Vaughan Brookfield Photography

Hi all. It’s been a few weeks since my last post. I decided it was time to take a break and get some sun, so I left the snow for a few weeks and met up with some good surf buddies in Indonesia. It was an amazing trip and it really recharged  my batteries and got the creative mind ticking again. Just being in a completely different environment is good for you every now and again.

The trip was all about getting waves, travelling around on scooters and just going wherever we felt was going to be fun. No accommodation booked, no set plans,  just a few good mates, a scooter and a surfboard – oh and the camera of course.

We had Tim Shaw as our tour guide - he knew all the spots. He would get up and read the swell reports most days, and he had a pretty good idea of what was going to be pumping next and not crowded. You would turn up to a spot on your scooter, look over the hill, and more ofter than not it would look something like the shot above.

Left- one of my attempts at shooting with my underwater case at Deserts Beach. It is super shallow, and there is quite a sharp reef, pretty scary stuff. I was doing my best to not get taken over the falls.

Right- there are little Indonesian kids eveywhere trying to sell you something. They are always so enthusiastic and super stoked on everything.

This is Deserts - it’s a pretty amazing place. We scored it right when the swell hit. One minute it will be dead flat and within an hour its 6 foot and peeling off the reef. There is no power out there and one dunny for about 60 people, so you have to learn to live ghetto for a while. If you are dirty you go for a swim, that’s it. Three out of four of us got a stomach bug after staying here and had about three days of not being able to leave the room for more than an hour.

This was our Mexican tour guide haha, na this is the man himself  Tim Shaw. You might remember the New Zealand DERO snowboard movies. He is the creator of them back in the day. Now he is surfing the earth and growing a mean mo.

Seemed everywhere that Tim took us it was pumping – too big for me out there.

We also came across this on one of our journeys. They strap these blades to the roosters and they fight to the death. Everyone puts bets on who they think will survive. Quite savage - the girls couldn’t watch.

This is my good friend Alex jumping his scooter. You go everywhere on these things and the streets are chaos. There are pretty much no road rules and the police are very corrupt. If they try and pull you up, you either just don’t look and keep going or give them a small bribe and you will be fine.

In some spots they have these huge areas of seaweed farms. On the high tide you just paddle straight over them but on low tide it can be quite a mission getting in. This guy is unloading his boat and taking the sea weed to be dried.

There are always lots of crazy Indo dudes around. This guy was pretty stoked on his ring and was showing it off to us whites.

Left- This little puppy was chilling at Desserts. The locals were saying his mother got hit by a car. He was charging though.

Right-Their bugs are super sized. This is a regular sized cigarette packet. Check out the size of that thing.

We went to the Gili Islands for a few days and just chilled out. There is lots of good snorkelling there and it was a nice spot to be with a bad stomach.

Some of the colorful fish and coral on the Gilis. There are also turtles cruising around like this guy below.

On my last few nights there we got lucky and got this really nice villa overlooking the rice fields. It had hot water (the first place that did on the trip) and had aircon with everything made out of marble or glass pretty much. This is what you would wake up to in your front yard – quite relaxing.

And this shot to finish up – if you look closely you can see this Indo is praying to the gods inside this tub – he must be happy with this one.

Now its back down to business for me. I’m back in Quenstown and got alot coming up over the next eight weeks. I’m revitalised after my break and excited to get on to these new projects. I should have something new up here soon. I hope you enjoy the Indo blog.