Ina a ‘ohe nalu, a laila aku i kai, penei e hea ai / Ku mai! Ku mai! Ka nalu nui mai Kahiki mai!
(If there is no surf, invoke sea work in the following manner
arise, arise you great surfs from Kahiki)
~Ancient Hawaiian Surf Prayer
Few indeed are the recreational activities with which our adopted homeland is not blessed. Name a sport, and chances are good to absolute that someone somewhere in China is doing it right now. Some of these passions, however, require a trip to the Middle Kingdom’s more far flung corners. One of these is surfing. Traversing the great curve of China’s east coast from Korea to Vietnam will bring you to beach after beach suitable for sunbathing, swimming, and ogling of all sorts, but none (to our knowledge – if anyone knows different, please contact the editor at editor@cityweekend.com) are renowned for great surf.
Hainan Island, that lush amber teardrop often called “the Hawaii of China” lives up to this moniker in most ways, with great seafood, a laid back populace, swaying palms and sandy beaches a-plenty. Vacationers report great scuba diving, snorkeling and even windsurfing (the sport which true surfers regard as kind of a spastic cousin). But alas, Hainan is not often visited by the massive waves required for truly excellent surf.
Thankfully, there is one little known but truly excellent spot left. While “To Surf!” is not a choice listed on the “reason for visit” section of the disembarkation card handed out on flights bound for the island, Taiwan has a burgeoning surf bum scene all its own. From the black sands of Honeymoon Bay in the north to the island’s southernmost tip in Kenting (where surfers can bask in the glow of one of the island’s main nuclear power plants), Taiwan east coast presents a number of places where those in the know can catch waves ranging from the acceptable to the truly bodacious. Yet only a handful of people even know the island has a surf scene. And Taiwan’s small, dedicated, and thoroughly amped surfing community would have it no other way.
Like most sports which need the cooperation of mother nature, good surfing requires a high degree of being in the right place at the right time. Right places are few and far between; sweet spots that have the waves without the crowds are even rarer. Nothing kills a good beach faster than overcrowding. Because of it’s proximity to Taipei (90 minutes by train), the area around Honeymoon Bay is one of the areas considered “decent, but usually too crowded” by local surfers.
While Pete, my guide into the world of surf was happy to lead me into tubular illumination, he asked that I not reveal the whereabouts of their beach. So readers will have to forgive my vagueness when I identify the beach where most of this story takes place as “in the boondocks, somewhere between Hualien and Taitung.” Those familiar with they myriad mysteries of the surf will understand completely the need for discretion, leaving those determined enough to seek the place out.
I met up with Pete at a pub in a city not far from his home. Pete lives a few miles away from a small, coastal city (renowned for its good weather and aboriginal beauty, and this is the last major clue you’ll get from me) in a small town on he picked out specifically for its proximity to what he calls “some of the best surf in Taiwan.” Our plan is to have supper in town and head home to hit the sack early and wake up at dawn to scope the conditions, but he decides to race home for some dusk surfing. Of course, I think he’s crazy already, as the sun is already almost down, but I’m just along for the ride. “You’ve gotta catch the waves when you can,” Pete tells me, jumping onto his motorcycle (specially designed with a side-mounted surfboard rack, naturally), and I follow him back to his house on my rented scooter.
We get back, and Pete grabs a long board and runs towards the beach. I follow along, leaving my camera at his house, already being too dark for outdoor photography. The beach we’re on is not white sand, as I’d expected would be ideal for surfing; rather, it is a rocky, curving stretch of seashore, difficult and uncomfortable to walk along. Pete disappears into the gray, churning mass that stretches out endlessly, and I sit listening to a sound quite unlike any I’ve ever heard, that of the undertow pulling millions of small stones into the sea, while the tide pushes millions more back against the shore. The endless crackling and popping makes me feel as if I’m sitting on the edge of an enormous bowl of giant-sized rice krispies.
Eventually, Pete comes back. “Once it gets too dark to see the waves its pretty much impossible to keep surfing,” he tells me. We head off to a local dumpling shop, where over a plate of dumplings and stinky, I grill Pete over what makes for good surfing. It turns out to be more complicated than I thought.
