(28 Jul 2019) At dusk, the first surfers in wet suits paddled out into the waves, while instructors on rocky beaches with Hawaiian names like Makaha and Waikiki trained students and insisted that surfing was born in Peru.
Some spoke about the country's world surfing champions. Others boasted about being home to the world's longest waves and a top destination for surfers worldwide. Everyone seemed fascinated by the professional surfers from across the Americas who prepared to compete on huge, bumpy waves on a reefbreak south of Lima when the sport features for the first time on Monday in the Pan American Games.
"As a Peruvian, I'm so proud that the Pan American Games are being held in Lima, and that for the first time, surfing is included as a sporting discipline," said Alberto Lopez, who runs one of the dozen or so schools at Makaha beach in Lima's upscale neighborhood of Miraflores. "Peru really is a gem, and all Latin Americans know that Peru is the region's best surfing destination."
Surfing is a way of life in Peru, which has been called the Hawaii of Latin America. Sure, millions have marvelled at the Incan ruins at Macchu Picchu and tasted the delicious cuisine that fuses indigenous traditions with European, African and Asian influences, through an abundance of fresh, unique ingredients, including a wealth of seafood from the Pacific Ocean's chilly Humboldt Current. But Peru is also a Mecca of surfing.
Some Peruvians even say that surfing's origins can be traced to their homeland, with the pre-Inca Chimu civilization, which lived near Chicama. Fishermen from the beach town of Huanchaco, 300 miles (480 kilometers) north of Lima, still ride the waves back to shore with the day's catch on the same long reed kayaks called caballitos, or little horses, used by the Chimu.
For long, the sport, which will also debut in Tokyo 2020, was a pastime reserved to Peru's wealthiest. But the tides changed. Surf's popularity in Peru transcended class lines with a greater availability of inexpensive boards and a homegrown 2004 world surfing champion who sparked a wave-riding fever.
The first World Championships staged by the International Surfing Federation were held in the same Punta Rocas beach where surfers will compete for the Pan Am Games, and they were won by Pomar. Mulanovich learned to surf at Waikiki when she was 9 and rose to become the 2004 women's world surfing champion. Her victory brought a wave of surf schools that opened along Lima's coast.
Unlike the surf in other hot spots like Australia, Costa Rica and Hawaii, where waves depend on the season, the breaks along Peru's 1,500-mile (2,400-kilometer) desert coast hit all year long, fed by the Humboldt current and uninterrupted by land masses.
That has brought notoriety to the northern Chicama beach, home to some of the world's longest waves and a top international destination for the most daring surfers - even before the Beach Boys sang about the "shores of Peru" in their 1962 hit "Surfin' Safari".
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