Tag: Travel

With the rocking of a peaceful swell in the wild Indian Ocean, Joe was overwhelmed by such waves of memories and shades of the past on the slow-moving ship. By that time, he was torn about figuring out why he was in the position that he was in, unleashed somewhat earlier by an unreal situation at home. He was fighting to control an immeasurable urge to kill. Even many years later, here far-off the coast of Sumatra, he couldn’t help but think about that crazy shit that had been driving him mad for so long.

Few people get to really comprehend the truth about traveling Third World remote places. It’s a long and slow ride, sometimes dangerous and mostly uncomfortable. In short, it sucks. But there’s no better way for someone committed to forge an own, authentic path, traveling the hard way, staying at the cheapest and most feral of accommodations like locals. Joe was among those who knew from experience that it’s the only way to travel. The remote tropical waves he had been looking for all these years weren’t to be found following the roads more often traveled. He couldn’t expect too much in the way of creature comforts where he was going. There would be no running water, electricity, cars, toilets, restaurants, and certainly no medical care in the villages near the waves.
On his way to these wild shorelines, he was lying drenched in sweat on the outworn mattress, awake in the stinking hot dorm-style cabin of an aging ferry. Here in the middle of nowhere, a kind of shift was naturally happening in his thoughts from the radical change of perspective. In the faint glow of the night sky, as always he came to wonder.
What am I doing here?

Joe went off in the noisy agitation of the unloading ship towards the dock, gently pressed to conclude an endless journey in this near end of day. He was pushing his way through the crush when someone approached him. The young fellow of something under thirty bore a gentle, proud expression under an indescribably emaciated appearance, which seemed to be a common feature tied to the people and culture in this region.
His name was Jupy, a diminutive for Jupiter.
After a few exchanges of words about the motives of his travel, they determined to take a bajaj together to his house, in the surroundings of what looked more of a village than a town, where his own motorized river boat would take him to a tiny island, the end of his journey, hopefully before dusk.
What to expect, Joe really didn’t quite know yet. He wasn’t very enchanted at first about the idea of a late excursion in the thick forest. Little did he suspect the flow of traffic in the middle of this wilderness. Rivers provided the island’s main network of transport in the ancient culture which was common to this archipelago. This type of travel was natural to the people who have been living there for many thousands of years.
The frail dugout canoe was proceeding carefully through the maze of the mangrove, often pausing the engine to prevent any damage from the irregularly shaped depths and banks. After an hour’s ride, they came out of the forest into a channel near a little island from where they proceeded ahead along a lengthy shore. At the end of the wild stretch of beach, there seemed to be nothing except a wave, but arrived closer, they started to discern signs of activity behind the trees.
It was a modest wooden stilted construction divided in three adjoining sections preceded by an open porch. He was struck by this atypical but well carpentered organization. The frontside porch used to become the dining-room when required and the rooms, which were designed for the basic accommodation of a few lodgers, were laid out alongside of two narrow decks. The whole place stood in a pleasant little cleared field, sprinkled with palm trees and surrounded by the dense forest.
The day was nearly over and the sound of an old generator providing barely enough power for light came through him. It was the only settlement in the area. The place as a whole seemed to inspire with a kind of apparent indolence, mixing well with the peaceful setting. It felt like a place that time forgot.

