As a kid from North America, I never really had the Middle East on my “bingo card” as a bucket list destination, let alone a surf trip. As a kid growing up, I saw a lot in the media that turned me off the idea of extending my travels in that direction, especially when I didn’t know what to expect. But once I finally arrived and was able to shake off the initial butterflies, the Middle East feels very like going anywhere else in the world. The assumptions I carried dissolved pretty quickly once I was actually on the ground, meeting people, moving through the spaces, and realizing how much of it is just unfamiliarity.
Along Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea coastline, the desert meets one of the most rapidly evolving development regions on earth. The Red Sea Project is a large-scale regenerative tourism initiative to reshape more than 28,000 square kilometres of coastline, islands, and desert to build a series of destinations designed around low-impact luxury, conservation, and recreation. What’s unfolding there is part of Saudi Arabia’s broader Vision 2030 plan, aimed at diversifying the country’s economy and opening up previously inaccessible regions to international travel.
So when Endless Surf (a division of White Water Group of Companies) approached me to come help shoot their new project at the Adrena wave park in the Red Sea region of Saudi Arabi, I jumped at the opportunity to experience something completely fresh. Endless Surf is developing wave pool technology by creating something that genuinely feels different from anything else out there. And being there in person, seeing the wave pool operate day after day, shifted my perspective entirely.
I’d always thought wave pools leaned more toward novelty, but this was something else. This experience wasn’t just about generating waves; it felt like a system being actively fine-tuned in real time with intention behind every adjustment and every new wave session. A perfect wave peeling through the Saudi Arabian desert still feels like a contradiction. Heat, sand, and endless development sit on one side. On the other there is a precisely engineered line standing up and running across still water as if it has always been there. For most athletes arriving, it was—just as it was for me—their first time visiting the Middle East. For a few, it was also their first experience inside a wave pool of this scale. Either way, the dance started long before they paddled out.
I could see the perspective shift in each of the athletes’ reactions to this particular set up. Surfers like Eithan Osbourne, Cam Richards, Victor Bernardo, and the Lopez family are all seasoned individuals who have surfed various wave pools all over the world. This wave riding experience brought them all in agreement that this was the best one they had ever experienced.
Surfer/skateboarder Shane Borland hadn’t given Saudi Arabia much thought before the call came in. But once the trip was in motion, his arrival made an impression. “It’s such a luxurious airport. Nice Mercedes waiting. You don’t even see your bags. They do everything for you,” he said.
Outside the Red Sea Project airport, the landscape quickly shifts into buildings still under construction, vast projects rising from the desert floor. “There’s still not a lot out there, just big development,” Borland said. “It’s what I would imagine Dubai was like 20 or 30 years ago.” That sense of scale, of something being built in real time, follows a traveler from the airport all the way to the coastline.
Inside the pool, everything tightens into focus. The outside world fades quickly, and is replaced by rhythm and repetition. For Shane, it was the air section on the wave that stood out most. “For me, it was definitely the best pool I’ve ever surfed,” he explained. “The air section was the best I’ve ever had in a pool.” What made it work wasn’t just its size or power, but the flexibility. “The wave didn’t force you into one type of air,” he recalled. “You could do anything. If you went early, late, spun, straight—it didn’t take anything away.” That consistency changes the rhythm entirely. Waves arrive with precision, each one offering another chance to refine, adjust, and go again without waiting for the ocean to cooperate.
For current world champion Yago Dora, the connection back to the sea was immediate. “This feels like a real ocean wave,” he said. “The wave keeps opening up, and at the end it connects into an end section. Then there is a section for a maneuver, a section for an air or another turn, and then it throws a barrel further down the line.” Even in an engineered setting, what Dora responded to was the structure, how the wave still offers progression from section to section, much like the ocean does when it lines up under perfect conditions. He also pointed toward what’s coming next, hinting at how quickly this space is evolving: “Pretty soon, there’s an even bigger wave pool like this coming to Búzios,” he revealed. “So if this one here is already good, I can imagine the one in Brazil will be even better.”
Big wave surfer Izzy Gomez was even more direct in her reaction: “I’ve never seen a more perfect wave.” There’s something telling about that kind of consensus, especially from surfers who are stereotypically indecisive and often don’t get impressed easily. Also, this wave pool just happens to sit right beside the Red Sea, pulling in filtered saltwater, which adds another layer to the whole experience. No chlorine necessary.
The experience overall was unreal. Every guest was treated incredibly well by staff and locals, and the setup itself felt dialed from every angle. The water—the foundation of the experience—was refreshing especially considering the desert heat, and there was a constant energy around the place that never really faded. Early mornings contain a quiet Zen, but as the day builds, the whole place begins to hum with excitement.
Surfers rotate through sessions, crews reset, engineers and workers watch, adjusting, and refining. Cheyne Magnuson was buzzing throughout the entire trip, watching people surf the waves he helped design and test. There is a unique something about witnessing a designer’s work not only being utilized but being actively pushed by some of the best surfers on the planet. Every session seemed to feed back into the next one. Nothing felt static. His engineering partner, Axel Terradillos, worked from the tower, fine-tuning the wave in real time for each surfer as needed. That back-and-forth between what was happening in the water and the adjustments above it became one of the most exciting rhythms of the entire place. You’d see a surfer try something, come in, give feedback, and then minutes later the wave would subtly shift. There would be a slightly different timing, shape, or energy to the wave. It made the whole system feel alive in a way I don’t usually associate with artificial environments.
Cheyne described it as a feedback loop between surfer and engineer. “I haven’t had that feeling since the early days,” he said. “That feeling that we’ve got something new. Something that’s going to progress wave riding again.” For him, it comes down to two key elements: runway and coping, and how they interact within the overall wave design. The goal is to refine the connection between speed generation and point of release. But what defines the system most is its responsiveness. “You come in. You surf it. You feel a tiny thing that’s off. And then, we adjust,” he explained. “That’s where the magic happens.”
From the control tower, Axel was the mad scientist behind the scenes, constantly making those micro-adjustments, watching the computer and the surfers at the same time, bridging the gap between design intention and real-world feedback.
From a photographer’s perspective, this was one of those rare setups where everything feels like it’s working in your favour. The desert light is harsh but clean, the horizon is uninterrupted, and the pool itself becomes this concentrated zone of perpetual motion. You’re constantly balancing the precision of the wave with the unpredictability of human reaction. In the water, the usual uncertainty of surfing disappears. No horizon scans, no long lulls between sets. For surfers used to reading the ocean rather than a schedule, it’s a different kind of freedom.
Even though the waves here are controlled, what happens on them never is. For me, it ended up being one of those trips that shifted my perspective in more ways than one: on wave pool technology, on travel, and on the value of stepping into the unfamiliar. The experience also changes how to think about progress in surfing. What you’re seeing isn’t repetition, but variation at speed. The ability to try a maneuver, adjust the technology, and immediately try it again changes the rhythm entirely. Now it becomes less about waiting for the right moment and more about recreating it until it clicks.
In the middle of the Saudi desert, that feels like something entirely new.
