When Monster Children’s dear friend Tom Cole gave me Rolo Montes’ number to call him about Time this morning, I had about three seconds to pull some questions together.

Fitting for a surf film called Time, I suppose. I also had no idea that Mikey Wright was also on speaker, so when all of my questions were directed to Rolo, asking him about his hometown of Puerto Rico, how his shaping is going on, and all that, I realised none of the questions I had prepared were going to be of any use. Luckily the boys were a few beers deep and very lovely, restarting the story every time it cut out over the poor Mexican wifi. They also let a few things slip about upcoming projects, but in the spirit of them being overly great, we’re just gonna give you their thoughts on the ten-minute clip that is insane in its own right.

Hey, Rolstie, Rolo or Rolando, which one do you prefer?

Rolo: You can call me Rolo.

Nice. Hey, Rolo, how are you doing?

Rolo: Just cruising.

Where are you right now?

Rolo: In Mexico.

Oh lovely.

Rolo: Flying out tomorrow, though. End of the trip.

And then are you going home?

Rolo: Yeah, going home.

What’s something special about Puerto Rico that people might not know about it?

Ohhh. There’s this place called Contra Bando which does the best pork chops in the world. With rice beans and everything.

That’s a hot tip.

Rolo: I can send you the pin. Yeah, but home, I’ll be there for like two weeks and then go to Indo or Australia for the swell.

What’s it like hanging out with Mikey?

Rolo: Epic.

Just epic… he’s sitting right next to you, isn’t he?

(Both laughing)

Mikey: We’ve been chasing waves since the start of the year non-stop together and still not sick of each other yet.

That’s pretty impressive, is it just you two?

Rolo: We were with Lungi for a while there. Holly Wawn jumped in. Alex Knost is with us now in Mexico. We’re next to them right now, actually.

Mikey: We kinda jumped in on their (Holly and Alex) trip. We just finished up in Puerto Rico. It was supposed to only be a week, but it was like two and a half.

Tell me about Time.

Rolo: Time kinda just happened. We ended up going with Lee Wilson, he recommended a particular wave, so we went there and had some fun.

Mikey: Yeah, considering when Indo happened, it wasn’t peak season; it was a bit of a weird time to go there. And then we had a mental boat trip with a friend over there, taking turns driving.

How was that?

Mikey: One of the crew on the boat cut her Achilles and needed stitches, and our mate who was helping us drive the boat, fully just stitched her up, had all the numbing medicines and all that shit while we were having a few beers.

Is she okay?

Mikey: Yeah yeah.

She just can’t walk now.

Mikey: (Laughs) Nah, he did a really good job. Also, by the way, we still haven’t watched Time yet ourselves. We didn’t even know it was a thing cause we’ve been down in Mex then we just saw it blow up on social media.

And you’re like, Oh, that’s me!

Rolo: (Laughs) Yeah.

Mikey: Nah, actually, the first day we were on the boat, we woke up after a pretty big night before. A little hungover. We’d been on the boat all night, and Rolo was feeling pretty crook. We kept saying it’s just from the beers, you’ll be sweet.

Rolo: Seven days later.

Mikey: (Laughs) Seven days later, Rolo’s still throwing up every day. It was pretty brutal. Every afternoon whenever the wind was up, he would be spewing. Every chance he had, he was fucking going to mainland.

How long was the boat trip?

Rolo: Nine days.

Shit, nine days of vomiting.  That’s committed. How many different islands all up?

Rolo: Java, Pandang…

Mikey: Macaronis, Rifles, which ones that right that Andy and that surfed? The crazy one that Kelly gets hell pitted?

Rolo: Starts with R. Rags! Then thunders.

Mikey: Then once we got all the way down there, we were like, ‘Okay, we better start heading home.’ The swell wasn’t going to be what it was. We start driving back and surfed Macaronis. Had a sick little session there before we got booted out ‘cause of the resort stuff. We started heading back to camp, fishing along the way and then driving through the night, and the motor stops. Fully conks out, at this point, we were doing like two knots we’re usually doing six. It was wild, fully in the middle of the storm, too, with 35-knot winds. We were supposed to be there by midnight, and we didn’t get back until 7 am or something.

Rolo: The mast broke and the boys were all trying hard to fix it while I was just in the dungeon vomiting my guts up. Useless.

Mikey: Hey, but you got your first fish. Cooked it up for dinner.

Rolo: Oh yeah, first catch ever. Best fish I’ve ever tasted.

How good. So Time is out. Now what?

Mikey: We’re filming for the next project that we’ve been working on since the start of the year. We’re frothing on it. We were supposed to be in Ireland for a couple of weeks, ended up being there for a couple of months, then Porto for one week, and ended up being there for two.

God, you guys live a hard life.

Rolo: We’re putting the hours in. Lungi came with us too.

Mikey: Yeah, we kinda got him under our wing. Telling him it’s gonna be a ten-day trip—ends up being a month and a half. He understands now. But yeah, let’s just say Time took, what, three weeks to film? And this next one we’ve been filming for four months.

Looking forward to it. Thanks, boys.

Mikey: Thank you. We’re gonna get back to the beers now.