Destinations >>> Trujillo >>> Huanchaco

Huanchaco

Huanchaco is a beautiful and relatively peaceful beach. It`s located 10 minutes from Trujillo, main city at the northern coast of Peru, and has the best known surfing waves in the South Pacific.

Until the 1970s, Huanchaco was an small village, quiet and little-known to tourists. Today it is one of the fastest growing settlements in Peru. It is visited by thousands of turists because of nearby Chan Chan, the largest clay city in the world, built by the Mochican centuries before the Inca empire.

Stacked along the back of the beach, you`ll see rows of caballitos del mar - the ancient seagoing rafts designed by the Mochicas and still used by locals today. They are constructed out of four cigar-shaped bundles of tortora reeds, tied together into an arc tapering at each end. The fishermen kneel or sit at the stern and paddle, using the surf for occasional bursts of motion. The local boat builders here are the last who know the craft of making caballitos to the original design of the Mochicas.