The hub of surfing in Lombok is the town of Kuta, located on the island’s southern coast. Confusingly, there is also a part of the Southern Bali sprawl called Kuta, but the two could not be more different. Kuta Lombok is located on a beautiful crescent bay, surrounded by rocky forested hills that slope down to the ocean’s edge. To the east and west of Kuta are a series of mostly uninhabited coves, bays and beaches of even greater beauty. The reefs off their shores create a number of exceptional surf breaks, which are the focus of many of the visitors to Southern Lombok. Kuta itself is a small town that has grown to support a small but consistent stream of foreign visitors. The town still feels like it retains much of its traditional culture, while also having decent amenities for visiting backpackers. There were plenty of inexpensive but tasty beachside restaurants and modest but comfortable guest houses and bungalows. We went to Southern Lombok because of its surf, but it turned out to be one of the most pleasant places we visited, surfing aside.

Fortunately there was surf however, and we took advantage of it . During the summer the surf off the coast of Kuta was not really working due to the strong onshore winds. So, every day we would ride our rented motorcycle fifteen minutes to the nearby town of Grupuk, which has several reef breaks in its bay. To get to the breaks you have to charter a little fishing boat which motors you out to the surf spots and waits for you while you surf. The first day Jessica felt like kicking back on the beach so I went surfing on my own. I got to Grupuk around 7 am, late by my Batu Karas schedule, and chartered a boat out to a break called Don-Don. When we anchored at the break I was very surprised to see that no one else was there – surprising because Southern Lombok is known to get quite crowded in August. Don-don is a break that allows you to take the wave as a “left” or a “right.” In surfing, a left is a wave that breaks to the left and a right breaks to the right, from the surfer’s point of view looking at the shore. Since you stand sideways on a surfboard, the feeling of riding a left versus a right differs considerably, so it is fun to be able to ride both kinds of waves at one spot .

That morning the right portion of the wave seemed to bend inward towards the shore as it broke, rather than breaking in the more linear fashion I’m accustomed to on beach and point breaks. It wasn’t closing out (breaking all at once along the wave), but it seemed like the wave both stood up and sunk into the water as it hit the reef and the line of swell coming from the ocean somehow bent around the reef. The strange distortion of the wave made me think one thing – the reef could not be far from the surface. Since I wasn’t quite sure what to make of it I watched the left for a bit, which didn’t seem to bend in such a peculiar way. Initially it looked good, but I was a bit distressed to notice that every time a larger wave passed through a jagged section of the reef would suddenly puncture the face of the passing wave. It wasn’t positioned right at the steepest portion of the wave where a surfer was likely to be, but it wasn’t far from there either, and it was hard to tell if there were similar portions of the reef that were perhaps hiding just a bit further below the surface, waiting to bite into an unsuspecting surfer .

After watching for a few minutes, feeling a bit nervous about the whole scene, my boat captain threw in the anchor and said, “Tunggu sebentar. Air naik,” meaning, “Wait a bit. The tide is coming in.” I was happy to wait a bit. It’s a rare surf session when I wish there were more surfers in the water, and an even rarer one when I wish there were local surfers present (since they tend to take more than their share of waves), but this was definitely one such time. I must have looked impatient (or anxious), because after just twenty minutes my captain told me to go for it, even though the rock hadn’t stopped popping up on the left when the larger waves came in. At least I hadn’t seen any rocks poking out on the right, even though it was still bending in its strange way. I caught a few, dropping in on the wave, riding to the right for about thirty feet, and then popping out early even though the wave was still rideable, because I didn’t entirely trust the wave and what lay underneath . It was fun and weird all at the same time, being out in the water far from land, with no one else around on quite good waves. Finally a few more boats pulled up to the reef and I was joined by some more surfers. The rock that had worried me on the left of the break stopped poking out of the water, and with more people around and some good rides under my belt my confidence soared and I started riding the waves more aggressively and further towards shore.

