Peru: an inside view

Surfear Es Libertad

 

One of the best times to reflect on a long journey in a foreign land is when you find yourself, at its end, sitting in the sterilized confines of the airport. Strung out from the journey, under the radiant glow of merciless halogen lights and berated by the ceaseless barrage of meaningless announcements coming from the overhead speakers spoken in a foreign tongue one has little choice but to reflect. In between hazy lustful thoughts of ones own bed, in ones own home, and the logistical ponderings on how to get there from ones current purgatorial situation, the underlying root question seeps through:

" Why did I come here?"

The question is certainly not contemplated in a negative connotation, (or hopefully at least not dominated by it) but more in an introspective analytical manner, which attempts to dissect the totality of ones journey into an easy bite sized a priori.
"Why did I come here?"

For a surfer finishing a surf trip the question more often than not has a very easy answer:
"I came here to surf!" the surfer in question would figuratively bellow back to his inquisitive internal dialogue.
But was it more than that? Why leave the consistent and well charted cradle of ones own local surf break, ditch most of your material possessions, and throw what’s left into a backpack to tactically meander around a part of the world you have never been to? Why put up with the long hours on the road, the grit, the grime, the injuries, the sickness, the lack of communication with loved ones, the abrupt removal from ones daily routine, and eternal threat of getting skunked?

Why deal with the airport lines, the dinged boards at the hands of a Banana Republic Airline, the long bus rides, the threats to your life and property and all of the other hardships that come with travelling? Especially when you have perfectly good consistently pumping surf within the borders of your own nation and hopefully your own local line up?

Some choose to stay, and for different reasons.
The revered hometown hero who proudly states how long he has spent on THEIR particular beach surfing THEIR particular break.
The weekend warrior who cant get more than two weeks off from his job.
The family man who is tied to his duties and obligations at home.
The teenaged surfer dreaming his life away through surf magazines and videos, but for the time being still chained to his hometown adolescence.
The old salt whom has already done and seen it all.
And really, truly, there are some lineups in the world that are so good you would be a fool to leave them for too long of a time period.


But for those that do leave, those that choose the uncertain paddle into the unknown waters of the world, the rewards are numerous. Those that choose to cast themselves into the void with right intention, manifest innumerable adventures.

 

Part 1 Getting There
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The journey begins like many do with a spontaneous offhand comment followed by much contemplation and preparation. Usually exclaimed at a bar, to a loved one, or in the silence of ones own room the prodigious traveller-to-be simply states "I want to go to ...."

This abstract comment soon gains momentum and quickly evolves into an abstract plan. Times and dates are selected, pennies pinched and saved, knowledgeable contacts dissected for information. The surf trip en-utero begins to achieve a consciousness.

As the selected date approaches last minute research begins to crescendo into a reckless pace until it implodes from the sheer weight of its own mass, leaving the studious traveller to abandon his efforts with a final "**** it". Nervousness and excitement clash swords in the realm of emotion. The traveller then resigns himself to the giant aluminum can hurtling at breakneck speed thousands of feet up in the atmosphere in the direction of his destination.

...

Chained to a leather seat with a fate in the hands of underpaid and overworked pilots the traveller gazes out his only connection to the outside world: the airplane window. Through the velvet night bursts of clustered lights appear below. Each one an unknown testament to future adventures. The south approaches.

As the first journey within a journey concludes the traveller inevitability finds himself gazing expectantly at the hanging vinyl straps that separate him from all the worldly possessions he has taken with him. When his bag finally crosses the threshold of this " Schrödinger's cat esc" membrane a deep sigh of relief is uttered. The exhausted traveller leaves the baggage claim area and melts into whatever accommodations he has procured for the night.

