Duke Storm presents stories of stoke from around the globe.

From Peru – with Ryan and Paul

Our first surf in Lima was mediocre at best, but after seven hours of screaming babies and a mild deportation scare, it felt good to simply get in the water. It didn’t take us long to realize that Lima proper is not the place to be for surf in Peru. We had two options: head north, or head south. All the local knowledge (or misinformation, as it would later turn out) we could gather indicated that we should head north, so after two nights in Lima, we hired a cab downtown and prepared ourselves for the 16 hour bus ride to Mancora.

Lima is a vast city 9 million strong. Colorful slums cover the city’s dusty desert cliff side . The landscape and sprawling poverty give off an unmistakable Kabul-by-the -sea vibe, which is only slightly disconcerting. Perhaps one of the best things about Lima is the absolute abundance of ice-cream men. Of the 9 million odd residents of Lima, roughly half-a-million (a conservative estimate) serve in the D’ANAFRIA helado army. You can’t go anywhere in Lima, or Peru for that matter, without being swarmed by yellow-clad ice-cream men, peddling frozen treats from their tricked out reverse tricycles.

Our trip to Mancora coincided with the arrival of a decent north swell. Mancora is often touted as the surf capital of Northern Peru, and while this may be true in a cultural sense, the wave leaves much to be desired. I am by no means saying that Mancora is a bad wave, quite the opposite in fact, but the crowd is a zoo and the form doesn’t hold a candle to the handful of more famous lefts a few hours south.

Peruvian lineup rules are a lot like Peruvian traffic laws: loosely followed, loosely enforced, and pretty much non existent. The sheer volume of surfers in Mancora, both local and traveling, coupled with the half-dozen area surf schools leads to absolute carnage in the water. Allow me to quote Indiana Jones: “I hate snakes” – and the left at Mancora is an absolute snake pit. Mancora is a fun rip-able wave, but not really worth the hassle.

If Mancora has any redeeming qualities, it is the nightlife and the girls. Our second night in Mancora was “la noche de amor.” My valentine was a pretty Peruvian chica named Leydey. After a night of dancing we headed to the beach for a moonlight stroll. In hindsight, this was a terrible idea, we’re not in Jersey anymore, but old habits die hard. I was only a few moments away from actually living out an Enrique Iglesias video when three masked banditos appeared and snatched Leydey’s purse. It took about three seconds for Leydey to break down into hysterics and start chasing after the thieves. Fully aware of how bad this situation could potentially become, but simultaneously aware of certain situational obligations, I reluctantly followed. We caught the banditos in no time and everyone began screaming in Spanish. The banditos promptly decided they had no time for negotiations and produced switchblades and a machete Things escalated quickly. Needless to say the following half minute got pretty hectic. I won’t bore you with the details of our daring escape. Suffice it to say I was able to effectively diffuse a potentially bad situation. However Leydey’s purse was gone forever.

The afore mentioned bandito experience led to my first experience with South American law enforcement. We all knew that going to the police was an exercise in futility, but we were told it’s always good to have a report on file. The police captain was indifference personified. After hearing our story, and the stories of several other victims, he simply shrugged, pointed at his watch, and continued eating his Yucca chips.

I returned from the police station around 6 am, just in time to squeeze in a sunrise session at the point. A rather emaciated, thick-haired, California goofy foot joined me in the water. He was absolutely killing it on a finless wooden aelia board. I think his name was Rob...

I can’t write about our time in Mancora without mentioning the Aussies. Paul and I ran into dozens of groups of Aussie travelers during our time in Peru, but these particular Aussies, the Mancora Aussies, are worthy of note because they raged harder and longer than I had previously thought humanly possible. This was the bender to end all benders-- ninety-six hours (that I know of) without sleeping and without stopping. These country boys from the South of Australia put every American frat boy I have ever met to shame. Paul and I couldn’t keep up, the POME’s couldn’t keep up, the Kiwi’s couldn’t keep up, and the Peruvians simply shook their heads. I’m talking a herculean feat of substance abuse. I’m neither condoning nor condemning this behavior, I’m simply recording a first-hand account of a freak natural phenomenon.

During a brief period of coherence, the Aussies also proffered some useful information: A) we really blew it by not heading south to Punta Hermosa and B) if we want good waves up North, we should head to Lobitos. It was settled. We would head to Lobitos. It would have been nice to surf Cabo Blanco, “the Peruvian pipeline” situated a few miles from Mancora, but Cabo Blanco needs a huge North swell and neither our livers nor our wallets could afford to wait around.

