Whale Sharks, Dirt Bikes & Empty Waves in Indonesia WHSE179

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:01]One of our favorite ways to explore Lombok by land is to rent a scooter and head off on our own self-guided tour.

[00:00:09]After a few months of riding scooters, we became more adventurous and started renting dirt bikes. Dan had ridden them a bit before, but my first experience on a dirt bike was on a dusty, unpaved road in Indonesia. I was quickly hooked.

[00:00:49]Somehow he's making up on his little moped. Dan and our friend Sam took their dirt bikes on a trip into the bush with some friends to see if they could find any wild pigs to hunt. Their first stop was a local produce stand to pick up rotten fruit that they were hoping would attract the >> mad good views. Ladies to the top, laid some bait. Going to take some practice shots. Basically adult children is awesome. It's like children with finances.

[00:01:15]>> This be the spot the man the myth.

[00:01:20]Yeehaw!

[00:01:22]Lined up some mangoes and some >> Sam was friends with the locals in the area and was sure to ask permission to use the land for hunting. Some of his friends came with them and even though they never shot a pig, they had a great day doing target practice and swapping stories in the shade of the palm trees.

[00:02:04]That is nuts, man.

[00:02:09]>> You made that look freaking easy.

[00:02:18]This thing is huge.

[00:02:31]>> Nice.

[00:02:43]Jesus.

[00:02:57]>> That's some sharp machetes, huh?

[00:02:59]>> Yeah.

[00:03:07]So yesterday we had an incident with the clutch lever.

[00:03:12]Snap the end off it. I don't know what would happen in the western world, but I think you'd get hit by a big old fine and they asked for a lot of money. But I brought it back, apologized, explained the situation and offered to fix it. Uh they arranged a part for me. I went and collected it. We borrowed a scooter uh for 50,000. We bought the part for 20,000. So I think for $6 total, I've gone and got the new part. Next day they're letting me install it and no money exchange. They're just like, "Oh, okay. Thanks for telling us fix it." And yeah. So, I kind of love that as opposed to paying anything, you just paid a quid for the park. There we go, man. Lock and duro tours. Super chill.

[00:03:46]The bike they pick the man, the met, the owner. Yeah.

[00:03:52]>> Bikes for days. Yeah, the guy at Diddy.

[00:03:55]Bikes for days.

[00:03:56]>> When we anchored up in Couta Lambach, we soon met an amazing man named Idi who worked at one of the surf hostels. Idi was born and raised in Couta Lambach and currently leads dirt bike tours around the area in addition to his normal job working at the hostel. He offered Dan to come along with him on one of his tours.

[00:04:15]Despite the fact that Dan had logged only a few hours on the dirt bike and that was mostly on roads, he eagerly agreed and set off to explore the wilder side of Lumba. Yeah, >> I mean this one is >> but no exact.

[00:04:41]>> Nice. Whatever.

[00:04:46]>> You guys ride bikes?

[00:04:48]>> No.

[00:05:31]Lightning Echo 7. That's the coolest time to see how many boats we're at. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, 10.

[00:05:44]>> 10 surf 11. peeling in.

[00:05:48]>> I'm hungry now, darling.

[00:05:50]>> Yeah, >> Dan's been feeling a bit under the weather, so yesterday evening I went for a sunset surf by myself. It's the first time I've gone to this wave by myself.

[00:06:01]It's a bit um it's like I'm still learning how to surf and this wave is at right at the edge of my ability. Um, so I always like to go with Dan because he can sort of help me out. But, uh, he wasn't feeling up for it and I wanted to get out and exercise.

[00:06:17]So, I went out. Uh, it was an awesome wave. It was really big, but I was getting it. It was fun. There were only three other people on the wave with me.

[00:06:23]Uh, the sun set. It started to get dark.

[00:06:26]They left, and I was like, "All right, I'm just going to get one more wave."

[00:06:29]Um, cuz I think I have about 10 minutes before it gets dark dark. So, I stayed out a bit longer. Um, went back to the dinghy. No one else was there. The uh surf break is about a mile from the anchorage right on the headland at the edge of the bay. I went to go pull up the anchor and it was stuck.

