Surfing the Mentawai's

Sat Aug 3. It is early -- 6:00pm and I am on the way to the airport.  28kgs of boards and 8kgs of useless stuff like clothes.  The traffic is good so I am going to be early.

Mani and I chat about life, water and taxes.  “In dry season, you have to buy water”.  His English is pretty good although I have to concentrate to understand, but years of listening to baby talk gives me some translation skills. The houses have concrete tanks underground and the sluggish, weezing water tankers feed them through a long pumping hose.  The water tankers are something else, smoking more heavily than an Indonesian man. A tanker disappears in a cloud of exhaust as it hits low gear around the Ulu’s bends.

The flight goes to Jakarta and then on to Padang.  Please God, don’t let them loose my boards.  12 days on a boat without boards would be a floating prison.

Mani owns the Bungalows I stay in.  He talks about another one he is building with a French business partner.  He also has an Argentinian business partner.  To buy land in Bali you need to be Balinese or at the least Indonesian.  Foreigners use a locals name and status to get a footing in the “Land of the Gods”.  It’s for the tourist dollar.  With no income tax and a property buy tax of 5% and a sell tax of 2% -- wow.  On the downside I saw an old man sleeping on a platform at the side of the road -- there is no social security and if you have no family then life is very tough.

I am sitting around writing this in the domestic airport, sipping on an Americana. Tech in this country is 15 years behind Australia, but the place looks new and clean.  Customs have the body scanners but not the newer stuff like passport facial detection.

My flights go from Denpasar Bali to Jakarta Java, with a 50 min stop over then onto Padang Sumatra. I line up with Indonesians and a sprinkling of surfers.  We wait in mellow excitement.

The flight is late to takeoff and land in Jakarta.  I rush to get the next flight.  The other surfers are the longhaired South Coast Aussie variety -- going out on a boat called the Bingtang. Ten of then! Mate, it's bring your own crowd.

Rushing down the corridors with moving floors (like flat escalators) -- we only have 30 min before the next plane takes off -- an airport security guard cruises past on a Segway.  Up to the second floor, rush, slowdown and strip off for another security check.

Quick -- throw my clothes back on, rethreading my belt and repacking my bag. I rush through another 1km of corridors.  All the other passengers have boarded but the other surfers are still behind me, so I try to get money out of an ATM -- no good what’s gone wrong?  No time to worry I must fly.

Thank god I paid more money and fly with Garuda.  Lion air has such a bad safety record -- banned in Europe and the last incident was the plane skidding off the runway to dodge a herd of buffalo.  At least I will make it on Garuda.

I can feel the eyes of the Indonesian passengers.  Sumatra is a Muslim Island and they are not smiley friendly to the foreigners.

A herd of Indonesian porters are waiting, alert and pushing for a job.  Damn, I accidentally make eye contact. The excited porter struts towards me only to be let down, I can handle my own bags.  Waiting for my bags, I say with false confidence “if one set of boards made the transfer then all sets will”. 

Thank god I see some boards, but where are mine?  Anxiously I watch the close circuit TV as the other luggage arrives. I watch a baggage handler strain and struggle to free a board bag, “a difficult birth” I say to the bloke next to me, he grunts.

My board comes through and I beat off a second rush of baggage handlers. “tidak tidak, I will do”

John is there to meet me.  He is short, brown and stout.  Wearing a Tengarri shirt, he shepherds me and my boards to the car.  We lift the boards onto the roof and he straps them down.

He hands me the phone and I am talking to Nick, his accent is strong, a New Zealander?  No Nick is our "Scottish" surf guide -- he is an adventurous soul with many cool stories.

He verifies me and my boards are okay and hands me back to John.  I will see him at the harbour in two hours.

Picking up the other passengers from the hotel, I meet John, Jim and Tommy.  John is short, brown, athletic and 65 years old and hard of hearing. Jim is taller, whiter and younger at 61 years old, he is a people person, quick with a joke and loves a laugh. Tommy is Jim’s son. 15, blonde and blue eyed. It’s his first time in Indonesia.  Dad has taken him for the trip of his life.

