Around The World In 80 Waves

My time is up in Java, so after packing up and saying my goodbyes I am back on board the G-Land Express. Everyone on board takes one last look at Money Trees on the way past, which was still cranking and the guys in the water were charging the break.

I haven’t been at all impressed with what I have seen of Bali and have decided to get back to Australia to spend more time with my friends there. I have spent so much time on my own during this trip, so it will be good to charge up my batteries whilst relaxing with people I know

I may be back in Indonesia later in my trip when Sumatra and the islands off the west coast will be close to my intended route home.

However I am unsure if I will travel across if the waves are going to be as busy as I have seen along the southern shores of the country. Whilst the quality of the breaks is undoubted there are so many people in the water and a distinct lack of surfing etiquette is all too often apparent.

Not much to report about the journey back other than due to my change of plans I had a ten hour wait in the airport before I could check into my flight. As usual I got ripped off for my surfboard going on a plane. I was flying Virgin Australia who only provide in flight entertainment for the six hour flight to those who have their Android or I-phone application. That there is no means of charging your device through the flight and that no warning that accessing the apps is necessary seems to have escaped them. Typical performance for an airline on my trip. 

The only other thing to report was that once back in New South Wales I saw a huge python in the road which we ushered back into the bush with a stick to stop it getting run over. They like to warm themselves on the hot tarmac apparently.

The swell that hits G-Land while I am here is simply monstrous. At times it is at least triple overhead and several times I walked out over the reef at low tide to get a closer look at it, hoping that I might see somewhere where I could surf.

I never did because it was huge and there were surfers with skills far greater than my own deciding to stay dry because it would be no fun at all and there would be every chance of you not coming back in one piece.

I lost count of how many painfully huge wipe-outs I saw, and this picture borrowed from the internet will gives you some idea of how badly hammered some of the people in the water were getting. Remember that the waves are breaking over just a few feet of water once the swell rolls over the edge of the reef.

Once you are inside you cant get back out unless there is a break in the swell (there wasn’t very often) or until the sweep has carried you all the way along the reef and things start easing off a tad at the break known as Chicken’s. However even that end was still too challenging for me while I was there.

One guy went over the falls near Fan Palms and then everybody on the beach watched his board tombstoning about half a kilometre along the edge of the reef. He was OK but practically crawling out of the water at the end of the experience a few minutes later. Nobody can help you and there nearest serious medical assistance is at best hours away. Gnarly is the understatement of the year here.

The people at Bobby’s have set up some shelters with bean bags, and a number of benches from where you can watch the surfers taking their life into their own hands. There was risk and reward though because I saw one guy get three separate five second barrels on one wave which he rode along at speeds I simply couldn’t generate on my board.

They have also rigged up the wheelbarrow fridge contraption you see above to get as many beers down there each night for everybody to enjoy. Westward facing there were awesome sunsets here every night and a great deal of amusement from those on the shore about how late those in the water would leave it before coming in and possibly have to take the huge waves and the reef on in the dark!

As well as all the other wildlife here in Java there also used to be Tigers. Sadly humans had hunted them to extinction by the seventies and they were formally declared extinct a decade later.

There are rumours that they still exist on the island, but it could only be in a tiny population even if it were true. However Tiger Tracks is a break named after the path towards it, which legend would have you believe occasionally sports some fresh footprints from the magnificent animals.

Myself and a few of the others from the camp took a boat over to the break to try and find something a bit more managable because a ridiculously big swell has arrived and the waves breaking in front of the camp were now somewhat above my pay grade.

After the heavy wipeouts at Kongs and Fan Palms I was feeling very nervous during this session which was again over a shallow reef, and I didn’t really bathe myself in glory as a consequence. Here is a shot of my board going airborne after one of any number of huge wipe outs that I experienced.

Here is another of me baling out of one of the waves which at times would just close out along the whole of the line up.

I’m trying to ditch the board in an attempt to avoid landing on it as I went over the falls once more.

I was surfing like it was my first ever time in the water and I have to say it was embarrassing because the standard of surfers who have made the pilgrimage to this area is unbelievably high.

