O’Neill launched their latest Strike Mission to Peru in search of the best left-hand point breaks in the world. And since goofyfoots will be goofyfoots, Ian Crane and Noah Wegrich got so over-psyched to go left, they went a week early. The dream they envisioned never materialized, but one of the best trips ever broke out in the middle of a skunking.

Turns out El Niño backfired on Peru and the current that’s fueling El Niño in our neck of the woods beat the waves down to a fraction of what they were forecast. It didn’t stop them from taking in all that Peru had to offer, and with a local Peruvian guide like Cristobal De Col leading them around, they were on the pulse.

I caught up with “Waggy” just as he boarded a plane to The Last Frontier: Alaska (let’s hope he packed some of that new O’Neill Hyperfreak Fire to keep him toasty in the frigid waters up there).

He’s planning to link up with Santa Cruz’s Josh Mulcoy and Canada’s Pete Devires, two guys who have made a career out of discovering and surfing the world’s coldest, most perfect waves. We’ll have to give Noah a call when he’s back in cell range to hear about this one too….

Until then, check out what Noah has to say about Peru and watch him shred alongside Ian Crane, Cristobal De Col and Kolohe Andino in O’Neill Strike Missions: You Should Have Been There Tomorrow. —Brandon Guilmette

[All Photos by Grant Ellis]

INHERENT BUMMER: Noah, did I catch you at a good time?

NOAH WEGRICH: I’m sitting on the plane now about to take off to Alaska, actually.

What’s happening in Alaska? To surf?

Yeah! We’re heading out on an adventure. Going to go meet up with Josh Mulcoy and Pete Devries and some other crew and go do some exploring. It will be sick, we’re way stoked. I hope some swell shows up for us.

I wanted to call you about your last adventure, Peru. What did you have in mind as far as what you thought you were in for?

[Laughs]...Oh man, I think you could say that we officially over-frothed it! We were supposed to go a week later and we talked to our buddy Cristo — he lives down there and he thought that the swell was looking really good. So Ian [Crane] and I decided to go a week early for this pre-runner swell. It ended up not coming to fruition. It looked crazy on the charts and we thought it was going to be double to triple-overhead and doing Skeleton Bay impressions. [Laughs]

So what happened when you got there?

Actually ,the first night we got to the area it was rad. It was this beautiful sunset with boats going past the sun on the horizon and we jumped out for five waves. It was like chest to head high pumping little lefts and so much fun! We thought,

““Oh my gosh…tomorrow…”. Which would become the running joke: For the entire next week we thought “tomorrow” would be the day. It never really happened [laughs].”

I think there was something weird going on with the currents. I’ve never heard of this before, but Cristo was saying it has to do with the El Niño currents switching too. Normally the water is really cold where we were at, but it flipped the current and it was coming from the north instead of the south. I guess the swell was coming from the south so they were kind of battling each other. So it was kind of this weird mix up of currents and swells that kind of cancelled each other out a bit. Lucky us [laughs].

I hate when that happens…

Yeah, after those first few days of a little bit of a low point we regrouped and then we started doing other stuff. Going hiking and fishing and getting after it. The surf was actually really fun still, it just wasn’t like, you know, nuclear [laughs]. It was fun stuff and we ended up having a great trip.

So outside of the surf, what would someone expect from a trip to Peru?

A lot of times on surf trips you get so hung up on the waves and surfing that you don’t do anything else. So to have that pressure pulled off and have free rein of all the random fun stuff that you don’t really do when the waves are good ended up being so cool. I feel like we experienced more of the country than usual.

My favorite thing was rallying the Toyota HiLux rentals that had roll cages in them. We were trying to jump them on these dirt roads and driving them on the beach everyday. It was like go-carts when you’re a kid. It was so fun!

How did you guys maintain optimism despite the forecast being a bit funky?

The first three days were the hardest days. We kept thinking it was going to be 10-foot beautiful tubes but it was 2-foot fun little lefts. To put it in perspective, I like to think that if I were at home and I saw this wave, how would I feel? It’s better than any wave at home for the next 6 months. Let’s do this! Then we would jump out and surf all day. Or if it looks a little small we would go fishing or go on a hike. We went up this cool and crazy mountain, El Encanto, it had spirits and cool folklore around it. We went up there at sunset one night and that was mental [laughs]. We had a cool trip up there and walked back in the dark on the beach. It was pretty classic.

What did you ride most of the time?

I thought we were going to be getting tubed most of the time, so I brought a lot of round tail boards. I ended up riding a “Happy Everyday” most the time. It’s kind of a grovelly shortboard shape but super fun. Gets speed and has a pretty flat rocker and generates speed way more than your average shortboard.

Actually my favorite board was this Channel Islands fish. It was this old school Skip Frye model with a huge swallow tail and super flat twin fin. That board worked insane and I rode that 90 percent of the time. Stoked I had it in the bag.

Who got the MVP of the trip and what did they bring to the table?

Cristobal for sure! He knew every little spot to turn off and check, or which mountain to hike up, which fishing spots were good. It was really cool to be with someone from the area. He got MVP for sure. I think everyone deserves a little badge of honor for having a cool attitude and enjoying the simple things besides just the waves.

Well I hope you score some waves on this trip to Alaska!

Yeah, right?! Hopefully some karma is coming my way.