Most of the land in the islands could not be purchased and used to be in control of the government or ancient clans who have inherited the land through countless generations. In the absence of registry, some people started to settle in the profusion of hot and humid fields available at the risk of losing their ownership at any time. Like many natives did to escape high disease and death rate on the islands, Jupy’s family was living in town, two hours or so from the camp by boat. The patriarch, who appeared to be a man of about fifty, thin-faced, was lord of a flourishing family consisting of his wife and four children, Jupy being the grown-up son. He was one of the few locals who had long been surfing a wave breaking at the end of the beach where the reef drops off. He later came to clear a small patch of forest and make a shelter, a common practice from when the ancient people used to live off their natural environment. With the recent drawing power of singular surf conditions in this remote wilderness, the feral palm shack had expanded to a modest beach camp permitting the whole family to increase the household income a little whilst reconnecting somewhat with their lost roots and lifestyle.
The old people were always busy all day, the father meticulously hand-building a new palm thatch roofed hut with the help of his sons, and the mother fishing on the reef or gathering in the forest. The unique daughter, helped by her young brother, was in charge with food and logistics for the current visitors. They were supported in their task by the boatman who was taking everyone in the small wooden craft to the nearby villages for supply or to the various islands in search of waves with the guests. Incidentally between two rides, he would try his hand at fishing on some reefs to bring back fresh fish to the camp for diner. The second son of eighteen was the only other surfer, he used to work hard doing a bit of everything and, as far as he could, joined the guests carelessly having fun surfing all day.
With electricity limited to the evening, rooms and facilities were pretty basic, so were the daily meals based almost exclusively on rice, eggs and fruits everyday, with some episodic fish or fresh meat like crab, pig or chicken depending on the collecting success of the day.
In the evening, they used to join by the porch after diner to endlessly play game at cards and smoke their popular clove-flavored cigarettes. When the three guest rooms were occupied, which was most likely to happen, many had to keep sleeping outside in the indeed strange, unsettling and mosquito-infested surroundings of the living forest at night, except for the two parents staying in the relative comfort of the little kitchen shack. In the morning, most of them seemed weary and had sleepy eyes while their uneasy sleep approached an inexorable end with the first lights and rising tropical heat of the day.

“It’s not even five miles long out there, we’re not going to get lost on this fucking tiny island!” shouted Sam, the funny Aussie. He was heading the small procession through the thick forest as they were trying to find a shortcut to the other side of the island. For quite some time, they had been sweating profusely loaded with boards and many other stuff, climbing up the hills over the narrow tracks still muddy and wet from previous rainy night while fighting an incessant charge of aggro “tiger” mosquitoes.
People fail to grasp the deep reality of what’s behind going very far indeed, just for waves or for something else worthwhile in life. They may seem curious at best but will never get even close to imagine the dedication that can be put chasing such fleeting mirages, for the sole delectation of riding perfect waves. With the instant mentality these days, people have little patience for anything that takes time. They afford an overpriced inclusive trip, get their photo or video and go back home post anywhere to virtually show everybody.
That’s how it is now.
Joe was from a different school, another mindset, where you get a feel for the real place and people, put in your time sitting on the beach waiting for the swell to come up and hopefully get some good waves.
He would be rewarded for this standpoint when a combination of circumstances had set him up all alone with the waves for hours of exhilarating withdrawal in this untouched wilderness. Many scenes would be seared in his mind with uncounted mechanical, machine-like, walls of sea water crashing over the shallow reef, infinite visions of tiny breaking points inviting to blow the lip with blinding speed, and downward projections bringing on the same visions of walls all over again. One of the most incredible feeling in surfing is to draw a perfect line. Another one is to go down the back, catch another wave, and do the same thing again.
No money could buy what he had that day.
He would also recollect one wave, on a later day, after hours under the burning afternoon sun with only a few others.
Boats always used to show up for the evening session pouring a herd of folks in the lineup. Unwritten rules granted a set wave for everyone each in his turn, but there would only be a set every once in a while and too many guys. Joe had been around for long, before the crowd, so he would be soon first in the queue and it would be his last wave for the day.
After a patient wait, he suddenly started moving firmly out to sea ahead the rest of the herd. A wave twice the size of the others then appeared on the horizon. Upon reaching the peaking wave, he turned around quickly and paddled quite furiously in opposite direction. When the wave reached a certain part of the shallow reef and started to break, he got on his feet in compact inclined position, like if it was to merge into the steep moving section. From the crest, a crowd of moving little points appeared furtively underneath, in front of him. Arrived at the bottom, the amount of speed retrieved from all the power of the breaking wave was followed by a deep turn forward and an upward leap like to project the board straight up to the sky. Focusing on a tiny point, his legs a little bent halfway up the breaking wall of water, he set out to position his right arm as a pivot upon almost reaching the top, turning in extension while pushing both legs with all his strength, filling an area of sky with a stream of water mist. It was only after this turn completed with power and flow that he reached the forefront of the horde and had then to weave between boards to make a few other turns.
As he paddled back through the pack to get back to shore around the reef, he could feel the impression the wave had made on the crowd.

