By Phil Jarratt
Last week after posting on social media a photo of a nice wave I’d just surfed in Bali, I found myself swamped with requests to reveal the location. I responded with the oldie but goodie: I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.
When you’re a really ancient surfer, old habits die hard, and the myth of the secret spot is one that we cling to like a life raft in a gale.
Of course there’s no such thing as a secret spot in Bali any more, but there are some places less well-known than others, and this was one of them. But it’s all relative. Now there’s a $200 a night boutique hotel with an infinity pool where once were paddocks in front of the rocky point, but I’m very comfortable there, thank you very much, and I can still get my share of the long lefthanders that peel across the reef.
A couple of nights earlier we’d been discussing this very same secret spot over a baked fish dinner at a bench in the Kuta night markets – another piece of old Bali that hasn’t changed – with John and Val Haymes, the founders of Tubes Surfers Bar in Poppies II.
John and I came to the conclusion that we’d both stumbled on this place in the same dry season of 1980, about the same time our Kuta-based crew also started venturing through the rice paddies to Canggu, where a single warung proudly bearing the name “Chew and Spew” stood next to the temple at what is now Echo Beach.
The difference is that while Canggu has become high density living and the home of the Russian surf schools – God help us! – Secret Spot West remains invitingly rural.
I can sit in the infinity pool sipping a sunset beer and look out over an endless untouched coastline (apart from scattered fishing villages) stretching towards Java, visible across the channel.
I remember the first time I saw this wave-rich coast, back in 1974 as we bounced towards Java on the “express bus” packed with chicken-toting locals.
We spied waves as the road dipped onto the coast at Soka, and there were enticing glimpses of reef set-ups through the palm trees for the next 20 kilometres.
But for the next six years, with so many perfect waves going unridden every day on the Bukit peninsula, there was no need to mount a mission.
I’d previously mentioned in this column surfing this spot for the first time in 1975, but John and Val set me straight on that, and they had the photos to prove it.
I can’t recall if it was the arrival of the Brazilians or the Japanese that made us start to think it was time to tuck our boards under our butts and point our motorbikes in the other direction, but I do remember parking them at a roadside warung and running excitedly down a track to a Muslim fishing village with a long, rocky point to its left.
And there they were – long lines of beautiful empty waves, peeling for section after section.
Like Crescent Head, Green Island, Greenmount and even Noosa’s First Point, Secret Spot West went out of fashion for a couple of decades, deemed a bit slow and clunky compared with the more recent discovery of slabs and hairy reef passes, but for longboarders all of these places remain a particular kind of paradise.
And for me, four beautiful long sessions there over two days last week was a very special therapy.
Give me a Corkarita!
Our friends Corky and Raquel Carroll lead a wonderful life at their beachfront surf camp at La Saladita, Mexico, punctuated a few times a year by Corky’s need to perform a sellout gig in his role as one of America’s leading surfer/musicians.
Such was the case when they flew out of Zihuatanejo last week bound for Orlando, Florida, and a big open air concert as part of the Surf Expo trade show.
First stop was Mexico City, where they picked up Raquel’s mum, then back on a plane for Atlanta, Georgia.
Mid-flight they were informed with no explanation that their flight had been diverted to Birmingham, Alabama, and while waiting six hours there for a connection to Orlando, Corky learnt that his gig had been cancelled due to the impending arrival of Hurricane Irma. Ticketed out of Orlando, the Carrolls had to arrive there before they could leave, so they kept heading towards the eye of the storm.
Meanwhile, an earthquake hitting 8.1 on the Richter scale rocked Mexico not far from their home, with a tsunami of epic proportions expected to smash the Saladita coast. It seemed like wherever they went, they were heading for trouble.
In Orlando after just one day. the Surf Expo shut down as people evacuated Florida. Corky, Raquel and Mum waited another two days before they could get seats on a plane, then managed to get out just an hour or so before the airport was shut down.
The good news is that when they finally got home, the tsunami had proved to be a fizzer, their home was untouched, and there was a new swell just starting to hit the point.
Every evening around sunset, Corky mixes up a delicious and potent jug of cocktails he calls “Corkaritas”.
I bet he had a few that night.
