Australia's Surfing Life Magazine

Bennetts’ Blog - Kuta to Balian

Written by Administrator Friday, 02 July 2010 00:00

Adam Bennetts

Luke Stedman in training for J-Bay. Pic Damea.

This week was one of the quietest weeks I’ve had since being over here. Can’t complain, the waves were still super fun with Keramas and Canggu delivering once again, but Balian proved to be the best, serving up some really fun waves.

We began the weekend with a bang. It was Friday night and it was my girl, Hannah’s, 21st birthday. We booked out this sick Italian restaurant up in Seminyak called Pandora and we had all kinds of shenanigans going on. Tai Buddha’s band did a live set, I was DJing and the whole place was jumping!


Pandora in action with a surprise guest, Mr. Jim Banks on the right.


Mark Matthews and Jack Perry with the birthday girl

We had the hell crew going and there were a lot of surprise guests who showed up. Brenno Dorrington had just got back into town from the SriLankan WQS and even the legendary Jim Banks showed up with a bongo and his guitar and jammed out with the boys.

It was the perfect night to try out my new Diana Mini camera, a belated birthday present Hanzy bought me a few days earlier. It’s so exciting putting in a roll of film for processing because you never know what your gonna get back.


Lincoln Taylor flew in from Sri Lanka, straight into some tunnel vision at one of the newly discovered waves not so far from the Kuta vortex. Pic Damea.

It's funny how everyone is complaining about crowds these days. If you take the time to look around in Bali you can find pumping waves with minor crowds. There are a bunch of new waves that have been “discovered” this season, if you know about them, it’s pretty damn good ‘cos there’s rarely anyone out.

After a big weekend of partying, we decided to escape the vortex and we made our way up to Balian for a couple of days. Balian is located about two hours north of Kuta and when its small back in town, or in this case, dead flat, it’s the best joint ever. When you do the mission up there, it’s always an early start. We were greeted with the most insane set up. It’s pretty much an oversize version of Trestles with a shorter punchier right-hander on one side and a longer bowlier left hander on the other.


Chalky, Buddha, Girv Nasty, Me and Ahu the ‘Super-Grom’. Best team ever!

The last time I went up to Balian was about three years ago and coming back this time was a pretty big shock. When I was up there last there was almost nothing. This time was such a contrast, there were 10 different hotel/villa set-ups on the hill. Even though there is heaps of development going on, it still feels like you are a long way from Kuta and I found myself constantly asking people ‘I wonder how big it is back in Bali’ when in fact we were still in Bali.


Mark Matthews rounds out the trip with a big air rev!


A perfect left bowl goes unridden...


This is the fun little right we had to ourselves on the first day - That’s Ahu on the shoulder. He was always the first one out and the last one in.

We woke up the next morning to a slightly smaller swell but still super rippable. Everyone was so buggered from surfing the previous day, so we had some brekky and waited for the tide to drop. We ended up having a good little slay on the main peak and decided to peel out and head back to Seminyak after lunch.

There are a couple of good swells back to back on the way, so check back next week to see what goes down.

Also just wanted to say a big thanks to Ahu for all the action shots...

Currrr!

Bennetts

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