 

Part 2 Acclimation
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The sleep of a thousand jetlagged years ends abruptly with an alarm or something. The already road weary traveller attempts to collect his thoughts and makes sense of his surroundings.
"I’m here." he thinks.
Dragging his body to the window he parts the shades, flooding the room with third world sunlight and tries to make sense of the chaotic scene below. All he wants is to climb back into bed, but check out time is in an hour and the room is too expensive for another night. The traveller reluctantly casts himself into the void.
...
At some point serendipity rears its whimsical head and if a traveller is lucky they are greeted by it in the beginning stages of their journey. Sometimes a ride to a new place, a meal in good company, a fortuitous encounter with a local (or a recommendation from one about a surf spot) can be the equivalent of karmatic rocket fuel for the initial stages of a journey. However one must make sure their rocket is heading in the right direction.
The first surf is inevitable on a surf trip. Usually purely organic in form on rented, borrowed or well travelled equipment (if the traveller is willing to pay to bring his own) the first surf in a new land stirs the soul. This is especially true when going from a five-mil wetsuit to board shorts. When feeling wax under your bear feet for the first time in a long time, it is easy to overlook the yellowness and degradation of the board below you, or how out of your element you are in a strange lineup.

The salt and sun washes the traveller clean of the confined and canned environment that has conveyed him to this point. The surf trip has taken its first breath.

 

...
Hiccups mar the preconceived pristine image the traveller had about the journey prior to embarking. Stomach pains, lack of affordable surf equipment, flatness, dysentery, rashes, mosquito bites, strange food, lack of good beer for affordable prices.
Negative factors mount and if not kept in check the vibes of the trip can to turn against the traveller. The attitude must be kept positive and the mind open to avoid the continued manifestation of this negative reality. Eventually physical and psychological acclimation is completed and the traveller begins to reach a relaxed equilibrium.
As the travel progresses staleness sets in quickly if one stays too long in the wrong place. Comfort becomes the bane of exploration and it becomes necessary for any surf traveller to acknowledge this fact and recognize when they have been trapped in a leisurely paradisiacal zone in the primordial stages of their trip.
A traveller will encounter the "snare of content-ness” many times in their journey and it will be a constant battle between remedying or giving in. Like the ebb and flow of tides a traveller goes from road weary and ambitious, to relaxed and lazy. It is a delicate dance. Some places are worth spending weeks, months, years, or even a lifetime in, but chances are if you are thinking about leaving for greener pastures they are probably out there. Enjoy the time you spend in each place; just be wary of one place spending all your time.

Though hard to leave, a traveller must move onwards from where they initially touched down and progress to the next stage. If not the days will slide into weeks and the surfer may find himself facing a return flight date that has approached far too fast, having accomplished nothing he set out to do.

As acclimation leads to itchy feet the traveller packs his bag once more and sets out towards the horizon.

 

Ok so my computer just **** the bed and shorted out. It wont charge anymore so ill have to take it to the store. Ill upload the whole narrative here and then put in the pictures later once i get my computer fixed

 

Part 3: Scoring

At some point the traveller will stumble into an offer too good to refuse. It may be a good surfboard for an even better price. It may be falling in with a group of people that offer them ride to a place they have always wanted to go. It may be that the swell finally turns on and they begin to get the best rides of their lives. When the scoring begins it is important to keep everything in perspective. The good and bad of any surf trip ebb and flow like the tide and it is important to practice some degree of non attachment for both good and bad situations. That being said a solid score should always be appreciated fully and logged to the memory banks for future reference regardless of what type of score it may be.

These things tend to line up serendipitously and synergistically.
One must enjoy the score, but anticipate it to end. Don’t try to hold on when things return to normal. Don’t be sad its over, be happy it happened at all, and as Jerry Lopez says " Surf for tomorrow, not like there isn’t one." At a certain point it will end just as surely as it began and it will be time to pick yourself up and continue on with your trip.

 

Part 4: The Break


At a certain point in every surf trip there is a time when it is necessary to take a break and recover or momentarily focus on other things. Maybe the traveller in question receives an injury or an illness. Maybe their arms have turned to jello. Maybe the swell has gone flat. Maybe a loved one is meeting them on their trip, or there may simply be other non-coastal parts of a country a surf-traveller desires to explore. Whatever the reason every good extended surf trip has a break in the action in which the participant pursues something else. Take this break for what it is, and regardless of whether it is the result of a positive or negative influence try and make the most of it. The beautiful thing about waves is that there will always be more; it’s just a question of whether you will be in the condition to ride them. Don’t be afraid to enjoy a weekend in the mountains.

