Great waves in a desert ghost town

  Lobitos, Peru
Sunday, December 10, 2006

Its the morning of the trip and we have arranged for a local guy called Coco to drive us and our mountain of stuff to Lobitos an hour and a half away. When I see the size of his van and the fact it has no roof rack I am already a little worried about whether we will all fit. We finally get everyone's stuff on board and this is the precarious view of our valuable boards, 11 on top in total! We say our goodbyes and cruise of into the desert in search of bigger, better waves.

The leaning tower of tabla's

 
I spend most of the hour and a half trip chatting to Big Jimmy, the life and soul of any party, a bit of a lad and owner of an infectious laugh. We have a similar sense of humour and have each other in stitches a number of times. We arrive in Lobitos to see perfect lefthand waves peeling of the point for a good distance, its late afternoon but every one of us are itching to get out there. The problem is, a good sized crowd has already beaten us to it. We dump our stuff in the first hostel we find, it sits high up above the beach a bit down from the point. The main social room is a large circle about 15 metres across and has glass windows edge to edge, giving fantastic panoramic views of the entire break.

We all suit up and paddle out, the first wave I duck under tricks me into thinking I am back in England, after two months of surfing in nothing but boardshorts, its bloody cold! Lobitos faces southwest and is blocked from the lovely warm Panama current, the currents here come north from much colder climes and the southerly wind is very strong. Paddling in a wetsuit again is hard work, the waves are fast, quite hollow and packed with good surfers. I struggle to catch my first wave for about half an hour, then when I do it takes me by surprise and I get it all wrong, when I fall and hit the water I feel a pain in my right shoulder. I spend another half hour paddling for waves but either cant quite drop in or someone else is on it first. I get cold in my sleeveless suit and my shoulder feels sore so I paddle back to shore pretty demoralised!

That night the crew heads out to the nearest restaurant, one of two in town (it really is a ghost town like something out of a western) I can't remember the name but we called it Mama's place due to the friendly owner, a bubbly, middle aged Peruvian lady who has met Big Jimmy previously and taken a liking to him, told you he was a bit of a lad. We all order the usual fish and rice and sit chatting about the waves and the location, we all agree it's a pretty perfect setup but ruined by the very competitive crowds. We decide to head to the next break north the next morning, Pasenas, it's a 15 minute walk but will be well worth it to avoid the crowds. Mama is serving our grub and I notice she has changed outfits since we arrived, she is now sporting what looks like a nightdress with some kind of teddy bear picture and in English underneath 'I love you....' We tease Jimmy that the wardrobe adjustment was purely for his benefit and he completely agrees in his own unique manner that causes much laughter!

The next morning my shoulder feels very stiff and I make the tough decision to have a day out of the water. I have a long history of shoulder problems from surfing since my first trip to Costa Rica in 2003. On that occasion I was on a two week holiday and refused to miss waves and rest up, it is a decision that has left me with a problem that is unlikely to go away without some kind of surgery. Shoulders are used a huge amount in surfing, having the luxury of travelling for a year means I can take rests to ensure it doesn't develop into something that puts me out of the water permanently. I take the opportunity to try out my camera skills from the beach and capture the boys tearing it up. I can take good quality video and point breaks give you an opportunity to get quite close to the action and catch some reasonable footage. The morning session ends but because of the low tide I haven't been able to get any good footage.

Lobitos surf

 
 
The afternoon session is higher tide and allows me a better angle from the beach. I get some good waves from jb, jimmy and simon but soon get bored and frustrated because I am not out there with them. To add humour to the proceedings I begin to add commentary, a skill I had overheard big jimmy putting to use on his video camera. It starts off with a bit of fun, using silly names like 'big jimmy, the giraffe of the surfing world' and commentating on the waves like it's a horse race. After a while I start to add a bit of depth to the characters on the screen. For example, Jimmy is described as "the worlds tallest surfer at 7foot6" he is actually a mere 6foot7! JB obviously gets some stick, becoming a shining example of underachievement - "johnboy has been surfing since he was only 8 months old, with his nappy strapped to a body board, you think he would be able to give us something better than that!??!" and "the disappointing jb attempts to pull off a reverse halfpenny twist with a bash to the lip, but he manages what can only be described as a plop followed by a few week bubbles". You get the idea....

The footage is played back later that day and everyone is disappointed about how crap they look compared to how good it feels when you are riding the wave...luckily this feeling is balanced by laughter at my ridiculous commentary.

The next day is my best days surfing in a while, we go back to Pasenas and have it to ourselves. I catch a number of good waves all the way to the shore dump. My shoulder starts to ache and get stiff again so unfortunately I can't spend as many hours in the surf as I would like. But no matter, it's Jeff Bells birthday night out back in England that very Saturday night and we have planned a celebration to match what our mates are doing in Manchester. Getting drunk doesn't take much planning to be fair, we bought a bottle of rum before going to Lobitos, which contrary to jb's diary account was actually a good and expensive bottle of Appleton's finest Jamaican rum. It cost more than three times the amount of the local brew, but it's certainly worth it in the taste.
 
Anna and Ghislaine have bravely joined us from Mancora in the desert Ghosttown of Lobitos for the night and will join in the festivities. I take the opportunity to get a group photo from home out of my bag with Jeff in it, partly to make sure everyone knows the person who's birthday we are celebrating and partly to show off my beautiful girlfriend Eva. At about 7.00pm (midnight in Manchester) a generous shot of Appleton's is served up to everyone before we head out to dinner and the night starts from there. Jb's and mine were especially large, here's the evidence....check out the long hair, I am ready for the abuse my friends. It took a while to fully transform myself from executive to surf bum, but I feel I have finally made it!
 
 

Jeffs birthday first drink

Jeffs birthday first drink reaction

 
 

 
 
We go to Mamas armed with booze and really liven the place up even more than usual. By the time we have finished our meal we are all quite merry and head back to the hostel to continue to celebrations. I am not sure who started it but we all end up doing whatever break dancing or displays of balance we can muster in our merry state, Simon tops them all by shimmying up the centre pole of the hostel and hanging from the top for a while, monkey style, he was a good 8 or 9 metres of the ground.
By 11.30 we are all suitably drunk and head to bed, no late nights when there is surf to be shredded the next mornin!
 

Jb and me at night end - 11.30!

Jb in trouble! I let him go eventually