A-Frames For Sale
Not the sort of story we usually run here at Swellnet, however we all love to dream.
A company called International Surf Properties has listed a large chunk of the island that A-Frames breaks off - local name Panangalat Island - for sale. Said block is "17,400 sqm [4.3 acres] and is covered with beautiful green coconut trees from end to end."
The serving suggestion from International Surf Properties is for "a boutique eco surf retreat or an amazing private eco residence."
Located immediately east of Kandui Island, in what was once called the Playgrounds area, Panangalat has easy boat access to all the waves fringing Kandui plus those around Masokut Island, such as Bank Vaults down to E-Bay.
Also, once Rokot Mentawai Airport is finished later this year, air travellers will have greater access to the northern Mentawai.
International Surf Properties have the lot listed as $950,000 USD noting "international buyers are welcome to lease the property in their own personal name or international entity name, as per Indonesian foreign investment law guidelines."
Comments
I've got NZ$124.25 (after filling the Toyota up). Who else wants to pitch in?
I’ll match yours & raise ya $10,.... about all I got after buying a lettuce & 2 tomatoes!
You can afford tomatoes?!!
Haha, actually no, I swiped ‘em out of a little old lady’s trolley..... this is what it’s come to!
Guys, we're onto a winner here. Only a matter of time and we'll be lording it in the Ments!
Add our passionfruit vine to the fund, hundreds of fruit this season which were going at $2.50 at local greengrocers...
Short term lease!!
Looks pretty susceptible to a rising water level, maybe tree house accommodation:-)
Not sure what's worse, $1.3m AUD for a small apartment in Sydney, or $1.3m AUD for a lease on part of an island that would still be partly owned by a surf resort developer.
Would be awesome to have enough money to be able to buy that though.
You'd need another coupla mil to set it up I reckon but from a resort perspective and so close to some pretty premier waves, I can see the potential.
Who currently own the lease? Even though I'm totally ignorant to the Ments and Indo in general, I can't see Kandui owners being too impressed with someone muscling in on their turf.
There are already a couple of resorts on Kandui Island, plus every nearby island has one, and in the case of Masokut, quite a few resorts. The days of Rick Cameron-style hustling are long gone.
Orrrrrrrrrrrrr ... just spend your $1.3 million on travelling through the Mentawais on a nice yacht every year for the rest of your life and save yourself the trouble
Fair point. If I had a spare 1.3 mil I wouldnt be investing in Indo. I would like to spend the profits in Indo
Definitely need the money to make it tsunami resistant.
Considering that all the Mentawai Islands are essentially scrapings from the subduction taking place with the Indo-Australian plate being pushed under the mainland Sumatra plate, a major earthquake in this area is inevitable - with a likely large tsunami completely covering all the low-lying islands in the area.
It's just a matter of time.
time in geological terms could be 10,000 years.. but you make a good point..
No, quicker than that.
Take note of all the palms falling into the sea on the fringes of the islands. I've been to many tropical places but never seen as many as in the Mentawais. Those trees sprouted and grew when the islands were higher and are dying from saltwater intrusion as the islands sink.
Similarly, the large swamp behind Maccas and how the trees in there are dying as the swamp is new, formed as the islands sink. These things are happening in time frames equivalent to human lifetimes.
It's a wildly active zone and John's right about the ever-imminent risk of tsunami and earthquake.
Much more here about the Sunda Megathrust and how it's dragging the islands down in an article Craig and I wrote ten years back:
https://www.swellnet.com/news/surfpolitik/2012/11/15/mentawai-islands-ri...
For $1m bucks I’d say that’s a bargain. Just look anywhere else in Aus and NZ and ask what a $1m bucks gets you there? You’re talking out past the blue mountains in Syd now. No ocean views there my friends!!
Just build a houseboat on it!! On stilts but when the tsunami comes the stilts get washed away and it becomes a house boat.
Equivalent prices may put you out past the Blue Mountains but at least you own the land.
Don't know much about 'buying' land in Indonesia do you. That million would get you nothing you couldn't do anyway except the right to brag about a pretty much useless piece of paper and after a few years the sinking feeling you get when you eventually realise that.
what a great idea a house boat free falling down a 30 m wave ........what could go wrong
or spend the interest off ya million bucks staying in top line accomadation in the ments no hassels
I could be wrong but I believe this was one of the very first locations to ever be bought/leased in the Mentawai's.
I beleive Paul King bought/leased most of the island and wanted to set up a surf camp there which would have been the first in the Mentawai if it happened, i think this was late 90s
But Christie Carter and Wave Park ended up being the first place built and opened early 00's.
