Tuesday SpotCheck: Desert Point, Indonesia
Lombok has the best, and most fickle, wave in the world.
Has anyone else’s head been getting done in by the recent run of swell in Indo clogging up ya feed? Be it the double-ups at HT’s, the Nias perfection for the QS comp, G-land on fire, Ivan and Nathan Fletcher’s drops from the Mentawais its been an endless run of blue-green tubes being forcibly injected into my eyeballs. And yet it’s the Desert Point footage that always hurts the most (see below for Skip McCullough from this week).
“I’ve had a few tubes in my time, but I had one at Desert Point that was by far the longest,” Dingo Morrison once told me. “Longer than I’ve had at Kirra, longer, well longer than anywhere.” He went on to recount a wave at Desert Point where he logged a continuous 25-seconds behind the curtain.
The thing is, you don’t have to have the skills of a pro to rack up tube time like this. 20-second tubes can happen to anyone, anytime Deserts turns on. It’s no wonder then whenever the “Best Wave in The World” debate kicks into life, be it in surf magazines or beach bars, it’s not long before “Deserts” muscles into the argument and to the top of the list.
It is pure mechanical perfection; a combination of a just right wave refraction hitting a perfect arc of coral reef, all airbrushed by offshore trades that blow firm and sure all winter long.
And if it all sounds too good to be true, well, that’s because it kinda is. This is by no means a consistent wave and several often elusive factors have to all come together at the same time for it to turn on. A massive just-right southwest direction swell has to coincide with a band of tide that happens only a few days each month.
In addition, its location at Bangko Bangko, Lombok’s most western point on the very tip of the world’s deepest and most dangerous stretches of water, the Lombok Strait can mean massive lulls will destroy the line-up. That or one of the strongest sweeps on Earth will start to pick you up, whisking you out at 40 knots past the take-off zone and into the bowels of the pirate-riddled strait.
But all the pain is forgotten as soon as, like magic, Desert’s switches on. An easy take-off launches you into an ever-growing perfectly pitching wave. The razor-sharp coral gets closer and closer to your fins as you progress, leading to a point where you are either locked in for one of the most orgasmic tubes of your life or cop a strafing across a live, bacteria-filled cheese grater. Further down the point, The Grower section is shorter, heavier and handles far more size. For pros and nutcases only (of which both are always in plenty of supply).
The original OG’s, pioneers of the wave in the 1980 and 1990s, of which Surf Bugle fan Grant “Cabbage” Conrick was one, would camp out for months living off rice and warm Bintang waiting for the elusive swells. The weeks of hard labour (and malaria) would pay off with four-day swells and no crowds. These days, with the improved transport links and surf forecasting, most Bali-based surfers just wait for the right swell, then bomb over via the capital Mataram. Crowds are now always an issue every time it breaks. Also, there are now far more clean and comfortable accommodation options on the point, where you can wait out the flat spells in far my style than old Cabbage did back in the day.
For less perfection and more forgiveness, the waves around the village of Kuta, lying about a 3-hour bemo drive away, offer more variety. Mawi is a consistent left, while Grupek is a huge bay about 7 km to the east of Kuta. The sweeping bay is home to five different spots, both left and rights, which work on various tides, wind and swell combinations.
When to go: May to September. Like the rest of Indonesia, the southeast trade winds blow and are offshore here.
Airport: Fly into Denpasar Bali (DPS), then either car and ferry it to Lombok, or a domestic flight into Lombok’s capital Mataram.
Boards: No turns, just tubes so normal shortboards, just maybe a little narrower and pinnier.
Accommodation: There is losmen-style accommodation in Bangko Bangko, or options in Kuta (Lombok) or Kuta (Bali).
Other waves: As mentioned Grupek Bay, while Mawi, also near Kuta is a left that throws up a few meaty barrels.
After Dark: Bottles of Bintang and tales of the day’s surfing are about as good as it gets.