The Rip Curl Cup did not run this year at Padang Padang, despite it being the 20th anniversary, despite the holding period being an entire month, and despite it being one of the best contests ever, at least in terms of wave quality and format. (The in-person viewing experience may be slightly tough for people on the beach due to the hidden nature of Padang breaking behind the cliffs, but I digress.)
All of this aside, Padang still broke a couple times in August. And while the contest organizers decided it wasn’t on, it was on for the surfers who paddled out to get shacked in one of the most spiritual places on the planet.
I swam out and shot the Expression Session at the start of the month, and to my surprise, immediately after the final heat wrapped up (the all-Indonesian heat) a bunch of stoked Aussie boys and some other visiting surfers paddled out as the tide continued to drop. Padang is a sketchy wave to begin with, inspiring fear and awe in even experienced surfers, but at dead low tide, it gets “proper gnarly” as the Aussies would say.
As the sun lowered down into the endless Indian Ocean, the barrels turned backlit, and my fins began scratching the bottom, the handful of lucky surfers who came out for sunset scored some of the best waves of their lives. They were lapping Padang the way people lapped Deserts in the ’80s… without having to fight for waves, getting tubed with their friends, and surrounded by the vibrant aliveness of moody and crystalline Indonesian waters.
