Punta Hermosa

Lets go to the beach and relax! We can just chill out and rest! We thought. We will never learn that we don’t have an off switch.

After 10 straight days of hiking through the Peruvian Andes, we were absolutely spent. Our bodies were sore. So we thought, hey, why don’t we head to the beach and surf a bit? Now neither of us knew a lot about surfing, but from what we know now, its not exactly a rest activity.

We took the advice of a German couple we met in our hostel to head to the town of Punta Hermosa, an hour south of Lima. It took a night bus and a taxi to get there, but we got to our hostel fine. The town, especially in Peruvian winter, is a sleepy town. Apparently there’s lots of summer houses here owned by Lima locals.

This town, and the entire coast around here, is full of surfer waves, and surfers on them. And they are skilled. This location, and the town 10 minutes south (Punta Negra) are home to a few international competitions. And a lot of world class surfers. So we decided to take up some surf lessons.

We had our first lesson three hours after coming into town, less than 48 hours after returning from our Huayhuash hike. We were sore but excited. Our instructor was ,Guillermo, a Punta Hermosa native. He’s since retired from being a professional surfer, and now seems to be the go to guy in town. He was a really positive dude, always excited for us.

We spent all four days of our lessons in one specific area on the beginner beach. Here there was a nice location where waves didn’t crest where we could rest. Not that we did much of that. Being winter, we were generally the only ones on the beginner shores. Guillermo and his go-go attituda had us doing run after run. There were many surfers deeper into the water for the bigger waves.

Our lessons consisted of a mixture of decent runs standing up, good runs on our knees, a lot of quick wipeouts at the start, and an absurd amount of paddling against the waves to get back to where we wanted to go. Our lessons ended not because we had reached our time, but because we ran out of energy. We got better over time though, and with more rest, may be able to put a more competent surf tape together.

On our third day, we spent the day hanging out with Guillermo after our lessons. He took us to a local ceviche joint. It was lovely food, but we added too many hot peppers! Afterwards, he showed us how to make slushy pisco sours (1 part lime, 2 parts simple syrup, 4 parts pisco, and ice), and we took it back to the beach to hang out. He told us about the dangers of the ocean, and some rescues he had made, as well as the surf culture of the town. It was a really nice day hanging out with him.

The days here somewhat blended together. We had our meals at the hostel with Mario, a quiet Slovak who traded the sales life for a fish factory. We read our books on the hostel roof, and took walks around the town. It was quiet, but it was not rest. Every day after surfing we were exhausted.

Lets try rest again though! We’re off to the big city for some food adventures!