But despite the surf
fever, Punta Hermosa remains off the radar for most tourists, probably because
there’s little reason to come unless you’re really into surfing. There are no
surf shops — boards and gear must be rented or bought in Lima — and only a
handful of hotels like Luisfer’s, a no-frills hostel where surfers bunk up, five
to a room. Between sessions, guests can be seen doing yoga atop their board bags
in the courtyard.
huanchaco-trujillo
Dining options are
limited, too. The sidewalks are lined with cheerful stands that serve ceviche
and seafood carpaccios that look amazing, but are far from stomach friendly. Ms.
Mulanovich’s boyfriend, a surfer named Scott from Los Angeles, had been holed up
in her condo for weeks after getting salmonella poisoning from bad mayonnaise.
The enterprising and
friendly locals, however, make up for the lack of infrastructure. The town’s
surf museum, for example, is actually the private home of an old-school surfer,
José A. Schiaffino. I stumbled upon the 1950s surf shack one afternoon while
walking back from the beach. Mr. Schiaffino wasn’t home, which was too bad
because I had heard he mixes a mean pisco sour, but his caretaker let me look
around.
The living room wall
was plastered with archival photos of the Waikiki Surf Club and the ceiling was
covered with colorful boards donated by big name riders like Nat Young, Mark Foo
and Ms. Mulanovich — a makeshift hall of fame.
Peru’s love affair
with surfing actually dates back to the 1940s, when the playboy socialite Carlos
Dogny returned from Hawaii with a shiny wooden board given to him by Duke
Kahanamoku, considered the godfather of modern surfing. In 1942, Mr. Dogny
founded the elite Waikiki Surf Club in Miraflores, a ritzy suburb on the
southern outskirts of Lima, where Peru’s ruling families rode the swells and got
tipsy in the clubhouse on pisco sours. (The club still employs “board boys” who
rush to the water’s edge to carry and wax members’ boards when they’re done with
a session.)
The club placed Peru
firmly on the international surf map and played host to the World Surfing
Championships, which was won by a local big-wave rider, Felipe Pomar, in the
1960s. But by the 1970s, the sport’s reputation sagged as it became associated
with dropouts and druggies, and surfing largely lost it cachet.
About the same time,
the country became marred by economic woes, political repression and terrorism.
Between 1980 and the early ’90s, the Maoist guerrilla group Shining Path waged
war against Peruvian society, killing tens of thousands of peasants and
small-town leaders, and turning Lima into a fiery battleground.
“Back then there was
a curfew at 1 a.m.,” said José de Col, a pro surfer who quit the sport in the
’80s to become an architect because there was little sponsorship money in Peru.
“We couldn’t have parties. Blackouts and bombs were part of daily life.”
Things began turning
around and, in the last few years, Peru seems to have planted a 180-degree
aerial. The country has stabilized politically under the new president, Alan
García, though soaring food prices have driven his popularity down. Despite high
rates of poverty (almost half the nation lives below the poverty line), Peru’s
economy has grown steadily, providing a much-needed morale booster and, for
surfers, an excuse to get back into the water.
After spending a day
playing sand bunny in Punta Hermosa, and watching the competitions from the
safety of my towel, I was itching for my own adrenaline rush. So the next
morning, I hired a taxi and set out on an hourlong journey to Cerro Azul, a
mellow break immortalized in a line from the Beach Boys’ 1962 anthem, “Surfin’
Safari.”
After maneuvering
through four police checkpoints (shakedowns are common along the Pan-American
Highway), we pulled up on a dirt road to the port town. Cerro Azul felt
abandoned, like a Western ghost town, except for a few shiny condos and the lazy
sounds of salsa lulling through the hot dusty air. The shoreline, however,
buzzed with anticipation. True to its reputation, the break had a mellow but
perky wave that rippled around a jagged point as though made in a water-park
wave pool. I paddled out, staked my spot among the teens, moms and old timers,
and caught a few rides before moving on to the next break down the coast.
As much as I liked
paddling along southern Peru, the word on the shore was that any surf safari
must also include a visit to Máncora, a small fishing village in northern Peru
near Ecuador. It enjoys an almost mythic reputation among surfers for its balmy
water, endless sunshine and crowd-free breaks. “Una paradiso!” my new friends
would say between sets.
