Sumbawa

 After a couple nights in Lombok, Kent and I drove across the island and caught a ferry to the next island to the East.

We pulled in a bit late, found the place Kents buddy had told us about, and checked in just in time for dinner. Met the others who were staying there, a Canadian guy who actually worked on the same pipeline project as I did in the winter, a Kiwi bodyboarder, an old American gnar dude, and the locals that stayed and worked there. Everybody was super friendly, and the food was outstanding. We had a beach fire after dinner and talked about the area. 

I woke up early the next couple days and walked around the beach area in front of our place, followed by breakfast and then a surf, either out front or at a different wave down the road.

 

Got a couple shots of my friends Drew, Drew, Matt and Adam on their way back to the surf camp after an early morning surf.

Spent the next couple afternoons at a nearby wave for the massive swell that was to come in. The wave is just down the road, probably shouldn't share the location, but this wave was actual Indo. Completely prefect, I'm talking not a drop out of place.
On the dirt road to the wave it wasn't odd to see these guys chillin' in the tasty grass. I got a bit too close once and got a little mock charge, didn't stick around much longer after that.

I spent the first day of the big swell hanging around, waiting for waves, eating banana pancakes, and surfing. Took some photos during the day but the break was so far out I couldn't get much. The owner of the hotel was supposed to take me out on his boat, but never got around to it. After the tide went to crap I went out on a little journey to try and find a different wave, no luck but I got a couple cool photos of the area:

I made it back for sunset and low tide so I could get out to the wave and try and get some wave shots, didn't work out, and the reef was sharp as shit, got these shots instead:

The following day was the same thing, up early and went back to the wave after breakfast. Surfed a bit and then met a friendly Aussie who takes his personal boat out to surf here. He was friendly enough to take me out with him where I was able to get a much better angle of the waves.

Hands down the best waves and best surfing I have ever seen in real life.

So the first day after sunset I had heard rumors that the locals had burned down the bridge that we needed to cross to get to our place, and also. It was over a large amount of jobs that were promised to the locals at the mine that is located on the Island. Turns out they never got the jobs they were promised and had quite the protest about it. I did pull up to the flaming, melting bridge just after dark with locals wearing bandannas over their face yielding large machetes and some even guns. The were friendly enough but told me I had to go the long way around. So I backtracked and found the dirt road to bypass the river, and made it home eventually.
The next day was the same thing, using the bypass, but never having any problems. I left the day after, and driving through the village I noticed they had set up barriers to stop anyone traveling through to see if they were employees working at the mine, I personally was not, so had no problems getting through. I came across one area where they had an SUV flipped over and smashed up. Kinda crazy, although I didn't fully understand what was going on..
It wasn't until I was on the ferry where I met a friendly local who turned out to be an employee from the mine who explained in broken English what was going on. He said one of the presidents from the mine operations promised 200 locals from nearby towns jobs at the mine when it expanded. Once the expansion was complete the president gave the jobs to close friends and family causing the locals to uprise. They stopped employee access to the mine, burned the bridge, caused the operation to shut down. The helicopter in the above photo was used to evacuate the workers to a safer place due to the violence that was growing.
Then man I met had said if they found out you were an employee while crossing these roadblocks they would cut your fingers off. He also told me the president of operations house had been burned down and he was in hiding. It seemed like a good time to leave the Island.