It was high tide on a scorching Tuesday, and the choppy beaches around Lima, Peru, were crawling with surfers. There were teenagers in ratty flip-flops carrying short boards patched with duct tape, and bronzed women in wet suits paddling out into the shimmering blue waves. There was even a businessman in his 30s, who climbed out of a black-tinted S.U.V. in nothing but shorts, as a muscular chau-ffeur handed him a freshly waxed board, a bottle of water and a dab of sunscreen.

The only thing missing, it seemed, were tourists. Despite having monster swells on par with those that hit Hawaii’s legen-dary northern shores, Peru isn’t known as a surfing destination, except per-haps by a small band of jet-setting sur-fers for whom no wave is beyond reach.

That is, unless you happen to be one of the approximately 28 million inhabitants of Peru, South America’s third-largest country in area. Then you know very well that surfing has swept the nation recen-tly in a pop cultural frenzy. On the wide boulevards of Lima, billboards are covered

with the fresh-faced ranks of Peruvian sur-fers endorsing cellphones, beer and soft drinks. Surfing contests are all the rage.

And to the south, where the waves are even bigger, physical attributes like pumped-up lungs, buff shoulders and sun-bleached hair seem to be bred into the local DNA. And now, as Peru rides a tourism wave pro-pelled by a strong economy and favorable exchange rates for bargain-minded Ame-ricans, it is poised to become the new “it” spot on the international surfing circuit. After all, Peru has 1,500 miles of rugged coastline dotted with countless breakers, from pristine beaches tucked around Lima to unexplored pockets up north where some waves are said to last more than a mile. And unlike Malibu, Hawaii’s northern shores and other well-known places, many of Peru’s best surfing spots are often nearly empty.

With so much to explore, surfing has mus-cled in on soccer and the culinary arts to be-come an unlikely symbol of national hope. Much of the current craze can be traced back to 24-year-old Sofía Mulanovich, a Peruvian who won the World Surfing Cham-

Riding the Waves of Peru

Lobitos magic spot.Foto: Jan Bijl

pionship title in Hawaii in 2004 — a contest dominated by Australians and Americans. And if the ranks of teenagers who frolic their spare hours away in the swell have any say, surfing in Peru will only get bigger.

That’s true up and down Peru’s coast, whe-ther it’s a small town like Chicama in the country’s north, famous for its super-long waves, or around the busy capital of Lima, where the sometimes polluted breaks are teeming with surfers from dusk till dawn. But the epicenter of the neo-surf scene is undoubtedly in Punta Hermosa, a summer beach community about 30 miles south of Lima, where surfing is virtually a religion.

The hourlong drive to Punta Hermosa pro-vides a sobering look at the arid and im-poverished landscape in this part of the country: brown hills devoid of vegetation and pocked with sad clusters of wooden shanties. The town itself doesn’t look like much — dusty concrete houses painted in bright greens, blues and reds in the hills below the four-lane Pan-American Hig-hway. But the fuss is clear when you finally arrive at the beach: curling waves fan out in all directions like Neptune’s block party.

Each break point presents a different cha-llenge. There’s Kon Tiki, which offers un-tamed waves so massive that it takes a strong arm even to paddle out to it; La

Isla, where homegrown pros like Ms. Mu-lanovich and Gabriel Villarán can often be found; and Pico Alto, a brawny break with swells that can range up to 25 feet high.

The surf champ Ms. Mulanovich, who is known as “la gringa” because of her fair skin and blond streaked hair, sat with an entourage near the judge’s per-ch as she watched her younger bro-ther, Matias, whiz over the lip and down the face of a meaty charging barrel.

“Peru is the best preparation for a pro sur-fer because there are so many different va-rieties of breaks and conditions,” said Ms. Mulanovich, who grew up in Punta Hermo-sa and recently bought a rock-star grade condo nearby with panoramic views of five surf breaks. “It’s much less crowded than in Hawaii and California, and even on the smallest day of the year it’s never flat.”

