Huanchaco and Chicama Surf

We returned to Trujillo and travelled just out of town to a town called Huanchaco. Huanchcao is on the coast and it was here that we met up with our Irish friends who had arrived out for a bit of surfing. We spent the guts of ten days surfing and eating sea food in the various forms that the Peruvians had come with! (raw with lime juice and onion, grilled, soups, cooked with milk, etc, etc).

Huanchaco has a long history of surfing on the reed boats you can see in the picture, these are used for fishing and can handle really big waves with relative ease. You sit or kneel on the boat, paddle with a split piece of bamboo and put your net and catch of fish in the bath shaped hole at the back.

There is several good waves in Huanchaco which we could easily walk to from the hostel. However half an hour up the road in a place called Chicama there is a world famous wave. This town isn´t nearly as nice, hence we stayed in Huanchaco. Chicama claims longest left hand wave in the world, this means that when you are standing on your surf board with the wave breaking behind you, you can surf the clean or unbroken wave towards your left for distances of up to three kilometers on a good day. We managed to catch Chicama on two "good" days and surfed waves maybe one to two kilometres long which we all pretty delighted about!

Huanchaco was great, the weather pleasant, everything was easy and we could and would have stayed there for much longer however we were keen to try to get north to Equador and Columbia. Our time in South America is now getting noticeable shorter and the list of "oh, we must go and check that out" is getting longer by the day. Sadly we moved on.

Menu del Dia

After lounging in the hot baths near Cajarmarca we were a bit peckish and headed off for some lunch. We found a not too grotty restaurant, with a table of eight happily munching, a good sign. We browsed the menu to find most regular items available.Pollo (chicken) this and pollo that. A bit of res(meat) with salad and beans. No guinea pig. Not that I could bear to watch Joe eat one again. Why the serve them with their heads on and the teeth peering up at you I cant understand! Caldo de Gallina, a broth with bits of veg and pollo into. Mystery bits that is. A red meat version is also available but bits of meat are more mysterious so we usually stick with the chicken(pollo). Most restaurants have a menu of the day. Its the cheapest and you can usually decipher what your eating. It also comes with a fruit cordial to really test your stomach. We decided to splash out a bit and instead of going from the Menu del Dia , Joe had some trout and & I had a well beaten piece of beef. It went down nicely and we settled it with a cold beer. We soon became aware of a constant thumping out side the window. Like someone chopping wood with a blunt axe. It would stop occasionally only to start up again , thump, thump, thump.

We finished our lunch, paid the billl and as we left the restaurant the curious noise was explained. A young lady was outside the restaurant, preparing the meat for the menu del Dia. On the table in front of her was half the head of a llama. In one hand she held the remaining half, the other hand careful scraping out the meat with a sharp knife, before dropping the bits in a bucket. Another head sat on the table, a hatchet firmly stuck in it. Tired of chopping she was having a bit of a break..........

Glad we didnt order the menu del dia

Leymebamba

Hey just wanted to let you all see the band that were waiting to greet us when we had a brief break from the bus on the way to Tingo!