Folks travel to Bali for all kinds of reasons. There is of course the mainstream tourist hype that exploded in the wake of the success of Eat, Pray, Love, but Bali has long been attracting nature lovers, surfers, yoga practitioners and others who were drawn to this South East Asian island paradise before the successful book and subsequent film starring Julia Roberts.
Read a couple of recent takes on Bali travel here and here. Even designer Donna Karan loves Bali.
But if it’s surfing your interested in, look no further.
Check out this awesome multimedia slideshow, which includes text, photos and animations of great surfing action some of Bali’s top surf spots. The slideshow, from surfline.com, documents a great day of surfing some massive waves with exceptionally large barrels at Uluwatu, Padang Padang and Bingin. Included in the action is a Brazilian surfer on an alaia board, a traditional wooden Hawaiian surfboard commonly used before the 20th century. This particular alaia is only 4 feet (1.2 meters) long and doesn’t look much more than a foot wide. The shot of a guy shredding on this is amazing.
This Brazilian guy swims out with a four-foot alaia board with no leash. He can’t even paddle the board, and swims himself deep into the lineup. A 10-foot set comes and he takes off under the lip, grabs rail and sticks it. He draws out a turn and then does a 36O spin in the Bowl and then he rips off down the wave for another 300 yards. He comes back out and does this half a dozen more times making for some of the best surfing anyone out there had seen.
–surfline.com
You can read more about Bali’s “swell of the season” at Uluwatu here.
photo by Tim Booth (tboothhk on Flickr CC)
