If you’re a surfer winter generally sucks in New Zealand, that’s why it’s always a good idea to get out of the country and go somewhere warm for a couple of months. In June I jumped on Garuda flight GA712 to Denpasar Bali for a 2-month surf trip throughout Indonesia.
I stayed a couple of days in Kuta which, unless you enjoy partying with drunk Aussies and getting heckled by shop keepers as you walk down the street, is probably a good place to avoid and then I flew up to Sumatra to jump on a boat and head out in to the Mentawai island chain with a bunch of mates.
The boat trip was a lot of fun, although being sick for the first half and getting average waves was a bit of a let down. If we were anywhere else in the world the waves we had would’ve been considered pumping, but the Mentawais is different, anything less than perfection is a disappointment.
After the boat trip I flew back down to Bali for a couple of days before flying down to Sumbawa, an island 45 minutes flight to the east of Bali. One of the main attractions of Sumbawa, for surfers anyway, is the small coastal town of Hu’u also known as Lakeys, which offers world-class reefs Lakey Peak, Lakey Pipe and Periscopes.
The first few days of my stay at Lakeys the waves were very average…well, it was pretty bad actually. There was very little swell and an uncharacteristic onshore wind had been blowing what swell there was in to waves that were nothing to get excited about, but at Lakeys it doesn’t stay bad for long.
After a few days of hoping and waiting, a new swell arrived, the wind sorted itself out in to a calm offshore breeze and the waves started to pump. For the next few days my friends and I enjoyed some of the best waves we had ever surfed, from 8-10 ft and dangerous to 2-3 ft with the most rip able walls, Lakeys had it all and at the end of each day we’d kick back and relax at one of the local restaurants, crack open a Bintang (Indonesia’s local beer), order a plate of fresh marlin steaks and watch the sun set behind perfect waves.
Indonesia is paradise, but New Zealand’s a bit better…maybe not in winter.