31 August 2009
Eating alone is pleasant when you're looking for solitude. Having mates tuck in with you is a pleasure. Then there is this dining experience: boatloads of tourists chomping at the bit for morsels of the KFC buffet, with only the whiff of the colonel's special herbs and spices to go on, or maybe the left-over mayo sachets trampled underfoot by the stampede. I've been eating like the latter of late, says Glen Thompson
In the two weeks in early August that I was in the southern Mentawais, the surfing smorgasbord of warm, tropical waves breaking over coral reef was shared more with the bustle of charter boats than just the crew at the Macaronis Resort. And this was surf tourism during the recession!
Don't get me wrong, I didn't have a bum trip to the Mentawais. Yes, the mixed bag of three Saffers, two Swiss, five Californians and two Aussies I was with got waves. Not five-star but pretty decent nonetheless. Not a day went by without a session and I clocked up lots of hours in the water. The swell was consistent and we got to sample a couple of choice spots: HT's provided some introductory lessons to why the surgeon's table should be avoided (patient Byron decided booties were a good thing from this point on in the trip); Macaroni's delivered, and delivered some more, even in cross-onshores; Thunders just boomed louder and louder over the three days we were moored there on the Laut India . Greenbush's on the high tide was little more than trying to catch a speeding train in a tunnel. Oh, and the Macca's left, well, it delivered round, fast and bashable walls - repeatedly.
Compared to my first trip this one was just peachy. The first thing my mate Grant asked our host when we arrived in Padang fresh from the airport was: “We are leaving on the boat tonight?” An innocent question although raising the spectre of a 2006 surf trip I was on with him and eight other Saffers who had booked their virgin Indo trip on the Indies Explorer.
The dear Captain had bought us all beers, sat us down at a fairly decent Padang hotel, and asked us if we wanted to hear the good or bad news. We opted for the bad as there is no such thing as bad news when you have just escaped all responsibilities of home and work. We laughed: “Good joke, mate.” But the skipper was dead serious: the boat's engine had the day before packed up. It didn't need a little tinkering to get going. It basically needed a new engine. So, marooned in Padang and pondering if our travel insurance or surf tour operator would cough up for the trip, we indulged in the good news. We were to be transported to the newly build Aliota Resort, north of the Sipora Island area in the middle of the Mentawai Island chain. So this was not the boat charter we had hoped for yet it turned out to be a great adventure. It gave me a taste for the Mentawais.
What made Grant's question more pertinent was that it was the same boat, although now under new management, that we were to be heading out to the Macaronis Resort on the North Pagai Island . Thankfully, our host had no bad news for us and I woke the next morning at sunrise nearing our first surf stop. Yet, I'm not sure if Laut India is all what it used to be: diesel fumes waft over the deck and through the cabins making, which strangely makes it easier to sleep through a voyage topping no more than six knots. It got us to our destination at the Macaronis Resort and then a few days later we headed further south to scope out Thunders. Admittedly, the magic of the boat wears off after a day or so. I felt pity and a large measure of relief at the space we had on board the Laut India after meeting a feral gang of Kiwis cruising around on a diminutive fishing boat-cum-surf charter which had less space to swing a freshly caught fish.
Romanticising the Mentawais is not an option despite the desire to do so after consuming too many magazine, web and DVD images of this surf rich island playground. For one thing, any more west than south swell that opens Dungeon's gates doesn't get to Macaronis except as a faded secondary swell. A localised tropical storm will destroy any illusions of having that final gorging overhead barrel before saying farewell to the islands. What I was glad to have experienced was staying at the Macaronis Resort in air-conditioned bungalows overlooking a quaint mangrove lagoon where I could rid myself of a boat swaying gait but then opt to head south on the Indies when the swell dropped.
Yet, not all was surfing. Sony Muchnizon, the Laut India skipper and surf guide who hails from the Mentawais, took the resort crew to visit one of the local villages to get a first hand view of the conditions under which the primary school learners get educated. The village was set back from the sea and our entry was via a serpentine river on motorised wooden longboats. We passed two old women paddling a wooden dug out canoe, off to catch fish for dinner under their palm-leafed hats. The village itself had a planned laid-out: built on a marsh, wooden homes with dug out canoes alongside followed a concrete pathway with intermittent tsunami warning signs pointing you up the hill to solid ground on which the Catholic Church was positioned.
Notices showing older and recent evidence of Surf Aid's health campaign were dotted about. The school was one long building with three classrooms, each subdivided to house two classes. It was much in need of much repair but the children's spirits did not seemed dampened by their surroundings as their voices sounded off well recited songs. As part of the resort's voluntary responsible tourism programme, we contributed educational materials to the school by handing out booklets, pencils and a few other items to the learners. Smiles do not need language.
This is the other side of surfing in the Mentawais and brings a much needed human face to the consumption of waves off and around Indonesian archipelago (or anywhere else for that matter). Land based surf tourism contributes more to local economic development than the boat charters do - although there are moves afoot to regulate moorings so that boats pay a fee to a local village when they stop over at a famed surf break.
There is already a practice for a Mentawaian villager to paddle out in a canoe to collect a tax in the form of cash, diesel or other goods from a boat load of surfer puling into barrels near to his home. Resorts, like the Macaronis Resort, employ staff from local villages and surfer spend does trickle into the villages through visits like the one described above and through a nominal community tourism tax. Yet, the context of poverty is not much changed as a result of surf tourism's impact over the last decade or so.
I left the Mentawais sated yet empty. My surfie psyche was stoked after days of peak experiences: my wave quotient was full, although I had broken my favourite 6'8” board; my body was tanned but sore and I was starching as if I had fleas after floating in a bath of plankton-like jellyfish; and I had had one of the best barrels of my life at Macca's on the second last day of the trip with only the resort crew in the water. I had eaten well but still felt part of the developing world dining on the fruits of the developed.
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