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 List of Bolivian cities by population, 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- ...

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 aviati ...

Piura Piura is a city in northwestern Peru, located north of the Sechura Desert along the Piura River. It is the capital of the Piura Region and the Piura Province. Its population was 484,475 as of 2017 and it is the 7th most populous city in Peru. ...

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

surf break A surf break (also break, shore break, or big wave break) is a permanent (or semi-permanent) obstruction such as a coral reef, rock (geology), rock, shoal, or headland that causes a Wind wave, wave to Wind wave#Wave breaking, break, forming a ...

. 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 between 9 and 11 species, depending on the taxonomic authority. Name The family's common name is thought to derive from their resemblance to a sailor's marlinspike. Taxonomy T ...

Ernest Hemingway Ernest Miller Hemingway ( ; July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) was an American novelist, short-story writer and journalist. Known for an economical, understated style that influenced later 20th-century writers, he has been romanticized fo ...

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 1952 novella by the American author Ernest Hemingway. Written between December 1950 and February 1951, it was the last major fictional work Hemingway published during his lifetime. It tells the story of Santiag ...

''. 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 newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer, 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 a circulation of over one million to win the National Magazine Award for General Excellen ...

'' 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 approximately between 40 degrees North and 45 degrees South, while in some instances venturing into more tem ...

off Cabo Blanco, a then world-record fish for a woman. In 1953, Alfred C. Glassell Jr. caught the IGFA all tackle world record black marlin, weighing . 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 The Banzai Pipeline, or simply Pipeline or Pipe, is a surf reef break located in Hawaii, off Ehukai Beach Park in Pupukea on O'ahu's North Shore. A reef break is an area in the ocean where waves start to break once they reach the shallows of ...

Hawaii Hawaii ( ; ) is an island U.S. state, state of the United States, in the Pacific Ocean about southwest of the U.S. mainland. One of the two Non-contiguous United States, non-contiguous U.S. states (along with Alaska), it is the only sta ...

. 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 ( ; ), founded in 1535 as the Ciudad de los Reyes (, Spanish for "City of Biblical Magi, Kings"), is the capital and largest city of Peru. It is located in the valleys of the Chillón River, Chillón, Rímac River, Rímac and Lurín Rive ...

(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 Javier Fuentes-León is a Peruvian film director based in Los Angeles and best known for his directorial long-feature debut ''Undertow (2009 film), Undertow'' (Spanish title ''Contracorriente'') that starred Cristian Mercado as Miguel, a fisherman ...

. 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 Department of Piura Surfing locations Surfing locations in Peru