The child playing in the sand doesn’t notice the rising tide. But he doesn’t care. And watching him construct imaginative drip-castles at the water’s edge, there’s an urge to get down and join him. Nothing else to do.
In the place where Peru’s legendary left Cabo Blanco should be throttling across the inshore stonehenge, gentle ripples lap the shore. Pre-teen boogies bob in boredom. And our last hopes for this swell appearing out of nowhere are gasping for air.
We’re sitting in the beachside café where they filmed Hemingway’s Old Man and the Sea. Faded, black and white photos of the writer with the café owner adorn the walls. Prehistoric pelicans eyeball the fresh ceviche on our table. And everywhere in this quaint coastal village, time appears to have stood perfectly still since Papa last hauled marlin from these graying seas. The dusty streets. The wooden boats. The ox-drawn pace of life. Only the surf stickers and the offshore oilrigs reveal the progress of time...
“The season is all wrong,” explains local pro Gabriel Villeran. “There should be sand over all those rocks.”
No one responds. We came here chasing a swell. A big north hits Hawaii and you’ve got a few days lead on scoring solid Peru. But it’s a big ocean. A lot can happen along the way. And right now our swell isn’t.
Pete Mendia paddles out anyway. To Pete from Florida, the ankle-biter surf looks okay. Local super-grom Cristobal de Col follows. This is why you bring a grom. He’s always psyched.
Taylor Steele and Dustin Humphrey set up their cameras. Nothing else to do. And this wouldn’t be the smallest surf they’ve encountered in their collaborations. But hopes for Peru had been higher. Maybe that was the problem: hopes. Well, they’re gone now.
Right then Mendia strokes in, gets tubed behind the rocks and blasts a flyaway into the closed-out bay. Everyone perks up.
Cristobal follows on the next wave. Twice as big (or he’s half as small). Grom gets shacked, too. Rob Machado is already jogging towards the water.
We might not be doomed after all.

One week earlier, we visited Machu Picchu, the fabled ruins of the Incan empire. Four hundred years ago, this was the most advanced civilization on earth. But history caught up with them. Now we were here to pick up a souvenir. Snap a photo. Smile for the apocalypse.
Back in America, history was closing the gap on another proud empire. Terrorist attacks. Flooded cities. Bank failures. Economic collapse. And we’re just out here surfing. Making pretty pictures. Filming a movie. Castles in the Sky.
Inside the ruins, a clock had stopped ticking. The Incans called this pillar “the hitching post of the sun.” It stood shadowless at every equinox. An astrological stopwatch at the heart of Machu Picchu. But a few years ago, a crew filming a beer commercial knocked over their crane and shattered the ancient stone forever. Today, film crews are not allowed inside Machu Picchu without special permission.
Sometimes “no” is just not an option. Travel teaches you that. So Taylor Steele accepted the guard’s refusal with a polite nod, then walked back to the van and began disassembling cameras to smuggle inside.
Despite history’s tendency to repeat itself, we all assume we’re immune.

“It’s a temple,” our guide explained as we waited in Machu Picchu’s Disneyland-line with camera gear stuffed under our coats.
Later, he pulled me aside again. “This is where the Incan emperor would come to fuck,” he said, glancing around as if to make sure the emperor’s wife wasn’t listening. “All day,” he said, miming with his hips, “all night.”
There are, of course, other theories. Fortress. Prison. Observatory. Bachelor pad. No one really knows why this place was built. Or how. Staring into the fog, waiting for the ruins to reveal themselves, Machu Picchu seemed unreal. Like the Pyramids or the Great Wall, postcard familiar and utterly alien.
Taylor Steele looks up from his camera, struck by another deep thought.
“Did anyone pack the extra camera battery?” he asks. “This one just died.”

Kai gets sick. Dustin gets sick. Pete gets sick. Rob gets sick. Everyone gets sick. They told us this would happen. They told us about rutted roads and tricky winds and dangerous towns. Everyone had some sort of hell-trip story to relate. Broken down. Beaten up. Stormed in. Stolen from. Even the locals still battled for land, rights and respect. Peru was raw. Unformed. Wild. A third world outlaw wearing first world clothing.
Sitting in the darkened lineup, I envision the places where condos will someday be built. Where hotels will someday loom. Where MTV-Peru will host Spring Break Beach Bash 2012.
But right now, this coastline is desolate.

So here we are now. Cabo Blanco. Home to Hemingway’s parable of man vs. nature. Where Peru’s heaviest barrels break in accordance with the shifting sands of time. Where we hoped to score great waves… and where the swell is finally starting to show.
Rob tucks into a sand-funneling barrel and slides past the inshore rocks as if they’re no hazard at all. Mendia’s already into his fourth cover-up, forcing his big-man frame through dredging inside sections and powering out a trademarked hack. Barger is racing to bolster his own wave-count, while Cristobal catches everything that moves. The session is suddenly alive.
It had been a long hard road. History had challenged us to a staring contest and, for a moment there, we almost blinked. Almost packed it in and trudged home to our teetering empire defeated.
A moment later, we were surfing.
The end of the world was nowhere in sight. No crumbling dynasties. No imminent apocalypse. Just surfing. Just waves striking the shore. One after the other. Travelers reaching their destination. And us surfers waiting here to welcome them.
Jogging down to the water’s edge, I notice that the child playing in the sand is gone, but his sandcastle remains. The walls have been washed away by the rising tide, but the spiraling towers remain, protected by a shallow moat. It won’t last long, but for this brief moment, it’s beautiful.
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