Da Point – “One last dance” – the goodbye with all the honors!!

End of season in Indonesia is always an unpredictable thing...We were surfing perfect Uluwatu on the 3 to 4 feet range for about a week when all the sections of the wave were working everyday according to the ideal tide conditions of each section almost to a maximum perfection...on these days we had some famous visitors such as Rob Machado and Christian Fletcher that were coming everyday to Ulus to share the waves with the Aussie Eddie Rasta aka “the Animal” or “Predator”, the Kiwi Nick, his friend Brad, Cacho, Me and the locals Lana, Pitur, etc...

It was a week of many barrels with perfect conditions at Temples, The Peak and Race Tracks every single day...and the crowd very easy...total relax...and as the surprises here in Indonesia are never few, the internet started to show a swell of medium intensity to arrive in a few days...start the planning’s again… G-Land?? Deserts?? Or probably Ulus going off on all the sections, perfect Bingin and small Padang?? The same old doubts here in Indo when a new swell is about to arrive...We had just been trough a full moon and the tides were basically perfect for the majority of the spots…no jokes, on the day before the swell I went about 4 times to the internet at Jiwa Juice at Bingin to be like a crazy checking the forecast sites taking notes and calculating...I have been back from G-Land not long ago and wanted to go to Deserts or stay on Bali...or maybe go to Scars?! My possible buddies for the trip Eddie and Nick were more inclined to go to G-Land after the perfection of Speedies and ended up going jungle camping taking the Californian Christian Fletcher along with them.

I had already decided to stay in Bali and went to check the last “golden red” sunset on the ocean at Ulus totally flat a few hours before the swell arrive...the will to hit the road was big but the risk of swapping something sure for something that was a doubt was a fact…I checked my notes again (probably by the 100th time) and decided impulsively to hit the road and don’t look back as the degrees of the swell’s angle were promising and there was a chance of this swell to also arrive at the Point.

Before hitting the road I went to have dinner with my Peruvian friend Jorge, owner and captain of the boat Irish Mist on the Mentawais and his Brazilian girlfriend Rebeca that in disbelief watched me as I left the Thai restaurant at Bingin…

Soon after started my “solo mission”...To some people (or maybe to the majority) travel alone is something boring and lonely; for me is the best…the feeling of not depending on anyone besides the so many lonely moments to reflect on life to me are priceless!!

And that’s how I went onto Padang Bai direction to get the midnight ferry…at 05:30 I was arriving at Lembar and around 06:30 I was already on the beach at the Point looking lines of 4 feet perfect that were peeling over the reef with only 3 guys in the water…JACKPOT!!

While the guys from Curitiba Gutinho of Rasta Mind and Marlon and the carioca Kadu from Rio were feasting in the water another car pulled up with 6 Brazilians (4 guys and 2 girlfriends) that had arrived earlier that morning and had slept at Sulaeman besides Rodrigo “Canabrava” aka “the Tales teller” or “the Throat” and a friend that had arrived by bike and were staying on the beach and a couple more Aussies that were on the same ferry as I and arrived mid morning after checking in at some guest house half way to the Point...I went to the water with the feeling that soon cars, motorbikes and boats would start to appear but the hours went by and no one else showed up…it was to good to be true... perfect Deserts with less then 10 guys in the water...honestly there has been more than 10 years since last time I got the Point like that...everyone in the water was grinning alone and the number of set waves was almost always bigger then the number of takers in position on the point...after almost 4 hours surfing I went in “stoked” to grab something to eat and relax a bit...I was laying down in my hammock listening to my ipod taking a nap and woke up every time the sets exploded on the reef with the noise each time louder of the waves that were coming bigger and bigger announcing an epic late afternoon session...At one stage the “Tales teller” went out even when the tide was full and did good…got many waves of 5 solid feet, got barreled, thrown a layback and got everyone up on the beach...even with the high tide and sideshore winds the waves were a bit more wobbly but still opened some heavy barrels and offered good sections for top turns and carves...it was hard to wait for the right tide time…I hold myself a few more hours and went back out with the tide far from ideal…in the water a strange group of 6 surfers from Switzerland that had arrived by boat was drawing attention…in fact it was a group of friends snowboarders and skaters that surf only 15 days a year and fall from the sky right at the Point...they dropped every wave straight and didn’t have the any idea of the dangers that surrounded them…I told them about tide that was dropping fast now and about the coral heads and in less than half hour they had disappear...and to my luck I was awarded with the wave of the trip according to the crew…a left of 6 feet solid where I found a nice barrel, faded the bottom turn to the maximum and let the section throw over far in front of me getting tubed until past the front of the warungs where I came out by the emergency exit before the bomb pinched the exit door on the shallowest part of the reef that could end up with some heavy consequences... Rodrigo “Canabrava” registered many moments of this wave with my camera that even without using the zoom can give a good idea of the size of the wave and the distance ridden...and the day kept going by, the tide kept running out, the waves kept dropping a bit and the barrels kept opening more and more...and again Gutinho, Marlon and Kadu went out and everyone got stoked…specially Gutinho that according to Marlon that saw one of his waves from up and close said that he got a big and deep barrel...and the late afternoon session that was promising to be an epic session ended up been depressing...the sets stopped coming and we stay floating for about one hour or more…

At night at Sulaeman we celebrated the birthday of one of the Brazilians that was staying there and I told everyone of the privilege we were having of scoring Deserts like that with that number of people…an utopia these days…

The following day showed very few sets early in the morning to the early birds and soon after the “Point” close down again…

I came back to Bali with that feeling of being privileged with something really special or as my friend Nick was saying before the swell had arrived “One last dance”.

Now is about waiting to see if this was really the last dance or if the unpredictable Indonesia still got some other card up its sleeve to show us in this end of season…whoever is alive will see...

ALOHA!!

Rodrigo “Digone”