Corpus Christi & Huanchaco by Brice & Ray

Ray told me to write about surfing and maybe Huanchaco. We'll see. I'll stick with the cool stuff.

We got a beachfront room. There's not much that I'll spend the extra $ for, but beachfront bedrooms are amazing. We got in on a taxi after a night bus, needing a shower and a lazy morning. We walked the two blocks from the Plaza de Armas, and set off towards the less-built up section of beachfront. Pretty soon we found a nice hotel, with a nice restaurant on the patio, and a it seemed to be pretty empty, which suggest to us: They are desperate! Cheap Rooms.

The cleaner boy (the only one in) tells us s/50 = 17 bucks a night. More than we had been paying, but totally worth it. Fantastic view of the beach, huge window over an entire wall, private porch. I was half way through my shower when he came back to tell us it was $50. And we're cheap college students, so screw that. We found a place a block or two down for cheaper. It had a smaller window, and our porch wasn't technically private.... but it came with a kitty, and the porch was private whenever we had our private breakfast served to us. It was 3 floors, and had a roof that I could go up to at 4am when I couldn't sleep, and I could peruse the waves, and the walls of the surrounding buildings, and drink the last inch of another poor wine choice (I blame Ray [I'll actually take responsibility for that; I thought it was a dry rose and it turned out to be liquid sugar with a funky after taste. Damn Peruvian wines.]). It even had a shower to store surfboards in!

Why would I need that? Well because I rented a surfboard of course! They had beautiful 6' swells traveling at least 300 yards down the beach. I got [rented, $17 for two days] my suit and my board and went for it! And got destroyed. My arms are not like Huanchaco surfer bum arms. At a certain point I stopped making progress. So I went back in and went down to the easy beach, which Ray will now tell you about: knickknacks, boats, turtle rocks, how cool all the tourists thought i was, and they all wanted pictures w/ me.

Well, first of all, I had juice boxes, towels, sun block, and crackers waiting for Brice whenever he came out of the water. He called me annoying, but - really - I think he was glad for something other than salty water to drink. Then I taught him how to paddle his surf board properly, because I spent my day watching the other surfers and listening in on the beginners' lessons being taught just a little ways down the beach. He did much better after that!

The "easy beach" was really a cove in the middle of town, so there were lots of street vendors and restaurants all around us. I had one man approach me to buy a "totoritas," but he had a Quechuan accent and I thought he said "tortugitas," which means baby turtle. Well, naturally I wanted to see the baby turtles! Man was I bummed when he tried to sell me a banana-sized reed boat. Anyways, Mrs. Farrell gave us a fine point sharpie at the beginnig of our trip, so I wandered in the surf until I found two green rocks and used the marker to decorate them like baby turtles (a girl for me and a boy for Brice)! Now we actually do have tortugitas from Peru.



These waves [further down the beach] were much more survivable*. I caught a few, chatted with people from Europe/ the states/ Australia, even caught a couple in the perfect area just pre-cresting, but the break zone moved all over the place, and they tended to die out pretty quick. Either way, it was lots of fun, wetsuits are amazing [isn't he cute?], and I learned to a shorter board than my first time surfing (meaning harder and more maneuverable).

Now ray will share things that i doubtlessly forgot, like how the road on the other side of town just died out in sand, or how they forgot? about us in the top level of a restaurant for like two hours while we watched surfers.

They didn't forget about us so much as take a really long time getting our food. Looking back on Peru, it's been nearly a year since we started that crazy road trip. I've spent way too long getting this blog together, so this is going to be my last post (sans photos until I get a chance to pull some files from my online back-up). Corpus Christi was amazing. We had a brilliant time singing and enjoying the mass, then we stole flowers from the public decorations with a bunch of Peruvian kids and wandered back to our hotel. The remainder of our days were spent sunbathing, surfing, and killing time until we caught a bus back to Lima.

The highlight of Lima this time around was the souvenir shopping. Brice bought me a present! It's SOOOO cute, and I love my guinea baby. I'm sure all of you who stopped in to see me over the past year were forced to ooh and ahh over it with me for several minutes. We returned to the US exhausted but enriched, and I've had no shortage of interesting stories to tell.

Here's the short version of our trip:

View South American Explorations in a larger map

* Survivable for me. We did watch a girl drift further and further in trying to catch smaller and smaller waves. When a big wave got to her... well, I wanted to scream, but it was too late. So I just said "RAY LOOK AT THIS" and pointed. She finally caught a wave! About 3' from the beach.... and got slammed down onto the hard sand. Luckily she came back up, laughing, so I didn't have to put into practice all those hours watching Baywatch reruns.