Dining options are limited, too. The si-dewalks are lined with cheerful stands that serve ceviche and seafood carpaccios that look amazing, but are far from stomach friendly. Ms. Mulanovich’s boyfriend, a sur-fer named Scott from Los Angeles, had been holed up in her condo for weeks after getting salmonella poisoning from bad mayonnaise.

Peru’s love affair with surfing actually dates back to the 1940s, when the play-

Miraflores beaches Lima La Herradura in Lima.

boy socialite Carlos Dogny returned from Hawaii with a shiny wooden board given to him by Duke Kahanamoku, considered the godfather of modern surfing. In 1942, Mr. Dogny founded the elite Waikiki Surf Club in Miraflores, a ritzy suburb on the southern outskirts of Lima, where Peru’s ruling families rode the swells and got tipsy in the clubhouse on pisco sours. (The club still employs “board boys” who rush to the water’s edge to carry and wax members’ boards when they’re done with a session.)

The club placed Peru firmly on the inter-national surf map and played host to the World Surfing Championships, which was won by a local big-wave rider, Felipe Po-mar, in the 1960s. But by the 1970s, the sport’s reputation sagged as it be-came associated with dropouts and dru-ggies, and surfing largely lost it cachet.

After spending a day playing sand bunny in Punta Hermosa, and watching the compe-titions from the safety of my towel, I was itching for my own adrenaline rush. So the next morning, I hired a taxi and set out on an hourlong journey to Cerro Azul, a me-

llow break immortalized in a line from the Beach Boys’ 1962 anthem, “Surfin’ Safari.”

After maneuvering through four police checkpoints (shakedowns are common along the Pan-American Highway), we pu-lled up on a dirt road to the port town. Cerro Azul felt abandoned, like a Western ghost town, except for a few shiny condos and the lazy sounds of salsa lulling through the hot dusty air, however, buzzed with an-ticipation. True to its reputation, the break had a mellow but perky wave that rippled around a jagged point as though made in a water-park wave pool. I paddled out, staked my spot among the teens, moms and old timers, and caught a few rides before mo-ving on to the next break down the coast.

As much as I liked paddling along southern Peru, the word on the shore was that any surf safari must also include a vi-sit to Máncora, a small fishing village in northern Peru near Ecuador. It enjoys an almost mythic reputation among sur-fers for its balmy water, endless sunshi-ne and crowd-free breaks. “Un paradiso!” my new friends would say between sets.

Bikini contest in Punta Rocas.

Chicama tubular from inside.Chicama pure perfection.

Chicama express pic from hotel.

CHICAMA THE LONGEST LEFT WAVE IN THE WORLD TRUJILLO - PERU

Hotel Surf Resort in Chicama.

Los Muelles in Lobitos is a tubular section.Foto: Jan Bijl.

Panic Point is for sure one of the best waves from Peru.

After an hour long taxi ride, I arrived in Máncora, which looked like a blink-of-an-eye frontier town until I wandered out to the beach. Nubile surfers in string bikinis loun-ged under palm trees sipping coconuts, ta-king turns paddling out into the crystal blue ocean. It felt like that secret spot in “The Beach,” the 2000 movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio, except it was not quite a secret.

Máncora has been transformed in recent years from a sleepy fishing village into a busy, international backpacker hub. After dark, the town’s sole street turns into a total party, with flotillas of surfers, wee-kenders from Ecuador and girls in slinky tank tops getting tipsy at bars like Igua-nas and Chill Out. There are also several amazing restaurants in town, serving the nouvelle Asian-Peruvian fusion known as novoandia. La Sirena, run by Juan Se-minario Garay, a 28-year-old local surfer who studied at Le Cordon Bleu in Lima, serves dishes like causa maki, dollops of mashed potatoes filled with scallops mixed in a red and yellow pepper sauce.

STILL, the restaurant was packed wall-to-wall on a recent Thursday afternoon with surfers waiting out the high-noon sun and low tides. Over delicate plates of smoked carpaccio and seared tuna steaks, they traded gossip on the day’s best swe-lls and near collisions in the lineup. Then, when the tide finally broke around 4 p.m., everyone put down their forks, gra-bbed their surfboards and headed back to the water in choreographed unison.

