Lucia and I just got back from Camana on Friday, March 6th.  I took the bus this time, both ways.  It was a much better trip than I had expected.

Everywhere I asked, the locals said surfing wasn't possible in Camana, because the waves weren't good.  They also said without exception, that there are no surfers in Camana, which after my experience in Camana, was 100% accurate, with the exception of the three days I was there.

As our bus drove down the sand dune mountain, and the ocean came in to view, I started to think that what I had been told about the 2001 tsunami destruction to Camana was accurate, and I immediately realized that what I'd been told about the surf was totally inaccurate.  Most of the buildings I saw were destroyed, and the few livable ones were pretty badly damaged.  The surf, was fucking amazing; in the 80th percentile of any day on the East coast.  A little closeout, but double overhead and clean.  You could have dropped in on any wave, with your eyes closed and had a 60% chance of making a small barrel, and making out.  Nice.

As the bus continued, onto the main beach highway, I realized that the area I was looking at, wasn't Camana.  Once we arrived in Camana, only a few minutes later, I found out that what we passed was a different part of the town, called Punta.  Camana looked fine, apparently fully recovered from the 2001 tsunami.  However, Punta still remained in disarray, even 8 years later.

The town of Camana is about 2 miles inland from the ocean, and in town, the beach has houses lining the shore, so we were told.  We decided to check out hotels in Punta.  We asked a police officer how safe Punta was.  She said, not very, but there's a hotel near the police station in Punta that is safe.  We took a bus back to Punta only a 10 minute ride, and only 30 cents per person, one way.  When we got there, we noticed that building next to the beach had been rebuilt and there was a pretty nice cement sidewalk, like a boardwalk, running along the beach.  We asked some people about the hotel we were looking for and found it.  It was $40 a night.  More than our budget would allow.  We found a $8 a night hotel a block away.

I was a bit worried that my computer might be stolen, since there was a sign in our room that the hotel wasn't responsible for undeclared items left in the rooms.  I declared my computer, and left it with a different person at the front desk every time we went to the beach.  I was very worried, but we had no problems in that regard for our whole stay.

We hit the beach 2 hours after we arrived at about 2pm.  It cost $1 for a huge shade umbrella that guys set up on the beach for you.  We laid our towels down and relaxed.  The waves were sick, the water cold, the sun warm.  I had no surfboard, but it was ok.  We ordered food on the beach; calamari, soup, salad, rice, and a beer.  They bring out a small table with all the food on it.  Full silverware and all.  In the states, it would be totally illegal because of the glass plates, and the food hustlers that stop by every couple of minutes when you first sit down.  In Camana, it was awesome.

Lucia dragged me into the frigid water for a about ten minutes, for which after, I couldn't feel my toes.  The rest of that first day included us just hanging out on the beach until sunset, then going downtown at night to search for a surfboard.  We talked to as many people as we could about surfing.  Most people didn't even know what surfing was.  They thought we were talking about bodyboarding.  Apparently, surfing is called "Hawaiian surfing" in Peru.  Everyone kept telling us that Hawaiian surfing wasn't possible in Camana.  Eventually, we talked to someone who knew the local water sports family, the Parodies.  We weren't able to track them down that night at their house, because they weren't there, but we did track them down, finally, at another house the second day of our trip.

The next day, we woke up and started asking where The Parodi family lived.  They were very close to our hotel, only about 1 mile away.  We walked to their house and asked them if they had a surfboard.  One family member did, indeed.  We were told that the surfboard owner had won it in some sort of raffle.  Apparently, he had tried to use the board once, and had to be rescued by the police/lifeguards.  It's sat on display in one of their restaurants for several years since then.  I told them I was a surfer, and that it seems they were the only people in the whole town that owned a surfboard.  They seemed skeptical, but willing to let me use the board.  They agreed, but explained that the board was in town, not at their beach house.  They sent a taxi to pick it, for which Lucia paid for, and I took it out for the afternoon.  The surf was awesome.  Sand bottom, and nice long period swells.  The wind and swell direction were a little off and it was a little disorganized because of mixing swells, but the long periods, head and three quarters size, sand bottom, and no crowd, made it sweeter than 70 percent days on the East coast of the US.  The Peruvian made board rode very well too.  What a great day!

A day at the beach with my hot girl, calamari, surf, and tamales.  It doesn't get too much better than that!

Later that day, the local body boarding kids showed up because they'd never seen someone surf, in person.  Eventually, I drew a small spectator crowd to our umbrella.  I suppose it was the first time any of them had seen someone in a full, hooded wetsuit, surf their local beach break.  Smiles were everywhere.  The body boarding guys wanted some tips on how to get past the inner breaks.  I told them to just follow me, and they all made it out fine.  I think they just needed someone to go first, since I'm sure they were all capable of making out on their own.  We all got some good waves before they died down in the evening.

We were planning on leaving the next day, but instead we decided to stay a third night, so I surfed all day that last day.  The waves were smaller, but I still had a great time.

We said goodbye to the the Parodis, and thanked them with ice cream for the whole family.  We said goodbye to the bodyboarder kids, and got the cheap bus back to Arequipa, which was a comfortable, but long ride home. 

February 22nd is "Carnival" in Peru.  Unfortunately, unlike Brazilian Carnival, women don't go topless and parade around in the streets, however there is a different kind of fun to be had.

Lucia and I loaded up on 200 water balloons, stood on the roof of her house, and gave a water smackdown to anyone within 150 feet of her house.  Cars, people, dogs, buses; it was great.  This was the advantage of lobbing water balloons and water from the roof of a building, instead of roving around on the street, in one of the water ballon, or paint gangs.  When the gangs would wander by, they were easy game.  They had to either run like pussies to get out of range, or suffer the barrage of water suffering.  Eventually, I got sick of the easy pickings from the roof, and nobly experienced the street danger, first hand.

Lucia and I had previously started a war with the guys and girls across the street.  They had fruitlessly tried to throw balloons high enough to hit us.  Once they actually got a balloon high enough, but it didn't hit it's target.  Lucia refused to roam the street with me, but I couldn't refuse the great opportunity for taunting everyone.  I walked down to the corner market and started to buy a Powerade.  I could see the army was gathering.  There was even a group of water soaked and painted girls that had joined the guys across the street.  The 12 of them started coming for me.  I didn't have time to grab my change for my purchase, but exclaimed I would come back soon.  I ran.  I wasn't really worried about getting wet, but being painted with my nice cashmere sweater on, wasn't going to happen.  I escaped all of them, mainly, by using cars and trucks in the street as obstacles, for which they were not versed in dogging.

I casually walked back to the store where I bought my Powerade, picked up my change, and started strolling back to Lucia's house, only 50 feet away.  I saw some guys from across the street coming toward me with a bucket of water.  I figured I could dodge it at short notice, until I glimpsed another guy coming from across the street, and behind me.  At this point, I knew it was going to be a difficult task to escape.  The water came in, I sprung into action, but my foot slipped.  Not only did I get a fairly direct bucket of water on me, but my foot slipping caused my to fall into the mixture of mud and water laying on the sidewalk.  The paint girls came in for the kill, but even when wet, I had the fortitude and advanced planning to avoid paint on my clothing.  Once soaked, the fun quickly ended.  Invincibly dry Erik, had been gotten.  The day became cloudy and cold and Carnival came to a close . . .

Apparently, there are some big advantages to living in a third world country, and being able to legally throw water balloons and smear paint on people, is one, or two of them.