Solo sailor Liz Clark calls her boat, Swell, the chariot of her dreams. It’s been her home for the last 10 years, giving her a ticket to freedom and a means of exploring the remote waves of the South Pacific. Last year, she set sail for the Tuamotus to join Kimi Werner and Léa Brassy for 10 days of surfing and diving amidst some of the world’s most beautiful atolls.
Explore more: http://www.patagonia.com/us/surfing
Liz Clark Website: http://swellvoyage.com/
About the Tuamotus
The Tuamotu Archipelago or the Tuamotus are a French Polynesian chain of just under 80 islands and atolls in the southern Pacific Ocean. They constitute the largest chain of atolls in the world, extending (from northwest to southeast) over an area roughly the size of Western Europe. Their combined land area is 850 square kilometres (328 square miles). This archipelago’s major islands are Anaa, Fakarava, Hao and Makemo.
The Tuamotus have approximately 16,000 inhabitants. The islands were initially settled by Polynesians, and modern Tuamotuans have inherited from them a shared culture and the Tuamotuan language.
The Tuamotus are a French overseas collectivity. The people of Tahiti originally called the islands the Paumotus, an exonym that means ‘the subservient islands’ – and other outsiders tended to use this name as well, until a delegation from the islands convinced the French authorities to change their name to Tuamotus, which means the ‘distant islands’.