 

Part 5: The Long Haul:


Here’s where things really start to get down and dirty.

The traveller has been on the road for a considerable amount of time now. He has entered, left, and re-entered his comfort zone multiple times. Each score overshadows the last until they all start to blur together.
"How did I get here?" thinks the traveller.
The "snare of content-ness" threatens to plant its roots deep into the travellers walkin' shoes at this point. But the epic score still has to be attained. Sure the waves are pretty good here, the food cheap and succulent, the beer plentiful and the accommodations moderately priced, but something is missing. The traveller already took a week break from surfing in the Andes mountains yet has returned to well worn ground in a pre-explored area. The return flight looms in the travellers brain and he knows he must continue onwards until the specter of his homeward journey turns from menacing to comforting.

The traveller once again leaves his comfort zone. This occurs against the advice of the company he keeps.
"Don’t go there" they say, " the waves are worse" or "its dangerous" or "the waters polluted" or "the roads aren’t open right now".
Yet the traveller knows he must continue on to achieve the epic score, or at least attempt to and get skunked in the process.
...

The vibes begin to turn. Something happens, a natural disaster, a highway washed out, a bus turned round, a country in turmoil. The traveller curses his own foolhardiness for jumping back into the void without more foresight. Penances are paid and the journey continues. The price of travelling into uncharted territory mounts ever higher in the traveller’s brain until he is forced to ask himself
"Was this worth it?"
The tide recedes; the traveller arrives at his destination. The waves are pumping, the accommodations moderately priced, the tenants cultured and friendly. The traveller is left to contemplate the bipolar extremes of any good surf trip, after a good shower of course.

 

Part 6: The Sign

The traveller gazes at a peeling oil pastel painting slung lopsided on the wall. It depicts a giant lightning storm over the Grand Canyon. Without even having to look at the leaden sky above the traveller feels the truth in his bones: it’s going to rain. He has pursued the epic score for weeks now, and he knows if he doesn’t leave first thing in the morning he will miss his window and get trapped where he is during the rainstorm and flooding. The swell is coming; he must leave and beat the storm. The traveller packs his bag once more.

The traveller piles into a ramshackle vehicle sprinting along the dusty pothole laden dirt track towards his fate. Precursors of catastrophe are everywhere, yet they do not faze him. Eventually the destination is reached, the waves are flat and the traveller is left to stew in his own juices of consternation.
"It was double overhead where I was, why is it flat HERE?" the traveller can do nothing but hope.
...
The traveller awakes to the sound of someone hammering something at midnight.
" What'n'the ****" he exclaims with outraged curiosity.
He pokes his head out the window and witnesses’ torrential downpours the likes of which this coastal desert has never seen. Water is pouring through every orifice of the house and he thinks surely it will wash away. His room is dry however, so he spends the night running around like a decapitated chicken trying to make himself useful while the world falls apart. Sweeping water out with crappy brooms and putting buckets under ceaselessly developing leaks in the roof becomes the frantic routine until the wee hours of the morning. He looks out his bedroom window and sees the dirt street has turned into a muddy torrent of a river, and the putrid odor of raw sewage wafts up to the window. After hours he goes to sleep with the thought in his brain that tomorrow the water will surely be too dirty to surf the epic swell he anticipated.

...

