Here’s a lesson in ocean currents and weather patterns. As summer winds down for us in the Northern Hemisphere, our neighbors to the south are just thawing out from a long winter. Western Australia is home to all three surfers featured in the following two clips, and as the name of the first clip featuring Taj Burrow and Jake Patterson in Yallingup implies, the cold rugged winter has had Western Australia firmly in her grasp.

In the second clip, Burrow and Patterson’s good mate Jay Davies flees Western Australia’s cold and sharky waters in favor of tropical paradise, found close by in Bali. While Indonesia may sit just to the north of Australia, fewer than 1,000 miles away in some parts, the ocean gyres and hot “dry season” weather patterns mean 80 degree heat, warm tropical water, and sunny skies. Indonesia’s geographic location is quite ideal, sitting just close enough to the equator to share the warmth of the Indian Ocean’s Equatorial Counter Current, which swirls warm waters from India and the Middle East in a counterclockwise loop, avoiding the colder currents to the south. If it weren’t for this stroke of luck, Mr. Davies would have to fly a lot further to escape winter at home.

While both locales have great waves, I’m pretty sure we can all agree that surfing in boardies as your bikini-clad lady looks on from the beachfront pool is going to beat grey skies and 4-millimeter wetsuit any day.