The author’s brother, Matt, looking out over the Uluwatu lineup. Photo: Bernie Baker
The Inertia’s recent story highlighting the calamitous cliff restoration project currently underway in Uluwatu, Bali, brought to mind the first time I found myself looking up at the distinctive, multi-tiered meru shrine at the Pura Luhur Uluwatu temple, not in its dramatic setting at the edge of the precipice, but from the water.
The year was 1984, when I found myself on the back of legendary surf traveler Randy Rarick’s motorcycle, bumping and sliding along the crushed limestone track that weaved its way through the Bukit Peninsula’s tended fields and open glens to the ravine at Uluwatu. The trail, tough to negotiate even on a dirt bike, had only been cut a few days earlier — before this you had to walk in from the temple road. In fact, we had hired as porters two young Pecatu village girls, Wayan and Made, who would follow behind on foot, carrying our boards on their heads the entire two miles. The three dollars they’d earn this day would triple what they might make stooping in the terraced rice paddies or grinding limestone in a quarry.
It was a hot morning, and the young acacias lining the trail into Ulu threw little shade. Quiet, too, save for the northeast trade wind sifting through the trees and the extraordinarily placid sound of hardwood bells tolling from the graceful necks of Bali’s delicate, doe-like cattle. And of course, the scream of our 250cc engine winding out in third gear.
When Randy and I got to the bluff above the reef we couldn’t see the surf yet, but could hear a distant booming, like some sort of demolition was happening on the far side of the trees. From where we parked our bike under a low, cane-thatched shed a well-worn track wound down to the mouth of the ravine and here it was cool under the canopy of mimosa that choked the walls of the gully. Down, then around a corner and suddenly there’s Uluwatu staring you right in the face, one of the great sights — the great moments — in all of surfing. The craggy limestone cliff, the open mouth of the cave that leads through to the reef, the blue and silver waves, dark coral bottom refracted up into their faces; the uniformity of the curl, not toppling like falling dominoes, but just moving down the line, across our field of vision, like a lace curtain falling sideways.
It was big: 10-foot plus and cracking off the far section known as Outside Corner. By the time I got there in the mid-1980s, Uluwatu was already crowded and the time of legends past. But Outside Corner, which only breaks on the biggest of swells and with just the right tide, was still the realm of heroes.
“Yeah…” said Randy. “Finally some real waves. We’re out there.”
Randy Rarick, renowned surf explorer, founder of the modern pro surfing tour and big wave hellman, was certainly a heroic figure and I’d have followed him just about anywhere. But I have to admit when he nonchalantly said, “We’re out there,” my stomach started to churn. By the time Made and Wayan finally showed up with our boards, I had a full gut-wrench going. We had stood on the north side of the ravine, under the eaves of the first of the open-air, thatched-roof warungs to be built, and watched the sets building. Along with all the chattering Balinese board carriers, kids and vendors, there was a full contingent of international surfers on hand, Japanese, Brazilian, American and Aussie. Only a few had ventured out, braving the slippery bamboo ladder down into the sea cave, then paddling out through the echoing, wave-lashed cavern, into the daylight and across the reef. Most of the rides this morning were short: spectacular drops and horrible wipeouts. One guy broke his leash and his board was swept down the coast toward Padang-Padang. We all rushed to the edge of the bluff and saw him caught in the rip that raced along the base of the cliff, battered by soup, clinging to jagged limestone, desperately trying not to overshoot the mouth of the cave, everyone’s worst high-tide nightmare.
Like most of the surfers up on the cliff, I was intimated by Uluwatu’s Outside Corner. It was different back then. In the same way that Hawaii’s Sunset Beach used to be considered the ultimate big wave, Outside Corner was then considered Bali’s heaviest challenge, and to be honest, I didn’t know if I was up to it; comfortable at Ulu’s main peak and the Racetrack was one thing, charging the Corner’s deepwater boomers something else entirely.
To be even more honest, I didn’t want to have to go out. But I did, following Randy like some medieval squire, with Made carrying my 6’6″ Al Merrick pintail — the biggest board I had and still about a foot too short for the conditions — down to the top of the cave. I lingered for a moment at the ladder, gulping a few breaths. Made, 16, having been a board carrier since she was 12 and already surf-savvy beyond her years, stood next to me, bracing her sturdy legs and battered feet easily on the slimy limestone. She looked me in the face, biting her own lip. At that moment, this strange, quiet little slip of a girl in the tattered skirt and dirty t-shirt knew me better than anyone else in the world.
“Let the first wave go by,” she said. “Don’t take close outs.”
Then she handed me my board. Made intuitively knew what kind of surfer Sam George was. But that I was going out anyway.
We actually made it into the lineup with our heads dry — a miracle of good timing. From out in the water the cliffs at Uluwatu look even more foreboding, white stone streaked with green creepers and vines, undercut beyond vertical, topped with thick stands of trees and dense shrubs. In fact, back then the cave was the only way to access the wave at Uluwatu or any other beach along the southwestern tip of Bali. Legend has it that in the 17th century a resolute band of Hindu pendetas, or priests, rather than face capture by invading Javanese, threw themselves from the walls of the Uluwatu temple and into the sea. Few surfers are that devout and if not for the ravine and the cave, Ulu probably wouldn’t have been surfed for years. Yet as I paddled out over the dark water toward the outside lineup, trailing Randy by about five strokes, I felt a fleeting kinship with those suicidal holymen. Except that my ritual demise would be a much more protracted affair: a knot of Balinese kids and nervous surfers stood watching, high on the cliff, waiting for me to hit the water with a splash.
