Beach Bumming it… Huanchaco and Mancora, Peru

We have finally left the mountains and descended several thousand feet and made it to the beach. We have come upon my heaven on earth…the Beach. After Huaraz, we took an overnight bus and arrived around 7am in Huanchaco on the northern Pacific coastline of Peru. With nothing else to do at 7am, except sleep, we hit the beach! To our surprise, the beach was a great place to people watch – from dramatically posed photographs, old men getting their pictures with young ladies and a lot of experienced and beginning surfers.

Huanchaco is a beach town, of course, and has great seafood (the ceviche’s pretty tasty), but it also has great waves to surf or learn to surf. They are just big enough to get a good ride, yet small enough to not be overly intimidating for a new surfer. Despite our second chance to learn the trade of surfing, we decided to simply sit on the beach and sip our beer and be onlookers. But, we did take in some beautiful sunsets!

Aside from vacationers, Huanchaco is a big fishing village and is famous for its narrow pointed fishing boats, known as caballitos, made of totora reeds. These boats are unique to this community and very often depicted in ruins of the Chimú (a pre-Incan culture that lived in this area).

One day we decided to make a visit just down the road to the famous Chan Chan, the largest Pre-Incan city in South America. The city spans over 28 square kilometers and includes 9 large adobe palaces built by the last 9 kings, temples, homes, gardens, etc. which are currently being preserved or reconstructed. We visited one of the compounds, surrounded by 9 meter high perimeter walls with one narrow entrance. It took us about 2 hours to walk through in and around the palace. It was huge! It is entirely all outdoors, and all made of adobe. El Niño has hit this area of Peru pretty hard in the past and therefore the rains have destroyed and washed away parts of this city. However, what is left on the ruins of the walls reveals beautiful decorations of the elements most important to the Chimú people. As with the Incas, the Chimu had their own symbols of the upper, middle and lower worlds. Symbols such as fish nets, waves, pelicans, spider, snake, rainbow, etc. Chan Chan was a city existing of 30,000 people, lasting about 620 years, prior to the Incan Empires threat and eventual conquest in 1471.

One More Stop in Peru

After our visit to Chan Chan and our time in Huanchaco, we decided to continue heading north, making a pit stop at another beach in Mancora on our route to entering Ecuador. There is not too much to report here other than that it was a nicer beach, smaller waves, but still surfers (probably better for beginners) and still hasn’t been too heavily developed (no huge hotels), but there are a lot of restaurants and bars, for better or worse.

Really, the only thing to do here is lay on the beach with a good book or learn how to kite surf. We had some great beach days until our last day. It was extremely windy with sand blowing everywhere, so we simply retreated to the pool at our hostel.