Safety checks in quads on Bali

In November, an eight-year-old boy was airlifted to Perth in an induced coma after suffering a fractured skull during a quad bike accident in Bali.

It wasn’t a one-off.

A quick online search shows headlines like “Dangerous/unsafe/100 per cent chances of getting badly hurt”, and “One of our riders was trapped under a rolled ATV, a 500kg machine, with both an adult and my son pinned beneath it”.

Nigel Mason, the fit 82-year-old Australian founder of Mason’s Adventures in Bali, adds: “There are more accidents than you hear about. Many of them are covered up. Quads are dangerous, full stop. Around 20 people get killed on them in Australia every year.”

It may sound odd, then, to learn in addition to whitewater rafting, elephant feeding and mountain biking, Mason’s Adventures offers “jungle buggy” tours on which tourists tear through the jungle with abandon. But there’s a huge difference, Nigel explains.

“We don’t use ordinary ATVs,” he says.

“We have a fleet of Polaris dune buggies from the US that you sit in, not on top of, which means you have a lower centre of gravity and are less likely to roll over. And in case you do roll over, you’re surrounded by a cage and wearing a seatbelt. We’re the only company in Bali that has them. Plus we don’t take people on roads or public tracks.

“We have a private 5km track that I spent three months gouging out of the jungle, and it has safety barriers and signs. And if you don’t have a valid driver’s licence, you can only go as a tandem passenger.

“People still flip from time to time but in eight years, the most serious accident we’ve had is a broken arm, and that only happened because they didn’t follow instructions and put their arm outside the buggy as they tipped over.”

All members of our group — a bunch of middle-aged blokes on holiday in Bali — wince as Nigel shows us video footage of that particularly painful incident and four or five other spills during a short safety briefing.

Once that’s out of the way we don helmets and buckle up in our buggies, which are now also equipped with safety nets that make it nearly impossible to thread an arm through.

Still, I can’t help feeling a little nervous as I turn the ignition key and 350cc of American muscle roars to life.

But my reservations fly out of the window as I follow the other riders and our guide on to the track.

Within a few minutes I’m drifting around corners and tearing down bumpy straights like a pro, high on adrenaline, wishing I could do this forever.

After three crazy laps we return to base camp – a large bamboo building overlooking dreamy green rice fields in central Bali – order a round of beers, and compare notes.

“It’s so easy. You go with it and let the machine do the work,” says Kim, a mate from Sweden.

“That was sound. Topnotch,” says Mathew, who hails from the UK. “And I’ll thank you for noticing that I came first across the finish line.”

“That’s because you started at the front of the queue behind the guide,” says Dave from Canada. “And there was no overtaking.”

“Would’ve, could’ve, should’ve. You could have overtaken me if you had any skills,” Mathew replies. And so the conversation progresses, with no party giving an inch over who was fastest and who got the highest air.

There was, however, one thing we could all agree on: jungle buggies in Bali are good fun.

+ Dave Smith was a guest of Nigel Mason. Nigel did not influence this story, or read it before publication.

fact file Jungle buggy adventures are $92 per person, including transfer from your hotel, a topnotch buffet lunch and insurance. Drivers must be 18 or over and have a valid driving licence. Tandem passengers must be 12 or over. See masonadventures.com.