Days 71-79: Rote Island, Indonesia

The Skinny - if you're just here for the highlights: We had toyed around with the idea of visiting the Philippines, Taiwan, or both after Bangkok and before heading to Indonesia. But a combination of factors including: some conversations with other travelers, it being the wrong time of year for surfing in both spots, and some back-to-back natural disaster episodes in the Philippines, we decided to head straight to Indonesia. And to be frank, we (myself especially) were getting a little bit of travel fatigue– staying put for a little while sounded really inviting. So all we planned for Indonesia was our first stop, which we decided would be Rote Island. We would see how much we liked it and go from there. Both of us were quietly hoping we would show up to paradise and plant ourselves on this southernmost tip of the Asian continent until it was time to head home. That was not exactly the case, but honestly, we are better for it.

Scroll down for pictures.

Getting to Rote

Traveling to Rote is not for the faint of heart. We flew from Bangkok to Bali, then after a five hour layover hopped on a second flight to Kupang, a city on the Island Timor. As far as I could tell, the only Indonesian flights to Rote airport are from Kupang and Jakarta. I met a woman who claimed they flew direct from Bali to Rote– I found no other evidence of this but also wouldn’t be surprised if that flight arises as Rote grows in popularity. You can also take a boat from Kupang. Many people send their surfboards on the boat and then fly to avoid steep baggage fees. Kupang does not have too much to offer tourists. We stayed at a B&B, La Hasienda Hotel and Restaurant near the airport, which had a lot of character. It was also a bit bizarre and hilarious to be at a pretty authentic Mexican style hotel in Indonesia–most of the guests seemed to be in transit to or from Rote.

The next morning we went for a walk around the village before flying to Rote. One funny thing we noticed, first on this walk but later throughout Indonesia, was countless wooden displays with clear glass bottles full of a pigmented green or blue liquid on the side of the road. My first thought was it was some kind of scary Indonesian hooch– turns out these are what scooter gas stations look like. Homemade petrol stored in old liquor bottles. We got to experience filling up our scooter with the higher quality blue kind.

Our plane landed in Rote right at sunset, and what a welcome it was. The whole sky was on fire in various shades of sherbet. The airport is on the other side of the Island relative to the main tourist town, Nemberala. Luckily, it's only about an hour drive. Our accommodations in Rote were a rare instance of actually being better than described on Airbnb. What we thought was just a guesthouse in someone’s backyard, with 0 reviews, turned out to be a full-on surf stay property that has been around for quite some time, just not listed online. We had one of maybe 9 private bungalows (the entire bathroom was outside which was actually kinda cool) 20 feet from the beach and directly in front of the main surf break. There was a restaurant, full staff, and even a pool. Our stay came with daily breakfast and boat transfers to the surf breaks, which are in most cases off-shore. The two most googlable breaks are called T-Land (main break) and Squealers (referred to as the beginner break). While Rote is a lesser-known Indonesian destination, T-Land is one of the longest lefts in the country, and can stretch up to 400 meters depending on the conditions. Its name comes from its striking similarity to the far more famous (and dangerous) G-Land in Java.

First Impressions

Our first morning in Nemberala was the end of a two-week dry spell during which the swell was almost dead, but it came back swinging. The waves were triple over-head, so like, fucking gigantic, and the whole town was chomping at the bit to surf them… except for me. It was the equivalent of a Saturday morning deep powder day after two weeks of no snow. And in this setting, I had never skied powder before. Sean actually took the boat out and got in the water, but was smart enough to not throw himself in this mix and did not try to catch any waves.

The mega swell and chaotic crowds lasted a few days, so Sean came with me to check out Squealers several times, once I even had a lesson, but something just really was not clicking for me. The waves were still quite big at Squealers and Sean and I both found it to be an unpleasant surf spot. The break seemed to have a mind of its own; most of the waves were closeouts, and if not they were very crumbly, short rides. It was not intuitive at all and the lesson didn’t help. The cherry on top was one surf, a huge cleanup set came through. I was on a bigger board and unable to make it out to the channel before it came crashing down on me, taking my board with it. It was crowded and my board collided with a young girl’s board. Luckily everyone was okay, but her board suffered a gash. I decided Squealers was cursed against me.