As you can see it didn’t stop me having fun though, and I certainly was giving the other surfers a few laughs as I got hammered repeatedly.

Some of the guys felt I was paddling too shallow and thought that might be why I was not catching enough through the session so I tried to dig deeper with every stroke.

Sure enough the additional commitment paid off and I was soon into a couple of decent rides.

The best of these you can see here, but even on this one I managed to get up with my leash wrapped around both legs like a lasso so when I tried to adjust my stance I snared myself up, wiping out and then going over the falls once more.

I was glad of the boots and helmet and thankfully didn’t maim myself, but it really felt like it was more by luck than judgement today!
After a couple of hours in the water the boat returned to collect us. everybody took this option to avoid a very long walk through the jungle.

There was the added bonus of not being bait for the tigers too!

Bobby’s Surf Camp at G-Land is right in the middle of the jungle. Apart from the three surf camps lining the shore there really isn’t anything here and the undergrowth around the camps is virtually impenetrable without a huge machete and an awful lot of elbow grease.

As you can see even the trees are angry here!

Because of the remote nature of the break the WiFi here was somewhat lacking which meant I have once again got a wee bit behind in my posts, so my apologies for the glut of posts now I have got a decent signal and a bit of time on my hands.

I will try to add them as gradually as I can but have a lot to update you on.

I didn’t see any wildlife in the water here but saw an abundance of it on dry land. There were spider monkeys and loads more of the macaque monkeys which I had seen in Lombok. The Javanese version are not quite as aggressive but much better at stealing food.

One guy had a chicken sandwich snatched from under his nose whilst he reached for the salt at the dinner table!

There weren’t just mammals here though. I saw ants that were half as long as your finger, bats, toucans, wild pigs, geckos and there was a huge spider, about the size of your fist, in our bathroom who I called Boris. Visits to the toilet started with kicking the seat to make sure he wasn’t hanging about underneath it!

However by far the most impressive were the five foot long monitor lizards that would crawl out of the jungle and across the camp as they headed for the kitchens in search of an easy meal.

There were also a number of green and brown snakes spotted. Most impressive of these was the Green Temple Viper which somebody saw in a tree above the footpath through the jungle to Kongs.

It was wrapped around something it had killed, which meant it wouldn’t be hungry and wouldn’t be interested in all of the surfers at the camp. Good job because they attack by dropping from trees and then bite their victims in the face! Their venom is highly poisonous, and it is known locally as the three steps snake because that is how far you get before the venom gets the better of you. Nice!

Whilst we were watching the waves one day we were joined by a herd of wild deer on the beach. I managed to get a few photos before they decided to run off.

However I suspect they ran off in the wrong direction because they ran up the little creek next to our camp in which an eight foot crocodile had been spotted about an hour before!

Back in Lombok some of the Nine Wise Men had actually suggested that I should consider giving a surf a miss at G-Land, describing it as a “death wave.” However I haven’t come this far just to chicken out when things get challenging.

All the waves here are over the reef surrounding the island, and inspecting some of the sharp rocks that you see here at low tide did little to settle my nerves. They were painful to walk on even with footwear, and I didn’t want to think too much about a hard landing upon them as a result of a wipe-out. A monster swell also arrived while I was here so I had plenty to think about when paddling out for the first time.

Kongs and Fan Palms are where the biggest waves break at G-Land, but they are also the least steep and have the most water under them. You get to both by paddling out through a narrow channel in the breaking waves, known as the key hole, and then turning left or right once through the white water. Where each break starts and ends is a bit vague so I am reporting on both together.

I surfed these breaks a few times over a number of days but decided that having bought one I should be wearing my helmet in the water for each session. On my first outing I did really well and bagged a number of the waves which were easily overhead, and on this one I actually out ran the breaking section by building up so much speed.

The waves were getting bigger all the time but the huge drop into the action seemed to be ok. The bottom turns were not too manic either but then you would swerve onto the unbroken section and see how long you could last.