In case you’re wondering if we scored any decent surf in this particular surf trip, the answer is YES, and the elaboration is forth coming…

Lobitos

An Aussie named Lebbo joined us for the Lobitos leg of our journey. We bused from Mancora to Talara, The drive to Talara is mostly arid dessert terrain which, as you near town, gives way to a vast plastic bag-garbage-forest. Garbage cans are scarce and unfortunately, parts of rural Peru resemble a giant land fill. Once in Talara we hired a cab to the small fishing village of Lobitos. Peruvian moto-taxis are essentially motorized tricycles. The standard is basically a three-wheeled Honda dirtbike. Remember that kickass big-wheel you had when you were 5? Didn’t you wish you could ride that thing forever? Peruvian taxi drivers are living the dream.

Lobitos is 26 kilometers from Talara– 26K’s of hard desert terrain. Our particular moto-taxi had small wheels and wasn’t very well suited to this particular journey, however our driver decided that the prospect of earning a full day’s pay in one trip outweighed the calculated risk of this undertaking.

Peru has the highest concentration of vultures and buzzards that I have ever seen. As we traversed the desert in our tiny tuk-tuk, dozens of vultures circled overhead, and we couldn’t help but wonder if perhaps the birds knew something that we didn’t. Surprisingly the moto-taxi survived the trek in one piece. Our makeshift roof racks, however, did not. The boards barely survived.

Lobitos is very remote. Aside from the military barracks, fishing port, and waves, there is NOTHING there. When we arrived, Lobitos was celebrating Carnival, which, after the mayhem that was Mancora, seemed like little more than a local block party. A quick glance at Miss Carnival definitively ruled out a trip to any Lobito’s discos, if they even had one. If you ever find yourself in this corner of the world, it might be worth your while to bring a skateboard. Both Lobitos and Talara looked like they could have been levels in a Tony Hawk game. I will say this about Lobitos: we finally scored some good surf. Lobitos picks up a lot of swell, and throughout our stay, the waves never dropped below head high.

The main wave in Lobitos is a fairly long left point. It’s a fast rip-able wave with several decent barrel sections. On the better days I almost made more trips through the barrel than trips to the bano, and thanks to the ceviche, I made a lot of trips to the bano. The top of the point is a shallow rock reef that slabs at low tide but the bulk of the wave breaks over sand. There are also dozens of other lefts surrounding Lobitos for the intrepid and patient traveler. We did a bit of exploring ourselves with largely less than stellar results. One particularly bad failed mission consisted of a long desert hike yielding only a sloppy chest high closeout. From afar the headland had looked extremely promising but we were duped. I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again, you can never trust the side-view. After that escapade we stuck mostly to the main point, which got consistently bigger throughout our stay, peaking at several feet overhead.

Speaking of side-view, the lineup at Lobitos was situated perfectly to witness the siren-call barrels reeling off the reef in front of the cliffs. Machine-perfect barrels pumped through, one after another, imploding on dry reef, mocking us, daring someone to ride them. On a bigger swell these reefs would have been going off, but at a few feet overhead they broke dangerously close to the exposed reef and surrounding cliffs. Still, occasionally a set would swing wide enough to make an attempt plausible. Paul and a Brazilian guy, unwilling or unable to let these waves go unridden, paddled up the point to make a go at it. Paul’s first wave was a pretty epic barrel. Temptation was mounting, but as the only Spanish speaker in the group I figured someone would need to tell the doctor how to reattach Paul’s face. The Brazilllian guy went over the falls a few times and came up missing a fin. Paul, brimming with confidence, pulled an Icarus when he took off way too close to the rocks and pulled in as the reef began sucking dry. The lineup collectively cringed as a linebacker sized rock popped up on the shoulder, completely blocking any exit. Paul popped out the back and barely missed going over the falls. No one made any more attempts at that particular reef during our session.

We’d been surfing Lobitos for nearly a week when, after accessing internet in Talara, we learned of a fairly decent South swell filling in. We decided this would be a good time to head further south, to some of the big name pointbreaks, and maybe, if we were lucky, surf Chicama.

Pecasamayo

We took a lot of buses. Lobitos to Talara. Talara to Piura. Piura to Chiclayo. Chiclayo to Pecasamayo. We had to spend the night in Chiclaya, which turned out to be a pretty interesting little town way off the gringo trail. Paul couldn’t resist the lure of the casinos. He cashed out up one sol cent, which is about a third of a penny. Inside the casino we were hit on by three generations of Peruvian gold diggers. The daughter was pretty, but the language barrier really inhibited Paul’s chances with the abuelita.

