Truthfully, I despise hotels. I've had such better experiences staying at people's houses and guesthouses; it's so much more comfortable and homey.

I've always been a big supporter of the Surfrider Foundation. I started my own foundation, Rob Machado Foundation, which focuses on environmental education for the little people of the world.

Mainly we helped people gut out their houses. We had a desire to help and serve the people.

Homeowners are staying in hotels, picking up bedbugs in their suitcases and bringing them home.

The best meal I've had was in Tavarua, an island in Fiji. It was just before sunset. A bunch of guys had just caught all this yellow fin tuna; they literally brought this huge wooden table down to the sand, pulled the tuna from the boat, dropped it on top of the table, pulled the skin off and sliced the tuna up.

At any given time, there are a lot of million-dollar luxury charter boats cruising around the Mentawai Islands finding the most incredible waves. And yet the people on shore are suffering. The whole scene is wrong. As a surf community, we have to do something.