The alarm went off at 7.55am. Its breakfast time and im in Peru baby. Crazy eggs and bread with jam, mental smoothie and we're off to surf with the gang. A few yanks, an Aussie, a Greek guy an Argentinian and a Brit called Bob (who I gave the nickname 'crazy bob').
We turned up to see what was described to me as a 'small day'. It was about 6-7ft on the wave face at a rocky point break. That's right on the edge of my comfort zone size wise, throw in a bed of rocks underneath and a seriously long paddle and im shitting myself. Managed to get one wave, huge and fast! It was like this for the next few days, lots of beatings and not many waves! Surprisingly I didn't get whingy about my lack of waves as I put it down to conditioning. Oh and im really not that good at surfing!
On my second day a chap called Pat arrived. Hes from Bournemouth and a top guy. He was sharing a room with me and crazy Bob, we all got on pretty well! We also had a kiwi arrive the next night, on crazy Bobs leaving night. Crazy bob went for a surf about 3pm, he arrived back around 7.30 absolutely wired wanting to party. Turns out he got to the beach and before getting in the surf he had been invited to a party with 4 chicks. So after an hour of smashing down vodka's and beer's he came back to the hostel to change out of his wetsuit, grab some cash and go back for more. Turns out the girls didn't want to party as hard as he did so he had a carrier bag (party bag) with a bag of coke, some weed and an almost full bottle of vodka when he arrived back at the hostel. This was bad news for the kiwi who got ninja'd (mostly by Pat and I throwing him under the bus and baiting him) into getting wrecked and going to the capital of Peru, Lima for a 'party'. Bob had a vague address written on his hand from the girls! After a lot of pressure from Bob they dealt with the party bag and jumped on the bus to Lima. Turns out that on a Peruvian bank holiday Monday the only place open for a party was a seedy brothel, where the boys sat and enjoyed the drinks brought for them by seedy old men. At 5am they got back and both lads surfed at 9am after breakfast. Turns out crazy Bob is a school teacher!! So crazy Bob is no more but left great memories and about 10 twinings tea bags for me and Pat. Sick.
After a few more days surfing 'small' waves over rocks and urchins (getting thrashed by the sea mostly) I had a few waves under my belt. Loving life. We had two dutch guys arrive, Tim and Melissa, both legends. I decided to push the boat out, i was going to buy my first pineapple and treat the team to pudding! The owner of the hostel took me to the most mental market ive ever seen and told me he would meet me in the middle in an hour. Nice. So i was walking around aimlessly taking it all in. Some of the highlights were; an AK47 wielding guard (yeah, at the market), a full chicken halved complete with all internal organs on show and avaliable to buy (ate chicken hearts at dinner, decent), a woman sat in the middle of the street breast feeding her child whilst holding an open bag of boiled lemon sweets, a cardboard cut out of a road worker and a guy chopping a pig up with a chop saw. Beautiful. After my mind bending experience I bought my first pineapple. It was huge and sooo sweet. Although i had no idea what to do with it so Meliss kindly played mum and dealt with it.
We surfed at a new place today, Frontera beach. On the way Giorgios (greek guy, obviously) discovered a huge whole in my board. It appears that a black and orange board in a hot country isnt a great idea as it was trying to melt. Gaffa tape to the rescue, I will surf! While surfing i tried to get under a wave mid way through the session and saw a jellyfish the size of a basketball. Instantly ditched my board which nearly killed Giorgios and Martin (Argentinian). Sorry guys. Ended the session with a few more holes in my board somehow. Its now taken on water and needs serious repairs. Ace.
In the afternoon some Finnish sisters arrived. We were walking to the shop and I offered to buy one of their boards as a laugh. Turns out they were selling it and only wanted £40. Result! That night we watched the jungle book (pat loves it) and Elena (older sister) managed to pick up the nickname Winnifried after one of the elephants, good work Pat. Eva (younger sister, who later got nicknamed Vanessa for no reason) thought Winnifried was a great name for her sister!
The kiwi had to leave and on his last night we planned a rum party, this tied in nicely with a locals birthday and the hostel was brimming with people, booze and noise! We surfed in the morning and in the afternoon we cruised the town and had a beer by the beach. We decided to start the rum party early, about 6.30 i think. By 7.30 we were pretty pissed, Tim disappeared without trace. Meliss found him on the bathroom floor in his pants raplhing his tits off. I went to see him as we were having bbq ribs for dinner (Tim's favourite meal) and he confirmed his night was done, after less than 2 hours. Dinner was served although noone ate or remembered it. The kiwi and I kept smashing back the rum, Pat meanwhile was absolutely leathered and terrorising the locals with his Spanish. We accosted an Aussie called Jason (who Pat later nicknamed fat Jason despite him not being fat), Jason wasnt as pissed as us so he bought another bottle of rum about 10 or 11pm. I don't really remember that much but Pat definitely smooched a local Peruvian! The next day was a dark affair.
A day later and the first time paddling out on my new board we were about half way to where the waves were breaking when I saw fins in the water. I shit myself until one of the gang shouted "dolphins "! So the new board had good omens, dolphins on my first time out with it. Very happy, caught some good waves. We paddled out at the dolphin spot a day or 2 later, fun waves on offer with only 3 or 4 other guys out. Dreamy. Then, bang. The biggest fucking sea lion I have ever seen though it would be cool to have dinner right in front of where we were surfing. It had massive teeth and would randomly surface chomping big fish. Vanessa caught a wave and as she came of the wave the sea lion surfaced about 3 feet from her. I was scared and she looked very uncomfortable with the situation!
More surf to follow and i think we are having another rum party on Saturday as the waves drop off on Sunday. The clubs open this weekend too so should be fun!
Pics below are of the kiwi, my broken board, my new board and the hostel complete with surf wagon. Check out #landlockedsurferletloose on instagram for more lifestyle photos and some surf pics on the link below.
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10205169936745279.1073741830.1150967679&type=1&l=792867bbcd
Thanks for reading!
Dan
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