This picture is of my best wave of the session and arguably of the trip so far. I had made a couple of turns and was charging down the line at Fan Palms when I heard a sound like being inside a drum roll. It was because the wave was jacking up as I travelled along it and then pushing the lip right over my head, and the sound was the drops of water falling on my helmet from above. By the time I had realised what was going on the wave dropped the lip on top of me and I got clattered. Sadly the two second interval between frames missed most of my tube time, but did catch the end of it as the wave landed on me.

The same two second interval can also be used to calculate that I then didn’t come up for air for 30 seconds because there were fifteen consecutive shot of the board being in or under the white water with me nowhere in sight. It felt far longer and I was gasping for air when I eventually came up. Panic levels were increasing during this process because I also got bounced rather heavily off the bottom, miraculously doing so without getting even a scratch.

This picture is from another stage in the sessions I had at these two breaks but shows me getting another pasting over the reef, with which I became intimately acquainted during my stay.

We are ferried ashore from the G-Land Express and after wading across the shallow reef are greeted by the jungle taxi, which you see here, and the driver utters the words “Welcome to the Jungle” which I thought I would only ever hear in Guns N’ Roses lyrics.

I have to say I was glad that the local guys carried our boards and bags in from the boat and across the coral. There is no way I would have managed it without upending myself into one of the rock pools.

Along with an international crowd of surfers I am staying in Bobby’s Surf Camp.

It is largely guys staying here and they have travelled from all over the planet to bag some of the gorgeous rides available here. There are surfers from Peru, Brazil, Hawaii, California, France, as well as Australia’s east and west coasts.

I am sharing this cabin with a dude called Quentin from Western Australia. Having been working in the mines there for weeks he is absolutely frothing at the mouth to get into the waves and unpacks a board and some shorts as soon as he puts his bags down.

His enthusiasm will put me to shame over the next few days. I actually woke one day at 4am to see him in his surfing gear sat on the end of his bed waiting for the first hint of daylight. The sun didn’t come up until 5.30am!

I was however laid pretty much flat by the oppressive heat of the jungle for the first 24 hours. It two naps and a gallon of water before I could even function properly. However it doesn’t take long to get settled into the pace of life here, and apart from the reef my only concern is that there might be a repeat of the Tsunami which took place here in 1994 turning the whole camp to matchsticks and sweeping all the surfers several hundred metres through the dense jungle. That nobody died is a miracle.

I spent my last morning on Lombok ragging around the island on the scooter in search of another break to surf. I didn’t find anything but had so much fun going far too fast down the dusty roads.

However I had to get back to the hotel and collect my packed bags before being transferred back to the airport. Out progress was somewhat hindered by the high school marching contest which was going on in the middle of the road on the way there. Again there were hundreds of kids involved in matching uniforms and a huge cheering crowd, but I don’t think there was anything at stake beyond the honour of winning for your school. Quite odd!

Another eighteen minute flight later and I was back in Bali for the night. I had another stroll around Kuta in order to put some more credit on my phone, and have to say I really dont like it here.

Minding my own business trying to get to the phone shop and then back to my hotel I was offered more drugs on Legian street than I was in the whole of Central and South America combined! Every opportunity to make a play for the contents of my wallet was grasped whole heartedly by the hawkers, and as a consequence I have decided that I am unlikely to return to the island much beyond passing through on my way back to Oz. The waves are also so crowded here that their quality is spoilt by all the aggression and dropping in that goes on.

However my Indonesian surf experience is far from over at this stage and I have a real treat lined up before moving on. A week at G-Land on Java, which is one of the world’s super breaks like Tea’hupoo, Pipeline and Mavericks.

G-Land is an abbreviation of the village of Grajagan and you get there by taking a two hour ocean crossing on a fast boat from Bali. I boarded the G-Land Express with a group of Australians, who had been out all night in Kuta and were making life a tad hard for everybody else as they dealt with their hangovers. However everything soon settled down as we bounced across the Indian Ocean for two hours.

Java is the third Indonesian island I have visited, and you can see Grajagan on the eastern end of it in this map. As we arrive on the island we power past all the G-Land breaks which are already breaking.

