The first wave I caught at Awera Right was maybe three feet. Clean, predictable and running down the reef at a playful pace. My daughter Zara paddled into the one behind it. I watched her trim along the face, not flashy, just committed and the light was doing that late-afternoon thing where everything goes gold and you think: yes. This was exactly right.
It was the back end of December. Off-season by any measure. We both knew what we were signing up for when we booked Awera Resort for ten nights over Christmas. The Mentawais in December is not May. The Indian Ocean swells that drive the dry season machinery — the ones that turn Macaronis and Lance’s Right into the screensavers you’ve had on your phone since 2009, those are largely absent. What you get instead is a different kind of trip. Whether that’s a good or a bad thing depends entirely on who you are.
We are average surfers. I’ll say that plainly, because it matters to this story. Zara surfs beach breaks at home on the Gold Coast, she can trim, link a few turns, find her feet on a wall. She’s beyond a beginner but hasn’t crossed the line into intermediate. I’ve been surfing most of my life with similar modest results. Neither of us needed hollow overhead barrels. What we needed was warm water, uncrowded waves and ten days without television.
To celebrate Awera’s 10th anniversary, we have teamed up with the resort to offer a winner and a guest a seven night stay with three meals per day and yoga classes included. Click below to enter.
The getting there
Gold Coast to Sydney, then a lesuirely flight to Jakarta. We checked into the Anara Airport Hotel, conveniently attached to Soekarno-Hatta, about a five-minute walk from arrivals and collapsed. It’s a clean, no-fuss stopover. In the morning, a 90-minute hop to Padang, then a night at Hotel Santika: a genuinely nice hotel, centrally located, pool in the courtyard, the kind of place that makes you feel like the journey hasn’t been a punishment. We found the Bat & Arrow bar, had a cold Bintang each, and got massages. Already the shoulders were coming down.
The fast ferry from Padang to Tua Pejat takes about three hours. In December the Mentawai Strait is relatively calm, no gnarly crossing, just a gradual unwinding as the islands emerge out of the haze. Awera staff met us on the dock, handled the bags with the kind of ease that tells you they’ve done this ten thousand times, and loaded us onto a speedboat. Fifteen minutes later we were pulling into a wooden jetty framed by coconut palms, and a smiling crew was handing us fresh drinks.
First Look
Awera Resort sits on a strip of coast with its two main breaks, the Right and the Left, visible from the communal dining area. That’s worth pausing on: you can watch your waves from a couch while eating breakfast. The grounds are generous and unhurried – lush lawns, well-spaced villas with real privacy between them, the kind of layout that doesn’t make you feel like you’re in a caravan park with pretensions. The central space, open plan and breezy, serves all meals and becomes the natural gathering point without ever feeling forced. You can eat alongside other guests or tuck yourself into a corner.
The resort’s hosting set the tone from the start, attentive without being hovering, warm without being performative. Nothing was ever a problem, no request too small or too awkward to ask. It’s the kind of service you only really notice in hindsight, once you realise how smoothly everything ran without you ever having to think about it.
The surf – an honest account
Let’s be straight about this. The waves in December are not the waves of June. If you’ve built a mental image of draining, double-overhead pits, you will need to recalibrate. Off-season means smaller, less consistent swell, more cloud, occasional rain, though for our ten nights, the weather was mostly generous, with only a few heavy downpours that passed through quickly and left the air clean.
We surfed every single day. That’s the important line. There were no write-off days. The boat was on the water every morning and the guides, Olly from Victoria, Mady from Kingscliff, Felix from Spain – were across the forecasts and moved us around accordingly. We surfed Awera Right on the first afternoon: three feet, super fun, not a crowd in sight. Day two, Icelands – cross-shore but playful enough to be worth it. Most mornings pointed us back to the Right or to Ombak Tidur, a peaky setup that spread everyone out and, on its best day of our trip, gave us an overhead, glassy session with the odd makeable barrel and long, fun walls.
Telescopes delivered later in the trip, not barreling, but fun, punchy walls that allowed you room to work on your surfing. We shared the lineup with another resort’s guests and nobody got territorial. Scarecrows was a two-to-three-foot muck-about. And on the days when nothing was working all that well, it didn’t really matter, because by then the rhythm of the place had taken over.