Daily Life

Everyone else staying at Belar Reef was super chill. They were all from Australia (as were nearly every other expat in this town) though the family we got to know the most were an American husband from Aspen (who played ice hockey at Cornell!), Russian wife, and their two young Australian kids. The town seemed to attract a lot of young families like this, to the point that there is actually a school for expat kids during extended stays.

But don’t let the school fool you; the town was really small. We rented a scooter so we could explore more of the Island’s coast line, which though pretty dry and more desert-like than we are used to when at the beach, still really gorgeous. The water was so bright and clear. We had scheduled (and rescheduled multiple times) a scuba dive, but the big swell had stirred up the water and the visibility never settled out. We rode over to the weekly market one Tuesday, which was our first and only taste of local life on Rote. It was pretty cool and totally hectic, displaying all kinds of produce, spices, clothes and random household goods in an endless maze.

We enjoyed super fresh lunches from a cute market called Indika and had a lot of fresh catch dinners right at our hotel. We ate multiple times at the restaurant on the nicer hotel property, Seed. It was pretty incredible how cheap it still was for such quality ingredients. I took a yoga class here as well and the shala was boarded by the resort’s gardens, from which we had the most delicious salads, topped with tuna that “had been swimming this morning.” I heard their spa was pretty amazing too, offering scrubs and facials for $10-20 USD. One night we tried to be social and ventured to Nemberala Beach Resort for Taco Tuesday. Pretty much the whole town was there; most of them had kids and all of them knew each other. It was honestly a little cliquey, and we started to feel like all anyone ever talked about was surfing. One place we didn’t get to eat at but really wish we did was 81 Palms– a resort owned by a former Michelin star chef and appropriately boasts a premier tapas restaurant.

We had some pretty spectacular star- and moon-gazing. The sky was always super clear and we were fortunate enough to be here during the full, strawberry moon with unobstructed views every night and early, pre-sunrise morning.

The Ups and Downs that Worked Out

The owner of Belar Reef is an absolute character. Steve from Australia has been coming to Rote for the better part of 40 years. He knows everyone and everything about the area, which came in handy, especially after Lukas and Olivia jinxed us and on our way out of town I had screwed up our flight… Steve told us to look for a “really nice Indonesian guy who for some reason looks Indian named Gradi.” Gradi hooked us up and got us on the only flight out for days… Steve used to be a huge surfer, but suffered a major leg injury during covid that he has never come back from. Now it seems he has largely replaced surfing with tallboys. He did go out and do a little surfing one morning when the swell was still big but slightly more manageable, the guys on our property decided to take a ride out to a lesser known break called Suckies and invited Sean to join. After that, we both felt more comfortable with the swell and surfed T-Land the next two days.

In my opinion, T-Land is far easier to surf than Squealers, just not on a mega day. There was also a more gentle break on the shoulder of T-Land called Bananas. Once the swell chilled out and we actually spent some quality time surfing T-Land, we both quickly understood what makes Rote such a great spot. The wave was super fun, and if you went closer to high tide as we did, you could surf this very long left with only a handful of other people in the water. If the swell was going to stay manageable, we almost definitely would have stuck around, probably for the rest of our trip. But with more huge waves in the forecast, we decided to move on. I'm grateful for this because it forced us to see and experience so much more of what Indonesia has to offer.

Now the question became whereto…

Afterthought

You'll see in the last photo of this post a not insignificant fire right behind the plane that was meant to take us from Kupang back to Bali... this was a continuation of Lukas and Olivia's jinx. Luckily they were able to get the fire under control just enough for us to takeoff and skip spending a second night in Kupang. Though I am not positive that would have flown in the US...