Most of my time spent working is usually with the goal to save up and travel. My girlfriend Jacqueline and I enjoy traveling slowly. Staying in one place for a few weeks if not a month or more. It is easier to make good friends and find the secret spots.
Our travels this year have taken us to South America in search of waves and wind. We flew into Lima, Peru and spent a few nights with an AirBnB, walking in the nicer part of the city and exploring the cuisine. Quickly realizing that the “expensive” restaurants offered the same fare as the hole in the wall restaurants, we went with the latter. Ceviche is one of the most enjoyed dishes and the best meal is lunch, you receive a “first” and a “second”, a drink and a soup. All for about 6$. Jacqueline was quite excited to explore the chocolate scene, but was only able to locate one chocolate store. She did make a nice little find of a chocolate tea made from the husks of the chocolate bean. From there we traveled south to Paracas, to teach Jacqueline how to Kiteboard.
Paracas has great conditions to learn how to kiteboard, flat shallow water and plenty of wind, although you do need a wetsuit after you get 200 feet from the shore. It is difficult when you are traveling to either bring too much or not enough. I have all the gear; wetsuits, pumps, kiteboards, surfboards, etc. But by the time you bring it all, the extra baggage airplane fees add up. Although she had never wakeboarded, and had only flown a kite a few times before, she picked it up quickly. It is quite a difficult sport to learn. We had booked a place in Lobitos about 20 hours north of Paracas ahead of time, and wish we would have stayed in Paracas a bit longer to make sure she had kiteboarding “down”. Waves and surfing was next on the list.
I managed to secure a boat ride out to a secret surfing spot called San Gallan with some locals from Lima. I can’t say I have surfed that much, a few times here and a few times there, Wisconsin surf. But with fairly small waves that were pretty kind. The day we arrived out at the island, the waves were huge! I was borrowing a wetsuit from the captain and a surfboard. The wetsuit was not thick enough and i got real cold in the water. Luckily I would catch a wave here or there and warm up a little bit, but I didn’t last that long due to being out of shape as well. I definitely got hammered by a few large waves. It wasn’t as fun as I thought it would be, due to the fact I wasn’t catching that many waves and everybody else was. If you caught a wave in the wrong spot, you would end up on the rocks during low tide, and it almost happened to me once. But I thought of it as a training experience and learned a lot watching the pro’s ride some huge barrels. The most fun part of the trip were the sea lions. In Peru, they call them sea wolfs. Packs of sea wolfs would surf the waves and were always so curious. They would come up and stick there head out of the water a few feet away from your face and look at you with a “come on lets play” attitude. There were hundreds of these little guys everywhere. It made for a memorable experience. I told my new surf friends, give me a month, and i’ll be catching them like you’ll.
Off to Lobitos for more surf…and yoga.
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