Stormy surf safari wiped out by angry Samoans | Nathan Davies

What should have been a perfect day’s surfing in the tropics turned out to be a muddy mission dodging angry toll collectors and trying not to crash a bus.

Surf trips change and evolve with age.

My first couple of sojourns to Indonesia were tentative baby steps into the mysterious archipelago.

We were wide-eyed kids from Port Lincoln where a bowl of egg-fried rice from the Ming Inn was considered exotic and not being able to get a park directly in front of the pub was considered traffic congestion.

The hustle and bustle of Bali, with its soundtrack of scooter engines and gamelan music and its smelltrack of clove cigarettes, incense and sewage, was completely intoxicating.

And the waves … well, they were everything we’d dreamt of finding. Ruler-edged left-handers marching down the Bukit Peninsula. Uluwatu into Padang into Bingin and, finally, Balangan. Just the names seemed exotic and we all got the best waves of our lives.

In later years those tentative baby steps became more confident strides to more far-flung locations. Java, Lombok, Sumbawa – more exotic names, more perfect waves, fewer people.

Leaky boats, sketchy buses, dodgy trucks and even the odd horse, whatever it took to get to whichever fabled reef break we were seeking. It was all part of the adventure.

Then everyone got proper jobs and, not long after that, everyone had kids. Suddenly finding a few weeks free to chase waves in the tropics on a broken-down boat was a challenging task, to say the least.

To Sua trench in Samoa, one of the world's best natural swimming pools. Picture: Nathan Davies

Which is why my mate and I thought we’d found the ultimate loophole when we convinced our wives that the tiny Pacific nation of Samoa was the ultimate family holiday destination. Our real plan, though, was to park the clans next to a well-maintained pool with a kids’ club and cocktails and sneak off for a few waves.

Gosh, we were brilliant! How had nobody ever thought of this cunning plan? And it actually worked, for one day at least. Two old blokes on board a boat for a day of reef-pass magic, paddling among the turtles and getting a few sneaky rides. Lovely.

It was our second attempt at a Team Dad day that went hilariously pear-shaped.

Due to the fact that there was some kind of international Pentecostal missionary convention in town the only hire care we could get our hands on was a 16-seater bus. Which was a fine enough vehicle with plenty of room, but not the most nimble of rides.

But off we went, reggae on the stereo, boards in the back, hearts full of hope that the forecast tropical storm might hold off. It didn’t.

We pulled into a resort where a Hawaiian surf guide, shouting over the wind and rain, gave us directions.

“There’s only one place on the island where you might get waves today,” he yelled, pointing on a map to an isolated village at the end of the island.

Determined to surf, we pointed our bus east and headed for the far tip of Samoa’s main island, Upolu.

On one of the days where everything went right. Picture: Nathan Davies

There’s a Samoan tradition of mild extortion where you stop on the way to a beach and flick the local villagers a few bucks for the privilege of driving down their road, but when that road is essentially on the way down a mud mountain and you’re driving a bus in the pouring rain stopping is not recommended.

“We’ll fix you up on the way back,” we yelled out the window and we slid towards our destination.

We finally pulled up for a rest on the first piece of flat ground we saw, which happened to be the front lawn of a local family. We had a chat and attempted to leave before realising we were bogged.

A few banana tree trunks under the wheels later and we were off again, half driving, half slipping down towards the sea.

“We are never getting this bus out of here,” I said to my companion.

“She’ll be right bro, no worries hey,” was his optimistic reply.

We finally arrived at the beachside village only to find it completely abandoned (we found out later that it bore the brunt of the 2009 tsunami). It was an eerie feeling to be a village with no people, but there were waves – kind of – out the front so we went for a paddle and tried to forget about the trials we were bound to face on our return journey.

Heading back went something like this – one of us would drive/spin up the mud track in our trusty bus with the other running alongside to lighten the load and push where necessary. Halfway back up and we were both more mud than human, but we were – miraculously – making progress.

Samoa ticks a lot of “heaven on earth” boxes.

Drive, run, push, slide. We’d forgotten one thing though – the villagers we hadn’t paid on the way down. By the time we got to the makeshift roadblock we were on a roll and we couldn’t risk stopping.

“Drive straight through, I’ll sort it out!” I yelled to my mate, jumping out the door into the mud to negotiate with the toll collectors … before realising I’d left my money in the bus.

Now Samoans are some of the nicest people on the planet, but they don’t have a whole lot of time for muddy tourists who owe them money, and I did look over my shoulder a couple of times as I ran up the hill yelling, “Sorry guys, no cash, I’ll fix you up next time” for the second time that day.

They were not happy.

We made it back to the main road with almost no fuel. We found a petrol bowser – only to find a gecko living in the spout. Not a good sign.

“Sorry boys, we haven’t had any petrol since the tsunami,” the owner told us after we woke him from a nap.

The only working petrol station, he said, was in Apia – on the other side of the island, over a mountain range. We were doomed.

We eventually got some petrol from a farm and limped back to the hotel muddy, bruised, cut up and completely exhausted.

“You were meant to be back hours ago,” our families told us.

Hardly a “holiday from hell”, it was actually one of the more memorable days of surfing in my life, a day my friend and I still laugh about, and hardly a wave was caught.