Surf Travel Guides

This place is just fantastic. Matapalo is located half an hour away from Puerto Jimenez in the Costa Rican jungle. There is already quite some people that sattled down out here, mostly „gringos“ but the properties are relatively well integrated in the landscape, some you don’t even see…

After the boarder crossing we arrive the same night in Tamarindo in the northern province of Guanacaste, Costa Rica. The little village has developed over the years to a little surf city and lost unfortunatelly simultaniously a bit of its pristine charme.

Boarder crossings, police checks, bribes, nice landscapes, an amazing El Salvador and many kilometres…. to name some of the highlights of the last few weeks. After arriving and staying for the night in Guatemala we head straight south to the next border. It’s kind of ironic after having been travelling for almost a year but unfortuanately we don’t have the time to explore all countries and we have to pic a few favorites.

The ferry in La Paz, Baja, take us accross the sea of Cortez to Mazatlan. Most of the 12 hours night crossing we spend sleeping. Once arrived in Mazatlan we hit the road streight away south. There is no time to miss, 7 weeks are left before we fly home from Panama, with a stopover in New York for a few days.

The same jumbo for little Fiji takes us back to Sydney. Julia and Holger are already waiting for us and organized our accomodation, comfortable. After two days with interesting and inspiring conversations, some good laughs and a little surf session at the famous bondy beach our journey continues with a stop over in LA to Baja California.

Two days before leaving Suva we discover the forest park, a real juwel of the area. A small path takes on wooden stairs, some in stone hammered steps and simple wood bridges along a real oases. Jungle all around us…. we just wait for Balu, Mogli an Shirkan to appear.

Some shots from the amazing Fiji underwater world

Take off into the sea with Captain Harry. First station is the island Beka (pronounced Mbanga). The winddirection isn’t perfect so the motor runs for the whole crossing of 3 hours. We find protection for the anchor spot in a little bay.

Here we are now in Fiji. We spend the first two nights in the nicest backpacker we’ve ever been. The best ist the singing and extremely friendly waiter Mal, he just played some amazing songs on the classic guitar while we where enjoying our romantic dinner.

Once more we extend our stay in Indonesia. This time because our friend Daniela is returning to Indonesia. We spend already some time with her some weeks ago. To have a nice last adventure in Indonesia we decide to visit West Java.

After our days in the hidden paradise we don’t feel at all like going back to Bali so we decide to reurn for 10 days to Roti. The trip to the airport makes a new chapter in our „the local way to travel“ diary.

We surf every day unless we take pictures. On those days our balls wheren’t big enough… or the waves where bigger than our balls, however. It was a good opportunity to make a big pleasure to our buddies with some shots off the canoe.

To reach our new secret paradise we have to get trough some stresses and strains. All in all we travel around 36 hours from Lakey. From the hills we get the first sight over the dream like bay. No big hotels as far as we can see. And as we find out later, there’s even no restaurants, no shops, no mobile phones and we’re far away from any internet connection. Our accomodation is a simple bamboo hut with a matrass and a moscito net.

The following pictures show some details of our daily routine. Here’s a rough schadule of a nomados day...

Some weeks have past since our last post. A lot of things happened meanwhile and there’s a lot to tell. Let’s turn time back to Lakey on Sumbawa. All in all we spend close to two weeks on the island. The food was an absolute highlight, a perfekt mixture between asian and western kitchen.

Almost three weeks have past since we left Roti. After one month of eating rice, vegies and fish we are more than happy when get served our pizza in an Italian Restaurant in Kuta. Elias time in Indonesia is over and once more we say good bye to a good freind.

We’ve spend now three weeks on the island, and every time we had to choose between making pictures and surfing we decided to surf. It was time to keep the promise to Dani and Elias to get some pictures of them on the waves.

Kupang is a hassle. We rush from one place to the other to organize all the things we need. The pizza we where looking so much forward was nowhere to find. However, we enjoyed much the aircondition and the huge bed… One day later we are happy to be back on the island.

Welcome to the surf metropole Bali. We find a room in the middle of the pumping area in Kuta, Poppies Line 2. It’s fore sure not the most romantic place to spend several weeks but it’s the place where everything is easy to organize. Allthough the surf is small and as crowded as the little streets in Kuta we enjoy the warm water and the nice climate.

Things have cooled down meanwhile and relaxed and chilled fellings have come back. We have worked our way up the west cost looking for waves and warmer weather. We found both in Lancelin, Geraldon and Kalbarri and have spend their some good days. After a long search Kathrin a fitting board which applies to her level and her design expectations.

Once in Australia things come different than expected. Seams like big expecations have always two sides, on one they might contribute that the expected comes true, on the other they also bring desappointment if not.

To be sure not to be bored in our water activities we decide to add one more – diving. We get an increadible deal for the open water licence, we pay 180 Euro incl. accomodation for our open water licence. A great price reguarding our travel budget. We discover a new world with plenty of colorfull fish, corals and other to us unfamiliar creatures. But the fare most exiting thing to us is the quiteness and peace of the under water world.

At five a clock in the morning the tuk-tuk driver is waiting in front of our hostel. With barely open eyes we take the way to the temples. Previously many people we met have been swarming so much about this place. Our first disappointment when the sun doesn’t show up with the nice morning light disapperas fast when we realize what a mystical atmosphere the clouds bring over this place.

Back in Mui Ne we’re blessed with good wind conditions. This time we spend our last nice evening and night at Ju and Philip’s safe place. The trip goes on to Saigon where we search two days for a new camera charger, the old one got stolen as well.

The first time we heard of Phu Quy was already the first day at Mui Ne Kite Beach. We met Laurent who just came back from the military base island to check how his kite school is running. 5 days later we’re all on the ferry to Phu Quy.

In the comming weeks we’ll work our way down the coast to Saigon. The first stop is Ninh Binh with Tam Coc as our main attraction (a boat ride on a river in the middle of rice paddies with special cliff formations). One day before departure in Hanoi we buy a “open tour” ticket, which alows us to use the bus to Saigon, jumping on and off at every place we like.

We find ourselves back where people eat relaxed on the roads, the lanes stink and blowing the horn is national sport nr.1. This simplicity makes it likeable from the beginning.

With each day on the island we discover more Surfspots. The weather is not as perfekt as we would wish but still no reason for bad mood. Rain has also an advantage, there’s less people on the water.

Beautiful photos from our trip to General Luna Down Town.

We find our spot at K1. Nice waves with a good size for both of us. Together with Matt, Josi and Bernd we organize a ride to the spot – a small bus with more less 15 seats.

After having had plenty of fun kiting and meeting new people on Boracay it was time to go on and look for a quiter and less explored place. We’ll for sure not miss the rumble at the beach but more the people like Steffi and Markus.