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He who does not travel does not know the value of men. – Moorish proverb

This place is a pretty remote part of the bloody world.
I’ve been raised in such a tropical island ghetto which is probably why I like enduring the horrifying long travels to these far-off corners of the globe. There’s room for valuable insights here in the face of compulsive materialism and raging narcissism that have become the appalling standards of our modern living.

I knew that the counterpart of the expensive travel to reach this place was to keep on a budget stay meaning actually to share a dorm room in a cheap surf/dive resort. The trouble is I became tired of socializing with surfers a fucking while ago.
In theory the unique combination of skills that surfing demands in the close interplay with harsh elements should promote accomplished characters in the same way as for explorers, divers, climbers or whatever.
Beyond the horizon of appearances lies the horizon of disappearance. It turns out most surfers are mere caricatures of that, formatted with a shallow mindset and dopey lifestyle ideal proceeding from a purely superficial and fabricated image of sea, surf and fun fitting perfectly for the mindset of wealthy spoiled westerners. Indeed surf companies have sucked the soul out of the billion dollar business of this “surfer dreamlife”. Add years of corporate advertisement bulshit, extensive exposure too close of a television screen, alienation from reality which reflects by the great rock’n roll star fever on Facebook/Twitter/Youtube/Instagram… what else to expect from this crap?

With this background in mind it’s likely to end up tiresome after only a short period of time. So I was rather pleased on the first days to be by myself in this nearly empty resort isolated in the middle of nowhere.
Shortly after, a friendly guy from Kauai showed up in the dorm room. He was a longstanding surfer but did not really come here for the waves. The long story was that he went to these islands a long time ago and had been one of the very early guys who uncovered and surfed a spot that had since been considered one of the best waves on the planet. Needless to say he surfed it a lot and there was not a soul in sight at the time.
He liked the place to the point of marrying a native girl and buying land with a ridiculous view on the offshore barrier reef where the wave breaks. The dream of a lifetime for a surfer. But at this point ongoing instability eventually led the country to invite him to leave. It was only twenty seven years later that he came back to exercise his ownership of land and build a house with the help of local people in the nearby village.

Today I’m a guest for lunch with a family helping to build his house.
There is a longstanding tradition in their culture for special occasions, so we’re going to chill out for hours of drinking, storytelling and socializing.
Local people never cease to surprise me. They are valuable persons which express their feelings and emotion through natural, unelaborated ways. The parents are rural characters living in a marginal house built of their own in a sparsely populated valley sheltered from the violent storms that can sweep the region. They have three teens, two girls and a boy who all finished school and have been working hard to help their family from well before reaching the age of majority. There is little employment outside from the hard labour of plantations. There’s no job prospect from inexistant higher education. Most people live in a precarious periphery, without an infrastructure, without basic sanitation, without almost anything. The islands suffered the consequences of severe political instability in the past leading to a deterioration in the social situation, so there’s a little hope for improvement from the upcoming democratic elections.
Those are the usual hardships afflicting the life of billions of people in the less advantaged world who, simply by virtue of being born somewhere, can never aspire to the secure life we live in comparison.
Life here is tough but it does have one advantage. Life is real.

