s ‘Struggle for Survival’ theory produced a sick-minded, hell-bent humanity which has failed to notice that… the scum also rises. Jetting into the Galapagos Islands is like taking a slow-motion swan dive into the infinity rock-pool of the cosmos. You rise out of the hell that is Guayaquil – with its horrendous infestation of … More The Scum Also Rises… Galapagos Diary # 2
If you’re on the path to peace, you’ll find out pretty quick that those be shark-infested waters! A guide for toe-dipping, the Curse of Darwin and who’s who in the spiritual zoo. Twenty years’ down the road less traveled and that gorgeous, lonely path is now some of the most fought-over real estate on the planet. … More Survival of the Sickest – the mess, the cause and how to fix it.
As ayahuasca tourism explodes into a frenzy of expensive retreats, gringo-shamanism, one-night love-ins, and do-it-yourself thrill-seeking across the planet – a shaman from the Amazon sends a postcard on which he writes, only this…. beware the kiss of the vine of death. If you were sick, I mean really – and abandoned on a sandbank in the Amazon -would … More The Bitter Cup: Ayahuasca – beware the hand that serves you
Could the wounded human love story be the tearing open of the bud to a truly Divine Romance? Huge, hard, kinky, tantra, boots and whips and puppies. Ice creams, gags, wax and weird conjugations of the kundalini…. since when did sensuality form this venomous helix with suffering? And where, on our wounded Earth, is all this going … More The Beautiful Suffering
Seven years on….. trails of blood and the sweat of healthcare workers mark the way to President Correa’s constitutional promise of health care for the people. Dr Maria Cordez works in a sparsely appointed concrete bunker in the dusty heart of downtown Raita, on Ecuador’s dreamy Pacific coast. The clinic serves villagers from hundreds of pueblos speckled higgledy-piggledy along … More The Blood Edge… Ecuador’s Progress for the People
Eat a little dirt, crush a little road… getting the sack can balance your reality check book. He boomed into town on a Kawasaki KLR 650. Dust swirled along the beachfront. Electricity crackled the off-season air and the unmistakable scent of men on adventure spiced up the saltbreeze off the sweaty Pacific. Eric Lange put a … More How a career man got a real life….
It was a long ride out. About two years, in all… but the final push was a grind, lurch, scramble out of Cuenca, through sunsnakes that rose over the baked-down rubble and concrete to Guayaquil’s inconvenient bus terminal, before plonking down in the right seat on the wrong bus. There was a slight commotion that … More Eat shit and die…
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