I wonder about the toursit circus, how much it differed from just another Inca ruin? But we left changed. A sense of ease promised us a safe journey to Chicama. Chicama is one of nature's other miracles that also happens to be in Peru. 780 km north it was all but the safe journey we expected. We walked into the airport at Cusco at 5.30am on Tuesday. It was supposed to be a 1 hour flight to Lima followed by a 10 hour bus to Trujillo, overnight then onto Chicama the next day. Wrong. If you don't speak much Spanish in Peru you're stuffed - as we found out in Chiclayo - 3 hours on the bus past Trujillo. Chiclayo was 200km+ from where we wanted to be at 2am on Wednesday after all sorts of delays and confusion. Nowhere to sleep, nowhere to hide.

Our boards and backpacks stood out like dog's nuts and we felt vulnerable. How did we get back to Trujillo? Luckily my Spanish was good enough to get us on the next dodgy-class bus back and by 8.30am and after yet another bus we were in Paijan being savaged by the local taxi drivers. "Peurto, Puerto!" they exclaimed in loud, come-with-me-or-die type voices. The sight of boards sent them into a frenzy. We submitted and in no time found ourselves passengers of the dodgiest V8 1960 Ford sedan, boards strapped like hell to the roof. The sight that greeted us at Puerto Chicama was 2ft, glassy and peeling endlessly down the point. Endessly. This wave is simply a miracle.

No other wave comes close to the perfect angle the point at Chicama draws into the swell. And on this trip we met a solid Pacific groundswell that produced four days of empty and eery waves up to around 5ft and 2km. At this size you don't paddle back out - you run. The rip here is permanent and guaranteed to cause spaghetti arms. The first day of the swell broke a four day lull that could've driven a Russian chess-champ mad. There's nothing to do at Chicama except go surfing.