Keramas Beach

Mention Keramas Beach to any of the top world tour surfers and it would be hard to find one that won’t smile and recount memories of a great session there. Keramas is also very popular with novice to intermediate surfers. By comparison to such well-known surf spots like Uluwatu that was first surfed in the 70’s, Keramas is a newborn baby. Most of the local and international professional surfers that come to Keramas to surf was began in 2000. A funny thing about the name Keramas, if you look up the word “keramas” in an Indonesian dictionary you’ll find that it translates into the word “shampoo”, which would sort of make sense when you think about waves and whitewater churning about.

But the original name of the area was in fact Kuramas, the Golden Turtle, coming from the combination of “kura “ which means turtle and “mas” which means “gold”, as long ago turtles would come to bury their eggs in the warm black sand. Later the name changed into Keramas, the Golden Monkey (from “kera” which means “monkey” and the “mas” still meaning gold), but where those monkeys went and why remains a mystery. But what is indeed no mystery is that Keramas Beach has rapidly become one of biggest superstars on great surf spots in Bali.