Want to surf Bali? Bring a Helmet.

The play by play:

Day One

It was raining when we woke up. Really raining. But we strapped our surfboards to the side of our scooter, donned our swimsuits and put on our motorcycle helmets. Riding motorcycles without every inch of your person covered with leather and Kevlar is about as smart as regular tobacco use, but the negative results are more abrupt. We justified our foolish behavior by the short ride to the wave.

Looking down from the bridge above, we could see some swell and a few people in the water. We took off our helmets and walked down a long stairway to the beach. As we walked passed some locals at the top of the steps, they waved at us and swung their arms towards the stairway, saying something we didn't understand. We kept walking--obviously the smart reaction to people's frantic gestures.

At the bottom of the stairs, we crossed the beach to the water already soaking wet, which made getting in the ocean all the easier. 

It was raining so hard that the nearby creek was pumping out brown water into the surf, and along with it all the debris from the street above. We paddled through trash and leaves and the rain drops struck the surface of the water so hard they splashed us in the face. Most tropical surf ads forget to feature paddling through cigarette butts, coke bottles and used band-aids.

People started getting out of the water. We paddled past them. Out where the waves were breaking, it was raining so hard you couldn't open your eyes all the way to see them coming.

We caught a few waves, but when the thunder started, we thought we should head in-- even we have limits, and apparently they coincide with possible electrocution. 

We paddled toward the beach as lightening flashed. Curiously, I noticed a waterfall on the small beach that I hadn't seen before. As I got closer, I realized it was the stairs we had just come down. Most of the beach had been eaten away by the creek (a local had grabbed our shoes before they were washed out to sea), and the stairway back to our scooter had become an intense brown waterfall, completely impassable for the gallons of water and debris pouring down from above. All this happened in less than 30 minutes. The locals' warning hand motions began to make sense.

Day Two

We made the same reckless scooter ride to the bridge overlooking the break. The surf was small and no one was surfing but a few people were swimming. We watched a few minutes, and a set came in.

 Just where the waves were breaking, a shark broke the surface of the water, thrashing around. A local standing next to us on the bridge started yelling at the people to get out of the water. We watched until the shark disappeared, then left-- "sharks" added to the limit list after "electrocution".

Day Three

We made the same ride, walked down the stairs, and as we came past the final landing before the beach, we realized a large crowd of people in white had gathered on the beach. Drumming began, incense was lit, and ducks were laid out for sacrifice. 

Forrest, always a welcome spectacle in Asia with his blond hair and alabaster skin, plowed with his board right through the center of the ceremony. When the worshippers saw plain, brown-haired me coming from behind, the blocked my way and shouted at me for interrupting their ceremony. I inched around the back of the crowd, waded through a creek to get away, and gave the ducks an empathetic look before paddling out to the rhythm of the drums.

We have seen more than our share of animal sacrifice on this world tour, but it apparently is not something that will stop us from surfing.