In his second ‘Runaway’ episode, Reubs heads to South America to hook up with with fellow Euro shred cats Nicolau von Rupp and Alex Botelho. And waves they scored! From pumping Arica to reeling sand-bottomed left-hand points down south. Vamos!

“I decided to go to Chile after my good friend Nic von Rupp called me up to see if I would be keen to go with him and Alex Botelho to film for his My Road series. I had never been there before and this trip sounded like a good one with friends. And I’m glad I went!

First we flew to the capital of Chile, Santiago and continued straight away to northern Chile, to Iquique. It took about 2 hours flight to get there. That was a pretty amazing place, but we didn’t really score. Iquique looks like a normal big city from the seaside, but when you look at the other side of the city, you can see that it’s surrounded by a huge sandy desert. Like in Santiago, this city also has a mix of new and old architecture. It reminded me of Portugal a little.

Because the waves didn’t get that good in Iquique, we decided to head even more north. This meant that we had to drive through the Atacama desert which is said to be the driest place on earth! The landscape is even said to look like Mars and the desert has been used as a location for filming Mars scenes. I have to say the landscape was absolutely breathtaking.

On the other side of the desert was our next destination, Arica, which is Chile’s most northern city. Arica is a slightly smaller city than Iquique but its location is similar – you have the sea on one side and desert on the other. Because of the desert, air temperatures vary a lot. Nights are really cold and days boiling hot because the sun comes out every day of the year.

The reason we travelled to Arica was for a wave called El Gringo. A very powerful and dangerous slab. It’s only for experienced surfers because the whole setup is very dangerous – not only is the wave heavy but there’s rocks real close too. I have to admit, I was shitting myself.

After spending four nights in Arica we decided to head back south. From Arica we travelled back to Iquique by bus, took a plane back to Santiago and jumped into cars to drive to southern Chile. Because Chile’s coastline is over 6000 km long, we spent a lot of time on the road driving or flying from one place to another. However, spending a lot of time in the car driving through Chile is not a bad idea because the landscape is so beautiful. While the north is dominated by sandy deserts, the south has forests and big snowy mountains. Chile has it all.

After a seven to eight hour drive we finally arrived at our last destination. We found some amazing spots over there with sandy beaches and perfect waves. I can’t tell you the names of places, because otherwise I’d have to kill you.

With 6000 km of coastline, there’s probably still hundreds of undiscovered perfect waves to be found in Chile. So waves are guaranteed.”