Kongs, Fan Palms, Money Trees, The Launching Pad, Speedies, Chickens, 20:20 and Tiger Tracks are all working. It is an awesome and mouth watering sight.

On the way back across the inlet in our boat like the ones you see here we went past the beginner wave called Don Don on our way towards the town of Grupuk. Don Don is more sheltered further inside the bay and therefore the waves there are not as gnarly.

There was a similar sized crowd to the break at Inside Grupuk but passing within metres of the waves I couldn’t resist stopping there. The battery on the GoPro had not been charged properly before the previous session so by this time the camera was dead and I have no pictures of this session that I can share with you as a consequence. 

However I had so much fun in the 40 minutes I was in the water here. None of the learners in the water were comfortable waiting right in front of the peek, which meant that I had it to myself so I caught wave after wave rolling right along the shoulder and through the pack before paddling back around the waves and doing it over again. I caught loads but didn’t stick around long a) because I was probably getting right up the noses of the other 50 surfers in the water by stealing all the waves and b) I had promised my boat skipper that I wouldn’t keep him waiting long. I could tell he was itching for another fare and probably another surf of his own!

Back in Grupuk I had a bite to eat before climbing back onto the pink surf wagon you see above, and then wobbled and bounced along the appalling road back to my hotel.

I got back to Bedrock just in time for sundowners under the shelters on the beach. Still no sign of Fred, Wilma, Barney or Betty but it was a glorious spot to end the day.

After breakfast I load my 8’0″ surfboard onto the side of the moped I have hired and then wobble and bump down the awful road towards Grupuk. Thankfully without puncturing any more tyres.

I hire a boat there to take me out to the break, but am then staggered and a bit put out when we arrive and the skipper produces a board out of thin air leaps over the side and then goes surfing. No wonder he is so happy in this picture, I am paying him to go surfing!

We have driven his boat across the bay and joined the mob loitering by the peak of this right hand reef break.

The first thing that happens to me is that I nearly lose my board shorts going through a wave, when the water washes them down my legs because I haven’t tied them up properly, Schoolboy error! 

I paddled straight up to the peak once I am sure of maintaining my clothed status and wait for the sets to come through to see what is on offer.

It was about shoulder high, and maybe a bit more on the sets which certainly felt chunky. They usually cleaned out the line up behind me, which was helpful because there were far too many trying to catch this wave. Sadly that meant that almost every time I snagged one my ride would be ruined by any number of people dropping into my fun.

One guy even surfed the whole way in front of me with me screaming at him to get out of the way, with the result only being a smile and a worthless apology at the end.

I sat as usual as far out as I thought the wave would break but got a bit of a shock with two other guys when a large grey fish started splashing close to us in the water. I can’t say for certain that it was a shark but it was at least as big as a surf board and there was an ominous shadow just under the water for five minutes!

As a consequence I didn’t stay in long after the one wave I caught without anybody dropping in. This is a groovy shot of that.

On the road from Heaven on the Planet to my next destination we got delayed for ages by this procession which went on for miles.

My driver’s English wasn’t good and I have nothing more than a smile in Indonesian so haven’t got a clue what it was about but there were thousands of people involved.

After a couple of hours on the road I arrive in Kuta Lombok which very different from Kuta Bali. It is much more mellow.

I am actually staying at the Novatel hotel here, which could easily be a honeymooners paradise, but having heard another guest say how much it resembles the town of Bedrock from the Flintstones I can no longer take it seriously.

The next day I hire a scooter and go exploring the island so that I can suss out the breaks before trying to get there with my board.

Apart from the resorts it is still very agricultural all over the island and a delight to whizz around on two wheels whilst getting lost and bumping along some of the less well maintained roads.

However my adventures for the day come to an abrupt end when I managed to put a hole in one of the inner tubes big enough to put my fist through.

There are so many pot holes on the way to Grupuk and I obviously hit one of them a bit too quickly. I am stranded at the side of the road for a short while but summon help from the hotel fairly easily and am mobile again after a pit stop at a scooter mechanic at the side of the road who worked so quickly the Formula 1 teams ought to get in touch.