Surfing Indonesia: A Search for the World's Most Perfect Waves

By Leonard Lueras and Lorca Lueras

Surfing Indonesia: A Search for the World's Most Perfect Waves is a guidebook to surfing at some of the most incredible surfing destinations in the world.

Explore the history of Indonesia surfing and gain some insight from surfers alike. Surfing Indonesia takes you on a safari, an ultimate surfers dream; from the huge island of Sumatra in the west and Indonesia's "Far East" through Java, Bali, and Lombok Sumbawa.

• Detailed maps of important surfing sites
• Insightful essays by surfers for surfers
• More than 120 action pumped photographs

If you like surfing or you are an inspiring surfer; this book will help guide you through the tips and tricks of the sport, including travel advisories, medical precautions, and safety hazards signs. And of course the spectacular views and places to surf in Indonesia are will be made aware to you.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Periplus Editions
• Release date: Apr 11, 2014
• ISBN: 9781462909377

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

Surfing in Indonesia

The World's Most Perfect Waves

Surf Season

Access

Sea Bottom

Special Gear

Hazards

Medical

Highlights

The waves in the ocean were like hills, which, without interruption, following [each other] from behind, rolled along up to the shore. The sound of the breakers thundered as though desirous to completely destroy the earth at the time of the end of the world in the Age of Destruction. Nevertheless, that did not produce fear in the mind of the ascetic...

— a 500-year-old description of surf off the west coast of the island of Bali, attributed to the great high priest-poet Dang Hyang Nirartha, who as chief religious adviser to the first great Balinese king, Dalem Baturenggong of Gelgel, helped establish Bali's Golden Age in the late 15th century.

Indeed, waves that were like hills. And which thundered! And if you read further into that sacred lontar book, you will find that Nirartha was enraptured by the energy and beauty of the waves he was meditating on so long ago.

At that time in history, in another island place called Hawaii, humans were already playing on such hills, indulging themselves in a grand and fun watersport that would later be called surfing. The people of the Indonesian island of Bali, however, would have to wait for nearly half a millennium after the time of the great pedanda court priest Nirartha before they would be exposed to that ancient Polynesian pastime.

Yes, Indonesia is definitely The World's Greatest Archipelago, hosting more than 13,600 islands, many of them directly exposed to powerful sea swells rushing in from fierce southern seas, but the millions of people in this vast maritime nation have never been particularly fond of the ocean and its coastlines as places for leisuretime recreation.

Rather, Indonesians have traditionally tended to stray away from active, wave-buffeted shorelines, preferring instead to work, play and settle on agricultural plains and in fertile inland valleys. If they did live at the sea, it was invariably along placid shorelines, either adjacent sheltered inland waterways or on the archipelago's northern coast, the so-called pesisir trading area. Rough, wave-pounded places, they surmised, were mystically charged locations—so-called nether-worlds or ends of the world—which were populated by demonic deities and fickle spirits.

Or as Nirartha dramatically noted, they are places which will completely destroy the earth at the time of the end of the world in the Age of Destruction.

The view into Bingin from atop a Bukit cliff. Photo: Jason Childs

Gary Elkerton holding his line under a lunging G-Land lip. Photo: Jeff Divine

Liam McNamara cruising through a Bingin tube. Photo: Jason Childs

Pemain Ski, Indo-style

Local attitudes, however, are beginning to change. Instead of being a desolate place just for brave fishermen and adventurous navigators, the sea as a place for play and pleasure is fast gaining a strong Indonesian following. Nowadays if you visit a popular resort beach on a sunny weekend you will find literally thousands of Balinese, Javanese and other Indonesians there—swimming, snorkeling, paddling about, sailing and, yes, now even surfing and windsurfing. What you are seeing is a major attitudinal shift that can in large part be attributed to an enthusiastic group of people from abroad who are known to the world as surfers.

Surfers, or pemain ski as they are referred to in Indonesian, have in less than three decades heavily influenced how once water-shy Indonesians now view their spectacular beaches and surging sea.

This book, Surfing Indonesia, is about surfers in Indonesia, the incredible surfing spots they have found in Indonesia, about their colorful local life-style, and how in a period of some 25 years they have literally transformed some parts of the Indonesian archipelago (and many Indonesians).