“There are lots of factors involved” he tells me” average wind direction, what the conditions under the waterline are. One of the reasons that the beach I surf is so good is the rockiness of the area. Another factor is the shape of the shoreline itself.” Before the sun went down, I’d noticed that the spot where Pete spent his time was just off of a graceful outward-extending arch of coastline. The curve, I’m told, forms a beach break under the water, a place where the waves will break fairly regularly and predictably.
“That’s the spot where we spend most of our time.” Pete tells me.
Gorged on dumplings, we head back to his place and listen to music. The operative plan is to wake up at dawn and see what the surf looks like, so we try to get to sleep early. Two other surfers show up at the house at around 4 AM, fresh off of their night jobs tending bar in a nearby city. “The waves look pitiful,” one mumbles before crawling into their sleeping bags, and everybody agrees to sleep late and wait for the tide to go out in the afternoon. At this time of year – late spring – this is prime time for surfing.
As the seasons change, so do the prime surfing times. According to Pete, Taiwan is good for surfing year round, but a wetsuit is a good idea until mid-spring. Pete had also clued me into the fact that the best season for surfing in Taiwan is also the most dangerous.
“Late summer / early autumn…” he’d said “especially right before a typhoon, when the waves are really high and the surf conditions are truly gnarly! But I don’t advise surfing before a typhoon, except for the truly psychotic!”
Predictably, everyone is still crashed out at seven, so I take my motorcycle up the coast to get some tea. It’s a brilliant day, and the sea is nearly flat, no swell at all. At nine, the ocean is showing some motion, with a few bumps forming here and there. Ignorant to the ways of surf though I am, I know that this isn’t enough to wake the sleeping surfers over.
Sometime in the early afternoon, the story has changed. Small and medium sized waves are crashing down regularly on the shore, and after a quick look, the assembled crew decides to go for it. My first surfing lesson is about to begin. Pete hands me a short board, and I follow the rest of the surfers down to the water’s edge.
Just getting there is a chore. While the rockiness may make for good surfing, it definitely hinders getting in and out of the water. Forget about the full sprints into the waves that you see on “Baywatch”, this is more like treading over a minefield. Once I’m in, the ocean itself seems not to want me, pushing me back a step for every two I manage to take forward. Finally, I get to a point where I can lie down on the board and begin paddling. Its incredibly taxing work, and long unused muscles protest almost immediately. The crew is way ahead of me within minutes, and while they’re relaxing on the higher seas, I’m scratching, desperately trying to paddle fast enough to get myself out of the zone, the place where the waves come crashing down. Nose pressed against the board, I keep paddling, hoping to get past the dump zone. My technique is all wrong. Maybe I should try…
WHUMP! I’m wrapped around the board, tumbling around inside the crashing water like a sock in the spin cycle. I wind up under the board, pushed back to the point where I my feet are touching rock. Before I have time to contemplate this
WHUMP! Another wave crashes down over me, pushing me even further back and ripping the board out of my hands. Thankfully, the Velcro leash strapped around my ankle holds, and I’m able to pull the board in and paddle back out. The rest of the surfers are already way ahead, looking out for incoming waves. The two that had just pummeled me weren’t big enough for them to even bother riding.
I had thought the toughest thing about surfing would be standing up on the board. Theoretically, that might be correct, but at the rate I was going, I wasn’t going to get the chance to find out. Eventually, I manage to paddle out past the break zone, and find myself prone on the board, not too far off from the take off point, the place where the other surfers are getting ready to ride the approaching waves. Now I’m ready to hang ten.
Not Quite. Possibly the most famous of surfer slang, “hang ten” means to keep all ten toes on the nose of the board (possible only with a long board). What I do is more like “hang onto the board for about ten seconds before getting pitched off.” This, in itself, feels like an achievement.
After about a half an hour, I’ve managed to body surf on a few of the smaller waves, but the amount of work I’d had to do to get to the waves has left me exhausted, and the inevitable pummeling at the end of the wave has drained me. That, and the fact that I’ve swallowed what feels like a small harbor’s worth of salt water leads me to the discoing that I’d best bail out while I still have the energy to crawl up the rocks, leaving the surfing to those who know how to handle it. I spend the rest of the afternoon sitting on the beach watching the crew surf away the afternoon. Surfing, I conclude, is hard work, and best left to those dedicated the sport. In the future, I think I’d best stick to watching Baywatch reruns.
