My time in Lobitos was unforgettable. I expected a small community without much going for it except quality waves. I could not have been more wrong. The community is definitely small and less developed than places like Lima, but the culture is vibrant and the location is beautiful. From the moment I entered the WAVES house to the moment I got on a mototaxi out of Lobitos, I was welcomed by all. The guys at the surf shop like Henry and Pepe were a blast to talk to, despite the fact that I probably spoke Spanish about as well as I can surf (not very well at all). I loved working in the classroom with the younger kids, though my back is killing me after carrying/dragging about 2.5 kids from the beach back to the WAVES office (make sure you bring some ibuprofen if you’re volunteering here). Dom (our resident Bob the Builder) got wind of a back specialist/witch doctor in Talara, so had I been here longer I might have experienced some true Peruvian medicinal practice. As for the rest of the WAVES guys, Abuelito (Tali) makes delightful food and thinks he’s a far better card player than he really is. Seth has a bit too much useless information bottled up underneath his beach bum haircut (who knew that the longest word in the English language was floccinoccinihilipilification?), and the three of them are all too British for their own good. If there are a bunch of extra U’s in my words, or they spell center like « centre », it wasn’t my doing. Oscar is a great guy as well, but I understand his Panamanian Spanish about as well as I surf (again, horribly).

As for the work here, I was in Lobitos at a neat time. Building has just started on the surf center, located across the street from the WAVES house. There will be several buildings used for educational purposes and volunteer work. I had the opportunity to work with Dom on some of the soil testing for the earth bag foundations that will be used for the terracing. Everybody thought we were just playing with mud, but believe it or not there is some importance to how a ball of clay and soil breaks when dropped. I hope to come back in the future to see how the earth bag terracing turns out, they have a great vision for the center. Working in the classroom was great too, the English class students loved my beautifully drawn stick figure when we taught them the names of different body parts. Also, I really know how to break it down when it comes to the Hokey-Pokey.

I loved my time here and I wish I had stayed longer. Tali described « Lobitos » time when I arrived, and I didn’t believe him. He said the days would feel like they dragged on forever with the heat and early morning surf sessions and late dinners, but that a week would go by in the blink of an eye, and it truly did. If you get the chance to volunteer, do your best to internalize every moment of it. Take pictures, write blog entries, and despite how enticing relaxing on the terrace may sound, try to use downtime to chat with the surf shop kids or hang out with the other volunteers. When you leave Lobitos, you should be exhausted both mentally and physically. And don’t forget to take some time to surf, because that is what WAVES is all about. As Seth puts it, if surfing goes, so goes the organization.