It is a book which could be rewritten every week, given the accelerated pace of new surfing discoveries and style influences, but it is complete enough to provide the most jaded or energetic of surfers with at least several thousand kilometers and a number of years of waveriding adventures (not to mention exposure to hundreds of languages and cultures in a beautifully varied nation of more than 200 million people).

80,000-plus Kilometers of Spectacular Coastline

Geographically, the islands of the Republic of Indonesia will prove intimidating to even the most ardent seeker of waves. For openers, this island group, traditionally referred to as Nusantara, sprawls for nearly 6,000 kilometers in a west-to-east arc that crosses but more-or-less straddles the equator. It is a distance, according to National Geographic magazine, that roughly equals the distance from Oregon on America's northwest coast to the island of Jamaica in the Caribbean.

Indonesia is, to use an understatement, a very big place, and, following the recent breakup of the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (the USSR), is now the world's fourth most populous nation (behind China, India and the United States).

Touring pro Luke Egan and legend Wayne Lynch share some solitude on the way out to the Kong's G-Land section. Photo: Jeff Divine

On surfari in Indo. Walking through sawah (ricefields) near Cimaja in West Java. Photo: Jason Childs

Flavio Padaratz hanging on the beach at G-Land with wife Gabby. Photo: Jason Childs

Made Switra floating over a tight closeout section at Cimaja Beach. Photo: Jason Childs

Because some 88 percent of its people are adherents of Islam, it is also often referred to as the world's most populous Muslim country.

Surfers, of course, will only be interested in data concerning Indonesia's southerly oriented shores, but consider, for the sake of personal exploration, that while in Indonesia you can spend non-surfing days checking out some 80,000-plus kilometers of coastline (the greatest sea littoral of any country) and some 3.1 million square kilometers of territorial waters. Beachcombing or sailing anybody?!

A statistics freak once calculated that if you were to spend only one day on each of Indonesia's known islands, it would take you at least 32 years, discounting inter-island travel time, to visit them all. And by then you would still not be finished because during that 32 years there would be additional isles, many newly emerged from the sea, to explore. Islands are constantly being born, destroyed and reshaped here because Indonesia, which is situated smack-bang on the so-called Asia-Pacific Ring of Fire, is also the most volcanically active place on earth. Indeed, a great point surfing break that existed last year may not be there next year—and vice-versa.

Surfing's Last Frontier

Given all the above geographical-oceanographical-volcanological factors, it is no wonder that Indonesia is well-known to surfers the world over as The Last Frontier of their sport. Except for Hawaii (a minor archipelago of only seven primary isles), where the Polynesian sport of surfing originated and was refined, no other maritime place on earth is so rich in challenges for accomplished waveriders.

With plenty of willpower, stamina and all the right surfriding gear, ambitious surfers can ride waves here until they drop. He or she can take off on exotic surfaris that are the stuff of long-chased and as yet unfulfilled dreams. Here to explore are nearly forgotten islands and shorelines that zigzag along the equator from Sumatra (just opposite Thailand and Malaysia) and on due west through Java (the world's greatest tropical island), Bali (the most famous island in the world), Lombok, Sumbawa, Sumba and Indonesia's still Stone Age Far East.

Some of the surf spots along this route are well-known, some are sort of known (depending on just when previous surfers happened to visit them), some are what surfers guardedly designate as secret spots, and hundreds of others have not yet been discovered and/or documented.

Start In Bali

Our starting point is Bali, the place where it all began, but from there on the itinerary is up to you. Or, as the well-known Australian surfing writer Peter Wilson recently summed up the Indo situation:

"Over the last two decades, Bali has been like a magnet, drawing surfers from all around the world. It [Bali] has now become the first stepping stone to the rest of the Indonesian Archipelago. Surfers have been exploring and surfing isolated spots throughout the islands, but the known breaks are still only the tip of the iceberg...

As a surfing location Indonesia's full potential might never be realized, but there is enough surf in Indonesia for everyone. All you need to do is go and find it.

With that advice in mind—and this book in hand—you are hereby invited to charge into this world of waves. It's every man (or woman) for him- or herself out here, but if you join our team of writers, photographers and artists on this endless Indo ride, we guarantee that you will soon be stoked—and returning here for evermore.

