The SURFERmag Interview: Gerry Lopez

SURFERmag: Does an issue like the widespread opening of destination surf camps seem controversial to you?

GERRY LOPEZ: Well, for those camps to exist they have to have a connection with the local people, and it’s in their interest to protect and give back to the locals. The bottom line is if they don’t do that their camps won’t last. So I think that’s great.

SURFERmag: What about the ferals who complain about the price of staying in them?

GERRY LOPEZ: Well, you know, I’m one of those guys who know firsthand how expensive those things are to run. I remember thinking nobody would pay for the surf camp at G-land, but man was I wrong. After going and experiencing what a place like that is all about those same people who complain are the ones who go, “Man, I’ll pay anything for this.” That’s when they realize that the things you can buy with money are cheap. So it’s inevitable and it’s really cool that camps have evolved the way they have from where I’m standing.

SURFERmag: During your days of exploration, were you guys trying to be the first ones to new spots, or was it about just getting somewhere new?

GERRY LOPEZ: I never really thought about being the first. In a lot of cases we were actually looking for people to go surfing with because it was pretty scary going out at some of these places alone. I remember being in Tahiti with my wife and I was dying to find somebody to surf Hapiti with. I actually stood in the road flagged this guy down because I spotted a surfboard on his car from a ways off. He was this French guy, and he took one look at the waves and said, “Non, non, c’est imposs-ee-bleh.” I spent the whole session looking over my shoulder.

SURFERmag: Well how much did you know about Indonesia before you ventured there?

GERRY LOPEZ: Jack McCoy showed me a single photo when we were down in Australia one year for the contest, and that was pretty much it. It was this picture of Wayne Lynch in Bali that he took. I stared at that picture for days.

SURFERmag: And you were sold...

GERRY LOPEZ: Completely. So after the Coke contest we flew to Bali and it was...I kid you not...like going to heaven. I couldn’t imagine a better place to be. There were maybe a dozen surfers on the whole island. We stayed for about five or six weeks that first trip and it never once dropped below six foot. We’d surf Kuta just to take a break.

SURFERmag: Is it true you spotted G-land from the airplane and that’s what led you guys there?

GERRY LOPEZ: Well, our friend Bob Laverty saw it first. The flight from Jakarta to Denpasar flies right over the southeast tip of Java, which is G-land, but because it’s almost always clouded over, about one out of every 50 flights the skies are clear and you can actually see it...and man...that’s a sight to behold. The whole Garajagan Bay is this white sand bottom so all you see are these dark lines moving across like stripes. Laverty checked the charts and stuff after spotting it and he was the guy who powered over there first with Mike Boyum, a guy from Maui. They came back and told us Uluwatu wasn’t even a wave compared to what they found. Of course, we didn’t believe them until we got there.

SURFERmag: Just getting there was a mission, wasn’t it?

GERRY LOPEZ: Oh yeah...There was no ferry system, and it was heavy because that was during a pretty troubled period too, I’m not sure how many of your readers would have seen that movie The Year of Living Dangerously.

SURFERmag: The one with Mel Gibson?

GERRY LOPEZ: Yeah, it was right around then, and going through Banyuwangi back then was pretty heavy because the whole of southeast Java was a hot bed of communism. Those guys were searched and questioned at gunpoint regularly.

SURFERmag: Risking it all?

GERRY LOPEZ: Well, it definitely wasn’t as easy as it is today, none of it. Bob Laverty died a few years later in Uluwatu of an epileptic seizure.

SURFERmag: Wow, and this was also during the Vietnam situation too. Were you drafted?