Cabo Blanco is a

fishing village A fishing village is a village, usually located near a fishing ground, with an economy based on catching fish and harvesting seafood. The continents and islands around the world have coastlines totalling around 356,000 kilometres (221,000 ...

in northwestern Peru, 3 km northwest from

El Alto El Alto (Spanish for "The Heights") is the second-largest city in Bolivia, located adjacent to La Paz in Pedro Domingo Murillo Province on the Altiplano highlands. El Alto is today one of Bolivia's fastest-growing urban centers, with an estimat ...

Talara Talara is a city in the Talara Province of the Piura Region, in northwestern Peru. It is a port city on the Pacific Ocean with a population of 91,444 as of 2017. Its climate is hot and dry. Due to its oil reserves, and ability to produce aviation ...

, Piura. It was famous in the past among big-game fishermen and today is a noted

surf break Surf or SURF may refer to: Commercial products * Surf (detergent), a brand of laundry detergent made by Unilever Computers and software * "Surfing the Web", slang for exploring the World Wide Web * surf (web browser), a lightweight web browse ...

. The village takes its name from the light coloured nearby mountains. In the 1950s and 1960s, fishermen traveled to Cabo Blanco to hunt big

marlin Marlins are fish from the family Istiophoridae, which includes about 10 species. A marlin has an elongated body, a spear-like snout or bill, and a long, rigid dorsal fin which extends forward to form a crest. Its common name is thought to deri ...

Ernest Hemingway Ernest Miller Hemingway (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) was an American novelist, short-story writer, and journalist. His economical and understated style—which he termed the iceberg theory—had a strong influence on 20th-century f ...

stayed more than a month at the famous "Cabo Blanco Fishing Club" and caught a 700-pound marlin while filming the motion picture based on his novel, ''

The Old Man and the Sea ''The Old Man and the Sea'' is a novella written by the American author Ernest Hemingway in 1951 in Cayo Blanco (Cuba), and published in 1952. It was the last major work of fiction written by Hemingway that was published during his lifetime. O ...

''. In 1952, model

Patsy Pulitzer Gladys "Patsy" Pulitzer Preston (May 31, 1928 – October 28, 2011) was an American fashion model, socialite and philanthropist. The granddaughter of Joseph Pulitzer, newspaper publisher and founder of the Pulitzer Prize, she grew up in Palm Beach ...

appeared in ''

Sports Illustrated ''Sports Illustrated'' (''SI'') is an American sports magazine first published in August 1954. Founded by Stuart Scheftel, it was the first magazine with circulation over one million to win the National Magazine Award for General Excellence twi ...

'' as one of the "World's Loveliest Sportswomen", after catching a 1,230-pound

black marlin The black marlin (''Istiompax indica'') is a species of marlin found in tropical and subtropical areas of the Indian and Pacific Oceans. With a maximum published length of and weight of , it is one of the largest marlins and also one of the la ...

off Cabo Blanco, a then world-record fish for a woman. In 1953, Alfred Glassell Jr. caught the IGFA all tackle world record black marlin, weighing 1560 pounds. In 1979, Peruvian surfer Gordo Barreda discovered the wave when he visited the village to check the surf in the area. The wave is a hollow powerful left and is reckoned the "Peruvian Pipeline", referring to the Banzai Pipeline in

Hawaii Hawaii ( ; haw, Hawaii or ) is a state in the Western United States, located in the Pacific Ocean about from the U.S. mainland. It is the only U.S. state outside North America, the only state that is an archipelago, and the only state ...

. Swell from Hawaii does in fact go on to reach Peru; in the 1990s the best way to get a surf forecast was to phone Hawaii and whatever swell they had would arrive about 5 days later. The wave breaks over sand and rock, with the sand building up through summer and being washed away progressively by winter swells. The wave inspires a kind of fanaticism among surfers. Although there are only about 20 locals, crowds of surfers are drawn to the wave from

Lima Lima ( ; ), originally founded as Ciudad de Los Reyes (City of The Kings) is the capital and the largest city of Peru. It is located in the valleys of the Chillón, Rímac and Lurín Rivers, in the desert zone of the central coastal part of ...

(700 kilometres south), and from around the world. With modern swell forecasts and the internet, it's easy to know when swell is on the way, and the surfers once there all pack into a single tight takeoff zone, despite other waves elsewhere in the area. A concrete pier was built for local fishermen a few years ago, replacing a wooden one which was between Cabo and Panic Point and was destroyed by the sea. The proposal had been to build it right through the takeoff zone of the Cabo wave, ruining the wave, but also being a difficult place to build. Sanity prevailed, and the pier was built about 150 metres north, but it still chops off the tail end of the ride. Cabo Blanco was used as the location of the film ''Undertow'' (''Contracorriente''), directed by Javier Fuentes-León. The movie was released in 2010.

References

''Without a Map: Northern Peru's dusty secrets''
article by Gonzalo Barandiaran at surfline.com
''"BARRELS"''
Surf shortfilm by Vico Casquero -Shot at Cabo Blanco (Feb2013)

at Paul Kennedy Photography (including pictures)
Cabo Blanco Tourist portal"Cabo Blanco and its Marine Life"
at PBS Nature
Ernest Hemingway at the Cabo Blanco Fishing Club
{{coord, 4, 15, 05, S, 81, 14, 06, W, region:PE_type:city_source:kolossus-eswiki, display=title Populated places in the Piura Region Surfing locations Surfing locations in Peru