— Leonard and Lorca Lueras

A serious set rolls through at Moneytrees, sending competitors scrambling at East Java's Grajagan. Photo: Jason Childs

Perfect wave lines shimmer on a classy Bali afternoon all the way from Padang-Padang to the beach at Bingin. Photo: Jack McCoy

Balinese Wayan Jodi throwing up top-of-the-wave buckets at tricky Canggu. Photo: Jason Childs

BALI

Introducing Bali

The Take-off Point

Surf Season

Access

Sea Bottom

Special Gear

Hazards

Medical

Highlights

According to contemporary surfing magazine lore, the island of Bali was first discovered as a viable surfing destination by a group of traveling Australian surfers who started coming here on surf exploration journeys during the late 1960s and early 1970s. That, of course, is revisionist and rubbish reportage. The truth of the matter is that waves on Bali were already being surfed by both foreign and local surfers as early as the late 1930s.

We delve into more detail regarding this historic subject in a following feature piece entitled Bali's First Surfers, but for now—and in order to set the record straight—we would first like to state emphatically that the original pioneer of surfing in Bali—and in Indonesia for that matter—was a colorful American expatriate from Los Angeles named Robert Koke.

Koke, who had learned how to surf in Hawaii while working as a location still photographer for Hollywood's Metro Goldwyn-Mayer film company, first visited Bali in 1936 with his artist wife, Louise, on the initial leg of a holiday tour through Southeast Asia.

The Koke couple had become so enthralled with the island of Bali, that they later returned, settled down and built a surfside hotel at Kuta Beach. Koke, in an article he later wrote for Fortune magazine, recalled how he and his wife discovered the location for their hotel following a leisurely bicycle excursion from their hotel in Denpasar.

One day when we were exploring the island on our hired bicycles, he recalled, we pedalled through a coconut grove and came out on the most beautiful beach in the world: clear surf, lapping miles of white sand, fringed with palms, and no trace of human habitation as far as the eye could see.

That fabulous place was, of course, Kuta Beach, and that's where Bob and Louise decided to build their dream home and hotel. It consisted of a series of bamboo, thatch and batik guest houses created in the native style. The Kokes called their place the Kuta Beach Hotel, and on the basis of its pre-World War II success, it served as the original role model and precursor for hundreds of similar places which eventually sprouted up in Kuta like magic mushrooms in a Balinese cow paddock.

More important for our readers, however, was the fact that Koke had another thing on his mind when he chose the hotel's location. Koke was a surfer and he was intrigued by Kuta's consistent waves and their surfing potential.

During a recent interview with longtime Bali resident Bruce Carpenter (for the December-January, 1994-1995 issue of the Bali Echo), Koke said that shortly after he and his wife settled into their new life at Kuta he arranged for a pair of mammoth Waikiki-style surfboards to be shipped to Bali from Hawaii. Not those sissy things they use nowadays, he said, but classic, Waikiki beachboy-style redwood 'planks'.

With those boards finally shipped to Bali and in Koke's hand, It was around December 1938 that he paddled out into the Kuta surf and became the first surfer in Bali, reported Carpenter.

The Balinese were almost as amazed as were his hotel guests. Surfing was a pretty esoteric sport at the time. Most of them thought that he was mad and if we are to believe him he probably was. He finally got a few of the Balinese to try it out but it took quite an effort, not surprising if you consider the Balinese' morbid fear of drowning. A true surfer, though, he was out there almost everyday whether alone or with a friend.

Koke recalled that he mainly surfed Kuta's many beachbreaks and what is now known as Kuta Reef during those 1930s and pre-war years, but he said he also explored remote wave spots to the west of Kuta. The currents were sometimes very frightening. I got halfway to Tanah Lot one time, he said. At the time of his 1994 interview, Koke had returned to Bali, following an absence of 50 years, to scatter Louise's ashes in waters off Kuta that used to front Indonesia's first official surf camp, their landmark Kuta Beach Hotel.

That bit of surfing history recorded, let us now shift into fast-forward—through World War II and Indonesia's post-war fight for Independence (or Merdeka), past 1965 and The Year of Living Dangerously and, finally, the relative calm of the late 1960s.

It was about 1967 that surf explorers from Australia first began arriving on the island of Bali bearing serious waveriding equipment. One Australian, Russel Hughes, recalls riding Kuta Reef during that year. Whoever preceded or post-dated Hughes there is yet to be determined, but it was definitely in the late Sixties that the Indo-bound surfer invasion commenced in earnest. It was a logical development, because Down Under there was already a large pool of waveriders ready and waiting to explore new surfing sites in the region. Indeed, Bali and the rest of Indonesia had everything going for them from a surfer's viewpoint. The country has great and variegated southern coastlines open and receptive to strong Indian Ocean swells, the food and drink is good and cheap, the people are cheerful and receptive to foreign visitors, and the climate is paradisiacal.