At dawn only traces of the flash flood are present. The aroma of sewage remains, but the swell is starting to fill in, and long chest high liners begin to wrap the point at Chicama. The traveller runs down the point and plunges into the trash-laden cesspool of filthy left point glory.
The swell increases and by afternoon it is well overhead and ripping down the point. The traveller surfs ceaselessly for three days. The sheer leg burning perfection of the waves he has enjoys overshadows the probable hepatitis he receives from the water quality. Paradise has been attained but at a price. The road to the town has been washed out, meaning no food or water can be delivered and they both double, then triple in price. Electricity is non-existent making it unsafe to consume meat or perishable food due to lack of refrigeration. Wi-Fi becomes a much-discussed pipe dream amongst the rabble that congregate on the benches of El Hombre overlooking the point. Beer is depleted in order to compensate for lack of water. Warm beer is no problem to one thirsty enough.

 

Part 7 Temptations

When one visits Chicama, they have three options to get to the take off zone. The first is to walk, a thirty-minute foot jarring experience in which one must watch every step one takes to avoid slicing their foot on something sharp. This can be a very common occurrence due to the fact that when the waves are pumping one cant help but watch them peel past in uniform glassy machine like perfection. If one becomes enamored by this display without stopping ones stride the result will surely by a swift and painful sharp rock or urchin to the bottom of ones bare foot.

The second option is to paddle, which is really only an option on small days when the point isn’t linking up in its entirety. Otherwise the paddlee in question would be struggling a few kilometers against a strong current and most certainly should have gotten out and walked to save both time and energy.

The third and most foul option to get to the lineup in Chicama is to sell out and take the zodiac. these infernal, smog producing, noise injecting, surf ruining crafts shuttle rich people who are too lame to walk or paddle from the beach to the point for a hefty price. One only needs to spend one afternoon walking down/ paddling the point during a good day at Chicama to see the terrible (and tempting) use of this craft.

Imagine this, you catch a leg burner and either paddle with noodle arms all the way back to the lineup, or walk with battered and bleeding feet. After reaching the take off point you paddle for twenty minutes to stay in position, observing all the normal cordialities of a lineup. Suddenly you hear a motor whining off in the distance and lo and behold a boat packed from bow to stern with rich kooks appears before you. As the set finally looms in the distance, the whole cadre of ten kooks get dropped off further out then you and snake the waves you and the whole lineup have been patiently waiting for. Worse yet, you see the same faces again in fifteen minutes because directly after snaking you, they get picked back up and brought out to snake the next guy.

For an individual the zodiac turns a five-wave session to a twenty-five-wave session, but the price is far more than the $30 a day pitched by the resort. When you hop in that boat, you pay wit a bit of your soul. There are two types of people who have surfed Chicama, those that used the zodiac, and those who didn't.
...
The traveller watched the zodiac burn through fuel for days on end, even after all the stores in town ran out of gas to power the generators for refrigeration. The traveller resisted temptation and couldn't bring himself to join in on the devils ferry after he realized it was literally squandering what little resources the community could have used to preserve fresh food.

The traveller could not however resist a good breakfast. For the same price as his lowly accommodations at El Hombre (about ten bucks a night) the traveller could go next door to the resort and eat at an all you can eat buffet with all the fixings. Needless to say, conversations and even eye contact with the zodiac-ers at breakfast were kept to a minimum. He realized that some temptations are too great, especially when you’ve only had saltines’ and rice for a few days. He understood that when travelling you must pick your battles.

 

Part 8 Winding down

Like every good swell, every good journey must eventually begin to fizzle out and inevitability come to an end. If one is fortunate enough, both of these things happen at the same time because there is nothing worse then looking out the window of an airplane when leaving a country and seeing the swell absolutely pumping.
...
For the traveller the run of swell eventually reached dismally flat proportions at Chicama, and no amount of drunken poker games on the porch of El Hombre could overshadow the fact that he knew there were bigger waves in Huanchaco and Pacasmayo. It became time to leave; yet the traveller clung to the idea of one final swell. In a few days the waves picked up to a fun size, but nowhere near the epic proportions he had witnessed earlier. The traveller decided to leave in a taxi for Huanchaco because the roads to Pacasmayo were washed out due to flooding and mudslides.

