Week 4 in Indo

1/15/2015

Our first month in Indo has just drawn to a close. It’s flown by in a flurry of surf and sun. Not too hard to understand why people come here and never leave. What’s not to like about consistent, warm water waves?

You know you’ve been here a while when you start to shiver when the temperature dips below 25C! They call it acclimatisation. The indo boat guys won’t even go for a surf when it gets that “cold”; preferring to stay inside the boats cabin with their towels wrapped round their shoulders.

Spongebob went for his first surf, and it didn’t go too well….

Turns out it’s pretty tricky to paddle an inflatable toy around the line-up. Ended up having to bite his arm so I had my hands free to paddle. Was a small day, but still the odd set coming through. Missed the first wave I went for cos Sponge made it hard to get my chin down onto the board. As luck would have it a lil set popped up, so ditched the board and tried to duck under the wave.

Hmmm, Sponge didn’t duck nowhere, so I got tumbled about by the whitewash. Next wave on its way so thought I’d get a better grip and grabbed Sponge by the butt in order to drag him deep. As I did so my nail dug into his ass…and he popped. Bummer. Dead before he even hooked a wave!

Least he was a whole bunch easier to paddle with once deflated, so managed to get him onto a wave after that.

That arvo we had to do a bit of surgery. Cut a piece off an old pool lilo and superglued it over the tear. Succeeded in getting a whole bunch of loo-roll stuck to him in the process….which was probably better than stuck fingers!

The repaired Bob then charged the next day and was stoked to pull into an “overhead” Bob bomb. Wasn’t taking any chances this time and just snuck a teeny wave way out on the shoulder, then took him straight back to the boat whilst he was still in one piece….so that the adventures of Spongebob can continue.

Surf trips are cool for a whole lot of reasons other than surfing. You get to meet so many different people, who all have lil nuggets of info to share. For instance, we now know that it’s really cheap to get your teeth done in Bangkok (and which dentist to see!), where to go surf in PNG, why the Carolines are the next new surf frontier, how to make your own DIY deck grip (below) and plenty of cool spots to check out when we visit Aus.

Our surf guide, Seagull. He has a wing span not an arm span!

Despite my presumption that Aus is crazy crowded, the guys insist it’s possible to get waves to yourself if you just head a bit north or south of town.

Ironically the first thing the ou’s say to you when they hear you’ve from SA is “But aren’t you scared of the Great Whites – you have so many huge sharks there!”

Um, no – we have the same number of sharks as you lot, and if memory serves me correctly there’ve been waaaay more shark attacks in Australia lately than SA

Sometimes you just can get wide quick enough

Yip, it's as inviting as it looks

Maybe just as well that’s a common misconception, else we’d be inundated with travelling Aussies given our good waves and favourable exchange rate. Great guys in general - but just add water to some of them, and their manners tend to dissolve in it. Guess it comes from having to compete with a zillion other peeps in the water, so not all of them have the best line-up etiquette.

Normally it's the Brazzo's who get fingered for being full on in the water. But the only thing the visiting Brazilian ladies did was get the guys mouths dropping open as they checked out their bottom....turns. Certain Brazilian stereotypes do hold true.

The site of Brazilian bums can force you to dive straight in to cool off!

The local language in Indo is Bahasa. Apparently a very simple lingo to learn, although my total vocab at this stage is only 3 words! Got taught an easy way how to say “thank you”. Basically it sounds like saying “tear-up-my-car-seat” really fast! Bagus!