Sunday, February 1, 2015

Lost Blog: Peruvian Birthday Lefts

The always perfect Lobitos

Oh my little blog I'm sorry, 7 months without writing in you, that's some kind of personal record. I'm not sure what happened. Writing is rather a temperamental thing for me. There will be times in my life when the words flow easily, I have so much to say and to write about. But then sometimes, I just simply don't feel like writing.

For those of you who don't know, I'm currently back home in Australia. I spent most of last year living in Peru, however medical reasons brought me home to sunny little Perth for the summer. It's been so long since I've written in here and I'm not quite sure on where to start? I suppose I'll start close to where I left off - my birthday trip in September.

Lima gets really grey in winter. I mean really really grey. Think no sunshine for maybe four months? Each morning I would roll over and open the blinds to look out the window, only to be greeted by a thick and miserable blanket of wet grey fog and zero sunshine. After a while it starts to get you down. I found myself lethargic, sleepy, lacking of energy and feeling down. I didn't really mind what I did for my birthday week, all I knew was I wanted some sunshine, and I wanted to get out. Luckily for me the north of Peru has beautiful weather in winter, and is also home to some of the world's best and longest left hand waves.

So I went back to visit Lobitos. Lobitos is this absolutely perfectly beautiful left hand point break in a small and dusty Peruvian town. It's very desolate, hot, sunny, windy and stunning in its own strange way. I had a very quiet birthday. A few surfs, a few beers and some much needed sunshine. There were only two downsides - one was I couldn't find a birthday cake anywhere. In fact not even a piece of cake. I ended up being sung happy birthday over a pizza. Happy birthday pizza, yay!  The second issue was the surf was so crowded. So so very crowded, and very aggressive. I find that lately I simply have no patience for agro crowds. My surf hunts become more about finding somewhere peaceful versus finding a perfect wave. To top things off on my birthday surf I got run over by a standup paddle board. I tried my best to dodge him, but it was windy, and as he came screaming down the line he lost control and shot his board out, hitting me on the back. I was unharmed, but left the water shaking my head and vowing to avoid over saturated lineups at all costs. It's sad when a wave you once loved so much just doesn't appeal anymore. But still, even the worst day at Lobitos is ten times better than the surf we have here in Perth!

Dusty Lobitos. It really is very pretty.

A local manages to find some uncrowded peaks.