July 4th 2023: The Bukit

The Bukit is kind of like a lolly scramble of lineups. Even with a small swell there are so many options and no matter which one you choose you always have this feeling that somewhere else might be even better. I've always struggled with this. But it is impossible to surf everywhere all at once.

We're also a slow-moving beast with four of us in the family surfing ... I'm a bit reluctant to have the kids join the daily scooter battle on the streets of Bali. Somewhere along the way I recalled the sage advice of a person with far more wisdom than me: "Surf what's in front of you".

The great thing about staying at Bingin is that you're smack bang in the middle of the heavily hipster influenced village with cafes like The Cashew Tree and Drifters oiling the wheels of an incredibly beautiful and fit culture of beach people. Thankfully they tolerate the surfers in their midsts.

Bingin is a grindy left at the bottom of a very long flight of irregular stairs. They're quite hard to navigate in the pre-dawn light and especially when distracting sets are looming. With a small swell it is a run and gun wave with no time for any hesitation. Great for kids who can rip. Quite difficult for adults who can't. A bit more size and it would be all on.

Further up the coast from Bingin you have Impossibles and then Padang Padang and finally Uluwatu. All of them are fairytale waves on their day. But that day didn't coincide with our week on the Bukit.

Of the three, Impossibles seemed to pick up the most swell and so this became our main focus. The crowd is way more relaxed than Uluwatu and because it is a long walk and a fairly long paddle to get to, it gathers way less of a crowd. It's still a super fast wave, but the bigger sets iron out the kinks.

Impossibles was kind of a saviour with such a small swell running all week. We were grateful for it and the entire Bingin experience.

See you at the reef ... Derek

PS Our next stop: Nusa Lembongan. We arrived a few days ago now and already encountered one of the most bizarre surf experiences yet. Firstly, there is a giant crane rusting slowly on the reef. It was brought in to remove a shipwreck at a break called Shippies. It's still there. Worse still, an Australian man in his 50s had paid three Indonesians to "guide" him at Shipwrecks. That meant two of them would block any surfers paddling for a wave and the other one would push him in like you might a child who is learning to surf. The sets were slow – one every seven minutes. He got the best wave everytime. He dropped in on me twice and I got blocked several more times. They also dropped in on my kids. He laughed about it out the back. I felt ashamed for him. He was stoked. It was a cruel metaphor of everything that is wrong in this world. In a few days the swell kicks in finally ... after a 14-day wait. Who knows what that will look like on an island with so few surf breaks. Until next time ...