The next day we arrived in Pecasamayo-- a cool town with a fishing pier at the North end, a lighthouse at the South end, a great wave, and a giant Christ statue overseeing all. Everyone said the water in Pecasamayo was cold, but everyone said the same thing about Lima and Lobitos, and both spots were easily trunkable. Screw it we thought, a few weeks ago we were surfing in snow. We decided to trunk it. Big mistake. The water around Pecasamayo gets pretty chilly thanks to localized upwelling and Antartic currents flowing offshore. We paddled out around sunset, into the biggest waves of the trip, the equatorial sun blinding our eyes, the Antarctic currents freezing our huevos, the wind and current cranking, and the point on fire. We were only able to catch one wave each before the sun went down, but what a wave! The speed, the power, the length of ride. I lost count of top turns around 15. This is why we left home in the first place. We got out of the water, freezing but stoked, and began our hike back through the desert. We were a sorry sight: our feet dancing around broken glass and skeletal remains, the howling wind threatening to blow us off the cliffs, buzzards circling overhead, two stupid gringos in board shorts, wandering the desert, screaming taxi.

That night we met a mustachio-ed man who ran a local Peruvian surf-cast site. He told us the swell should be 8-10 ft at 16 seconds, which meant that Pecasamayo would be firing, but Chicama would barely be chest high. We made the executive decision to skip Chicama in favor of scoring Pecasamayo doing it’s thing. I know, I know. It’s practically sacrilege for two goofyfoots to go to Peru and not surf Chicama, but if you objectively analyze the situation, we made the right call. The novelty of surfing the worlds longest left doesn’t mean much when you’re struggling in waist high crumblers. When comparing two pointbreaks measured in kilometers, the overhead barrel is going to win every time. Paul and I were stoked to finally pull our pintails out of our boardbags.

The next morning Pecasamayo was on-- well overhead, 2x overhead + on the set, and cranking. The wave is long and fast and perfect with several barrel sections. The wind came up hard around noon and blew out the surf for the rest of the day. The next day, however, we lucked out as thick fog kept the wind calm all day. The swell not only stuck around for Sunday morning, but actually increased a bit, as bigger sets became more and more frequent. Sunday morning was one of those magic sessions that gets burned in the mind’s eye of every traveling surfer. Perfect left after perfect left. Barrel after barrel. My arms were dead and my legs were almost as tired. It was a good day to be in Pecasamayo.

The wave is actually a bit far from town. The best way to get to the point is to hire a moto-taxi for about $1USD. We usually ended up with one of two taxi drivers. The first driver, an older gentleman with a melon-head and a Ned Flanders ’stache was possibly the best moto-taxi driver in all of Peru. He had his own board racks, he avoided the bumps and he got us to the wave fast. His main competition was the kid. If Evel Knievel had an illegitimate Peruvian child, than the kid is most certainly the progeny of that bastard. The kid, covered from head to foot in mud and axle grease, would go tearing through the desert, smashing into rocks, charging over bumps, teetering on the edge of cliffs, all the while giggling away like a schoolgirl. It would have been great fun if our boards hadn’t been chattering against bare aluminum the whole time, threatening to snap every time the kid went airborne. I’ve got to hand it to him though,the kid was always around when we needed a driver. What he lacked in finesse he made up for in availability.

By Sunday night the swell was dropping and we were thoroughly surfed-out. It was time to leave Peru and begin our journey Northward. While I regret not being able to surf Chicama, I realize it was the wrong time of year and our chances of scoring Chicama were slim from the get go. Part of me wanted to hang around and wait for Chicama to break, but if we were going to make it thorough Central America, we needed to move on.

Moving on…

Pecasamayo to Chiclaya. Chiclaya to Piura. Piura to Mancora. We took a combi collectivo to Mancora. Both prior to, and during, our journey, we had heard a great deal about the perils of the Pan-American highway, but thus far our Peruvian travels had been largely uneventful. The collectivo from Piura to Mancora spiced things up a bit. Our collectivo driver had a rather cavalier attitude toward double yellow lines, solid white lines, and the general concept of turning. Preferring the laws of geometry to the (loosely followed and rarely enforced) rules of the road, our driver took the straight line whenever possible. Additionally, our friendly combi driver had a strong penchant for 80’s music. Charging past two tractor trailers around a blind mountain pass while blasting “Take on Me” was almost too surreal to handle. In his defense, we would have made great time if we hadn’t been held up by that overturned onion truck.

When the highway was once again onion free, we made our way back to Mancora, where we hopped a bus to our next destination… Ecuador.

Bonus Nachos: Aussie Spanglish

The gringo habit of butchering the Spanish language is often referred to as Spanglish, and the Aussies elevated Spanglish to new levels of hilarity. Here’s a few gems we came across:

-Peruvian bartender: Buenas Noches
-Aussie: You hear that boys? We get bonus nachos! Wicked!

2 hours later- Aussie: Where the f@#$ are my nachos!?

-Aussie (to Peruvian surfer): I’m on the playa, I’m tranquilo and you’re nada.

Peruvian surfer: Tranquilo! Aussie surfer: Ten Kilos? I’m 85!