[00:06:48]So I probably spent about 15 minutes trying to get the anchor up. All the different things you do pulling it um tying it really tight to the dinghy and motoring on it. Letting out a bunch of scope and motoring on it. Absolutely nothing. At this point I basically can't see. There's no way I'm going to dive on it in the dark without a mask. So, I did the only thing I could do, which was uh to tie my surfboard off to the line. Um, I untied it from the dinghy, tied my surfboard to it. At this point, I'm risking my surfboard cuz it's dark and there's a lot of fishing boats, like little local fishing boats that come in and out right by the surf break. Uh, so there was a chance that it would get run over. There was the chain, the anchor, both our weight belts attached to it to make it into a moing. Um, so I zoomed back home, grabbed the spotlight. um one of my Pearl Farm floats from Polynesia.

[00:07:38]Went back out to the surf break. Mind you, I'm the engine's tiny, so it's like 15 minutes each way getting there and back. Um it pitch black with the spotlight in the dark trying to find the surfboard by the surf break. So, it's like white cap, waves. I couldn't really tell where I was. I finally found it. Um tied the float off to it. And this morning, it's pretty low tide. I don't think there's a wave out there um to surf, but I'm going to bring the surfboard just in case. So, I'm going out with my free diving stuff. It's probably in about um 6 7 m of water, so that's not a big deal. I to just drink a bunch of coffee and I can get out with my surfing stuff and get the anchor back. But yeah, so that's the that's the surf break right there way out there.

[00:08:23]And uh you can see that there's absolutely no waves. But anyway, that's my morning mission.

[00:08:30]It's beautiful. I love getting up early.

[00:08:32]any excuse to set the old alarm. Um, it's very low tide. It's full moon right now, so the tides are super super high and super super low. And right now, we're coming out of a super super low.

[00:08:43]So, anyway, got the waterproof dive case for the GoPro. Um, this is a trick. If you're putting your camera into a underwater case, they can get a bit condensate inside. So, Tigga taught me this actually. If you put a little piece of paper towel, they sell special ones, but you can just use I just use toilet paper, uh, in the case with your camera, then this absorbs the moisture and your camera doesn't fog up underwater. So, that's what I do. Anyway, off we go.

[00:09:19]Hey, we're off. Uh, it's a gorgeous morning.

[00:09:24]It looks like there's a wave, but it's so shallow. I don't know if it's uh just breaking on the reef or not, but it's really beautiful.

[00:09:35]I see my ball.

[00:09:38]I was worried that it might uh the surf might have come in closer to it or something, but but nay. This is fine. No one else is out here, which probably means the wave sucks. But um I might go for it while I'm here. First, I'll dive on the anchor. I'm very curious to see what it's hung up on. Um, also my grub planes, but only with one person and only if you're all the way forward. And I'm too short to reach the engine from up here. So, I have to steer with my foot.

[00:10:09]Here we are.

[00:10:11]I've basically created a moing. So, I'm going to tie the dinghy off to the mooring uh and then dive on it and free it and uh re-anchor and play on this super shallow wave.

[00:10:28]Here's the beautiful outside Gurubuk.

[00:10:32]Actually, normally it's way more hazy than this. Um, you can't even see the hills clearly. This is a beautiful morning. Um, here's here's the situation. So, I'm just going to jump in and bring the camera with me. We'll see what's what's going on. And then Oh, doesn't really look like there's a wave.

[00:10:49]But maybe maybe maybe not. Maybe. Oh yeah. I feel like if you Who knows? Who knows? We'll try.

[00:11:26]Okay, I accidentally had the GoPro on time warp when I dove down, but basically I somehow dropped the anchor in a hole. Like there's a hole exactly the width of the anchor. So, there's absolutely no way I would have gotten it out without diving on it, which is ridiculous. That's just so insane. So, I moved it out of the hole. Um, and now I'm gonna go serve these things. There's a boat that just dropped people off, so my quiet wave has disappeared. Um, but last time, yesterday morning, we came here and there were 15 boats and probably over 60 people on the wave. So, this is this is good. I'll take it while it lasts.

[00:12:04]Inspired by the ease of traveling over land, Dan and I rented a scooter and a dirt bike and took a road trip over to Lombok's neighboring island to the east, Sumbawa.

[00:12:15]The journey to Simba involves riding on one of the brightly lit up fairies that Dan and I had encountered a few weeks earlier when we were stuck in the pass between the two islands.

