also known as Lance’s Right. Had I been here in 1991, I would be
focused on the giant tree, insides carved out by the elements,
shooting straight out of the sea, and the lone Aussie, a wave-chaser
named Lance Knight, surfing the barreling beaut. While the tree
has been lost to time and unrelenting swells, the names Lance’s
Right and Hollow Tree’s have been forever since on the minds and
lips of surfers from Bali to Brisbane, California to Cape Town.
I watch wave after perfect, sapphire-glass wave roll into the end
of the bay before unloading on the water table known as The Office
and breaking into shards of crystal whitewater on a shallow reef
dubbed The Surgeon’s Table—which is as dangerous as it sounds.
And then, I’m on a board out there, as a colossal wave picks me
up and propels me forward a mere half-meter above flesh-splitting
coral. The whitewater sprinkles back into the sea and I ease out
into the deeper bay, adrenaline flowing. I pump one hand in the air
and use the other to wave my paddle aloft, shouting to the heavens,
“I surfed Hollow Tree’s!” Laughter is the reply from the local kids
in the break, and I know they think I’m an idiot. But I’m no surfer,
so fannying about on a stand-up paddleboard in the froth of one of
the best waves in the world is the closest I’ll ever come to fulfilling
my Lance Knight dreams.
THERE IS A POSEIDON-LIKE CHARACTER HERE,
though, who also has a backstory bound to this break. Cast your
mind back two decades. There’s a sailboat on the horizon. Behind
the wheel is captain Daniel, his wife Janine and a little long-haired
boy named Teiki, or Teiki-eetai, in the French Polynesian dialect he
was named. It means, “The Little Prince Who Went to Sea.”
They are a French sailing family, the Ballians. They are
explorers, although they would never say that (“We just wanted a
happy life,” Janine tells me when I meet her). Captivated by the
first-rate wave and sheltered bay, they drop anchor and stay the
night under the stars.
Teiki was only 12 years old, but he had circumnavigated the
world twice, spoke five languages, could captain the family’s
22-meter yacht Scame, and surfed like a pro. He had a rascally
SITTING ON A
WHITE-SAND,
CASTAWAY-ISLAND
BEACH, I’M
DAYDREAMING
UNDER THE
HYPNOTIC SPELL
OF ONE OF THE BEST RIGHT-HAND WAVES
IN THE WORLD—HOLLOW TREE’S,
charm that anchored his youth with a chain of
friends in ports from Burma to Thailand and
along the sweeping western spine of Indonesia.
Southeast Asia was the family’s surf-charter
turf, and the Mentawais, and Hollow Tree’s
break, Teiki’s favorite playground.
Today, Teiki is 31, but he’s an old sea dog—
and the new co-owner of Hollow Tree’s Resort,
which reopened in March. With his deep
connection to nature, he’s the perfect person to
helm one of the only two resorts on south
Sipora Island, a speck in the remote Mentawai
Archipelago 150-kilometers off western
Sumatra that took me an entire day to reach
and is undefiled by mass tourism and poorly
planned infrastructure. It is anyone’s idea of
paradise. After drifting our way around
Sipora, swimming over reefs teeming with life,
and exploring bays by paddleboard and dense
jungles on borrowed motorcycles, and after
venturing deep into the heart of Siberut Island
to meet machete-wielding shamans whose
animism survives beyond the Indonesian
government’s eye, I come away knowing more
than ever before that when left unburdened
nature is vibrant, vivid and unafraid.LAST YEAR, TEIKI CAME TO SURF
his beloved break and saw the resort boarded
up, entangled in a barbed wire fence. So he
called his friend Vincent, also a French surfer,
in Bali, and together they morphed the place
from a derelict cluster of beachfront huts into
an 18-guest-maximum upscale surf resort
humming with life and the scents of freshly
baked guava pie drifting through the balmy air.76 MAY 2017 / TRAVELANDLEISUREASIA.COM