When the lip of the wave breaks and it hits the bottom, it’s like an explosion. On the really big waves, there’s a noise that’s indescribable. It’s very instinctive and very, very intense. You have to navigate, do jumps, a lot of adjusting. (About 45 miles per hour.) “The water is changing under your feet as you’re going down. “The amount of speed you get going down those waves is incredible,” says Maya Gabeira of Brazil. For big wave surfers, it’s the ride of their lives. When conditions at Nazaré are right, in the months between October and March, modern-day Prometheans zipper down the black well of the wave’s face, chasing the violent edge of the crest’s shadow, hurtling desperately toward the light. Surging vertically to a height of up to 100 feet just behind an ancient lighthouse, the wave has all the menace of a massive tsunami, but unlike a tsunami, it can be surfed. When you first see the leviathan arch of the world’s biggest wave tower over the cliffs of Nazaré, Portugal, its crown of angry froth exploding onto itself, you might wonder if it isn’t the tongue of God come to swallow the Earth.
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