[00:12:28]We're here on one of the fairies that we've been studiously trying to avoid when we were in the Sima pass.

[00:12:34]Excited to do this pass in a a giant metal boat.

[00:12:39]Yeah, looks like a pretty good day for it though. Not too much wind and it appears to be flat out there. Our trip included a visit to some remote surf breaks and very excitingly a trip up to the north of Zumbawa to swim with whale sharks. We are on our road trip. As you can see, the road is super dusty. I need to get some sort of a mask cuz I'm just breathing it all in and it feels horrible in my lungs. Also, I got stung by a bee.

[00:13:02]Kind of see I'm lumped out on this side.

[00:13:04]I hit a bee with my face while I was driving and the stinger got stuck in me.

[00:13:08]I had to beep really loudly and down.

[00:13:10]Had to pull the stinger out of my lip.

[00:13:11]It was very painful experience. It hurt for about 2 hours afterwards. Anyway, it's starting to get better. I can talk again. There was a bit while I could talk with this. Uh but now we are sitting y'all.

[00:13:24]So this is the menu. Uh for reference 100,000 is $6. So this menu everything is about $3 $4 less. I'm bad at math, but you can see a third of six is two. Two bucks for all this stuff. Very exciting. And I'm glad you guys got to come along with me on that mental math journey.

[00:13:51]Uh, half of it is translated into English and most of it's not, but we're starting to learn our food words. This is soup. Sup, I have chicken. Um, bec back.

[00:14:09]>> Oh, no. Um, and what else? Laapon is stir fry. It's a fun word. Uh, and what else? What are the other words I know? Kang Kong. That's like their local greens.

[00:14:25]Yeah.

[00:14:27]And this is the view.

[00:14:32]>> It smells like fish.

[00:14:33]>> Awfully pretty here. So, for $2.20 per meal, we have a chicken leg, sambal, which is spicy chili sauce, and some rice. And then Dan got the fried rice with the fried egg on top and some >> classic Nazi goring.

[00:14:46]>> Yeah. Amazing.

[00:14:47]>> Beautiful food.

[00:14:48]>> $4 meal.

[00:14:50]Okay.

[00:14:52]What's quite crazy is for $2, you even get them growing all the vegetables in the garden. We got a couple of eggplants growing. I'm panting like this cuz they're chilies, which you can see back there.

[00:15:05]Absolutely blowing my socks off. But when you order, they warn you it's spicy. And I always acknowledge and agree that it's spicy. And then I don't want to hand back an empty spice plate.

[00:15:13]I want them to know that I can eat the spice. So, I do it. And it blows my little socks off. Uh, it's better to do this than to hand them back a spicy plate that they told me was spicy, so you have to eat it.

[00:15:24]I'm salvating.

[00:15:25]>> Our first stop after a food break was a gorgeous home stay right on our own private beach and only a 15-minute scooter ride from a killer break. After surfing in the crowded waters of Lombok, the Sumbawa break was mercifully quiet.

[00:15:39]At the busiest, we were sharing the break with about 15 other people, and sometimes we found ourselves alone on the wave.

[00:15:47]A little food stop.

[00:15:49]>> Good friends of ours were in Sima on their boat and they kindly offered Dan and I to come stay for a few weeks.

[00:15:56]After a week in surfing paradise, we took to the bikes and headed to Sumbawa's northern coastline.

[00:16:02]>> You just get plated up a little bit of everything and it cost 15,000.

[00:16:07]>> We don't know what we got going on.

[00:16:09]>> Give it a 180 spin.

[00:16:10]>> This is Moo.

[00:16:12]We couldn't communicate the kind of meat it was with her, so we made a cow sound and she was like, "Oh, yes." And >> this is jack fruit, the only thing I've tried so far, and it's delicious.

[00:16:23]>> Dave and Tracy picked us up from our scooter and dirt bike, and we motored off to a bay near where we could find the whale sharks. On land, we had hired a local boat through one of the whale shark viewing businesses. And the next morning, they picked us up pre- sunrise as the whale sharks tend to be most active when the sun has just started peeking up above the horizon.

[00:16:42]>> He's looking very poignant.

[00:16:51]>> Okay.