Before the traveller hopped in the cab with his French and Australian friends, the owner of El Hombre requested one more favor. Apparently there was a new oceanfront road and promenade being constructed by the state, and this conflicted with El Hombre's property boundaries. The traveller was requested to help tear down the contested porch on the boundary. At first the process went orderly and calmly, but after the owner instructed the workers that they could destroy the porch an anarchistic orgy of destruction ensued. The porch was torn apart by the inhabitants of El Hombre like a pack of rabid wolverines.

As the traveller hopped into the cab he took one last look at the bulldozers approaching the chill spot on the cliff encompassed of two trees and a few green stone benches overlooking the point at Chicama. He realized that this historic spot enjoyed by surfers and travellers for generations was surely in the path of destruction. His small group of surfers chilling and drinking beers on the benches each day (arm chair surfing the point until they were inspired to paddle out) would be the last in a long lineage to do so. He realized Chicama would never be the same for him once he returned. He wondered about the effect of the new road and beachfront promenade. He wondered how many more zodiacs would be clogging the lineup because of them when he finally returned.

 

part 9 giving back

The traveller spent the last week or so of his trip in Huanchaco because the threat of rain loomed, and information about road access to Pacasmayo remained sketchy. He resigned himself to the fact that along with the inaccessible Lobitos and Mancora (due to rain and flooding) Pacas must be saved for next time. Once his decision was made the Huanchaco haze set in, and the traveller found the days flying by in a mirage of bad beer, and good company.
However a quote from his Australian friend hung over his thoughts.
" I would hate to say that I was in Peru during one of its worse natural disasters ever, and I didn’t do anything for the people who lived there."
The traveller realized that this would soon become a reality for him, as his return flight was only a few days away. It seemed too late to volunteer so the traveller wrote himself off as just another one of the first world's neocolonistic tourist gringos.
...
Soon the day came for the gringo to sell his surfboard or be forced to pay the ridiculous $236 dollars that the bloodsucking leach bastards at United Airlines required of him to transport the $100 wave craft home. The travelling gringo spent half the day walking around to various surf schools and shops only to be turned away or disrespected with the gringo discount when he tried to sell his board.

" I'll give you forty bucks,” said one
" I'll trade you a pair of fins but you need to give me fifty bucks,” said another.

"**** that." thought the gringo. "I would sooner give it away."

Asking a local, the gringo found out about a charity group that ran a local orphanage in town. The name was Mundo de Ninos. Serendipitously enough every evening after a surf, (and the obligatory post session beers) the gringo would buy brownies and empanadas from the orphanage's bread cart Mundo Pan. This was entirely unbeknownst to him, who thought it was just a heady brownie and empanada spot directly in front of his hostel.
...
As the afternoon grew later the gringo/traveller/neocolonolistic-gypsyman approached the bread cart dude.
"Yo man, you sell bread for the orphanage?" the gringo asked in mangled half nonsensical Spanish

"Si." replied the bread man
"I have this surf board I would like to donate." Fumbled the gringo in Spanglish so thick the bread man started grinning.

"Sure man!" said the bread man in Spanish. "After work ill bring you to the orphanage and you can give the board to the kids."

Sure enough the bread man appeared later that evening in a motorcycle jerry rigged to be a Moto-taxi, jerry rigged to be a bread cart. The gringo clung to the side of the mad-maxed-out vehicle while the bread man rode with the surfboard under his legs. Together they hurtled down pothole-laden tracks to the orphanage.

Upon arrival the gringo and the bread man were greeted by the loud barking of dogs and a locked iron gate that was quickly opened to reveal the caretaker of the orphanage. He lead them to the orphans who were seated around two long tables set up end to end with a blue and white checkered vinyl picnic clothe covering its surface.

The 20 or so orphans were in the midst of chattering amongst themselves when this scraggly sunburnt and sun-bleached gringo ambled in carrying a well used but still fully functioning Al-Merrick surfboard. They immediately stared and went silent, and the gringo took advantage of the acoustic void to give his best attempt at some life advice in Spanish:


" Surfear es libertad"

 

hahahhaa