Cabo Blanco takes its name from the light coloured surrounding mountains, which drop away abruptly at the barren desert coast.

In one of the two restaurants there, black and white photos from the 1950s hang on the walls. In them, visiting gringo game fishermen pose next to their massive trophy marlin and the indigenous pescadors of the day.

A few of the photos are of Ernest Hemingway fishing at Cabo. One shows him out at sea on a boat engaged in conversation with the crew. Hemingway loved the fishing at Cabo Blanco and he took inspiration for his 1952 novel The Old Man And The Sea from his time spent on its waters.

Whatever so stirred him may well be missing today. Long gone are the record marlin and the Fishing Club Hotel has been closed for over fifteen years. Instead small oil platforms now dot the coast just a kilometre or two out to sea. Hypnotic chimes ring out from the closest ones, perhaps triggered by the swell or wind. The resulting background music has permeated its way into the drifty, hot days of the Cabo experience.

Essentially though it's still the Cabo of old. The fishermen remain strong in numbers with several dozen boats moored just beyond the end of the pier. And the wave, the 'Peruvian Pipeline', is still there, although nowadays it's a little shorter.

The story of the wave goes like this: some years ago the local fishermen began to identify the surfers as the catalysts for the big swells. While the surfers seemed to revel in them, these huge seas made the fishermen's work difficult and hazardous. When an old wooden pier between Panic Point and Cabo Blanco was destroyed by the sea, the fishermen wanted to build a new one, right through the take-off zone of the Cabo wave.

Geographically this was about the worst place to build a pier, with waves at their biggest on the rocky point, and little room to work in on land due to the hills and village behind the spot. But the intention was to kill the wave and keep away the surfers that brought them.






Sanity prevailed as Peruvian surfers thwarted such a ludicrous plan. Instead, the new pier, built solidly from concrete, was constructed just a hundred and fifty metres north, cutting the end section off Cabo's hollow left.

When north swells hit Cabo Blanco from November to March, the biggest sets smash dangerously over the end of the pier which was built too low and too short. In the midst of a solid swell only a few brave fishermen risk offloading fish onto the pier, during lulls. They do it in small dinghies with someone always reving the outboard, anxiously scanning for the big sets, which crest just as they reach the pier.

Nowadays the fishermen seem to have mellowed and accepted the surfers as the constant and growing force that they are from late spring to early summer. The surfers are friendly and relaxed, and they also spend money in the village, which is otherwise starved of tourist dollars.

The first north swells usually hit sometime in November. These are the best swells at Cabo Blanco, when sand coverage over the reef is at a maximum and the wave is a perfect freight train barrel.

Each new swell washes away more sand, exposing more of the rocky reef below. By the time half a dozen have come and gone, the short Cabo Blanco season comes to an end and the wave loses form and breaks too dry. Only then do the locals switch their attention to the other classic, hollow waves in the area, which begin to fire in January and February, once their sand has been washed away.

Just as Cabo Blanco is the first North swell wave to come alive on Piura's sun-drenched north-facing coast, it's also the premiere tube in Peru. Like a giant magnet it draws the Peruvian barrel-riders in.

When it's on there'll be as many as thirty guys in the water all day, apart from the early afternoon in the heat of the day, when strong winds can take the edge off the still hollow waves. The take-off area is tight and the pulsating nature of the north swells, due to the distance they've travelled, makes it hard for almost anyone to get a wave. Locals such as Coco Landeo, Bruno Mesinas, David Fioriani, Coqui Carbajal and a number of others are amongst Peru's best surfers. The level of surfing is world class.

Such is the hunger for one of Cabo's famous tubes that friend will drop in on friend, sometimes with such frequency that some sets can become chaos. Visiting gringos, of which there are few, can expect to be dropped in on repeatedly. An Australian named Barney who'd tackled Teahupoo, Papa Tangaroa, El Gringo and Pico Alto on his journey, told me how he spent eight hours in the water for five waves. "Pretty good waves though," he said.

