(A super late blog post: With an upcoming surf trip, I’m motivated enough to complete my blog about my time in Indonesia. I think knowing that surfing will soon be tangible again has given me the emotional impetus to finally pen down my final few weeks in Indonesia.)
For my final few weeks in Indonesia, I knew I wanted to attempt to get that final barrel before I finished this segment of my surf journey. This gave me two options: Nias or Mentawais, both areas known for generating reliable barrels. Not pausing to do some research, knowing that a swell was due, having watched heavy Nias completely wreck a decently-sized boat, I rashly and quickly made the decision to go to Mentawais instead. (A local Nias videographer visiting Mentawais later told me that November would have been the perfect time to surf there with minimum crowds *facepalm*)
I first bought my flight tickets to Padang, thinking that I could easily hop onto a boat any of the Mentawai islands on any given day, and leisurely select which island would suit my surfing level the best. But NOPE, another silly mistake. It turned out that each of the Mentawai islands: Sibeirut, Sipura, Pagai Utara and Pagai Selatan, were super undeveloped, and had only a fast ferry visit 2-3 times per week. Fortunately, my flight times coincided with the a fast boat the following day for Sipura and I set out to find a decent surf spot on that specific island.
I was again fortunate enough that there was a intermediate-friendly break on Sipora that barreled occasionally called Telescopes. Looking up the closest accommodation on the island, I found Arthur’s Homestay as the closest affordable place and booked my stay there.
All in all, getting to the Mentawais is a proper mission, with a flight to Padang, then a fast ferry to the respective islands, followed by a drive to whatever final destination you maybe on the islands. Of all the islands, only Sipora had a local non-tourist town, and there was barely any roads connecting each individual island. So, travelling by boat from one side of the island to the other is the fastest way around. Not to mention, there was a steep surfer’s tax of about 75USD per two weeks. This was the most ridiculous notion to me: Surfers surf to escape the trappings of modern society, to momentarily be free from the rules and restrictions of human societies, and yet in one of the most remote parts of the world, I was getting taxed for enjoying Mother Nature’s ocean blessings without with bare minimum equipment without leaving a trace of our presence behind. No where else in the world had I heard of such surfer’s blasphemy. Nonetheless, I paid it up, optimistically hoping that all of it would be used for developing the islands. (Probably more than half of it will be lost to corrupt officials, of course *facepalm*)
This was the most ridiculous notion to me: Surfers surf to attempt to escape from the trappings of modern society, to momentarily be free from the rules and restrictions of human societies, and yet in one of the most remote parts of the world, I was getting taxed for enjoying Mother Nature’s ocean blessings with the bare minimum equipment and not leaving a trace of our presence behind.
Hoping that the forecasted swell would arrive a day late at Telescopes, I was sadly wrong. By the time, I caught only the tail end of the swell, plus the onshore wind was not in our favour. I took out my newly bought second hand Lost board to try and catch some rides, but was just totally out of rhythm. I fell on too many takeoffs, and couldn’t even get in a good turn for the first two sessions. I think the inconsistency of catching rides at Keramas had reduced my confidence, but also the new environment, plus the new boards made it challenging for me. Eventually, after a session where I missed 4-5 waves because I couldn’t catch the wave and fell it past underneath me, it dawned on me that I was positioned too far back on my surfboard while paddling. The learner’s takeaway: equipment transition takes time.
On one of the days that Telescopes was completely dead, we went to check out a further surf break named Scarecrows, and we lucked in to find ourselves the only group there. The sets were 1.5x overhead and the rides were long, and our group of surfers from Arthur’s homestay scored many nice long rides. But again, I was still readjusting to the new board under my feet, and didn’t manage to catch the waves consistently enough to get a good ride with a couple of turns. Most of them were closeouts after several seconds right. Either that, or I just wasn’t generating speed fast enough.
One positive memory stood out to me though: I caught a wave, popped up and trimmed my line. The wave then suddenly seemed to stand up higher than before and I felt it towering over me with immense weight and force. I was shocked and surprised by how large it had suddenly seemed to grow, and the only thing playing in my mind was: ‘Go, go go! Don’t let it eat you up!’ I zoomed past the menacing wall and saw the wave closing out down the line, and so quickly hopped out the back, along with my life and safety in tow. 😀
We could see the immense amount of wildlife swimming right underneath us at Scarecrows. Massive schools of 1-2 ft long trevallies swimming about 1-2 metres just below us. It was insane how pristine the Mentawais were. Unfortunately, the combination of the reef and the swell threw up loads and loads of annoying jellyfish. And I was unfortunate enough to paddle right through an entire school of them. I left Scarecrows with jellyfish tattoos all over my arms and even up to my neck and some on my face. Not pleasant.
The wave then suddenly seemed to stand up higher than before and I felt it towering over me with immense weight and force. I was shocked and surprised by how large it had suddenly seemed to grow, and the only thing playing in my mind was: ‘Go, go go! Don’t let it eat you up!’
On one of the flat days, where Telescopes was flat, we went to check out Iceland, a beginner’s break which was a fat slow wave with only a 1-2 second right. The break was already mediocre to begin with, but we saw a crowd of 20 people when we got there. And there was absolutely no point in surfing it. Out of options, the boatman suggested surfing Suicides and the advanced surfers in our boat agreed just to escape the crowds. The other novice surfer and I were much more reluctant, but these advanced French surfers who grew up with the ocean said, “Come on, we went to Telescopes, and there were not telescopes. We went to Scarecrows and we didn’t see any scarecrows. The same goes for Iceland, there was no ice!”
I had to admit their argument had me convinced. Some of these breaks can be named disproportionately to their difficulties, so we went to check Suicides out. The break itself was peeling beautifully into a bay, but you could literally see the massive angry coral heads while popping up. I tried my hand at one wave first, completely kooked it up by being too slow and got washed onto the most aggressively uneven reef with only knee high water. Once I was stuck there, it took me forever to get out. My board was dinged by the rocks, my board shorts were sliced by the reef, and my feet felt the sharpness and pain even through the reef booties. If not for them, my feet would have been absolutely shredded to the point of being a medical emergency.
You’d think that I would have just call it quits then, but nope, I wanted to prove to myself that I could surf one wave on this break called Suicides.
Foolish mistake.
Same story again.
But this time, my leash got wrapped around a rock and the incoming waves made it difficult for me to stand up and maneuver myself into a good position. I was stuck in sharp coral rocks, struggling to free myself while getting pounded by waves for a good 5 minutes.
This was definitely enough to teach me a lesson. Don’t try to surf beyond your limits.
