The Corona Bali Protected -formerly the Corona Bali Pro – men’s and women’s contests will bring the world’s best surfers back to Bali and the incredible location of Keramas. The wave itself provides the athletes with a canvas to perform to their very limits, while it has to be the only place where you can sit in a pool, sip a beer and watch Filipe Toledo do a frontside flip. One million years in the making, we take a long-term look at surfing’s most modern event.

From Homo Erectus to Homo Surfus

Bali formed when the Indo-Australian tectonic plate moved under its Eurasian neighbor. This tectonic subduction, as it is called in the Bali nightclubs, lifted the ocean floor’s limestone and coral reefs above sea level. This movement also created fissures in the crust through which volcanoes eagerly sprang. Mt Agung, Bali’s largest active volcano, has been depositing magma for over a million years, the most recent being just 40 years ago. Humans were quick to spot the beauty, with Java Man, the first known specimen of Homo Erectus, arriving in the hood between 1.7 and 0.7 million years ago. Homo Sapiens, on the gap-year walk to Australia, arrived around 45,000 years ago. The Buddhists and Hindus appeared around 1000 AD earning Bali its nickname, “Island of The Gods.” The Portuguese touched down in the 1500s and the Dutch set up camp a century later. However, it wasn’t until 1970 that Homo Surfus arrived, changing the island forever. It was their introduction that eventually led to where we are now, on the eve of the first-ever Corona Bali Pro.

Sunrise on another beautiful day on the so-called Island of the Gods.WSL / KIRSTIN SCHOLTZ