There’s no point deluding ourselves about the shock of civilizations, in the face of west culture where fakery and self-interest pulverize reality at every corner.
While spending time with other guests in the resort, it’s striking to observe how well-off brats, the standard profile seen on the roads, fit stuck up superficial stereotypes in comparison. They are too pleased about themselves to be truly perceptive and respectful of others, starring in their own movie and navel-gazing with the self-delusion of blurring the void of their existential bulshit. It doesn’t take much time to uncover the dirt. Look beneath the façade of seamless well-adjustment and what you often find are toxic levels of ego, inabilty and lack of self confidence to face reality, flaws in the personality sometimes until sheer excessiveness and borderline situations.
It’s the outmost feature of narcissistic characters to show an unlimited sense of disrespect for the others and the ways in which they do things, of superficial individualities to deal with an obsessive “looking cool” disorder, of inflated western ladies to push the limits of shallow insipidness, of arrogant caricatures to reflect poor personal standards and lack of true life experience. It’s actually in the far end of Switzerland in a famous elite academy full of entitled little shits that I have learned the most about this prodigious discovery, but that’s another story. Experience teaches that the theory can be easily generalized on a large scale.
“Character is like a tree and reputation like its shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.” – Abraham Lincoln
Too bad so much people have lost the real thing.
But why should we care about the problems of so many fucking idiots?

As I sat exhausted from a few hours in solid surf sleepily watching those big lefts peeling down the reef like freight trains, time had also come for me to face some truth. After all these years I still suck at surfing.
This time of year is at the peak of the swell season. Travelling so hard to some of the best waves in the world is with the little idea to push some limits in mind. I was about to be well served.
Massive swells hit the islands consistently, waves rarely fall under the six foot range at 15 to 20 seconds period. Wave power is proportional to the wave energy period and in major storms, the largest waves offshore have a period of about 15 seconds. There are not so many places in the world holding this energy.

But surfing big is a tough stepwise process. When the shit goes down, you’d better be ready. I humbly declined what I would set to a really big day on my personal scale.
A few days later, the stormy Southern Ocean machine delivers a smaller ten foot swell. The spot is slowly clearing up because massive double size sets fills in every now and then, coming out of nowhere. After watching a moment from the boat I decide to paddle out.
It is usually one thing to estimate the size of the waves from a distance and a different story from close sea-level perspective. I have already surfed waves that size but it didn’t come close to this power. In their march towards the reef, faces are slowly extending vertically nearly limitless, preceding a ton of water, then loosing one fraction of the size as they folder projecting everything far ahead in a huge amount of energy. It’s all about an absolute drop into the pit and hitting the gas straight from inside endlessly expanding caverns across a distance that can exceed 300 meters. There’s no time to bottom turn. Being too slow or finding yourself in front of an exploding section is not an option. Being caught by an outside double up set neither.
I have to admit that I’ve been shitting my pants on a couple of waves. I’ll give an arm to surf the same shit frontside.

Everyone in the crew is regular (surfing their back facing this wave) and a bit of frustration starts to emerge from surfing exclusively big lefts for quite some time.
There’s actually a world class righthander at a nearby reef pass but it has been blown out with the incessant succession of depressions. Finally the windless day long awaited ended up happening and we all agreed for the extra boat ride to check it out.
Outcome of the operation: perfect barrels, six guys out. Muy bueno.

The bowl starts on a shallow piece of sharp reef where the wave is too fast, so it’s better to take off a little bit inside. However it’s a kind of a free fall take off to find yourself directly racing a long and super fast barrel. It took a few wipeouts to understand the process when I finally spotted this perfect looking set from a distance gradually moving towards my direction. Being the very early one paddling in the pack, there was my name on the first wave.
I remember having often noticed the singular nature of the flow of events from this precise moment: there’s no room for thinking anymore, everything goes mechanical from the instant we start paddling, we turn into crazy machines.
The sea starts opening wide just below my board making the reef visible underneath as I’m still paddling hard like if it was to save my life. I quickly angle my board to avoid end up projected and peeled off like a snake skin on the coral. Micro bottom turn. Heavy kick in the ass quickly followed by a detonating load of water chasing me on my left side. An hypnotic crystal blue wall is endlessly arching at an insane speed ahead of me.
The show is unreal. I can remember now what I came here for.

Pumping conditions right at the end is the best possible finish for a trip. After a few weeks it’s easier to leave when forecasts let no hope for another good swell anytime soon.
Jumping off the boat back from a last perfect session, just enough time to pack my boards before heading to the airport, at least I can leave satiated with no fear of missing too much of this perfection.
Because what awaits now might be less fun. Four days straight of air travel madness to get back home.

Welcome back to the real.