Mentawais Revisited

My buddies and I took the surf trip of a lifetime in July of 2004 to the Mentawai Islands, off the west coast of Sumatra, Indonesia. I stumbled upon the images on one of my drives the other day and it brought back a lot of memories about that trip.

For those of us on the trip who were married (with and without children), it represented two weeks of reverting back to pre-teen adolescence, except instead of Capri Sun we drank Bintang beer. Other than that it wasn't much different.

Part of the fun of any big adventure is getting there. And if anyone's ever flown to Southeast Asia, there's a lot of "getting there" to be had. Midnight flight from LAX to Taipei (11 hrs.), then Taipei to Singapore (4 hrs) with a 4-hour layover in Singapore (can you say "Asahi"?), followed by a 1-hour flight to Padang Airport in Indonesia. I think all of us watched "The Girl Next Door" with Elisha Cuthbert about 5 times.

Nice long line at LAX security. Ahead of us were 2 other groups of surfers heading on the same trip.

I think the craziest drivers in the world have to be in Indonesia (I've heard this from several people). Few traffic lights, no lane markers, no crosswalks, no bike lanes. Complete and utter chaos.

Some kid looking for surf stickers. We hooked him up.

So before you can board the boat, you have to make a copy of your passport for the travel company, which they do at the local surf shop. Some local skate rats had made a half pipe, one-half ramp and the other half the side of the building. This proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that necessity is the mother of invention.

Our driver from the airport to the boat. I think he thought we had named him "Oh s@#t!"

Padang Harbor, where we boarded our boat.

After a 12-hour boat ride throught the night, we anchored at a spot called "Playgrounds". At first light, we could see the surf wasn't happening there, so we motored for another hour to a neighboring island and came upon this vicious right-hander. This spot is called "Bank Vaults". That's Dustin fishing in the foreground.

Trunks and rashguards drying on the boat rail.

Brett "B-Wett" Martin

Erik "The Merkin" Martin. Erik was kind enough to organize the whole trip. Thanks, Cheryl!

Okay, onto some surfing. This is Dustin at a spot called Thunder's. Easily the biggest waves we got on the trip. Solid double-overhead on the sets with some spooky rougue waves breaking waaay outside around the tip of the island.

Finer on his first wave of the day at Thunder's. Not a bad way to start.

Clean-up set at Thunder's.

Boat view of Telescopes, which was my favorite wave. Just a picture-perfect left that peels around this reef pass.