The guides were worth their weight. Not in the hollow resort-brochure sense, in the actual, practical sense. Olly and Mady would tell you where to sit on the reef, read the sets before they arrived, and call you into waves you’d have otherwise let pass. Over dinners and boat rides they became people you’d look up when you got home. Felix, who’d clearly adopted Indonesia as a spiritual second address, had the kind of easy stoke that made average conditions feel enough.
Surfing with your child
Travelling with Zara changed the texture of the whole trip in ways I hadn’t fully anticipated. She’d surfed beach breaks her whole life and so the Ments, even in modest off-season form, gave her something she couldn’t get at home: predictability.
By the end of the trip she was surfing the best waves of her life. I watched that happen from the channel.
The best moment of the whole trip and there were many, was Christmas morning. The guides proposed a soft-board session at Awera Left, and the mood was pure. All of us in the water, calling each other into waves, laughing when someone fell, whooping when someone made a section. Just the guides, Zara and I. No scorecard, no ego. The kind of surf session you can’t plan for.
Zara also got me into yoga. She’d been doing the morning and afternoon sessions with the instructor, a genuinely good teacher who pitched it for all levels and at some point I stopped making excuses and joined her on the mat. I’ve kept it up since we got home. That detail doesn’t belong in a surf article, except that it does: the off-season Mentawais gave us enough space to slow down and actually absorb where we were.
No television. Sunrises on the beach. Watching sunsets from the lineup at Awera Right while sharing waves with your daughter. These are the things you don’t get from a peak-season trip where every surf feels like a contest heat.
The food
Awera’s food deserves its own paragraph. It’s the best food I’ve eaten at any surf resort, by a distance. Full a la carte menu for every meal, steaks, sushi, authentic Indonesian dishes, fresh fruit, proper desserts. The eye fillet was exceptional. There was almost too much of it, which is the correct problem to have after a morning surf. Christmas Day lunch was a tomahawk steak and fresh seafood banquet that felt absurd in the best possible way. Sitting in the Ments on Christmas Day, far from home, eating a tomahawk — that’s a memory that doesn’t fade.
Who this trip is for
The off-season Mentawais isn’t for everyone. If you’re chasing heavy, technical, double-overhead barrels, book May through September and go during the dry season. That’s a different product and it’s a legitimate one. The off-season is for people who want to surf good waves every day without paddling into a lineup that feels like Snapper on a Saturday; people who are happy to trade a bit of size for breathing room; families where mum and dad want waves but the kids need something to do (Awera has snorkelling, fishing, table tennis, a pool, yoga, and a beach); and younger surfers who want to build confidence on proper reef without the anxiety of heavy crowds.
One practical note on duration: ten nights was right, and I’d call it the minimum worth considering. The Ments is not a quick getaway, the travel alone involves multiple flights and a ferry. Fourteen days would give you even more margin for a flat spell and the psychological space to truly decompress. Don’t do it in a week.
Awera is one of the few resorts operating through the off-season at all. There were no flotillas in the water, no twenty-person lineups, no one dropping in because they came sixteen thousand kilometres and feel entitled to every wave. The ocean felt like it belonged to the people in it.
On the speedboat back to Tua Pejat on our last morning, Zara didn’t say much. Neither did I. We watched the resort get small behind us, and the Mentawais coastline went back to being a green line against a grey sky. She’d had the best surf trip of her life. So had I, if I’m being honest and I’ve had a few.
Sometimes the off-season is exactly the season you needed.
Practical Info
Resort: Awera Resort, Mentawais — aweraresort.com
Getting there: Fly to Padang via Jakarta. Overnight in Padang, then fast ferry to Tua Pejat (~3 hrs). Speedboat transfer to resort.
Duration: 10–14 nights recommended.
Off-season: October–April. Smaller, less consistent swell. Dramatically fewer crowds. Resort remains open.
Best for: Intermediate and developing surfers, families, anyone who values uncrowded waves over raw size.
Stops en route: Anara Airport Hotel, Jakarta (airport-connected). Hotel Santika, Padang (central, pool, highly recommended).