In hindsight it’s not really surprising that nature would send me a sharp reminder of how much I’m still at its mercy. I caught a very fun wave that started as a big wedge, allowing me to cut back and forth on its face several times, then accelerated into a fast moving steep section that seemed to menace over head while it rocketed me forward, and then into the final smaller bendy section which let me do a few more turns before it closed out. It was a great ride and I felt like I had never surfed better as I turned to paddle back out to the line-up, when I saw that the wave didn’t come alone . I had ridden in too far to make it over the incoming waves, they were already breaking, but I thought I’d just be able to duck-dive the whitewater and get back out. As I pushed my board under water, however, I discovered what I had earlier suspected but forgotten in all the fun. Less than two feet underwater one of my hands that held the rail of my board ran straight into the jagged reef, slicing my hand open in five places. The next few waves pounded me back towards shore and into even shallower water over the reef. I was stuck taking the incoming whitewater directly in the head, since I was even more worried about the sharp reef below me. There’s not much more frustrating than trying desperately to paddle out while continuously getting smashed by incoming breaking waves, which push you backwards, erasing any forward progress that you have made. With a break in the incoming waves not seeming to be in the cards, several more reef cuts on my feet and knee, and my muscles exhausted, I was eventually forced to make a long paddle from the right side of the break across the reef parallel to shore, and out into the deeper water off the left side of the break . It was exhausting, humbling, and painful. Of course, after that first day I came back to Don-don or one of the other breaks at Grupuk once or twice a day for the next week, and it was some of the best surfing I’ve ever done. I did, however, become much more aware of what the ever shifting tides were doing at any given time of day.

Besides surfing, Southern Lombok has a lot to offer. A five minute walk from our cozy little bungalow was a beautiful beach with turquoise water that sat next to a small mangrove. We often had the stunning beach there all to ourselves, except for the troop of Macaque monkeys that usually patrolled the beach and steep rocky hills at the beach’s edge. The monkeys have no fear of humans, and will often come quite close to sunbathing beachgoers. While lying on the beach you definitely have to always keep an eye on the mischievous monkeys. Once, while we were sitting on the beach a monkey that was making a big show of looking for crabs or other goodies in the tidal pools on the nearby rocks slowly made its way towards us . He would climb onto a rock and half-heartedly poke around in the tide water, all the while keeping an eye on us, before moving to the next rock, invariably closer to our location. Finally, he was just five feet away, sitting on his rock lacksidasicaly poking around in a water pool on the rock. He made his move in a flash, darting off the rock, grabbing our nearest possession, a water bottle, and then retreating to his rock. After he bit the cap off the bottle, he managed to pour the water onto the ground without getting any in his mouth, and then dropped the bottle on the rocks. I thought I’d at least pick up after him, but when I tried to get it back the monkey growled at me and stood his ground defiantly. Since I was many times bigger than the monkey I thought I’d try the tough guy routine right back at him, and shouted “HA” in my fiercest Viking voice several times, which made him move back a few feet. As I made my move for the bottle the monkey upped the ante however, jumping forward and growling, this time bearing his teeth too . Monkey teeth are very pointy, so finally good sense returned and I conceded the battle with the monkey(meaning I shrieked like a child and made a break for it). I’m pretty sure that no-good monkey didn’t even recycle that bottle when he was done either.

After a week we had to leave so we could have a few days at our last stop of the trip, Gili Meno, but I would have been happy staying in Kuta for a long time. The surfing, the beauty of the ocean and beaches, the friendliness of the local people, all would have been reasons to stay for a while had we been able. On our last day we biked an hour to a beach called Mawi, and while we looked down from the side of a steep hill that provided one of the most magnificently expansive coastal views I’ve ever seen, a whale started breaching repeatedly not far off shore. It was stunning. If you go to Indonesia, go to Southern Lombok, whether you surf or not. Unfortunately, there are rumors of large-scale development on the horizon. As we drove north towards the Gilis we travelled along one of the nicest four lane roads we had seen in Indonesia. This brand-new road connects Kuta to a brand new airport less than an hour away; definite signs of things to come. It’s easy to imagine the planners seeing Southern Lombok as the new South Bali – development will mean construction, jobs, luxury accommodations, fancy clubs, and of course huge piles of money, all of which will appeal to many different people, but for me Southern Lombok is exactly perfect as it is right now, and I can’t help but feel saddened by the coming change.