DUDE!

After a nine-hour bus ride from Lima to Trujillo, and a 30 minute car ride, we finally arrived in the beach town / surfer village of Huanchaco in Northern Peru! We arrived late at night, with many a cranky child to put to bed before the inevitable brain melt, so we did not realize, nor cared to, that this week’s AirBnb pick was in fact quite well-situated, a delight that did not escape us the next morning as we woke up…

Zoel and I took a quick walk over to the “beach,” between quotes only because it really is just a piece of undeveloped coastal real estate yet to be correctly appraised by its inhabitants. As with a lot of places we’ve travelled in South America, we westerners seem a lot more aware, which is not to say active, of the need for conservation of local nature. Too many beautiful places we’ve been through here seems treated like the landfill it most definitely is not, so much as to make Iron Eyes Cody weep for years. So undeveloped and trashed that the condo we have rented for the next few days is literally adjacent to a no-man’s land, see my artist’s rendering below…

Still, we are 5 minutes walking distance from the town proper, which we quickly realized has long ago been adopted by hippies from all corners of the world. The smoke is in the air, the guitars are out and the vegetarian restaurants plentiful…

The town itself serves as the base of operation for further-flung adventures but is cute enough for a couple of days, what with its sunsets over the adorable straw canoes…

…its long walks on the beach…

…and, most importantly, its fried street bread…

I strongly recommend taking the bus around, just jumping in any that passes by, and going wherever it takes you, probably somewhere you will encounter real life…