Peru
Chicama
A left-hand point wave of legendary length, peeling down a bone-pale desert shore.
The wave starts at the point and keeps going. And going — section linking to section along a desert shore the colour of bone, in water cold enough to demand neoprene. Chicama is not a beach town. It is a single wave with a few buildings beside it.
Chicama — formally Puerto Malabrigo — holds the wave that made Peruvian surfing's name abroad: a left-hander whose point sections link, on the right swell, into rides measured in minutes — length that carried its name around the world and legs measured in lactic acid. Surfers have chased it since the 1960s. The honest version is the better story anyway: length depends on swell, tide, wind and your own line, so the trip is planned around forecasts and flexible days, ideally with local surf knowledge in the loop. Between sessions the port goes on being what it always was — a working fishing community with grilled catch at family tables, seco de cabrito up the road, and nothing else to do but watch the horizon for the next set. Which is the point.
Solo
Committed surfers come for the wave and stay for the stripped-back solitude — a port quiet enough to reset between sessions.
Friends
A Chicama mission defines friendships — dawn checks, long rides, flat-day patience and fish grilled by somebody's mother.
- On the right swell the point links into left-hand rides of extraordinary length.
- Surfers have made the pilgrimage to Puerto Malabrigo since the 1960s.
- Puerto Malabrigo's desert headland gives the break a stark setting all its own.
- The port remains a working fishing community first, surf stop second.
The day's catch grilled whole — no menu, just what the boats brought.
Seco de cabrito — goat braised in coriander and chicha — between swells.
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