The Wild History of G-Land: How a Tiger-Infested Jungle Became the World's Most Famous Left

Ask any surfer who's done time in Indonesia to name the wave that haunts their dreams and there's a good chance they'll utter these words… 

G-Land.

It's the long, walling left-hander that peels down a half-kilometer of coral reef on the edge of the East Javan jungle. One of the best waves on the planet (and one of the heaviest). 

This isn't a wave most people will ever surf… and that's part of the legend.

But the story of how it got found is wilder than the wave itself. 

So pour a coffee, crack a beer or ready your vino. Here's how it all started.

A wave spotted from a plane

Back in 1972 a young Californian surfer named Bob Laverty was on a flight from Jakarta to Bali when the weather pushed his plane off course.

Staring out the window over the southeast tip of Java, he looked down on something that didn't seem real. Row after row of perfect whitewater lines marching down a point into a massive blue bay.

The bay was called Grajagan. The jungle was Alas Purwo, an all-but-abandoned national reserve the local Javanese considered a powerful center of black magic. A place, they said, that was never meant for men, let alone crusty surfers.

But Laverty didn't care about the spirits. He got his hands on a British Admiralty chart, found the bay and went looking for someone crazy enough to come with him.

The first mission

He found his man in the infamous Bill Boyum. An American surfer living in Bali.

The two loaded up motorbikes with boards and supplies, ferried across the Bali Strait and made their way to the fishing village of Grajagan. From there a local boatman took them as far as he dared into the bay, then dumped them on the sand well short of the wave. 

The boatman wanted nothing to do with that jungle. So they walked. Pushed their bikes along the hard low-tide sand until the sand ran out, then ditched the bikes and went on foot.

Night fell before they reached the surf. 

They slept on the beach by a sliver of moonlight and at some point they woke to the roar of a Javan tiger somewhere in the dark. They spent the rest of the night taking shifts with spears they'd sharpened from driftwood.

At sunrise they got their reward. Perfect, empty, eight-foot waves breaking down the reef with not another soul for miles.

They surfed for three days straight until they ran out of water. And in the old tradition of letting the first surfers name a break, they called it G-Land (even though the wave actually breaks off a point known locally as Plengkung… a fair way from Grajagan itself).

A discovery shadowed by tragedy

Here's where the legend turns dark.

Just a few weeks after that first session, Bob Laverty suffered an epileptic seizure while surfing Uluwatu and drowned in the rock pools. He never got to see what his discovery would become.

To this day some of the local villagers reckon the jungle took him as payment for trespassing on sacred ground. A tale that only fuels the myth of G-Land.

The birth of the surf camp

Bill's brother Mike Boyum had a different relationship with the place. 

A vagabonding, fast-talking, deal-making gypsy kinda surfer, Mike saw the business in those waves and wanted to lock it down before the crowds arrived.

He tried a floating camp first. Bought a beat-up 24-foot fishing boat that could make the run from Kuta in just over four hours on a good day. And on a bad day? Well… you don’t want to know.

The boat idea sank fast, so Bill went back to an idea he'd had since that tiger-filled first night: build the camp up in the trees.

In June 1974 they finished the first treehouse. Just one. A 15-by-15-foot thatched-roof, bamboo-sided hut raised 20 feet off the ground so the tigers, cobras and tusked wild pigs couldn't reach anyone sleeping.

Underneath sat a kitchen of three single-burner stoves and a 50-pound sack of rice. All of it was duct-taped shut each night (but still regularly trashed by the animals). 

The surfers learned to sleep through nature’s chaos. The one sound that woke them was silence, because silence meant the tigers were close.

That single treehouse is widely credited as the start of the surf camp concept. The model that's since spread to every coastline on earth, ours in Uluwatu included.

For a few golden years G-Land belonged to a tiny crew. 

Gerry Lopez practically made it a second home, writing dreamy features for the magazines from his treehouse perch. He and Aussie Peter "Grubby" McCabe would weave down the reef on the same wave and call it their Blue Angels act.

Lopez later called it a surfing monastery, and said they probably just shouldn't have told anyone. There's a great long-form telling of the whole saga if you want to go deeper down the rabbit hole.

From secret spot to world stage

Word got out, of course. It always does.

More camps opened. Daily boat shuttles started running from Bali. Before long there could be a hundred surfers in the lineup.

In the late 70s a Balinese surfer named Bobby Radiasa took over the original operation. Renamed Bobby's Surf Camp, it's still running today and stands as the longest-running surf camp in the sport's history.

The wave earned its competitive crown too. In 1995 the world tour rolled in and Kelly Slater won the inaugural event in flawless six-to-eight-foot surf. More titles and contests followed, cementing G-Land's place in the record books.

The wave today

Strip away the legend and the wave still delivers.

G-Land breaks best in the dry season from roughly April to October, when the offshore trades groom it into those long, hollow tubes. 

It's split into named sections. Kongs up the top, the long barreling Moneytrees through the middle and Speedies down the line. Speedies is the fastest, heaviest part of the reef and the one that's handed out the most beatings.

We'll level with you.

G-Land is a wave for experienced surfers who know how to handle a fast, shallow reef. It's not a spot you cut your teeth on. But that's exactly why it's worth knowing about. 

Every surfer who comes through Uluwatu eventually hears the name. And now you know the story behind it. Put in the seasons, get your reef hours up and figure out where you really sit as a surfer. 

Maybe one day that boat ride from Bali has your name on it. Until then, we'll keep the good waves pumping for you a little closer to home.