the Salzblogue: Surfing in the rain

06.02.2013

A happy Finnish bunch going for surf near Kuta (Lombok, not Bali)

The last few days have been some of the best ones during our trip so far. Indonesia has totally stolen my heart – this is a beautiful country with stunning nature, interesting architecture, friendly funny people, good food, and affordable prices. On top of this everything works well; tourism here is developed enough for the travel agents to really know what they are doing and the transportation system is super convenient. I have no complaints at all. Seems like it is a great idea to be here during the low season, and if I ever come back here, it will definitely be at this time of the year. The staff members everywhere have enough time to talk with the customers, prices are lower, beaches empty, and you are way more interesting and special when there is not that many tourists around. Feeling special is always nice.

We spent some lovely days on Gili Meno, but since there is not much else to do than just enjoying yourself, we decided to continue to Lombok pretty soon. Jenny had been obsessed about surfing for ages and Kuta Lombok sounded like a good place to get started with it. We took a boat from Meno and then a very unofficial taxi and arrived to Kuta just when the sun was about to set and it was raining like hell. The town itself in Kuta is not that special and when we first got there it was absolutely empty, like a ghost town. The beach is quite nice and the bars and restaurants are chill, but during the day the thing is to get out of the town and do something. And for most of the people that something equals surfing.

Weird, vicious and hungry kittens in Meno

Beach bar @ Meno

Having lunch with other Finnish guys (we only came here to hang out with other Finns obviously)

Shopping

Weird sunset light in Kuta

Our wonderfully big beds at Seger Reef homestay

Cockroach fighter

Little local girls knocking on our door

HERU-TOURIST

It was already on our first evening when we met three guys from Helsinki and got to ask about a million questions about surfing and Kuta. The next four days we went surfing together every day, got a teacher the Finnish guys had been surfing with before, and it was great. Our daily program was something like 1. waking up and having breakfast, 2. chilling a bit and getting lunch, 3. going surfing to Gerupuk for 3-4 hours in the afternoon when the tide was low enough for waves, and 4. getting dinner and chilling at some of the beach bars. The after-surf feeling is wonderful when you're exhausted and full of energy at the same time, and surfing itself is extremely addictive. Spending time at the sea is something I've really gotten into during this trip, it's a whole new world that has opened up to me. I used to be scared of water but the more you spend time with it, the more familiar it gets. On top of this I think that surfing is the best possible meditation, since your head gets so into the thing that it's impossible to think about any other stuff than the waves and the board and the water and paddling faster faster faster.

Our surf teacher Soup :)

The second day we went surfing it was raining a lot. Luckily the rain started when we were already in the water, so it didn't really matter that much. What a magical feeling it was to be surfing in the pouring rain and when falling back to the water it felt like falling to a bath tub since the sea water was so warm. The inner spot in Gerupuk was a great place to learn surfing, because the bottom of the sea was mostly just plants (no big rocks or coral) and the size of the waves was not too scary. Sometimes when there were too many people it was a bit hazardous when 10 people took the same wave, so I don't even want to think how crowded it would be during the high season! Imagine 30 beginners in the same surfing spot... What a catastrophe. So yes, the tourism low season is good for surfing too. Also our surf teacher Soup deserves all the possible credit. He's a tiny Indonesian dude and he was super flirtatious and funny, but also a great surf teacher, so he made the whole experience even better than it would've been with some other teacher. At one point after some more flirtatious jokes I asked if I'm not too tall for him since I'm almost 30 cm taller, and he just answered “No problem. I can climb.” :'''D What a big ego for such a small person...

After four awesome days we had our last night in Kuta, the Finnish guys were leaving and we were heading to Ubud at 7AM in the morning. It wasn't really planned but we stayed up all night drinking Bintang and listening to music, and when the sun started to rise, we had a nice morning swim in the sea. 15 minutes before we were supposed to be having breakfast at our guesthouse we got out of the sea, said goodbye to the Finns and started packing our backpacks in a hurry. What a great idea to leave the packing to the last minute. At least now we know it takes 10 minutes to pack in a case of emergency.