Chasing the Dream

It is a rare surfer who is not also a traveller. The siren song of perfect waves peeling off unmolested on distant coastlines has lured most of us to leave our local lineups at some stage. Even the office-bound weekend-warriors of our clan are tempted to take virtual pilgrimages to surfing's Shangri-las via Google Earth and live the dream vicariously on Vimeo.

To help you chase down your dream waves, Coastalwatch are profiling some of the planet’s premier waves and giving you the chance to win a trip to Hawaii for the Pipe Masters…

Chicama, La Libertad, northern Peru

You’ll never go to Chicama. I acknowledge that. It’s on the other side of the world, a long way from not much. You’ll fly over Hawaii and Mexico to get there, both of which have several functioning airports. But tell me you haven’t stared at a lineup of this desert left that goes on forever and, for a second at least, thought about yourself riding one of those things?

Chicama is a wave from another time, a time when dinosaurs walked the earth. It was a time when surf travel was done in pith helmets and dirigibles, when it had an exotic flavour, before it became easy. It was a time of romantic tales of discovery, of waves spotted from DC3s. It was a time of Grajagan, Lagundri, Santosha. It was a time before we manufactured our own Chicama on the Gold Coast. There’s a generation of kids now who have never heard of Chicama, and yet Chicama is still there and it’s still breaking down that glorious bank with one surfer for every hundred metres. Chicama, it seems, doesn’t need gushing magazine coverage or a section in a Taylor Steele movie to justify what it does.

The wave at Chicama is actually five; La Isla, The Cape, The Point, El Hombre and The Pier. Individually, only The Point would be considered world-class, but laid end-to-end and linking up under bigger swells it becomes something special, offering waves of up to two kilometers. Imagine the Superbank flipped to a left, scrubbed clean of humanity, and neutered slightly and you’ve got Chicama. It’s more a natural marvel than a world-class wave, and in a lot of ways its typical of the kind of wave you’ll find on the Western seaboard of South America – long left points under the caress of long-range South Pacific swells. The beauty of this wave, apart from the numbers ticking over on your surfboards odometer, is that surfing it is unlikely to be the death of you (unlike several other entries into this list). The wave breaks on sand, and while there are sections that barrel, for the most it’s a relaxing and relentless wall that just keeps materialising in front of you. The run around back up the point is the toughest part of the whole gig, although for the more sedentary amongst you can hire a cab back out the point for just a handful of coins.

Once you’ve done the hard work and made it to South America then getting to Puerto Chicama is actually pretty easy, being just a short flight and a drive from the Peruvian capital, Lima. The living in town is pretty easy and it needs to be, as Chicama requires quite a bit of swell to show form and you may be waiting in the dirt for a good while to score it. There are a number of cheap hotels in town, and one upmarket surf resort that is still only 70 bucks a day and gives you the bonus of having a zodiac taxi service out in the lineup. The landscape might be arid but the ocean is teeming, and so you’ll be living of the bounty of the Humboldt Current with plenty of cerviche and prawns washed down with cheap cerveza. There ain’t much in the way of natural beauty, but you can use your downtime exploring both the Temple of the Sun and the Moon and the area’s rich indigenous history.

You wouldn’t travel half a globe to surf Chicama, but if you throw it into an itinerary that includes Machu Picchu, Rio, the Amazon, an Argentinian princess and a road trip down through Chile… well, then the whole thing starts to take on a certain charm.

CHICAMA - Fast Facts

Zone: La Libertad, northern Peru
Overall rating: 6/10
Best size: As big as you can get it.
Best months: June-to-October
Swell direction: Southwest
Wind: Easterly
Consistency: 3/10
Difficulty: 2/10
Best board: Big enough to paddle, short enough to turn
Bottom: Sand point
Length of ride: As long as you want.
Ability level: Punter-friendly
Other options: Another long left point at Pacasmayo, an hour north
Bring: A steamer, a good book.