Nick Blottnitz on the Visa run to end all Visa runs. Photo: Drifter // YouTube
The Visa run is an odd quirk in the life of an ex-pat in Bali – an obligatory trip out of the country every 60 days, for just barely the requisite amount of time to apply for an extension. Usually the trips are to nearby Singapore or Kuala Lumpur, but Nick Blottnitz decided to kill two birds with his run by going to Cloudbreak.
Heading out to the break in the boat that morning, it didn’t even seem like it would be an especially epic day… until he arrived to find a bevy of big-wave aficionados out in the lineup, including Nathan Florence. The itinerant slab-hunter turned out to be the canary in a coal mine that hinted he’d be in for some heavy surf. “He’s like the Keanu Reeves of surfing, these days,” says Nick “You see him around the world like – this is going to be scary.”
And boy was it. Turns out Blottnitz had arrived on Cloudbreak’s day of days. It was a run of swell that we saw from countless different angles, whether it was the POV of Nathan Florence’s GoPro to sweeping footage caught by Tim Bonython’s keen lens. Each new view of what went down has been more epic than the last, and Nick’s footage is no exception.
He also did manage to renew his visa, so mission accomplished.
