What a journey it has been.
It started one and a half years ago with our hardcore trip to Peru, South America. Xavier Vidal invited me, Xaver Walser, Herve Nicolai and Julien Billard to come and stay for a few days in down town Lima. There we drew up surf maps and threw all our knowledge together to start working on what was yet to become a brand new waveski film.

Lima is a very noisy city and the sooner you get out of there the better for you health.

Traveling through Peru is fairly easy but it takes time for the roads are bad and the public transport is slow. But good things come to those who are not scared of missioning and have lots of patience. We scored the world's longest wave pretty much perfect. To ride one wave for a distance of 2.5 km and packing in over 30 manoeuvres is something to experience for yourself.

Virtually impossible to film the wave, for there is so much water moving and the distances are huge. We had to concentrate on one section at a time to get as close as possible to the rider with the lens. This was not the only dilemma that we were facing for the little town had a serious problem. The fish factory is only open 6 months of the year. This is due to huge Japanese fishing tankers killing the fishing industry and stripping the ocean bottom from every living creature. The fish do not even get time to grow before the nets come and take them away. So the people suffering in the process are the locals that sit unemployed for half the year. Drugs are freely flowing in from Columbia and these sniff up all the local fisherman's money. So when the factories close the only way to get drug money is via armed robbery. Filming with big cameras is completely out of the question. The way to overcome this problem is to hire other local guys patrolling the sand dunes on the lookout for corrupt police and their friends coming to take my equipment. It's hard to film when you are constantly in fear of someone pushing a gun down your throat. But the hard work paid off and the cameras can't disguise the true beauty of the world's longest wave.

We continued with the next step of the film with an organized film/competition structured by the Kawak Association in Morocco. The Arabic country of colour and culture that managed to crawl in under my skin has the most amazing hospitality and a mint tea waiting for you around every corner. We had a huge gathering of world-class riders. Guys like Sylvain Longuet, Julien Billard, Renan Leloutre, Julien Laderriere and of course Mathieu Babarit. The standard of surfing was very high, but the swell did not last. No, we had one week of nearly perfect conditions and there after we were confronted with onshore winds and side chop. It was sad for I was pretty much sure I don't have enough material to finish the film.

With too much time away from the camera your imagination gets a little crazy. So it's in that time were the Kazilam was born. I wrote a script and started building on one of my best sculpture personalities I have ever created. Julie Cherpe won the character roll as the Kazilam. She was brilliant and by the end of the trip we filmed the entire story line with all the main riders that would feature in the film. Now all we were lacking was more waves. Mmm...

So that's why we decided on Mexico, and what a great choice. KaziLines was again blessed with super talent traveling from the far corners of the world to make their appearance in the new film. Julien Billard, Mathieu Babarit, Caroline Angibaud, Olivier Tanton and Malan Calitz were the key players. Swell was for some reason always there and the high quality uncrowded surf ensured that the tapes filled up with beautiful footage.

One camera packed up on us and Julien lost his beloved board due to a shallow sand bar, but otherwise it was the trip that made KaziLines the movie that it is today.

I want to thank all the riders and helpers for one amazing project and my best work up to date. I had a lot of inspiration from lots of different personalities. If I can mention a few: my wife Pia Walser, my mentor Phil Darley, my brother Pieter Walser and last but not least our Kazilam that's not with us any more, Herve Nicolai. So I hope you all enjoy this film as we take Waveski to the next level of competitiveness.

Xaver Walser for SGP Media.2006