I followed them in. The waves were as gentle and as well-formed as the famously friendly breaks at San Onofre or Waikiki. And almost as jammed. Luckily there was a chain of hidden beaches just a hop away.

After bumming around Wawa for a couple of days, I hired a local surf guide nickna-med Pulpo to show me around. He dro-ve me 10 miles in his teal-blue van to Los Organos, an abandoned oil town with a couple of new beachside hostels.

There were no more than a dozen other

Sunset in the north shore of Peru.

riders on the surf. I took my board into the water and waited for my wave. It didn’t take long before I caught one that was head high with a defined peak that tape-red off to the right into a long shoulder — perfect for cutting and carving long arcs.

Pulpo seemed impressed because he took me 45 minutes farther south to Lobitos, a hard-to-find break tucked at the end of a ragged dirt road. There were oil pumps, rusty pipelines and crumbling military barracks, some of which had been taken over by squatters and turned into sur-fing hostels decorated with bumper stic-kers. I poked my head inside one: seve-ral blond French girls were having lunch with their dreadlocked Chilean boyfriends.

Eating would have to wait. We pulled up over the dirt and parked alongside the deserted beach. I pulled out my chunky 7-foot-6-inch rental board with trepida-tion. The beach looked like a small swat-ch of an industrial wasteland: a couple of oil barrels with flames flickering on top, and a few giant rigs on the horizon. But the waves, it turned out, had a perky, fun shape. Really fun, in fact. And the water was a seductive clear blue. Pulpo smiled. He had promised me a crowd-free break that was off the grid, and here it was.

I rode the swells for several hours, forgetting about the ominous oil ba-

rrels and, apparently, the time. Pul-po called me in. There was another spot up the road that was even better.

SOUTH AMERICAN SURFIN’ SAFARI

GETTING THERE

Several airlines including Continental, Ame-rican and LAN Airlines fly direct from New York area airports to Lima, starting at about $650 for travel next month, according to a recent online search. To get to Máncora in the north of Peru, fly from Lima to Piura $244 round trip, and then take a two-and-a-half-hour taxi ride to Máncora (about$50).

Punta Hermosa

WHERE TO EAT AND SHOP

A lively evening scene can be found at Don-de Luis (Frente la Playa Punta Hermosa), an Argentine-run cafe filled with antique furniture and surfers dressed up in their best flip-flops. Dinner, including delicio-us pizzas, salads and wine, about 50 sols (about $18.20 at 2.75 soles to the dollar).

The Kon-Tiki Surfboards Museum on the main beach in Punta Hermosa do-ubles as the private home of the surfer José A. Schiaffino. There’s an impressi-ve collection of vintage surfboards, ar-chival photos and other memorabilia.

Mancora beaches unique paradise.

Máncora

WHERE TO STAY

An upscale alternative is the Sunset Ho-tel (Avenida Antigua Panamericana Nor-te, 196; www.hotelsunset.com.pe), a boutique hotel with six suites, a seclu-ded beach and a romantic restaurant perched on a cliff. Doubles start at $73.

WHERE TO EAT AND SHOP

La Sirena (Panamericana Norte, 316: 51-19-9811-5737) serves exquisite nouve-lle Asian-Peruvian fusion, known as no-voandina, in a little garden off the main drag. Dinner for two with wine, 108 soles.

El Tuno (Panamerica Norte, 233; 51-19-9408-2410) is a bright orange Peruvian-Ita-lian restaurant that features an accordion player and specialties like tuna tartare with shaved avocado and mango salsa (50 sols).

Soledad Surf Shop (Avenida Piu-ra, 316) sells a full range of gear for men and women such as rash guards, flip-flops and waterproof sun block.

*Article published in the Travel section of New York Times 2008.

Surfers in Lobitos.Foto: Jan Bijl

Hotel in Mancora Hotel in Lobitos