I went to Nias in 1984

by Davo

My three months in Sri Lanka had been bittersweet. I had ventured there as a medical volunteer, after a frustrating 1st year of medical school at U.C.L.A. I never really took to L.A. and more often than not, found myself claustrophobic, wishing that I was back surfing Blacks with the boys. The year was 1984 and I'd set out for Sri Lanka the last minute with a new friend from school.

What a classic guy; whereas I'd grown up on the beach and had surfed for years, Paul grew up 20 miles from the beach, started surfing late and was more committed to finding waves than anyone I'd ever met. Starting surfing later in life can be a dangerous thing, everyone knows that these guys get the fever the worst.

We had had some incredible experiences volunteering. The first day our mentor, an Indian surgeon named Wijemane, had asked us if we'd done surgery. "Sure" we said, lying through our teeth and hoping to see some action. So we accompanied him to a little room where a petite brown woman was lying on a gurney waiting for a tubal ligation operation. As soon as the anesthesia kicked in, he took a scalpel blade with no handle and cut across the abdomen. Reaching in he fished out a fallopian tube to show us and smiled.

Between the heat, the humidity and the lack of a good meal, I never had a chance. I noticed that I suddenly felt overwhelmingly hot and that my vision was starting to waver, like a TV screen on the blink. By the time I reached the door, everything looked far away as though I was peering through binoculars backwards. Stepping outside, I removed my mask and discretely fainted. When I came to, Paul was unconscious on top of me.

Inside I could hear the surgeon laughing hysterically. "It seems our young doctors are not used to the third world." Sitting against the wall, covered with sweat, I looked at Paul who was stumbling to his knees, and whispered, "I think it is going to be a long summer." He nodded weakly. If Sri Lanka had been exciting on the one hand, it had been equally frustrating on the other, hunting for waves. We quickly tired of the muddy, monsoon generated waves. On one bigger day I had kicked out only to get sucked into a true to life whirlpool. I felt like I'd been flushed down a toilet. I hit bottom 8 feet down and came up about 10 yards away. Believe me, that was then end of that session.

We spent a week surfing in Aragum Bay which was fun. Aragum Bay is one of those classic set ups with losmonds on the edge of a big game reserve, the only problem is that it doesn't catch enough swell and you find yourself constantly thinking, "If only this place were about 6 feet bigger." In desperation, we began exploring the south of Sri Lanka and it was there that we met an outgoing Aussie named Chris. He had just broken two ribs surfing Indonesia and was just passing time on his way to India.

One night when we were hammered Chris took out a little pouch and said with a certain sense of gravity, "I am going to let you guys in on a little secret; though I really shouldn't." Reaching in he pulled out a stack of photographs. Almost every photograph showed someone tube riding in a huge right barrel and some of the photographs were so similar that you had to put them side to side to prove the weren't duplicates. "Yeah, I just surfed this wave off the coast of Sumatra and it's flawless." Paul and I looked at each other and within two minutes we made a pact to go there.

That night, after we bought Chris innumerable beers, we convinced him to tell us where this paradise lay. Taking out a napkin, he drew us a rough map. "First you fly to Singapore, then take the buses up through Malaysia. Fly from Penang to Medan, that's a pit of a city if ever there was one, then take buses out to the coast. Ask for Lagunid Bay, people will know where to take you.

Two weeks later we were off. I must admit that flying across the Indian Ocean with a napkin as my itinerary seemed a bit risky, but what the hell. Singapore and Malaysia were fantastic but the novelty of riding buses soon wore off, and by the time we hit Medan in Central Sumatra, we were pretty low. Lying in my mosquito net, basting in the humidity, I wondered if the whole thing was just a hoax. We flew the final leg over jungles so dense that the canopies of trees covered entire valleys. They say that when planes go down in those jungles they don't even look for them.

Finally, we arrived on Nias and as we walked the final path through the jungle we were peaking with anticipation. Stepping through the last clearing, I saw something I will never forget.

A huge clean wall was breaking perfectly across the reef. I watched a surfer lazily bottom turn and pull in deep only to come out far, far down the line. I'd never seen anything like it, and I just stood there completely awestruck. The next three waves were equally perfect.

We surfed Nias for six weeks straight, day in and day out, and it never got below 4-6 feet. I'd never experienced tubes like this the kind where you are so relaxed that you just stand inside and watch the sections open and close in front of you. The Seventy's quote, that time expands in the tube, may be scoffed at, but something feels different. Who knows, maybe some future generation Einstein will explain it all to us.

When I got back to school something was different for me, and over the last decade and a half the sense of wanderlust has never left me, it has probably just grown stronger. I don't know if there is any great moral to this story only that surfing remains a beautiful and dynamic process, with a million potential experiences for anyone who seeks them.

So, be happy and go surfing.

Davo