Surfing Peru

After our experience with the protests we decided that we could do with a few days of rest and unwinding.

We went to the little town of Huanchaco. This is a great surfing spot on the coast, 12km from the hectic city of Trujillo. We spent two days there just relaxing and soaking up the atmosphere. It felt a lot like the West Coast of South Africa. Not everybody that went there enjoyed, because it is so quiet and deserted, but this suited us just fine! We did try some surfing, but the waves were pretty messy and it was VERY hard work. We were pretty sore and banged up by the end of the day!

camouflaged crustacean

From there we were off to Mancora. This is a little coastal resort, seen as THE surf spot in Peru. It was quite a mission to get there! There were no direct buses going before 19h and we didn´t want to wait the whole day in Trujillo, so we hopped from little town to little town in local buses, finally getting there late the evening. There we once again met up with Holly. We spent the night just chilling a bit and got some great cocktails at a beautiful cabana styled bar on the beach.

the creature from the deep

Mancora is a great place if you´re a surfer. It is a bit touristy, but still the water is great (nice and warm), the waves consistent and the prices reasonable. We headed out early for some surfing (it is a lot harder than it looked). It was a beautiful sunny day with good waves. It was incredible paddling around surrounded by pelicans who seem utterly unafraid of humans! We did get a few good runs, and we do manage to occasionally get on the board. But it seems that Sunday is the day the locals spend surfing and the competition is pretty fierce. The waves become really crowded as the waves are only good in a small area and some of the locals are incredibly rude and aggresive. I actually got slapped by a local! He cut in in front of me and I saw him too late and could not bail and hit him with my board. He totally freaked out and started swearing at me, although I was apologising profusely in English and Spanish. Then suddenly out of nowhere he slapped me. I talked to other travellers who got the same treatment! After that incident the surfing sort of lost some of its luster for me... Anyway, we had to stop, because we were burned to a crisp! It is now several days later and the backs of our legs still hurt like hell. That night we spent some time with some Americans we met on the beach watching the paradaisical sunset, me perhaps drinking maybe a little bit too much rum...

a bird of carrion waiting for our sunburnt bodies to stop twitching...

The next morning we were up early to catch the bus (no need, the bus was two hours late) to Guayaquil, Ecuador, a much longer than anticipated ride, but without any major incidents (4 passport checks and a detour because the bus was too heavy to cross the bridge into Guayaquil). We finally arrived in Guayaquil at 21h and got on another bus to Manta at 22h15. We arrived in Manta at 01h45 and just crashed at the first hotel we could find. This morning we caught another bus to Puerto Lopez where we´ll be staying for about three nights. This is a lovely, quiet little dirt road fishing village. We stay in a rustic wood and bamboo lodge with a nice garden and some welcome hammocks in the shade. Ecuador is quite a change from the coldish conditions we experienced in Peru. We are now only 1 degree south of the equator and it is swelteringly hot... They also use American dollars, because of a total collapse of the Ecuadorian currency. OK, off for some more seafood! Neil