[00:16:53]>> Yeah, I think so.

[00:16:54]>> We're going to get him. It's gorgeous.

[00:16:55]We got a little sunset going on.

[00:17:00]>> Yeah, use those quads, mate.

[00:17:13]Chef Tracy, workout queen. Beautiful view.

[00:17:17]>> Wales apparently are early risers.

[00:17:28]Zumba has a giant lagoon called Salai Bay on the north end of the island that provides a stellar habitat for a wide variety of marine life. It also attracts a wide variety of fishermen. Traditional wooden platforms called bugon are scattered about the bay. Each platform is equipped with bright lights to attract anchovies at night. By catch and anchovi escapes filter from the nets which attract whale sharks. Shrimp fishing is also a dominant industry on the wide flat lagoon and thereby catch and stray shrimp also attract the whale sharks. Before the fishing industries dominated the lagoon, whale sharks were likely attracted to the rich plankton life in the warm protected waters. But today they are more attracted to the fishing platforms. Come for the plankton, stay for the shrimp. Before conservation groups came on the scene and began to educate fishermen about the whale sharks, fishermen had mixed feelings about them, whale sharks were hunted for their liver oil and meat. In some instances, they were feared for their size, and sometimes they got caught in the fisherman's nets and drowned. Today, fishermen see whale sharks as bringing good luck because they come to feed off the catches. When there's a big catch, there are more whale sharks. I don't typically go for curated encounters with wild animals, but the knowledge that my tourist dollars were contributing to whale shark conservation and supporting a community that respected and protected them made me feel good about signing up. And how cool is it to swim with whale sharks anyway?

[00:19:06]Close your eyes. Hear the voice within calling this heavy load got under your skin.

[00:19:21]You got the wide knuckles holding on a tight keeping your feelings bottled up inside. Heading for collision. And then now to really you got to die. Breathe in.

[00:19:39]Breathe out.

[00:19:41]Hey, come alive.

[00:19:45]Breathe in.

[00:19:47]Breathe out.

[00:19:49]Look at the colors. Colors. Colors around.

[00:20:12]Moments pass. Make this one count.

[00:20:18]Untie.

[00:20:20]You're so good at dragging yourself down.

[00:20:26]Why?

[00:20:27]Well, there ain't much time left to figure things out. Deep underneath all the laser your doubts. There's a heart gone out of rhythm in despair.

[00:20:40]Hell under water for brea.

[00:20:50]>> After a few hours in the water, we made our way back to Dave and Tracy's boat.

[00:20:54]They upped anchor and sailed us back to the mainland where we mounted our noble steeds and began the li long drive back to Lombok.

[00:21:16]>> We need kachang.

[00:21:17]>> Kachang lady.

[00:21:22]>> Hello.

[00:21:23]>> Hello.

[00:21:26]Ah, >> several hours, a ferry, and a giant rainstorm later, and we were back in Lombok.

[00:21:41]Thanks for watching this week's episode.

[00:21:43]I put out new episodes on YouTube every two weeks, and for my patrons, you guys get a snack on the weeks that I don't put out a full length YouTube episode.

[00:21:52]Right now on my Patreon, I'm doing a snack series of small blue water cruising boats that are affordable and seaorthy. I do deep dives into different brands and specific boats that I think are just kind of great. So, head over to my Patreon if you want to check any of that out. And thank you so much to my patrons who are supporting me and making this trip possible. If you'd like to become a patron, my Patreon is patreon.com/wwindhippy.

[00:22:20]And for onetime donations, I have a PayPal, paypal.me/winthippy.

[00:22:25]I also have merchandise, all the links below. Thank you guys for your lovely comments. I love reading them. It makes my heart skip with joy. And thanks for coming along in this sort of minieries of things that Dan and I did in Lombok.

[00:22:39]It's a bit of a departure from my normal sailing content, but we did end up spending so much time there. it just felt wrong to not share some of the extracurricular activities we were doing. But um next week we're we're back to sailing stuff. So um for those of you who prefer the sailing, don't worry, it's coming back. And for those of you who enjoyed a bit of the touristing, um sorry, that's it. Anyway, um patrons, I'll see you guys next week with another snack. And everyone else, I'll catch you on YouTube in another two weeks. Bye.