Anders and Chris go south

As we said in an earlier post, the group recently had "The Great Split." Dani, Benjy, Scott, Laura, and Pauline went on their hike to the Mt. Rinjanni while Chris and Anders tried to come up with something to do for 3 days that would equal the awesomeness of climbing up a volcano. DBSL&P will post about their own adventures soon, and Anders and I will try to recap what we did while exploring central and southern Lombok.



Kuta, Lombok. This is what is known as "The Other Kuta." If you've been paying attention to the blog posts, you'll recognize the name Kuta. The first one is on Bali island, and this one is on Lombok. This was our first stop after a whirlwind motorbike tour of the inner island. If you're map-checking, we cut through the Mataram, to Sengkol, back down to Kerouak, and finally down south to Kuta. The trip itself was fantastic - no injuries, no scares, just sun, wind, open roads, and 2 boys rolling south on scooters (helmets included).

I think Yamaha and Kawasaki should make a commercial based on our scooter adventures in Lombok. They took us everywhere: to the small towns, to the surf spots, to the hotels, through the jungles and deserts, and down to the beach like this one midway between Kuta and the fishing village of Gurupuk.

Here you can see Anders against what I'm guessing is the Mawun cove. The island is just dotted with these gorgeous cove-lets. The scenery is super green, the people friendly, the waves rolling (and, during mid to high tide, surfable in some places).


Anders was quick to make some friends with the locals. They spoke no English and our Indonesia is very limited, but they were happy to let us take some whacks with the sticks to beat the green beans out of their shells. It's definitely not the green bean you probably have pictured in your head, but it's the closest vegetable a waitress was able to match with the shells and beans I showed to her.



This is a shot of the cove at Gurupuk, a fishing village and popular surf spot just east of Kuta. It's a lot different than the surfing that we're used to, being that you have to boat out the where the waves break. Well, the second major difference is that all of these breaks are "reef breaks," meaning that sea floor is not sand, but coral. Scarier, but not too dangerous when the tides are high. We saw a lot of kelp beds out in the cove, and it seems like activity in the town is centered on fishing (which must happen at night or super early in the morning because of the high swells and wind that come during the day).


We took a walk around the town and had some conversations with the locals. The living conditions are not impossible, but definitely low. Garbage and sewage are big problems, mostly because environmental protection doesn't move at the same pace as tourism growth. However, Lombok in general is less "tainted" by tourism - as they say, Lombok is what Bali was 20 years ago.


A lot of the locals asked for their pictures to be taken, including this mom and her kid. Gurupuk is a village that has a lot of visitors, especially surfers, so they're not as surprised by white folk, but our trip through the central and eastern villages on the first day was filled with a lot of surprised faces, stares, and waves. We are definitely a minority in the south.


Ah, the last day. After some mild success surfing the DoonDoon break at Gurupuk (or DunDunj, or DunDun, or DonDonj, or the thousand other ways I've seen it spelled), Anders and I decided to try our hand at Mawi. It's pronounced the same was as the Hawaiian island, and supposedly is named because of similar-looking landscape. Because of the full moon, the swell was OK and the tides (and rip tides, ugh) were strong, so the surfing was pretty good, though small. The above shot is actually Anders getting out of the water at Mawi. After 2-3 hours of continuous surfing, Anders and I couldn't claim more than a couple of good rides. However, we more counted our major achievement as not dying or suffering, as Anders called it, major disfiguration to his beautiful body.


This is probably what Anders and I looked like for the entire 3 hours. Nooo, no, no, not the guy surfing in the wave. That's not us. We're the guy getting thrashed under the wave. He's not quite visible in the shot. This would be considered a very small wave for the day. The larger waves were the ones that ripped Anders' board from his leash, or the waves that pushed Chris to the bottom of the reef about 30 feet below the surface.


Exhausted, thrashed, and hungry, but very happy. Here we are sitting with Adi, our driver and surfer guide for the day. He's 23 and has been working at a local surf shop for quite some time. He gave us a glimpse into a lot of Lombok life, including education and religion. Probably the comment that most caught my attention was that many of the Lombok kids only get some form of junior high education. Adi considers himself extremely lucky to have finished senior high, and credits most of the achievement to his parents' willingness to pay for it. Both of his sisters got married and never got past elementary education, same going with his youngest brother, though his older brother finished senior high like he did.


Here's a shot we took after climbing up to a Hindu temple called Gerung Sengong. It's got great vistas of central Lombok, and a neat history - it served as a hiding place for Japanese soldiers during WWII. The temple was restored 25 years ago, but still maintains that air of antiquity. Our feelings of calmness were slightly disrupted by the monkeys that came out of the forest to greet Anders. Neither the monkey nor Anders were injured in the meeting, but both were mentally and emotionally scarred, perhaps for life.


Yep, dirty, sunburned, and gross after our 3 day trip. I hope the sea of green rice paddy fields make up for it. (Side note: during the dry season, which is now, a lot of the families plant tobacco. During the wet season, it's rice fields. Or at least that's the part of the system. Anyhow, down in southern, dry Lombok, we saw a lot more tobacco fields). The experience was well worth it, though it might not compare to the volcano-climbers' adventure. This is just a bare-bones account of our journey, so we'll have to share some of the funnier stories later.


The kid in the middle captures my emotions for the 3 days.

Good times.