indo report 7

Especially because of how it went, the Sumba trip represented the end of the experimenting phase of my Indo trip.

Back in Bali I had 5 more full days to surf and I wanted to just surf the two best waves I found so far: Secrets at Ulu Watu and Airport lefts in Kuta.

The great thing about those two waves is that the first one works the best on low tide and the second on high (at least, that's how I like them).

Yesterday (Friday 24), that allowed me to do a morning session at Sectrets and an afternoon one at Airport Lefts. The waves were fun, so I can say that the plan worked beautifully.

Clearly, in order to be able to do so, I had to rent a bike again, probably one of the easiest things to do in Kuta.
Now that I know the road and don't get lost anymore, my personal record is 37 minutes for the commute. Driving to Honolua Bay from Paia takes way more than that.

This morning (Saturday 25) a new long period swell hit and the waves at Ulu Watu were way bigger than the day before. Nonetheless, I decided to take the walk to the launching point for Sectrets. I finally figured out that at low tide you can walk on the rocks and launch almost in front of it, cutting the paddling time down from 20-25 minutes to 5! That means more people too, but never more than 5-8.

The waves looked double overhead plus from shore, but I just wanted to check them out anyway. Well, I couldn't: I got rejected by the inside ones. I got slammed on the reef on a duck dive and that was the clear sign that it was not going to be a safe session.

So I hopped back on the scooter and drove down the coast . I paddled out from the deep water channels that sits between Padang-Padang and Impossibles and noticed that the former only had three surfers out. It's a world class wave famous for its heavy barrels, which is not exactly my kinda stuff, but I decided to go check it out.

I caught one of the shoulder, managed to stick the nonetheless very steep drop, got a little cover up and triumphally kicked out at full speed in the channel.

"Hey, I can do this! And even if it's a shorter ride, this is way more fun than Impossibles!"

There's one thing I don't like about that very properly named spot, in fact: no matter how much ground you manage to cover, sooner or later it's going to shut down on you. And that for me feels like a wave I couldn't make. It's a psychological thing and I guess it derives from the fact that I pretty much only surfed in Maui, where almost every wave has a channel.

All pumped up from the first successful wave, I caught three more. On two I had to straighten towards the rocks because the heavy lip was heavily closing right in front of me, and on the last one I went over the overhead falls since it jacked up at the speed of light.

Fortunately I survived the wipeout and while paddling out again I saw a guy getting the biggest barrel I've never seen from the water. He had his arms spread wide open and there was still plenty room. Then he got annihilated, eaten, erased. The whole water world he had around collapsed on him.

"Well, Impossibles is not a bad wave in the end... I guess I'll go check it out."

The first wave I had there was finally a really long one (Josh's lineup instructions workded!). But once again, after that one, I just got closeouts after closeouts.

"Okey, I got it: lunch time!"

After that, I went back to the hotel (below a view from my room: $10/night).

I took a little nap and upon waking up I took one of the best decisions of my life: ditch the sunset session (my mind really wanted to, but my body said: no way!) and went for an hour massage instead. Same price of the boat trip to the Kuta reefs: 5 bucks (that answers the question in one of the comments of the previous post. Thanks everyone for those, btw!).

After that, I chilled out at sunset with a couple of Bintangs on the beach and observed the many surfers getting closeouts after closeouts in the beach breaks.

Now I'm having a lovely dinner at this Wi-Fied restaurant and I can tell you that life here is not bad at all.

I think I'll be able to do one more post before I leave on the night of the 28, so stay tuned.

Assorted photos below.

One the way back from Sumba. No idea what island is that, but sure there's no shortage of waves!

Peculiar toilet sign at the domestic airport in Bali.


The word "onde" meand waves in Italian. I had to try one of those. No idea what they're made of, but they're very good and I had to get a whole bag of them. Feels to good to know that I can have as many onde as I want...
BTW, Rp. 1,000 is about 12 cents. Can you buy anything at all for 12 cents in the States?




Forecast for the next days. Damn, tomorrow is even bigger! Maybe I'll go back to Canggu and surf those more mellow breaks again. Hope I remember how to get there...