Surfing the Philippines

There are two flight a week to the island of Siargao, if the winds blowing then there will be no flight's! the only other way to get there is a 16 hour boat from Cebu, we were lucky arriving mid Jan the wind had been blowing 30 knots for the last 2 weeks, we hit sun and light winds, landing at the airport we were greeted by a super friendly surf guide, offering us boat trip's, road trips, a pic of waves, lefts, rights, big, small! taking the 30 minute journey to Cloud 9 your driven through un touched beautiful palm covered hills, and rice terraces. it really does have an amazing feeling. we had no real idea how good the waves would be. all articles you read tell you Cloud 9 is fickle, you can wait weeks for waves, This is true in the cyclone season, July - September, through the winter months however you have swell every day, there's a lot of on shore wind at the main break, so you just have to go searching, finding secret islands and hidden bays, no other surfers around, empty little gems all over the place, the local surfers in these photos are the boat men, taking you out every day, they know where to go, there are some world class surfers here, more than happy to point you in the right direction, and they haven't taken on that local attitude that you seems to have taken over the world, these guys will hoot you into waves, let you have the sets and make sure you ok after being trashed by another heavy wave, and these waves are heavy. looking at Siargao on the map, its a tiny little island in between a lot of coast line, up and down this coast you can find waves, if you have time and are ready to rough it, you could be rewarded by some top class, un discovered waves. the photos from the boat are taken with a 70 - 200 lens, all water shots are taken on my 5d MKll, 15mm fish eye in an SPL water housing.