But it didn’t seem
that way at first. I flew on Aerocondor, onboard a clunky plane that still had
ashtrays in the arm rests, and landed in Talara, an industrial port city whose
airport is now temporarily closed. The region, with a brown dirt terrain as
monotonous as a broken record, is the center of Peru’s oil industry. Giant rigs
scar the landscape like mechanical mosquitoes and perfume the air with the fetid
scent of raw petroleum.
After an hourlong
taxi ride, I arrived in Máncora, which looked like a blink-of-an-eye frontier
town until I wandered out to the beach. Nubile surfers in string bikinis lounged
under palm trees sipping coconuts, taking turns paddling out into the crystal
blue ocean. It felt like that secret spot in “The Beach,” the 2000 movie
starring Leonardo DiCaprio, except it was not quite a secret.
Máncora has been transformed in recent
years from a sleepy fishing village into a busy, international backpacker hub.
After dark, the town’s sole street turns into a total party, with flotillas of
surfers, weekenders from Ecuador and girls in slinky tank tops getting tipsy at
bars like Iguanas and Chill Out. There are also several amazing restaurants in
town, serving the nouvelle Asian-Peruvian fusion known as novoandia. La Sirena,
run by Juan Seminario Garay, a 28-year-old local surfer who studied at Le Cordon
Bleu in Lima, serves dishes like causa maki, dollops of mashed potatoes filled
with scallops mixed in a red and yellow pepper sauce.
san bartolo-lima
In the morning, the action moved to the
beach, especially at the main surf break in front of the Hotel del Wawa, a small
hotel and restaurant owned by the hunky surf pro Fernando Paraud, who is known
simply as Wawa. “Every day is like a weekend,” said Wawa, who was holding court
at his usual table. “Except weekends are more crowded.”
STILL, the restaurant was packed
wall-to-wall on a recent Thursday afternoon with surfers waiting out the
high-noon sun and low tides. Over delicate plates of smoked carpaccio and seared
tuna steaks, they traded gossip on the day’s best swells and near collisions in
the lineup. Then, when the tide finally broke around 4 p.m., everyone put down
their forks, grabbed their surfboards and headed back to the water in
choreographed unison.
It felt like a scene from a Broadway
musical, especially when cheers of “Oy!” “Va!” “Ey!” would wash over the crowd
like the chorus of a reggaetón song.
I followed them in. The waves were as
gentle and as well-formed as the famously friendly breaks at San Onofre or
Waikiki. And almost as jammed. Luckily there was a chain of hidden beaches just
a hop away.
After bumming around Wawa for a couple of
days, I hired a local surf guide nicknamed Pulpo to show me around. He drove me
10 miles in his teal-blue van to Los Organos, an abandoned oil town with a
couple of new beachside hostels.
lobitos-piura
There were no more than a dozen other
riders on the surf. I took my board into the water and waited for my wave. It
didn’t take long before I caught one that was head high with a defined peak that
tapered off to the right into a long shoulder — perfect for cutting and carving
long arcs.
Pulpo seemed impressed because he took me
45 minutes farther south to Lobitos, a hard-to-find break tucked at the end of a
ragged dirt road. There were oil pumps, rusty pipelines and crumbling military
barracks, some of which had been taken over by squatters and turned into surfing
hostels decorated with bumper stickers. I poked my head inside one: several
blond French girls were having lunch with their dreadlocked Chilean boyfriends.
Eating would have to wait. We pulled up
over the dirt and parked alongside the deserted beach. I pulled out my chunky
7-foot-6-inch rental board with trepidation. The beach looked like a small
swatch of an industrial wasteland: a couple of oil barrels with flames
flickering on top, and a few giant rigs on the horizon. But the waves, it turned
out, had a perky, fun shape. Really fun, in fact. And the water was a seductive
clear blue. Pulpo smiled. He had promised me a crowd-free break that was off the
grid, and here it was.
I rode the swells for several hours,
forgetting about the ominous oil barrels and, apparently, the time. Pulpo called
me in. There was another spot up the road that was even better.
has been a few years and now Peru is for all globe a surf destination.
this report was wrote by julia chaplin reprinted for the New yorks Time
