The number of world class waves packed on these tiny islands is unbelievable. There are waves for every levels, every stances and every type of surfing, all year round. The water is crystal clear, 27 degrees, and the scenery is just like a postcard. A little surf heaven...

...except for one thing: the Mentawais have become so popular that nowadays the majority of the spots have become crowded. It's not rare to arrive at HT's, Lances or Macaronis and see five boats parked in the channel and 40 people in the water fighting for their wave.

When I first made the itinerary of the Indo Odyssey with Jim, we weren't sure about stopping in the Mentawai. First because of the crowd factor, and second because we thought that every surfable wave had been discovered there, and that we would not get the thrill of exploration and surfing waves by ourselves. The Mentawai is such a trendy destination and a well established place for surf tourism. In other words, exactly the type of place we wanted to escape by creating the Indo Odyssey!

But we got tempted by the quality of the waves and headed there. It turned out to be a real good decision; not only did we scored hundreds of barrels, but we also surfed numerous days by oursleves, without any boat or fancy resort in sight!

It takes a little bit of strategy and knowledge of the place to escape the crowds in the Mentawai. One day when we decided to head south when all the other boats were planning to head north. A 7 foot groundswell was suppose to hit the islands the next day.

Heading south was a risky decision as the angle of the swell wasn't optimal to break properly on the southern reefs, but we hoped the swell was strong enough to wrap around and get there. It was also a costly decision, as this meant that we had to spend a lot more fuel to get there and to come back to Padang as well.

It turned out to be a real good move. We scored perfect head to head high plus barrels to ourselves for three days straight. No other boats around, nobody in the water exept us...sunny weather, crystal clear water, and A+ barrels for us only!

Some of our guests caught the barrel of their lives so we're definitely heading back to the Mentawai next season!

In the meantime, enjoy the photos from our trip of last year.

See you around!

Julien Borello

To visit the Indo Odyssey website click here.