As one surfer takes off and pulls deep into a green, cavernous set wave the one he's been waiting an hour for - he'll begin screaming at the top of his lungs trying to halt all the would be assasins of his ride. Alas, he sees the lip curling over from his inside view only to have the curtain pulled down by his compadre, who drops in five metres ahead. Resentment seems mild and short-lived as they rejoin the line-up and switch their focus on finding another.

The one hundred metre-long wave is often a barrel from take-off to end, but it needs a fast exit before the close-out on the sandy beach next to the new pier.

While most people battle it out, the top surfers such as Magoo de la Rosa, Titi de Col, German Aguirre and Cesar Aspillaga catch the largest share by taking off deepest and generally being afforded the respect which comes from years of top surfing, way beyond the level of the others. There's not much to be gained by dropping in on Cesar Aspillaga. You could drop into the barrel and not even know he was there apart, from a bark in Castellano from deeper within, which has apparently abated in recent years. Out of the water Cesar is friendly and he's as energised about his surfing as the most excited grom. Mr Tubo as he is also known appears immune to the crowd at Cabo Blanco. When asked about it once in a surf magazine interview, he replied, "Crowd, what crowd?"

His sessions there (or anywhere) are remarkable to watch. With his distinctive helmut making him easy to spot, you could set your watch by his clockwork cycles; Cesar paddles out and waits, a set arrives, one of the best waves is his, tubed most or all of the wave, exits the water, quick jog back up point. Cesar paddles out and waits........ Around and round he goes. By the end of the day some of the best surfers will be happy with their dozen waves, while Cesar would have doubled that and would've rarely been seen out on the face of a wave all day.

This season, with a mild El Nino in effect, the first North swell arrived in late October. It was a hard one to pick on the internet swell forecasts, so most of the Lima surfers who usually flock to Cabo missed it. It pumped for four days and by the end the locals were in a festive mood, celebrating South American-style, buoyed by having scored it to themselves.

By the time the second swell hit a week later, the white hotel overlooking the point was full of Lima surfers, and on the small beach below, well over a dozen tents were pitched closely together. The usual dogfight was set to begin.

The internet has had a marked effect on the numbers at Cabo Blanco. Approaching North swells are now obvious to anyone with access. One basic prediction method is that if Hawaii is huge, then Peru's north facing coast can expect solid waves approximately six days later, when the swell will arrive in a super-clean state. This doesn't always hold true however and the epic swell of 26 November 2002, the biggest in Hawaii since January 1998, was somehow obstructed on its way south to Peru and Ecuador. One Hawaiian surfer actually left the North Shore and flew to Cabo Blanco for the expected 8ft plus waves. He was foiled along with dozens of other expectant surfers, and no doubt later questioned his decision.

Normally though, when Lima surfers (which is where almost all of Peru's travelling surfers come from) see the right signs, all they have to do is pile in a car or easier still, jump onto one of Peru's overnight buses, and arrive the next morning.

From my experience, the wave at Cabo Blanco seems to have reached a saturation point as far as numbers go. Sheer frustration with the crowd, evident in many surfers comments and attitudes, should limit it from expanding further. While the crowds flock to Cabo, other quality reefs and points, though not as classy, reel off mostly unridden.

During the winter months, when Cabo Blanco lies dormant, another wave breathes life just four hundred metres south along the white sand beach. Panic Point, just like Cabo, is a prime, fast-breaking hollow left that also acts as a crowd magnet. It's seldom as perfect as Cabo Blanco in its south swell window, but on those rare occasions when it is, the odd local will venture to say it's actually a better wave.

Yet Cabo Blanco is the place, and it'll always be the wave, even in its shortened state. For three short months, or six solid north swells, it comes alive. And when the sand has finally washed away and exposed the rocks, the surfers reluctantly leave and once again only the fishermen remain, a bit like the Cabo of old.

by Paul Kennedy © 2007