They would have got it dirt cheap as even about 2006 the price was still only about 30c a square metre but quickly became $3m2 and then went up and up and up
IMHO the location is one of the best in Indo possibly the world for world class and variety of waves, but you would have to be pretty worried about erosion, Bat Cave Island down near Macca's has gone from an island im guessing one third to half the size with a forest of coconut palms around 2008 to now a small sand patch with a couple palms remaining.
I've been to Kandui resort a couple of times, never seen A frames the wave good. Beautiful spot however my understanding is the island is infested with snakes according to the local boys who work at Kandui
Introduce 10 pairs of domestic cats to the island to clean up the snakes, then, by the time you develop you will have a side business of being a tropical escape for Cat Ladies in the off season. Win, win.
With a side side business of selling kopi luwak to said Cat Ladies.
Brilliant! Will need a few civets too then. Do cats eat civets? The cat numbers should be fine as the only natural predator of cats is youtube.
Civets eat snakes so you don't need cats.
Oh hang on, the ladies like the cats, don't they?
Just make it a menagerie with a cafe and we're all good.
I think many of the ladies might be single and approachable, too.
an off season academic retreat velocityjohhnno?
good proposal
single...
not approachable
Tell them their dreaming
Thanks Stu - yes, this area is one of the most tectonically active zones on earth - with subduction happening as we write, making the occurrence of a large earthquake in the Mentawai area inevitable, as energy from the megathrust fault is suddenly and catastrophically released as happened in Aceh in 2004 and then near Nias in 2005.
The BBC did a feature on a fascinating study of limestone caves in the Aceh region - well above sea level, yet had layers of beach sand inside, alternating with layers of bat guano.
How does beach sand get into caves well above sea level? Tsunamis, that's how.
There is ample evidence of many earthquakes followed by major tsunami waves, similar to the 2004 quake, taking place over tens of thousands of years in these caves -
If you do choose to lease and build in this area, you should get a few years of tropical living and world-class surf, but know a major earthquake is coming - but no one knows exactly when : )
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-25269698
ok I stand corrected. Fascinating. makes you ponder that these waves may have not been around for millions of years...??
Certainly, long-period groundswell has been arriving in the Mentawai area for eons - but what it encounters when it gets there is what is changing, in some cases within a time frame of our lifetimes, which in geology terms, is very fast indeed.
As no one surfed in this area until perhaps the mid 1980's when those Aussies went out from Sikakap and camped at Macaroni's, no one knows what the main spots (or any spots) looked like in the 1500's, 1700's or even the 1960's as there were few people living in the area and no one was doing anything scientific.
I did hear from an old fellow in Katiet who spoke incredible good English that he could remember as a boy, before the arrival of the Japanese Imperial Army in Katiet in 1942, that the reef stretched across the Keyhole area in front of the village, with only a small channel for canoes.
JIA engineers dynamited the current channel to allow landing craft to access the sand beach and offload the occupation garrison and the heavy equipment used to build the airstrip, now covered by forest and unrecognisable.
So Lance's Right may in fact be a man-made wave.
Buyer beware... on a large swell and king tide waves wash across the island.
Tsunami risk on top of this. Serious infrastructure needed to make it a safe long term investment. You will need deep pockets and the patience of Jobe.
When did they change the name from Playgrounds? What’s Playgrounds called now?
Crickets
Been stranded on there (long story) lovely spot.
My understanding of the Ments is that the whole area is actually due to rise pending death and destruction for the next mega earth quake / tsunami might be a bargain longer term?
All the earthquakes from 2004-2019
Fark thats a good but scary shot for perspective, that Mentawai to Aceh area is like the hot spot out of a crazy ring of fire thing
I surfed that left, there is the outside left and the inside left, you can even go right out the back, pretty ordinary wave for that area, C grade. We thought it was called John Kendy (well that's what's written on the back of the shirt).
Yeah its also called John Candy's, pretty much all waves through Sumatra have a number of names, some names gain more popularity than others because they sound better or just sometimes because a more popular resort used the name online everywhere.
Fuck A Frames…. It’s only a 10 min boat ride to Rifles from there!
My contribution to the seismic risk discussion
https://www.swellnet.com/news/coastal-creationism/2016/03/08/coastal-cre...
I camped on the Island 25 years ago. I remember the centre on the island being a big swamp. Not sure if its still like that but very low lying island and prob a bad investment in the long term with all the bribes and red tape to conduct a business there. Probably would never make your money back needing to build with inflated prices to ship in all supplies. But if you got money falling out of your pockets and can afford to loss it all go ahead and roll the dice.
To put it into perspective you could take about 8 boat trips a year for 40 years for that type of money, just relaxing without the stress of construction, bribes, whinging guests, lazy staff and all the things that break down.
My offer is, 276 Lettuces for that Island.