COVID was mostly bad, but there were a few good things that came of it. Photo: YouTube
The COVID lockdowns were a strange time in our recent past. By April of 2020, around half the the world’s population was under some form of stay-at-home or social distancing order.
Nearly four billion people from more than 90 countries were under those orders, and depending on the research, they were “generally effective at reducing the spread of COVID-19, therefore flattening the curve.” When it first became a thing, I couldn’t stop thinking about how weird and wonderful it would be to be trapped at a tropical surf destination with all but empty lineups. A few people were in that exact position, and Nic von Rupp was one of them.
“How about surfing Macaronis in the Mentawais with just your buddies out?” he wrote. “That’s basically what happened on this trip, and you bet that’s not very common.”
Nic and his friends were aiming for a big swell at Greenish, but their first stop was at Macaronis. The waves were, as Nic calls them, “very fun-sized, perfect waves,” and the lineup was sparse, to say the least.
“In this raw version you can see everything that made this trip so special,” Nic continued. “From leaving the island to taking turns to drive the boat at night and arriving to Macas for a super fun session.”
A surf trip like Nic’s is just a tiny sliver of a silver lining in an absolutely terrible time and the negatives of the Covid pandemic far outweigh the positives… but Nic’s positive was a particularly heavy one.