We head through turbulent towns and turn onto the steep, winding road to the harbour.  Padang has a train from the city to the airport.  Looking at all the train crossings, I think to myself “what can go wrong there?  Hmmm, I bet there are some one-legged locals”.

The news is the big earthquake in Java.  6.9 on the richter scale makes it strong.  

From Wikipedia 6.9 means -- Damage to a moderate number of well-built structures in populated areas. Earthquake-resistant structures survive with slight to moderate damage. Poorly designed structures receive moderate to severe damage. Felt in wider areas; up to hundreds of miles/kilometers from the epicenter. Strong to violent shaking in epicentral area.

We are lucky, the Tsunami warning has been downgraded for this area.  I notice the low areas have Tsunami evacuation paths.  The sign is a person sprinting up hill, very apt.  

Our boat is called the Tengerri.  Tengerri is Indonesian for Spanish mackerel.  Nick gives us a casual induction to the boat and then we eat and get ready for the 12 hour rough crossing to the Metawi island chain.

The others are wearing patches behind their ears. “sea sickness is a horrible thing” Jim smiles.  I inwardly flinch. I had counted on my morning ferry trips across the harbour as sea readiness.

It is the middle of the night, I am in my bunk in the catamarans left hull.  The boat is a demented amusement ride.  Pitching, rolling, slapping and dropping.  We have moments of free-fall but the little aluminium boat with the big engines keeps powering on.  Grinding grinding.  My stomach is cramping and I need to go to the toilet, but I hang on.  I am afraid of standing up, the boat will throw me into the hard walls and make me slip on the ladders.  I feel small, sad and lonely.  I review my life choices that have brought me to this point. We are going to sink and we are going to die.  8 hours out to sea and no hope. The night is a feverous delirium, but the sea starts to smooth out and then the engines stop and we drop anchor.

Every year someone falls off the boat on a crossing.  They go on deck in the storm to vomit or wee and fall overboard. The last person was a South African surfer who was found alive after 27 hours of floating on his back. He was not missed until breakfast the next day and all the surf charter boats responded to the search and rescue. I make a mental note to not be one of the sea witches victims.

https://stabmag.com/news/missing-south-african-surfer-found-in-the-mentawais/

The Indonesian sea witch lives underwater. She takes men as lovers into her watery domain.  She is fond of green so no green boardshorts :)

Water confuses the dreamy trip. It all starts before dawn with the clinking of the anchor winch. Then the ignition beep as first one of the diesel engines fire and then the next.  We move into position, observe conditions and drop anchor. Up, eat, out and surf.  Just the 4 of us. Eat, surf, eat, surf, eat surf repeat.  Donnies meals are very good. Omelettes, spaghetti, pizza, baked chicken, nasi goreng, pancakes, steak, roasts -- it goes on and on.

Warm sticky water.  Many, many waves.  Many breaks and times.

In the more popular spots there are other surfers.

Sitting in the line up as a boat load of surfers arrive we form ranks. “Keep moving up the line fellas” John broadcasts in his Californian drawl.  “This is the ‘old mans’ peak, no one under 45 surfs this peak!”. An Ozi surfer asks, “is 35 okay?”.  “Nope, keep moving buddy” John replies.

Back In Bali -- today a monkey snatch sun glasses off a blokes head whilst we sat eating. There was much commotion and shouting.  The Monkey climbed up onto the roof and casually snapped the glasses in two and left them for human retrieval.  It reminded me of my cheeky little monkey friends back home :)

The monkeys are feared because they scratch and bite -- rabies is always a concern.  They are monkey organised crime.  They snatch up goods, take them to the roof and demand a payment.  This time the reward comes in the form of a boiled egg. And this time a 2nd monkey grabs some persons sandal from inside the warung to double up the payment.

Bali is all waves and women.  I got surfed out in the Mentawai -- so many, many waves on a boat full of men. 3 surfs a day, it started to feel like work.  In the end I could not wait to get back to Bali and dance with the bachata girls :)

My life has dragged me back to Australia.  I have been back for 2 weeks now and Indo seems like a lifetime ago.  The people, places, sounds and smells, so real but maybe not.  Back to life, back to reality.  I went crazy on the return to Bali, risk taking, testosterone and being locked up on a boat went to my head.