On November 6, five Cuban surfers who grew up together in the Playa municipality of Havana set off from various points in Europe to Bali. Arnán Pérez Lantigua, Frank González Guerra, Yojany Pérez Rivera, Carlos Manuel Aguiló, and Luis Manuel Mazorra embarked on a journey that took them, after stops in Galicia, Madrid, Doha, Bali, Lombok, and Bima, to the remote location of Lakey Peak on the Indonesian island of Sumbawa. There, at one of the most iconic surfing spots in the world, they are filming a documentary that aims to tell a story of friendship, perseverance, and roots.
The trip, completely self-funded, was organized by Arnán Pérez Lantigua with the collaboration of Mazorra. They spent two days in Bali before continuing to Lakey Peak, after two domestic flights and three hours on the road. The group will stay for about twenty days in search of the best swell and images that tell more than just an adventure: a reconnection with childhood dreams.
The story of these five surfers begins in the early 2000s, when at Playa 70 —a rocky stretch of Miramar where the sea breaks against a reef locally known as "dog tooth"— they learned to surf under challenging conditions. With handmade plywood boards, without institutional support and amid the regime's distrust, surfing became a form of freedom for them. Some were even arrested for practicing it, but that didn't stop them.
From that generation, Arnán Pérez Lantigua and Frank González Guerra quickly stood out as two of the best surfers in Cuba. Years later, Frank starred in the documentary Havana Libre, a piece that depicts the struggle to legalize surfing in Cuba and the indomitable spirit of those who practice it despite the lack of official recognition and basic resources.
Arnán, for his part, is today a symbol of perseverance. He has survived two cancers, a partial amputation, and a recovery process that led him to start practicing adaptive surfing, a discipline in which he has won championships in Portugal and France. Amid treatments and chemotherapy sessions, he continued surfing, convinced that the sea was his best medicine. His return to Indonesia holds profound symbolic significance: it is a return to the water with his lifelong friends, in the place they dreamed of visiting as children while looking at old magazines and VHS videos that made their way to Cuba through tourists' hands.
Along with him are traveling Frank González Guerra, a historical figure in Cuban surfing; Yojany Pérez Rivera, another pioneer of Playa 70 and a lifelong friend of Arnán; Carlos Manuel Aguiló, a surfer and professional photographer specialized in analog photography, responsible for documenting every moment of the journey with an extensive array of cameras and film equipment; and Luis Manuel Mazorra, founder in 2005 of CubaSurf, the first magazine dedicated to this sport on the island, and director and co-founder of CiberCuba since 2014.
The documentary —yet untitled— aims to capture not only the perfect waves of Lakey Peak and West Sumbawa, but also the resilient spirit of a generation of surfers born without open seas and without support, but with an unyielding passion. Arnán is also backed by Black Magik Surfboard (Italy) and Radical Surfshop, while the project seeks new sponsorships to broaden its reach.
For the five Cubans, this journey is the realization of a dream delayed for two decades: that of the young people from Playa municipality who once imagined paddling together towards a distant wave. Today, they are doing it in Indonesia, demonstrating that Cuban surfing exists, that it has history, and that, despite institutional neglect, it continues to produce champions, artists, and dreamers.
"We have fulfilled a childhood dream", the protagonists repeat. And they do so from the other side of the world, with the sea as their witness and the conviction that each wave they ride is also a victory over forgetfulness.
Filed under: