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TR: Mentawai Islands, Indonesia


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in tokyo at the moment mate. flying back to perth tomorrow, then will be in the mentawais on the 2nd or 3rd of march

i heard they scored smoking 4-5ft rifles to themselves abou a month ago, last week was small and there's been plenty of good empty waves.

am looking forward to getting back. only doing 4 month this year though. time for a change methinks

 

anyone ever been to sulawesi? we're pretty keen to have a holiday there for abot a month in july/august. no surf (i know) but keen to check the highlands out and do some snorkelling etc

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My wife spent a year there. Mostly in Ujung Pandang living with a moslem family. She was teaching English. She trekked in Tanatarja in the central area and trekked in the mentawais in 1989 too, in Siburit.

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Originally Posted By: Mantas
My wife spent a year there. Mostly in Ujung Pandang living with a moslem family. She was teaching English. She trekked in Tanatarja in the central area and trekked in the mentawais in 1989 too, in Siburit.


wow. that would have beenpretty wild. siberut is still very wild and untouched. it's a long story, but we have a friend who is apparently the first white man to visit a village on siberut. the amazing thing is it is only 20km or so from where we are. crazy to think how many people visit the mentawais on surf trips and yet there are villages like this relatively nearby. he described the trip as "hard". that means it was unbelieveably gruelling
he's working on a documentary of his trip. i'll post a link to his website when he gets it up and running

you guys got any trips planned this year. mantas - you still going to krui?

our plan is march-july in the mentawais. then a month on sulawesi, just cos it looks rad and i'll want to be away from surf rats for a while.

then no plan, but a month or two somewhere else in asia would be nice. anywhere in indo is cool too. any recommendations for uncrowded-ish waves. i'm not that interested in the obvious spots in bali/lombok/sumbawa/g-land etc

was even thinking about the phillipines maybe. never been there and don't know much about it though
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Originally Posted By: spook


wow. that would have beenpretty wild. siberut is still very wild and untouched. it's a long story, but we have a friend who is apparently the first white man to visit a village on siberut. the amazing thing is it is only 20km or so from where we are. crazy to think how many people visit the mentawais on surf trips and yet there are villages like this relatively nearby. he described the trip as "hard". that means it was unbelieveably gruelling
he's working on a documentary of his trip. i'll post a link to his website when he gets it up and running



Yeah she was pretty adventurous for an 18 year old. She has photos of her hanging out with some tattooed jungle dudes. Not too many whiteys went through back then. She's never showed any desire to go back to Sulawesi though.
If your toying with ideas, I'd recommend going down through the Meluccus, the Spice islands. Flores, Timor, Komodo. We had a great trip through there. Komodo felt like another planet. Kelimutu in Flores was pretty spectacular too. Those places are predominately christian, which adds a nice flavour to it all as well.

Krui is locked and loaded. mid June. not my ideal location but still should be fun. Lots of lefts. Cant wait.
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yeah man, krui will be awesome. i think there is also a right called jenny's point or something a couple of guys i know surfed it good last year. the krui lefts look super long too

yeah, all those places you mentioned in indo sounds pretty amazing. i take it you weren't surfing on that trip?

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Surfed in Timor (Roti) and Sumbawa then snapped my one and only board so no surfing after that. lol Timor was fun. Only 6 surfers in the village back then, not sure what it's like now.

I know where your comming from Spook. Not all my travels were surf/ snow related. If I'd been doing all the surfing you were doing for months on end, I'd like to get away from it for a while and see some different stuff.

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How did you rate Roti mantas? Alot of crew say it's good but nothing fantastic.

I did a hell trip there by myself long story short the ferry from Kupang was late because of a big cyclone coming (they shouldn't have even left) and I rocked up to the losmen on Roti with no guests then the cyclone hit and for 7 days I was trapped. It was way too big and out of control to surf by myself (not surfable at all, even with a crew) so I waited for the ferry to come and each day it never did! Finally when it did I got the fark out of there and off to Sumba!

 

Did you hit up the caves in Timor Mantas? They were pretty fun.

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I had a great trip there in 91. The waves were so so but I do remember sitting out there one day surfing 3 footers all by myself. We stayed with the village chief as there was no where else to stay. It was one of those 'before the crowds' kind of experiencess. My Bahasa was pretty good back then and I had a long conversation with an old guy who told me about the day the Japanese bombers flew over head on the way to bomb Darwin. He was also a prisoner of war and told me about his experiences with the Japs. I also remember climbing up a tree with a SW radio to listen to the 91 grand final.

lol

Beautiful place and the people were really cool.

I did go to those under ground caves for a swim one day, is that what your talking about? There was a guy up there that brewed his own alcohol.

 

I like to go back with the kids but I think I'd be dreaming if I thought that it would be the same after 20000 surfers have been through.

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Yeah the underground caves Mantas. We had a ball there!

I think T'land would be busier but not overly busy. Really only the one main wave to surf and so far from anywhere. Was nice back in 97 would have been great to surf there!

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  • 4 weeks later...

cheers indo. i tried to link some facebook pics into here last night but it didn't seem to be working.

about to head out for a surf now, will try again tonight...

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hey hey

so i've been trying to link some pics from facebook t this thread, but have had zero joy. i'd like to post a bunch of pics but will have to settle for the ones below instead.

these are from the last two weeks in the mentawais. the waves have been fun if nothing off the hook. there have been some nuts sessions, but for the most part it's just been good.

not that im complaining. i'm happy as larry (whoever he is)

yeuw!

 

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Glad to see you haven't forgotten us Spook. Up to your usual standard too.

 

Nothing down here Indo. We've had a few southerly swells, usually onshore, interspersed by weeks of nothing.....

My ears are pricked, waiting for the sound of that cyclone swell forcast for tomorrow. It will have a lot of north in it so it may miss us alltogether. It's supposed to get massive up at the Goldy....

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just had a surf at sideshore rifles. swell was good, tide was good, wind was... not quite there. worth a shot though. i got reatrded drunk last night, was hungover as hell today and kind of rattled out there. it's so damn shallow.

the surf looks pretty sick for the next few days and there's no one around. but i got to go to padang to deal with some immigration stuff. very annoying. luckily there's room on some speedboats for both crossing, but still - 5 hour trip each way, 3 nights in padang just to get a photo taken and do some fingerprint. they already have my photo and fingerprints. boo.

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Indo logistics. Five hours in a speed boat. lol Spose it beats 12+ hours on a ferry eh?

 

Nothing down here. Nothing! Forecast of 6-8 foot ENE ground swell has resulted in 1 foot wind swell. Disappointed.

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Spook, he he, Love the ol' Indo red tape..

At least you will be able to pig out on Maskan Padang!

 

We have about 4-6ft but onshie.. VEry light now, and has cleaned itself up a bit. Might be a chance tomozz early. Otherwise, I"ll be chasing the fish.

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just got into padang and the trip was an absolute breeze. using speedboats is so much better than the ferry. what was the better part of half a day and a night worth of travel is now just an afternoon.

stuffed my face with spicy bbq prawns and fish for dinner, staying in a nice (low-rise) hotel. it ain't so bad.

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