Surfing has changed a hell of a lot in the last few years. Time was if you wanted to learn to surf you bought yourself a yellowed old clunker of a board and you set about the time honoured ritual of trial and error that is learning the sport of kings. You did it by yourself without instructors and ten other lycra wearing gibbons.
You did it because you wanted to become a surfer, not because it was an ‘extreme’ way of wasting a few hours before the drinking really starts on a stag do. Similarly once you could surf and you wanted to travel to new surf spots around the world you booked your ticket and went armed with maybe a Lonely Planet book, a photocopied fifth hand version of Surfer mag's ancient surf guide sheets, whatever info you could crib from more experienced friends and a positive outlook. A surf travel company didn’t arrange the trip, surf camps were few and far between- only existing in places where there really was no other option like G-Land and Fiji- and it was a proper adventure to try and find decent surf. These days it’s all packaged, homogenised, online and well… boring.
Going somewhere interesting that’s not been buried by surf tourism these days is a big ask. I went to Bali for the first time in 10-years earlier this year and seeing Boots, M&S, not to mention Starbucks and Maccas on every corner really upset me. Sure it was already on the road to spiralling out of control in the 90’s but Kuta was a quiet fishing village in the seventies and thanks to surfing is now a concrete jungle/surf shopping mall bereft of any good bits. Sure the surf pumps but what’s the point if you’ve got 100 moron friends joining you every time it works?
It’s the same anywhere in the world- you inject western tourist dollars into a previous backwater area off the mainstream tourist radar and the same progression is inevitable: surfers break the new ground, staying with locals who figure out that maybe running a little guest house is a much easier job than fishing all day or toiling in the fields. Their mates see them getting fat whilst sitting on their bums and want some of the action so they open a guesthouse or eatery and the wheels are then in motion. The backpacker crowd come next enjoying the off the beaten track vibe, the cheap digs and in the case of backpacking chicks the easily available surfer meat. Before you know it the regular tourists are on the case and proper hotels, golf courses, real amenities and infrastructure are in place burying the reason anyone came in the first place. In the meantime the surfers have moved on somewhere else that’s less commercial. It’s progress. It’s unavoidable but that doesn’t stop it sucking.
Now here’s the central question of this column- what happens when the surfer led development comes off the rails? What occurs when a spanner is thrown in the metaphorical works? How about your groovy little surf enclave is smashed by a one in a million tsunami and then cut off from the tourist dollar by a civil war on it’s doorstep?
The answer is in Sri Lanka: it’s known as Aragum Bay.
It’s been on the surfer radar since the seventies and seeing as a bunch of my mates went there in the early 90’s (coming back with tales of epic waves, weird board shuffle games and opium smoking) I kinda assumed it would be well down the path to paradise lost by now. Weird thing is- it isn’t.
The aforementioned tsunami tragedy and the war put the brakes on in a big way. No surfers= no dollars. No dollars means that previous lifestyle of fishing, farming and living in happy harmony with the land seems a hell of a lot more attractive. A-Bay is like a surf town with amnesia, it knows something use to happen there, people use to come, surf, spend their money, party, get drunk, root and do drugs. Now it’s a town of empty cabanas, dusty restaurants and fat guesthouse owners getting thinner by the day. The waves roll on without a care.
Now the civil strife is over things can start to get back to normal, hell, that’s why we were there for the UK Pro tour event, to let people know Aragum is open for business again. The people there are desperate for the surfers to come back. They want to go down the path of development, they want tourism to be their towns cash cow. Hopefully they’ve got the sense to not just keep building until the bay is ruined. At the moment it’s a palm tree lined bay, fishing boats and shacks crowd the beach (tsunami relief efforts gave far more boats than there were actual fishermen so many go unused) and it really is a little slice of paradise. The water’s warm as wee, the point’s a long leisurely right that is intermediate surfer friendly and even beginner friendly on the inside, the local people are cool as and not given to Indo style hassle and the foods great. It is an ace place to go. It’s how I imagine Kuta to have been in the seventies… It has a bit of a time warp feel to it. How long this vibe lasts I don’t know. It’s the tragic thing about surf tourism- the more people go the worse things get. The better it get’s for the local economy the worse the actual experience is for surfers.
A new road is being built at the moment, taking the previous nightmare 12-hour bus ride out of the equation and once word gets out that it’s safe again the hordes will start pouring in. Best get there while you can…
