Boats

Indonesia is typically very bad at maintaining things, machine in particular. Yet the Mentawai fast Ferry is an exception to this rule (for the most part). It’s just a fantastic boat. As the name suggests, it is fast. It is stable. It has weird movies with Indonesian subtitles playing. It has a balcony at the back. It has an open air top cabin. The crew smoke cigarettes in the engine room. It’s perfect.

The Padang to Siburet crossing is something that I did many times during 2017 and 2018. There are three ways of approaching it: Mentawai Fast, an overnight ship called the Gombalo and a private charter speedboat. The guests would come and go by private charter, so that was my usual mode of transport - but it was by far the worst in my opinion. Bumpy, noisy and uncomfortable. The Gombalo was a goods carrying ship that moves at about a walking pace and takes 12 hours - yet you could get a cabin and if you slept through the night it was fairly pleasant. The Mentawai fast just feels cool; so I was overjoyed to be using it again.

We start off at the back balcony, watching Padang shrink away. Turbulent water erupts from the two propellors as we drive between small fishing boats and islands, away from the mainland of Sumatra.

I have been told that sea sickness is the body thinking that it has been poisoned. Due to two senses giving your brain conflicting information on your internal gyroscope: your inner ear is correct in giving live feedback to the rolling and pitching of the ship, yet your eyes lie when they look at the unchanging horizontal lines in the boat’s seats, shelves and ceiling. Poison does the same thing to your senses; so your brain does the sensible thing and invokes nausea - aiming to evict whatever poison you consumed.

Seasickness medication has never really worked well for me. And the simple cure - as per the description above is simply to eliminate the conflicting information to your brain: either watch the horizon or close your eyes. The former will align with your inner ear. The latter will mean that there’s only your inner ear keeping track of what is level.

With Cait taking deep breaths on my lap and looking a touch white we decide to spend some time outside on the back of the boat and the roof. Fifteen minutes of wind and ocean spray in the face and some eyes trained to the horizon and all signs of seasickness is a thing of the past.

On Tuesdays the boat makes a stop at Sikabaluan first, about an hour north of the town of Siburet on the island of Siburet. Signs on land begin to appear in debris in the water before we see the coconut clad island in the distance. The impenetrable jungle where the Sikerei people still live, some tribes still untouched by the modern world.

We watch flying fish glide away from the steel hunk of noise and disruption that forges through their ocean. When land comes into view there are three buffalos standing on a sand spit. The boat rounds the corner and perfect peeling waves trail us - the first waves that we’ve seen in the Mentawais, so far.

A heavy rain chases the awestruck westerners back inside to the inner cabin. Air-conditioning and movies provide distraction while some people disembark and others join the boat. The movies played on the Mentawai fast are of a certain niche: action packed with little to no dialog. They serve the purpose of simply providing something to look at and continue to be entertained without any need to know what is happening. You can drop in and out at your own leisure.

The first movie that was played was a Dune knock off: explosions, light sabres, guns that shoot this gooey glowing stuff that melts things and spaceships - perfect. The second movie, that finishes about three minutes after we dock at Siburet is Kong vs Godzilla and then all of a sudden they team up against evil ice Kong and Godzilla. They then proceed to fight in famous locations around the world before falling into a portal and going to another location. Safe to say that managed to decimate many large cities around the world as well as the pyramids (which was truly inconsiderate of them). It all ends well when they defeat the evil ice Kong and then evil ice Godzilla seems to become a submissive pony for good Kong to ride around on. There was this weird intergalactic omnibelevolent moth thing that seemed to do things, but I couldn’t work out its role. Safe to say I was adequately distracted for the last part of the journey to Siburet.

Rikka’s son Albert meets us at the dock in Siburet with two boats. He’s grown up substantially since I knew him six years ago. He ushers us around the collection of board bags, paying the surf tax (which seems not to apply to the women in our group) and loading the boats. We stop off in the Venetian-esque town of Siburet for some food; the comparison to Venice is only due to its dependance on the waterways as the primary mode of transport. We amble down a short road to get a rice based fish takeaway.

We’re back in the boat with food and drink and hit the river. The smaller boat with our boards and bags (and Albert’s girlfriend) takes the lead. I’m well accustomed to this part of the journey, which takes passengers through a beautiful maze of interlaced shallow waterways in towering mangroves. Yet I see anew through the fresh eyes of Cait, Nik and Jess who gawp as the banks close in and the forest canopy closes overhead. We sit in the front of the longboat, eat our lunch and marvel at the spectacle that is Siburet’s mangrove highways.

An hour later we’re out in the expansive river. A Mosque on the river bank with a small village around it. Dugout trees turned fishing boats both mechanised and not move to and fro. Deep green jungle stretches as far as the eye can see. A mostly mangrove mattered bank is punctuated by great old trees dripping in vines. The sky is a clear blue and the water hot. Our four days of traveling are coming to an end.

Breaking out of the river into the ocean provides the first sight of the fabled Mentawai surf. Eret, a beautiful A-Frame is breaking with one boat surfing it - I tell stories of its heavy but predictable vortexes that cause so many people to undertake the Mentawai pilgrimage to this surfing Mecca.

Josh is on the island already - having spent a week at a place called EBay. We get a message out to him telling him that he will be collected in the next few hours - island time sets in; everything will happen when it happens.

Here we are, now. Now is here and here is the Mentawais - what a privilege.