Slowly, imperceptibly at first, the wind picks up. It gathers strength throughout the morning and blows harder until finally it is scouring our faces, forcing rivulets of sand into our clothes, our noses, our mouths, the grains crunching loudly between our teeth. By the time we head back to the airport to collect our missing equipment it has become a raging sandstorm. Large drifts of sand creep across the highway and a foreboding orange glow hangs in the sky where the sun lies trapped behind a cloud of dust.
“This is what the end of the world would look like,” says King.
A flock of surfers whose equipment suffered the same fate are already waiting anxiously at the airport when we arrive. Out the apocalypse comes a small pickup loaded with boards of all shapes and sizes lashed down to its flatbed. King’s boardbag sits on the top of the bulging pile. “I guess there’s no turning back now,” he laughs as he grabs his gear.
