I’ve done it. I’ve finally booked a trip to the pristine Mentawai Islands.
Considering I’ve travelled a lot in my years, it’s been a personal failing of mine that I haven’t done a lot of surf travel trips.
My best friend drove me to want to go to Bali for the first time in 1981 on my Kiwi rite of passage OE (Overseas Experience) with his surf tales and a few photos he sent me.
My first surf was at Kuta Reef. Being young, stupid and wanting to save money, I decided to paddle out to the reef and back after a 2 1/2 hour session rather than pay the boat ride fees. I couldn’t lift my arms above my shoulders for the next two days. Luckily, the surf was great.
To get to Uluwatu in those days you had to leave your motorbike at the top and run down the hill for 10 – 15 mins to the two warungs sitting on the cliff overlooking the break. The rickety ladder was the only way down to the cave and out to the surf at the time.
Photos: Ric Chan
I mostly surfed at Ulus on that trip on a 6’6” channel bottom single fin that I bought to replace the board I took there. It had gotten dinged up on the Ulu’s cliffs after being torn off my leg on one session. I gave it to one of the kids that used to carry boards for you down the hill for a small fee. He was stoked. This was the time of Mr. Uluwatu, Peter McCabe. I saw Jim Banks out twice tearing The Race Track a new one. Most memorable for me was when I backdoored a barrel on an 8ft day at Outside Corner.
Kuta was a warren of little alleyways with accommodation and restaurants, and one major intersection, Bemo Corner, with a money exchange and shops running in four directions. Soft plastic was what your purchases came in from the shops or on the beach from the vendors once you’d succumbed to what was then good-natured hard sell. I don’t remember much litter on the beach at Kuta and certainly none in the water. Or at Canggu, which was essentially at the end of a dirt track past the paddy fields.
Poppies Lane Photo: Ric Chan
That extended sojourn in Asia included a month of surfing and partying at Hikkaduwa in Sri Lanka. A fun and easy going wave that was mostly 3 – 5ft when I was there. It was relatively devoid of plastic waste, too.
L: Hikkaduwa, Sri Lanka R: Sakwa River, Odawara, Japan – Photo by Takayuki Nishizawa
I was meant to finish up in Europe, but instead I headed to Japan where I lived for a number of years. I did get back to Bali a couple of times while there and surfed in Japan as much as I could. That wasn’t the easiest to do living in the centre of Tokyo. I rented a small weekend getaway for a while in Kamakura and surfed the local beaches nearby. I had friends further down the coast and there was a fantastic rivermouth wave I loved called Sakawa. I tried to get down there as often as I could. But over my time in Tokyo it became harder and harder to chase the waves.
It was easy to be blissfully unaware in those days about plastic pollution because it wasn’t in the water in either Bali or Sri Lanka. But that wasn’t the case in Japan. It took a lot of getting used to seeing Japanese sunbathing at the beach, oblivious to being flanked either side by plastic and other rubbish. And it wasn’t uncommon to find plastic bags and other detritus floating around while out surfing.
Beach near Enoshima, Kanagawa, Japan
After 11 years in Japan in two stints, I returned home for good in 1995.
Although I’ve continued to surf with great enthusiasm in Aotearoa New Zealand, I hadn’t made a real point of travelling overseas for waves. Once on a work-related trip to Western Australia in 2015, I did visit Margaret River and North Point, which was going off. I was travelling with a non-surfing work colleague and friend, though, and didn’t push to hit the waves as I didn’t have a board.
Back in 2017, I was headed to France for work and stopped off in Lisbon, Portugal, for a few days. I rented a car, drove to Peniche, hired a board and was the only one out in 1ft offshore surf at Supertubos. A claim to visiting the famous break but nothing else.
Then in 2022 I decided it was well past time to get moving. I went to Samoa with a mate on a dedicated surf excursion just after it opened up following COVID. Deserted, beautiful conditions, but no great surf to rave about although we had a good time.
In France in 2023, again after a work-related visit, I travelled to Biarritz with another colleague and friend, but with the intention to surf this time. Hired a board and had a few good surfs at Anglet, and a rip-cursed one at Hossegor.
My first really successful surf travel, Bali aside, was my trip to Fiji in 2024 with a friend. Considering it’s on my doorstep from New Zealand, for the life of me I can’t fathom why I left it until last year to go. The surf was unbelievable. Pumping Cloudbreak and Wilkes Pass for days on end, with a couple of less than memorable outings at Swimming Pools. Namotu Left was memorable, however, but only for the horrendous current sweeping down the reef. It eventually drove us out of the water.
Like most surfers on the planet, I’ve ogled the Mentawai waves so often on YouTube I feel like I‘ve literally been there. I have to go—for real—I thought.
I’d been approached in Fiji by a Kiwi I knew to join a boat trip this year. After some back and forth, I decided that approach wasn’t for me. I looked into various options and settled on a land camp on Awera Island, south of Playgrounds. I turned to mates to join me. Not enough interest to make up the required party. Expanded the search to work colleagues and surf acquaintances and finally hit pay dirt. Filled the slot to make the trip viable.
