Waves that disappear, salt-water crocs and an
upcoming apocalypse! Come to the Mentawais before it all goes to
hell!
It’s a surf-photo studio, these pretty little islands
halfway along the Sumatran coast, neither west nor
east. Their proximity to the equator, one-and-half degrees off it
in most places, means y’get, mostly, desultory winds and, in
season, roaring south swells, coming all the way from the tip of
South Africa.
But I wonder, how much do you know about these islands that fill
our magazines, that decorate our websites and provide the
promotional material for every surf co and colour all performance
surf films?
Did you know, for instance…
1. Doomsday approaches!
Geologists believe we have 150-year earthquake cycles. And the
Mentawais are at the epicentre of the Pacific Ring of Fire where
tectonic plates meet. It’s an even chance there’ll be a monster
rumble within 30 years; something that’ll make the quake of 2009
look like a kid’s party. Plenty of villagers got the message
when the Boxing Day and Nias tsunamis went down a decade ago and
moved shop into the hills thus surviving 2009’s quake.
2. But not the village at Greenbush
You know Greenbush? Craig Ando, Damo Hobgood, etc, riding the
most picturesque of lefthand barrels? There used to be a village of
200 people right there. They got… swatted in the
2009 tsunami. The village evaporated. An entire community wiped
out. Go there now and it looks like a steamroller drove through the
jungle.
3. Boat SOP for surviving a tsunami
When the Boxing Day tsunami in 2004 killed quarter of a million
people in 14 countries and sunk hundreds of boats, an
English sailor-surveyor was in Aceh, got his boat off
anchor and climbed … just… over the
tsunamis. What did he learn? That you need to anchor in a minimum
of seven metres of water to have a chance of survival and you need
to have some kinda quick-release on your anchor. Good boats will
anchor… deep. Fifteen metres or more .
4. Salt-water crocs and orcas too!
Rare in the open ocean, but it happens. They live in the
estuaries that meander up the islands. If you wanna buy one, and
who doesn’t, go to the right village and they’ll get you a baby for
a couple of hundred thousand rupiah. Keep him on chain. Feed
chicken. Little pods of orcas come by every season too (impossible
to catch or buy).
5. The waves disappear!
Every time the tectonic plates shift, reefs move upwards, in
feet, not inches. Back in ’91 Martin Daly took Pottz and
Tom Carroll to a monster lefthander. When a quake a decade later
hit, the reef moved five feet. Gone. Happens all over the chain.
It’s called “uplift.” Waves appear; waves disappear.
6. Illegal logging is mostly over
Illegal logging was rife forever in the Mentawais. Who didn’t
want some of that gorgeous Sumatran lumber? Then, two years ago,
the governor of the Mentawais got sprung with $17 million in
his account and was slapped in chains. Since he split, the logging
has stopped.
7. Jamie O’Brien keeps a container at Lance’s
Left
It contains SUPs, a jet-ski and a mother lode of surfboards. He
visits a lot with his guy pals.
8. Locals won’t stay at the Bumi Minang Hotel
in Padang
In the 2009 earthquake, it was pancaked. Hundreds of westerners
died. Locals say it is haunted by the ghosts of all those poor
souls and refuse to go there. One skipper I spoke to said he saw
dozens of bodies being stacked like cord wood.
9. Overcrowding is hitting a critical mass
At least it is around the Playgrounds area, home to the
well-known waves Rifles, Bank Vaults, E-Bay, Nokanduis etc. There’s
at least seven resorts, various boats and innumerable home stays.
Thirty people in the water? It ain’t rare. Who wants to fly, drive,
fly, sail, and squat in a crowd?
10. It’s mostly Christian
Did you know that in this vast archipelago, the greatest and
most wonderful concentration of muslims in the world, that the
Mentawais is… Christian? Gorgeous little
infidels right here in Allah’s paw! Turns out the missionaries were
the only ones who could give enough of a damn to trek through the
jungles and build and pay for infrastructure. The biggest
structure, therefore, in this chain is a church. The payback is the
Mentawais don’t receive the kind of government funding as, say, the
nearby Telo islands where Islam dominates.