In Oz, meanwhile, the water was much colder, and most prime wave spots down there were already being surfed and getting crowded. Surfing was a well-established national pastime in Australia, having been embraced since 1917, the year the great Hawaiian swimmer and surfer Duke Kahanamoku had traveled to Australia and demonstrated the ancient Polynesian sport of he'enalu, or surfboard-riding, to large numbers of enthusiastic Australian outdoorsmen.

The Australians' natural wanderlust carried them north, and a large number of them (who just happened to be surfers) hopped up to Indonesia. Invariably their first Asian stop was Bali, that fabled Island of the Gods sometimes also referred to as Australia's Hawaii.

What those Aussie surfers found on Bali, however, was more than just waves. They soon discovered that they could live the so-called good life on this fascinating island of beasts and beauties. Back in the late Sixties and early Seventies one could hang out splendidly—cold beer in hand, hot lobster in mouth—for a few bucks a day, including a charming tropical room, all the sun you could stand, and, it was discovered, more good waves than you could ride. Those were indeed the days, my friend, and few believed they would ever end.

History, of course, dictated otherwise. There was no way that a pleasurable place like Bali could be kept a secret. More and more people kept coming here until they had created—in concert with enterprising local folks—the busy and decidedly touristic situation which exists today. Welcome, would-be Indo surfers, to Bali, Surfing Indonesia's Take-off Point.

— Leonard and Lorca Lueras

Surf's up so this properly attired chap is on his way to the beach, Bali-style. He appears on a whimsical surf shop sign in the seaside resort village of Sanur. Photo: Leonard Lueras

A fun Kuta-area beachbreak rolls casually in waters fronting a Balinese-style resort complex. Nice and soft, a good practicing ground. Photo: Jason Childs

BALI

Kuta

Making The Scene

May-Oct. (Dry season)

Easy—all roads are paved. You can walk between beachbreaks. Boats available to reefs.

All beachbreaks are sand bottom. Airport Rights to Kuta Reef are reef bottom.

Beach break boards for tricks, plus small, thin leg ropes.

Crowds. Lots of locals, so stay out of the way. Don't hassle over 2 foot waves.

Sometimes dirty water that equals earaches.

Kuta Reef—Bali's first big discovery, but really crowded. Ultra-fun beachbreaks for reef-shy surfers and tricksters.

...I remember a Kuta perfumed with clove cigarettes and chicken sate. And empty streets that we would walk down the middle of, only making way every now and then for the occasional bemo. [Now] the cruisy travellers, hippies and adventurous surfers who used to trade stories over chillums during the tranquil evenings have been replaced by bargain hunting, package deal tourists, oblivious to the underlying rhythm, of Bali while they charge around on pub crawls and fill the air with suburban babble. It seems that almost everything we came here for has been replaced by the very things we were trying to escape...

—Australian surfing pro Jim Banks, writing in Tracks magazine, 1994

Yes, a lot of us remember a Kuta like that—lit by flickering kerosene lamps, eerily quiet, another sort of place during another special time when the only excitement was cockfights, traditional performances of Balinese music and dance (and not for tourists, mind you), daily religious rituals and long days of surfing all the waves you could stand. People also still recall that when there was nothing productive left to do, scores of people spent pre-twilight hours watching Kuta sunsets while hallucinating from the effects of incredibly potent magic mushroom omelets.

Nowadays that all seems like part of a psychedelic daydream long past. Kuta today is literally a tropical neon jungle, a paradise being lost to cost, and, a beach like no other beach. What we have here is an Asian Tijuana steeping in a chaos made up of crass commercialism and hedonistic excesses, but surviving by being held together by the religious and caste strictures of a traditional Balinese fishing village. Kuta can be a rude scene indeed, but apparently lots of people like this surrealistic place because more tourists—both foreigners and Indonesians—visit this honky-tonk beach resort more than any other holiday destination in this vast and interesting country.