I had thought I was one of the few surfers who’d never been to the Mentawais, considering it’s been a renowned surfing destination for decades now. That’s not the case. A lot of people still haven’t been, I discovered.
I remember when my best mate’s brother came back in the late 70’s, talking of this mystical place he’d surfed with its picture perfect right hander on an island off the coast of Sumatra called Nias.
Nias, Indonesia Photo: Erik Aeder
I did get to Sumatra for a land-based look around Lake Toba in 1981, but not to Nias, unfortunately.
Time to make up for it.
I’m locked in now for a trip to the Mentawais in September. It’s still a few months away. Far enough off to order the boards I want to take with me. Of course I’ve devoured every YouTube video there is about quivers to take. I could draw from the six boards I’ve already got. But no, that’s not enough (for me). I’ve just put a board up for sale, which I will replace with the same model but less volume. And I’m seriously considering taking another step up—one a little better suited to charging hollow waves. Hoping like hell I’ve got the cajones to put it to use.
So that’ll be four boards: A 6’1” Red Tiger for the small days. My 6’2” Shadow for the rest until it gets too uncomfortable. I’ll then have two choices of step up. A 6’4” Ghost and I’m looking at a 6’6”—still undecided. If I break any of them, which is essentially what I’m creating options for, I’ll still be covered in my view. Unless I break the lot.
Of course all the Mentawai quivers I’ve looked at are mostly shorter. But then all the guys who speak about them are a lot younger than me. So I’m happy with my choices and comfortable riding them. Except for the 6’6” if I get it. It’ll be a board that will pretty much go unridden in NZ unless the conditions really turn on somewhere. But I will give it a go at least once here to get some wave time underfoot. Hopefully I’ll like it.
I’m as excited and frothing about the upcoming trip as I’d be if I were forty years younger. But I’m also trying to be a little more thoughtful about it as well.
Indonesia is facing a severe plastic pollution crisis, especially with soft plastics. It’s the second largest plastic pollution contributor globally after China.
For a while now, soft plastics have been a personal issue for me. We are surrounded by it and it’s a massive problem. I’ve done a bit of research about what’s being done about it, particularly in Indonesia.
Many of us have seen the underwater shots of soft plastic pollution in the waters of Nusa Penida near Bali highlighted in the video footage by diver Rich Horner in 2018.
Responding to the despoiling of their own home, Melati and Isabel Wijsen, two sisters from Bali, drove their “Bye Bye Plastic Bags” campaign, which successfully led to a ban on single-use plastic bags and other plastic items there.
Other organisations, such as 4 Ocean, a public benefit corporation founded by two US surfers and Sungai Watch, a non-profit established by three French siblings who grew up in in Bali, are making considerable efforts in Indonesia to reduce plastic waste.
My personal favourite is Take 3 For The Sea, an Australian non-profit, who is working elsewhere. While an official organisation, Take 3 For The Sea is also a simple idea you can follow immediately:
Take 3 pieces of rubbish with you when you leave the beach, waterway… or anywhere
Take 3 actions to reduce your single-use plastic
Take 3 people on the journey with you.
While I struggle with No. 3, the other two are easy to do.
It’s an idea I can take to the Mentawais with me. And maybe work on that No. 3 with others there.
I’ve chatted with the eco resort owner Chantal Malherbe of Bilou Villas where I’ll be staying to see what’s being done with issues in the Mentawais, and taken a look at what some have been up to. She tells me that the sea and water ways are still in great shape, and that they are trying to head off problems before they occur. She also related how she and her husband Gideon used to ferry Surf Aid staff out to the Mentawais on their yacht, when it first got going. Surf Aid, founded by Kiwi Dr. Dave Jenkins and a couple of mates, was extremely successful in helping to eradicate malaria in local communities there.
A Perfect Foundation, set up by the Perfect (Wave) Travel Group, and the Kandui Foundation, a Kandui Resorts initiative, were non-profits operating in the Mentawais, working with local communities to effect positive change across a range of issues. It seems though that neither are active now.
Last year I watched documentary feature The Road To Patagonia, which tells the story of a journey by director and surfer Matty Hannon. The film’s starts in the Mentawai Islands where he lived for five years amongst a local community and to which he has a deep connection. He uses his film to help drum up support for the Suku Mentawai Foundation, which supports Indigenous-led education programs strengthening connection to language, culture & ecology. The Mentawais are home to indigenous tribes who have their own language.
Another documentary I watched, Ellis Park, by Australian director Justin Kurzel, profiles renowned Australian musician Warren Ellis, who has teamed up with activist Femke den Haas to help fight the illegal wildlife trade over in Sumatra, and rehabilitate or care for animals they have rescued.
These are all exemplars of the good work being undertaken in and around the Mentawai Islands. But as Chantal Marlherbe tells me, there’s a lot more to be done. While a 10-day surfing trip isn’t a lot of time to make a big difference, I can at least pick up any rubbish I see, if any. And who knows, maybe like the surf trip Dave Jenkins did which inspired him to set up Surf Aid, perhaps I’ll find a better way to give back.
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