I didn’t, at least not right away. Big black swells stacked up a mile up the reef, past a section known as “The Temple of Doom,” so there were no surprises; we could all see the sets coming, the half-dozen or so surfers who had made it to the Outside Corner. Exactly who wanted one of those big waves was an entirely different matter. When swells hit the Corner, they bend with sudden definition, and the relentless Indian Ocean power band suddenly has a launching pad. Positioned properly, the kink in the wall allows you to get into the wave early and take a fairly easy drop. Then, like a steeplechaser emerging from a water jump, the wave re-gathers momentum and races off full-speed toward the Northern Hemisphere. The key is getting in that slot, and not being left behind, mowed down by the curl. At the end of one of these watery express rides, you kick out and paddle hard, not back up the reef, but straight out to sea, off the tracks, so that the next freight train doesn’t run you down.
I survived three cycles of this action, rode three big waves all the way across the reef and felt that I could now go in with at least a shred of dignity. Trouble was, the tide had dropped considerably by this point, which meant that I couldn’t simply straighten off after my last ride and prone the soup in toward the mouth of the cave. The coral on the inside section was now high and dry: 100 yards of sharp and tricky, all the way to the cliff base. At this tide, going in meant riding right up onto the reef, gingerly gaining a foothold, then high-stepping over the damp coral to the dry stuff before the next wall of soup roared in.
I tried this after my third ride, but as I neared the edge of where water met dry coral the sight of the next set, chewing its way down the reef like some gargantuan shark feeding on a whale carcass, so terrified me that I turned tail and scurried back out to the relative safety of the lineup, hoping to try again during a real lull.
There were none — the swell was too strong, too beautiful, too perfect for real big-wave men like Randy. At the end of each wave I tried to go in, and each time was scared back out into deep water. Easily the most daunting surf session of my life: afraid to go out and now afraid to go in. Sitting in the lineup after another perfunctory ride, I burned with silent self-recrimination, but in my distress decided on a plan of action — or non-action, as it were. It was simple, really. So long as I didn’t do anything stupid the big walls were safe enough to ride — thrilling, actually. I’d just do that for three or four hours, waiting for the tide to fill in and cover the reef enough so that I could just sail back into the cave on my belly.
My proud first session at Outside Corner Uluwatu.
I surfed through an entire tidal shift, almost five hours in total. The kids up on the cliff must’ve wondered why, when I kicked out at the end of each ride, I’d crane my neck and frantically look toward shore, rather than out to where the waves were, before heading back out. I was sunburned, tired and thirsty when I finally took my last wave in, proned out in the soup, paddled back through the cleft and into the cave, and then dragged myself out of the water and onto the cool, damp sand of the limestone cavern. I dropped to my knees, not only exhausted, but humiliated; so obvious was my trepidation, surely everyone saw what I was up to. Then I heard the kid’s voices, echoing from up above.
“Samgeorge! Samgeorge!” they cried in their pidgin, sing-song patois. “Ironman! Ironman!” I looked up and saw Made picking her way down the rickety bamboo; she would carry my board up back into the sunlight. Behind her danced a few of the younger gang, shirtless and shoeless, backlit and hopping around like tree frogs.
“Samgeorge, five hours! Samgeorge, five hours!” they chanted. “Ironman!”
Made just picked up my board and, coiling a towel on top of her head, balanced it and walked back up the ladder, no hands. I followed shakily and when I got to the warung there was my brother Matt, along with good friends Jimmy Hunter and Bernie Baker, who had all been surfing that morning in Kuta. Randy, who after getting enough waves simply got out when he wanted, was sitting in the shade, finishing a lunch of baked avocado, cheese and tomato jaffles and a Bintang beer. Wayan stood behind him, idly massaging his neck and shoulders.
The safety of the cave, which looks bigger than it is here. It can be a challenge to reach in big swell. Photo: Mark Wilson
“You got some good waves,” he said.
“Yeah,” I muttered, then sat down next to Randy in a rattan deck chair. A little brown grommet, Froggy actually was his name, brought me a cold bottle of Coke.
“Five hours.” Froggy whispered to Made, as she stood next to me, wiping sweat from her forehead with her towel.
“Sure,” she said bluntly. “Ironman.” Then, to me, and just me:
“Let’s go.”
Made knew my go-out wouldn’t stand up to too much scrutiny. I got up and followed her, letting Randy take the bike, and instead walked all the way out next to Made, who again carried my board on her head. When we got back to the main road that leads to the temple my motorcycle was waiting, as were the rest of the crew, who had passed us on the trail like some half-naked bike gang. Made handed me my surfboard.
“Swell dropping, I think,” she said, tucking the bills I gave her into the rolled waistband of her skirt. “You come tomorrow.”
And in her wise, young eyes I found a small measure of redemption, or at least relief. “Your secret is safe with me,” her expression seemed to say. “And if you get right back out there you might get a chance to actually earn those kid’s respect.”
Thanks to Made, I’ve never stopped trying.