According to Indonesian government tourism statistics, perhaps as many as 90 percent of the true tourists to Indonesia, including hardcore surfers, visit Bali for the majority of their stay. If you carry that figure forward to analyze visitors to Bali, perhaps 80 percent of that original 90 percent spend most of their time on this isle playing, shopping, perving and surfing in Kuta. At all hours of the day (and even night!) this zany stretch of beach—which in recent years has sprawled beyond itself and linked itself up to the nearby Ngurah Rai International Airport to the south and with the villages of Legian, Seminyak and Kerobokan to its north—buzzes with activity. It is one of those gregarious places where, to use a cliche, there is never ever a dull moment.

Twenty-five years ago the opposite was true. There were many dull, dreamy and languorous moments in a sleepy fishing village with no electricity, mostly dirt roads and few restaurants and losmen (small guest inns). In those days if you were a surfer and didn't like to surf alone, you had to spend half your morning wandering around looking for somebody else who would like to go surfing with you. Finally, surf partner acquired, you would paddle out to the break of your choice and have endless waves to yourself—day after day after day.

Some of the Bali surfing contingent pose for a snap at Nusa Dua beach. Photo: Leonard Lueras

A bird's-eye view of the Kuta-Legian beach area. Photo: Jason Childs

Those days became hazy memories quickly once large numbers of visiting surfers and itinerant world travelers began arriving in Bali and reporting back home about this magical place.

Sooner than any oldtimers expected, serious bands of highly proficient waveriders on earnest surfaris began arriving in Bali and invariably establishing a coconut forest headquarters at Kuta. These wave-worshipping travelers provided a natural market for the enterprising Balinese (who are always ready to sell anything to anybody) and an industry, or series of industries, was born. Since those halcyon days of the early Seventies, Kuta has never looked back and has today evolved into an international travel industry phenomenon.

Surfing and surfers, as it turned out, were the catalysts which created the Kuta style of today, but they were and still are only the tip of a booming visitor iceberg that is now traveling on its own uncontrolled inertia. Indeed, first came the surfers and a motley group of non-surfing peers called hippies (remember hippies?), but they were soon followed by the masses.

Everyone under the sun is strutting about Kuta these days, but that isn't to say that the surfers have been tossed to the wayside. Rather, many of them have evolved into entrepreneurs right alongside their Balinese neighbors; and in the process Kuta has become one of those extremely hip and sea-conscious places where you can't see the surfers for the waveriders. They're everywhere, from everywhere, on every flashy and blinking street corner and bar. Indeed, much of modern Kuta was custom-created by surfers for surfers in concert with local spouses and partners. Look around, grommet, and you will see more surf shops in and about the greater Kuta-Legian-Seminyak area than you will find in all of Hawaii. And you will discover that much of the trendy surf gear (shirts, boardshorts, rashguards, jackets, etc.) that you see for sale back in Bondi, Honolulu or Malibu is actually designed and manufactured here. The Kuta-headquartered surfing business has become, as they say in other types of board-rooms, big business.

Wanna be with your sunburnt peers? Then head for a real surfer's bar and restaurant.

The oldest and biggest longtime hangout for local and visiting wave-chargers is a sand-floored place on Poppies Lane II that was presciently named Tubes. This surfers' oasis smack in the middle of the Kuta storm center was opened in 1988 by a former architecture and plastics engineering student named Steven Palmer in cooperation with a friend, Kim Fly Bradley, and a group of local Balinese business partners.

We thought it would be cool if we had our own place to hang out, said Palmer recently. I found some people who said, 'Yeah, that's cool,' so we just did it What Palmer and his surfing colleagues did was initiate a sprawling and surfy complex—including a big bar, dance floor, restaurant and a board-selling wall—made up of coconut wood, papaya wood, Balinese thatched roofs and, of course, the complicated ambience that is created when more than a few surfers gather to socialize under one roof.

Tubes is in fact a living museum of modern-era surfing in Bali where you will see vintage boards and other surfabilia that evokes memories of Indo surfing days past, present and even in the future. Classic surf gear hangs here and there from walls and rafters, and non-stop music and surf videos fill speakers and screens throughout this hybrid place. In addition to just business, the Tubes management has over the years been a prime sponsor of local surf contests and in-house surfing award ceremonies, in both amateur and professional sectors of surfing.

