A short documentary on Hawaiian surfing icon Gerry Lopez and local NGO, Project Clean Uluwatu brings us right down memory lane, but at the same time, discusses what’s in store for the Uluwatu community moving forward.
In the docu “The More Things Change,” directed by Nathan Myers, Lopez discusses (and shares images of) a Bali that many who are here now, never got to see, before mass tourism hit.
The Hawaiian first came to Bali in 1974 and he was among the first to “pioneer the waves at Bali’s legendary break, Uluwatu.”
Now, four decades later, Lopez came back to teach yoga and share one of his ‘Talk Story’ slide shows. And at 68, we have to say, Lopez is in incredible shape and is still shredding barrels. That yoga-surfing combo has done him well.
“People want to know, what was it like before,” Lopez says in a voiceover.
“They see what it is now and they wouldn’t be here if they didn’t like it. But obviously it wasn’t always like this, so what was it like before?”
Well, for one thing, there wasn’t so much trash!
“When I first came here, it was before plastic packaging, if you can believe that. Bottled water came in glass bottles and sometimes you’d get a bottle and the cap would just flick off with your thumbnail,” which is how you’d know it was ‘bootlegged,’ Lopez later joked.
“I don’t know if any of you spent any time in that cave, but it’s a pretty psychedelic place,” Lopez said at one point, speaking of the cave’s magic at Suluban.
Cue outline of the amazing work that Project Clean Uluwatu has done for the community in the past six years, cleaning up the runoff flowing through the cave at Suluban, building a bioseptic system, and planting bio-waste gardens, just to name a few of their achievements.
What’s wonderful about Myers’ documentary is how brilliantly optimistic the tone is. Bali was more clean and green before mass tourism hit, before Uluwatu rocketed to fame as a world-class surfing spot and plastic packaging became a thing, but guess what? Bali has not lost its magic and people are doing something in the community to preserve it.
As Lopez puts it, “If you get everybody to do just a little bit, then it adds up to something.”
