Mancora and Lobitos, adventures in El Norte

We are currently stationed at El Muelles Surf Camp, a rugged surfer/squatter complex in the ex-military oil town of Lobitos, in the middle of nowhere once again. We arrived here yesterday from Mancora via Talara, and thats where I need to catch up with the story.

Mancora was a pretty crazy time, but were glad to be moving on. We spent a good portion of the second day trying to get a room at Loki hostel, which is the hottest thing ever apparently in this town but for good reason. Loki seemed for all intensive purposes to be a resort, with a huge pool and cool bar area and nice rooms with terraces. We ran once again into our friends the North Carolina crew who were camping out in a wierd hotel setup on the beach, and partied with some of them afterhours. By we I mean I alone, Evan came down with another round of ceviche induced misery that sent him to the doctor and out of commission for the most of the weekend. I however, saw a couple of sunrises following all-nighter beach parties with mostly Argentiñas and came out unscathed. This place will end you soon enough I would think.

We hung out with some new friends from Lima I had met, spending some reallllyyy leisurely time out eating or drinking or whatever Mancora style. The wave was really not worth surfing with the crowd, so we enjoyed our first surfless day of the trip figuring there was plenty more to come. In the meantime, Evan recovered 100% and we were ready to hit the road again for the middle-of-nowhere town of Lobitos, supposedly Peru´s best all around wave.

Taking a bus to Talara, we got a taxi to take us the half-hour trip down a really rough road which somehow became paved and much better the closer we got to the town. We were greeted with a strange sight- hundreds of people out on the beach, in a place that is supposedly half-abandoned save for a strange mix of wierdo squatters and surfers. Well it was sunday so we figured that was the reason, everyone loves the beach on the weekend. We ended up at a fancy hotel, not our destination, and had to get another mototaxi over to what appeared on the outside as a ramshackle stable house or something. We never know what to expect.

This was El Muelles Surf Camp, a highly recommended surf hostel that was easily the coolest place weve stayed thus far and a unique little community house reminiscent of that from ¨The Beach¨ in its lofty, DIY squatter charm. A guy named Johnny runs the place with his wife and baby and cook 3 meals a day mess hall style for all the surfers staying at the camp, in our case about 20 guys from Wales, Argentina, Norway, California and Nova Scotia of all places. The rooms are camping tents, pitched right on the wooden planks lofted 20 feet above the ground, with hammocks and makeshift sofas all about, a true surfers hangout. Below and in the back are skateramps made of scrap wood and theres even a volleyball court and laptop set up for internet. All this housed under the rafters and scrap metal roof of a former military barracks. I love this place.

The story of Lobitos is that it was once a military base established in the war against ecuador, also serving as protection for the areas oil deposits and offshore rigs you can see in the distance. When tensions ended and a pact was made, the stipulations required Peru to withdraw its military presence from within a certain distance of the ecuadorian border, and so the army packed up and left a bunch of ruins to the squatters who soon moved in and reestablished a small fishing community. Its a bizarre place and yes theres a great wave right out in front, but the unfavorable swell direction has made it less than ideal since weve been here, coupled with some strong winds, though we still managed to get some fun (and big) sessions in.

I spent some of the day today surfing, hiking around the town ruins and adding to the huge collection of painted army helmets one can find eerily stacked behind the surf camp complex. I painted a series of them, depicting various bones (the ungoing theme of our trip), our friend the Zombie Dolphin, and ¨Jellyfish Man¨; a real life character from a story we read about a guy who snapped his pelvis at G-Land and floated back over the reef minus most of his lower half. Gnarly times indeed.

We find it easy to relax here, the vibe is really awesome and you can just watch the wave all day from the tent platform until it gets good enough for a session. Ive been catching up on ¨The Old Man and the Sea¨and doing some research for Cusco, our next stop after returning to Lima. We leave tomorrow mid-day and say so long to the ocean for a week, not so bad since the swell is on the decline and were siked for some mountain action and change of scenery. Ciao.

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