It's been a surfers hang sort of place, says Palmer, who has hosted some of surfing's biggest names over the years. He recalls one night when former world champion Nat Young began, running around Tubes and hanging off the rafters. On another occasion, he recalls seeing yet another surf champ, Owl Chapman, climb up into Tubes' rafters to see who had shaped a particular Lightning Bolt surfboard.

As this book was going to print, yet another such place was preparing to open its Kuta doors to surfers. This spot, the All-Stars Surf Cafe, is located on the airport side of Kuta on the second floor of the new Kuta Centre shopping mall on Jalan Kartika Plaza No. 8X. All-Stars was envisioned as a sort of Hard Rock Cafe for surfers, showcasing surfing graphics and memorabilia, surf music and movies, hot dance sounds and foods and drinks preferred by beach people.

All-Stars' manager, Martial Hernandez, a native of Honolulu, said this new surf venue would be a living tribute to the history of surfing around the world and will include a world-class pro surfing shop in conjunction with two modern restaurants (All-Stars and Amigos) and bars.

We want this place to be a home-away-from-home for all surfers coming to Bali. As well as a fun place to eat and party, we also aim to act as an information center for surfers who are not familiar with Bali, said Hernandez.

Given the explosion of interest that surfers have in Bali in particular and Indonesia in general, these two places, Tubes and All-Stars, probably won't be the last such places of their genre created in and about Kuta Beach.

One great thing about the Kuta area, however, is that besides all the Surf City stuff, this place also has waves. Remember, this is where the Indo surfing movement was born. With that in mind, let us now consider the surf at Kuta.

Old-time Bali surf junkies reckon that sands here have shifted or disappeared and that the beach-breaks of Kuta are not as good as they used to be, but on any given surf's up morning or afternoon at Kuta, you will see scores of surf-boarders, bodyboarders (spongeriders) and even bodysurfers storming the waves here. Toss in a recent influx of Japanese girl surfers who boogie-board here and you are talking a serious crowd scene reminiscent of public beaches in Southern California or eastern Australia. A real board hoard, mate, so stay cool and low-profile.

Probably the best-shaped beachbreak wave along Kuta Beach proper is a place called Halfway that is located (yes) halfway down the kilometer-long beachfront Kuta road called Jalan Raya Pantai Kuta. It is just opposite the Rama Palace and Bali Anggrek hotels. Peaks here shift as much as shifting sands do, so where you turn and go out here is a day-to-day decision (though lefts tend to be better than rights). If you are in a mood for tricksterism, a sandy bottom and crowded but sometimes fun conditions, then give this place a bash. There is always a large crowd on hand here, so go on—strut your stuff. Ridable at all tides, but low tide with a bigger swell usually produces more lined up waves. Dumps and pounds most of the time, but on certain rare days can be magic.

The next break spot along this long and wide beach is Padma—a place of lined up lefts and rights breaking toward each other—which you will spot north of Halfway where Jalan Padma meets the beach. During high tide periods you can slash, ricochet and air your way all the way to the beach. Closes out above four to five feet.

In your quest for the ultimate beachbreak boogie, you should now stroll even further north to a spot opposite the Blue Ocean Hotel. In the old days this spot had a number of other names, but in recent years has been renamed Blue Ocean. It's a popular beachbreak haunt, favored by local party animals who are a wealth of information regarding much more than just incoming waves.

Whatever you find out from the people at Blue Ocean, we guarantee that you will also usually find waves, too. Fun lefts and rights spill all over the place there, preferably at higher tide and during moderate swells. Doesn't handle a lot of size, but, well, few beachbreaks do.

Wayan Neka about to slam the lip at fast-moving Kuta Reef. Photo: Jason Childs

When surf starts really pumping you would be well-advised to mosey further down south with a larger board and see what's up at Kuta Reef or other more serious spots to the south.

Kuta Reef was the first wave of any consequence to be discovered by Modern Era Bali surfers. Quite a while before the real primo stuff was being ridden on the Bukit Peninsula, this reef break was the biggest Kuta-area challenge. Nowadays, though it can get quite good, Kuta Reef is but a taste of more awesome things on down the south surfline. Basically it is a good historical and living example of what Indo is famous for—that is, a long and sometimes nearly perfect lefthander that peaks, walls up, thunders all the way to the inside, and now and then gives up the occasional barrel ride.

This senior Kuta Beach curl is located about a half kilometer out to sea from the Holiday Inn's Resort Balihai