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.The drive from Kuta through Sanur and then up along the East Coast on the Ida Bagus Mantra By-Pass is a quick one if you start at first light, taking about 45 minutes of first speeding by the innumerable shops and restaurants, then cruising between the green rice fields and coconut palms of the coastal road until a small sign directs you to exit the main road and take the small dirt road that heads towards the Keramas Beach.During the dry season (June to October) the onshore wind usually comes up between 10 or 11 so you'll want to get there early, but if the swell is sizeable enough it will still be surfable into the early afternoon. From November to May (rainy season) the water gets a murky cappuccino color as the runoff from the rain rushes down the nearby river and directly into the lineup, but the waves are still good and less wind-affected as the winds blow down from the northwest instead of the east or southwest.

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.

Source - http://www.pawongan.com/

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