The Race Track

The sun crept in through the sheet hanging in the window, acting as a curtain, and I began to flop around on my stiff, crinkly mattress. Wiping my eyes and blinking them open, my surroundings came into focus. Tyler’s dirty feet were staring me in the face and I was instantly reminded that I was not at home. Due to a lack of beds, Tyler and I had to share one and we did the infamous, “your head on this end, my head on that end,” which in turns means you get to wake up to feet in your face. I emerged from our dark quarters and stumbled into the courtyard to basque in the early morning sun. Tyler was quick to follow. “Well… we made it. We are in Indo,” I proclaimed with a bit of disbelief. I could see Tyler reflecting on our last two days of travel and he finally confirmed, “Indeed we are,” in the philosophical tone he uses from time to time. Leaving our buddy Erin sleeping in the room, we began walking down the street and, although we had not uttered another word, we both knew we were heading to find the ocean.

Our room

We strolled out of the hostel and had to choose which direction to take in search of the water, left or right. We chose right and meandered our way down the winding asphalt until we finally came upon Uluwatu. What a place… a massive cliff overlooks a majestic coastline, swell is funneled in from the Indian Ocean and wraps around the bending reef, and perfect waves taper down the line one after another as surfers exchange waves and shuffle about the lineup. I sat in awe as I watched the first wave of a set roll in from far out the back as a lone surfer sat on the outside corner patiently waiting in anticipation. He calculated the arrival of the wave perfectly as he spun and did a three stroke take off, he confidently hopped to his feet and just barely slid under the guillotining lip, after stalling in the tube for a few brief moments he eventually shifted his weight to his front foot and accelerated out of the barrel with the section pinching just behind him. Illuminated by the sunrise, he negotiated a beautiful line and carved a figure eight across the face, followed by a series of vertical hacks, and a final arching bottom turn to set up for the infamous barrel section at “the race track,” where he got slotted for a few seconds before being flung around like dirty laundry and being kicked out the back. I glanced at Tyler to see if he had witnessed what I had just observed and he confirmed by exclaiming, “We are in Indo!” Wearing a huge grin, I reassured him, “Indeed, we are.”

Our first task, after a breakfast of jaffles, boggles, and porridge, was to obtain scooters. We had a few calls made and the scooters were brought to our hostel in about fifteen minutes. It took another fifteen minutes of negotiation to get the same rental rate as our buddy, Erin, who showed up two days prior to our arrival. We eventually settled on roughly three bucks a day to rent the scooters, which were all equipped with surfboard racks. So, we threw our boards in the racks and, despite the fact that Tyler and I had never driven a scooter, sped off down the sketchy road in search of surf. We charged along the coast line like a wanna-be biker gang and checked all of the epic surf spots that litter the coast line of the Bukhit Peninsula. We eventually decided on a beach to surf, which was quite the task because the abundance of insane surf spots with in a scooter’s ride is unreal. We walked up a wide, sandy beach that looked like it belonged on the back of a post card and stopped at the water’s edge. A steep, rocky cliff lies at the end of the beach and left handers wrap around the corner of the cliff and reel across the inside, bringing all the various sections of the wave to life. We surfed out there for a few hours and although the surf was not going off, it was still nice to get wet, get a few practice Indo waves under my belt, and wash off the jet lag.

So many good waves!

After our surf we returned to The Gong and had some traditional nasi goreng for dinner. We were wiped out from traveling and surfing so we spent the remainder of the evening talking story. I was over the whole feet in your face thing, so I opted to sleep on my board bag on the ground rather than share a bed with Tyler (again). It was not the most comfortable sleeping accommodation, but I eventually fell asleep.

“knock. knock. knock.” I sprung my head up and slowly drifted from a half-asleep, dream-like state to a present reality. “KNOCK. KNOCK,” the sound was louder this time and it took a few moments for my semi-conscious brain to comprehend the sudden noise and I finally put two and two together. “Someone is at the door,” I announced to my passed out friends. I hopped up, turned the knob, and slowly creaked the door open only to be greeted by a familiar and friendly face.

Dean Leavy, the fourth and last person in our crew had showed up in the middle of the night after a horrendous cab ride. Apparently, his ride was worse than ours because he spent over three hours circumnavigating the peninsula in search of The Gong Hostel with a lost cab driver. When he finally found the hostel, no one was awake to let him in. So, being the inquisitive little devil that he is, Dean began to inspect the compound. He eventually found the quarters of the lady who runs the hostel and was forced to knock on her door and wake her at the awful hour. There were no open rooms at the time and she was not prepared to deal with the problem at the moment, so she simply let Dean into her room where he curled up at the foot of her bed next to the dog.

Obviously, he did not sleep well and was up at first light. Once again, he found himself out in the courtyard searching for clues as to which room we might be in. After stumbling around every porch and door he came upon room number 5, which had a heaping pile of Rusty Surfboards in front of it; he was fairly confident he had found us. It had been a long time since all four of us had been in the same country at the same time, let alone the same room! It was exhilarating having the full crew assembled in Indo; we all managed to make it to Bali and strategically (yet miraculously) cross paths at the tiny hostel in Uluwatu! With everyone present it was time to score some dream waves and have some serious fun…

TO BE CONTINUED…

No shortage of girls cruising around Bali

Text and Photos: Brody