Surfing in Lobitos and a short-trip to Ecuador
A lot of surfers along the way told us about a mysterious surfspot called Lobitos. Apparently this deserted town offered world-class surf they said….so we made our way towards Lobitos (amazing, our GPS found sandtracks we could almost not identify as such) and spent some days at this weird spot on Peru’s North coast. We both had some fantastic surf sessions.
When the swell dropped down, we decided to drive further up to Ecuador. There is literally nothing to do when there’s no surf in Lobitos. The constant flying sand gets everywhere and to find fresh food is quite difficult….shops do not exist, we peeked into windows in town and discovered one or the other well stocked up living-room and bought our stuff there. So it was an appreciated change to visit Ecuador…
We crossed the border at Tumbes which took almost two hours as immigrations and customs on the Ecuadorian side were hard to find and far away from each other. On top the ‘Senior’ who was in charge for our motorbike documents was just having lunch and did not want to be disturbed… At least he accepted our German Automobil Club Card as “International Insurance” which saved us buying the expensive Ecuadorian motorbike insurance.
So we successfully entered the 9th country of our trip which was great! We noticed immediately how different Ecuador was compared to Peru. The landscape changed from hot and dry desert to humid rainforest, the people looked different and we had the impression that Ecuador is a lot more modern and wealthy than its neighbour.
We headed towards Cuenca, apparently Ecuador’s cleanest city, a beautiful colonial town at an altitude of 2600 meters with many nice restaurants, bars and cafés. The people and the city itself seemed very peaceful and happy.
After a couple of days back in “civilisation”, fresh food and entertainment, we made our way back to Lobitos to enjoy more sunny days surfing and relaxing there. The swell forecast was predicting new swell, so off we went.
Unfortunatelly Robin got stung by a stingray. Isabel stepped on a stingray in Costa Rica in December, so this was our second accident at sea. After surfing a nice wave, Robin jumped off his board and into a stingray. Not wearing booties, the sting into the thigh itself was quite painful. Robin being a tough soldier stayed in a bit longer before he left the water. That was when the pain really kicked in and moved up his leg.
We went to the local police and ambulance who couldn’t really help before Nacho, our landlord, turned out to be the best doc in the world. He put Robin’s foot in almost boiling water and sucked out the wound. Thanks Nacho you’re the BEST!! After the whole process with massaging and everything which was quite painful, it got much much better and the next day Robin was back in the water.
Find our pics from Ecuador here:
And the pics from Lima and North Peru here:
