Lost Horizons
Surfing the Edge of the Map in the Telos Islands
Date: Late Summer 2022
Location: Telos Islands, Indonesia
Miles Traveled: 9,000+
Trip Details: Remote Surfing, Open Ocean Crossings
Singapore in late summer felt like living inside a sealed plastic bag. Heat rose from the pavement in thick waves, the air saturated with the kind of humidity that left you drenched before noon. Every walk to work was a slow march toward dehydration. I counted the days until my return to the States, watching flights on my screen like a prisoner marking the walls of his cell.
Then an email arrived. David. A name I recognized from a mutual friend, a surf forecaster who knew how to read swell maps like scripture. He had a proposition.
"Mentawais? Last-minute trip. Could probably get a deal at one of the camps that hasn’t filled up. You in?"
The answer was obvious.
Within hours, I was messaging Channel Islands Surf in Bali to see if they could shape something in time. A few days later, my boards arrived in Singapore. I booked a flight to Jakarta, where I met up with David. He was wrecked from the haul across the Pacific, barely keeping his eyes open as we checked into a pod hotel near the terminal. A row of oversized, plastic sleep coffins, rented by the hour. The showers were worse. A closet with a garden hose, ten-minute increments, and the unspoken promise that the last guy hadn’t left it much cleaner than he found it.
We skipped the rinse and caught a red eye to Padang.
Padang was alive at dawn. Heat swelled in the streets, thick with the smell of fried rice and gasoline. Our ride to the harbor arrived, a rusted-out van driven by a local who spoke in broken English and chain-smoked like he was gunning for a world record. At the dock, we met our transport, a fishing boat that looked like it had survived more storms than it should have. There was no high-speed ferry to the Telos. Just this, twenty-foot wooden hull, diesel fumes thick in the air, bunks that were two inches too short to lie straight. We set off as the sun dipped below the horizon, the first few hours deceptively calm.
Then came the storm.
The captain was either reckless or possessed. He hit every wave with precision, angling into the chop like a man with a personal vendetta against our stomachs. No one slept. The bunks became coffins of micro-concussions, heads slamming against the wooden frame with every impact. By midnight, the entire crew was suffering, spilling their insides over the side. I’ve been in the Navy for almost a decade. I’ve seen rough seas. This was something else.
Sometime after 3 a.m., David climbed to the wheelhouse for air and found the captain asleep at the controls. Eyes shut. Hands slack. Our boat, a toy drifting in open ocean. David shook him awake. The captain muttered something, corrected course, and pretended nothing had happened.
By sunrise, the sea had calmed. We surfaced onto the deck, shells of ourselves, and were greeted by breakfast: Bintang beer and white bread. A meal the locals called The Telos Grand Slam. We were supposed to arrive at 7 a.m. The captain informed us we were off course.
Five more hours.
From the first glimpse, the Telos looked untouched. A chain of jungle-covered islands, surrounded by shallow reefs and the kind of surf that had made Indonesia legendary. No resorts. No roads. Just a handful of small surf camps, metal-hulled boats, and waves that had been breaking long before anyone had come to ride them.
A few dinghies met us offshore, tossing our gear onto the sand. The air smelled like salt, wet earth, and wood smoke.
After a quick orientation, where to eat, where to sleep, how to avoid the stray dogs that ran wild through camp, we paddled out. The first session was messy. The last tail-end of the storm still pulsed through the lineup.
But there were waves.
On the second day, conditions cleaned up. I sat in the lineup, watching a video clip of Andy Irons surfing this very break. In the footage, he ran the wave past the first two sections before kicking out. Local guides had warned us, bail before the third section.
Andy didn’t.
Neither did I.
Andy was a multiple time world champ.
I couldn’t win a heat at your local NSSA.
On my third wave of the day, I went for it. The first two sections were clean. Fast. I held my line and committed, dropping into the third, only to feel the bottom vanish beneath me. The reef surged up, shallow as a puddle. My board went first. Two missing fin boxes. A couple of deep gouges. Hands and knees paid the price. I swam in and added it to the pile of other snapped blades, each claimed by the Telos’ infamous reef.
Some say these islands are cursed. There are stories about shipwrecks and lost sailors, about tides that turn without warning and waves that lure you into false security. Maybe it was just bad luck. Maybe the ocean has a way of keeping things balanced. Either way, I swapped boards, a slightly shorter shape, got my cuts rubbed with the customary lime juice and played it safer for the rest of the trip.
For the next week, we surfed perfect waves in complete isolation. Lefts. Rights. Heavy reef slabs that felt like they belonged in a surf film. In between, we dealt with jungle heat, mosquitoes that could carry off small children, and the kind of humidity that made every dry T-shirt a 30-second investment.
I got sick somewhere in the middle. Maybe bad water. Maybe just the price of admission. A fever burned through me for two days, leaving me curled up in a hammock, sweating through the sheets. When I finally made it back to the lineup, I was ten pounds lighter and twice as hungry for waves.
On our final day, a new swell arrived. Heavy. Shallow. It was the kind of session where everyone took what they came for. Some got the best waves of their lives. Others left with new scars.
Morning came too soon. The weather looked promising. A different boat was supposed to take us back to Padang.
Then we saw it.
The same fifty-year-old fishing boat, crawling into the bay. The captain stood at the bow, grinning like a man who knew exactly what we were thinking. We were too tired to protest.
The ocean was flat. Flying fish skipped across the surface. The boat puttered along at a generous four knots, stretching the journey into another eighteen-hour ordeal. As the sun sank over the Indian Ocean, one of the crew members sat chain-smoking on top of the propane tanks.
No one said a word. If anything, an explosion might have made the boat move faster.
Back in Jakarta, David and I parted ways. He flew west, I flew east.
The Telos had been wild, unforgiving, and impossibly beautiful. The jungle clung to you, heavy and damp, while the ocean stretched into nothing. If you got lost out there, you wouldn’t be found. No trade routes. No passing ships. Just thousands of empty waves, waiting for someone to take the risk.
Maybe one day, I’d return.
Maybe some places are better left untouched.
