ROLLING WITH THE TIMES
GERRY LOPEZ WASN’T LONG OUT of the icy waters of Bells Beach on Australia’s rugged southern coastline when he first set eyes on Uluwatu.
The year was 1974, and Lopez, a tawny-haired 25-year-old from Oahu, was renowned throughout the surfing world for his masterful tube-riding skills. “Mr. Pipeline,” they called him. His peers—people like surf photographer Jeff Divine—spoke admiringly of the meditative, almost Zen-like movements he applied to the sport.
Lopez traveled frequently between Hawai‘i and Australia to compete in prestigious surf competitions, and on this occasion, he was in Torquay, Victoria, for the Rip Curl Pro Bells Beach, now among the most coveted trophies on the World Surf League championship tour. He didn’t win the contest that season, but over dinner one night at fellow surfer Jack McCoy’s vegetarian restaurant, a framed photo on the wall caught his eye.
“It was a water shot of another surfer friend, Wayne Lynch, taken the previous year,” Lopez recalls. “The wave he was riding wasn’t particularly exceptional—there was white water all over the face—but it was hollow and Wayne’s position was cool, racing across a long, lean lefthander. What intrigued me most was seeing him surfing in board shorts rather than his usual wetsuit, and the fact that I had absolutely no idea where the wave was. I was mesmerized.”
McCoy informed Lopez that the shot was taken in southern Bali, just off a dramatic limestone cliff called Uluwatu. Lopez repeated the name, the syllables rolling dreamily off his tongue. “As soon as I said ‘Uluwatu,’ I felt destined to go,” he says. “It was like a mantra that put me into a trance.” He and McCoy booked tickets to Bali pretty much straight away.
The pair flew from Australia into a heady, heaving Kuta and set out south on scooters the following dawn. They rode past the ramshackle fishing villages
