Café Racer

Picture Peru. If you haven’t had the pleasure, summon clichés. Employ prejudice. 

Plump reed boats in the surf. An arid landscape of cinderblock low-rises and garish buses. Hangover-free, kitten-soft, etherwashed powder from the Ica Valley. Two-stroke moto taxis buzzing like wasps. That highland flute music the eat-pray-love backpackers lose their shit over. Improbably long left points with a backdrop of oil platforms and artisanal squid boats. 

Yet none of these are in evidence in Punta Hermosa, the bustling but relaxed surf suburb an hour south of Lima. Isla Ballesta Street in June feels more like Lisbon than rural South America. European-style shops defy the dusty surroundings. Sport wagons and Rovers pass through gated privada checkpoints. It’s a town clearly on some slow, deliberate come-up. This is the home of Charcutería Lucaffé, the storefront owned and operated by WSL and Olympic surfer Miguel Tudela and his fiancée, model-entrepreneur Alessandra Bonelli. 

Bonelli discovered the Italian espresso brand on her travels, arranged a Peruvian license, and now imports Lucaffé, using the Charcutería as the mothership. Tudela’s energy and local-hero status supercharged the launch. The deli is now a gathering point for townsfolk, surfers or not. A jersey and a cover shot or two adorn the interior, but it’s undersold—not the sort of surf-kitsch overload you’d see in Redon – do. Tudela pulls me a cortado as Bonelli glides across the street to pick up the daily pastry from the bakery. Sitting at a sidewalk table, we get beaned up and take the measure of the day. 

It’s gray. Peruvian winters are comically socked in, six months of overcast endured by the Limeños with stoic acceptance. If David Lynch spoke Spanish, he’d scout wintertime Peru for gloom appeal alone. It tests a visitor’s mettle. Even a Californian inured to the Golden State’s Catalina eddy. It’s a mid-grade sort of misery, a vitamin D–depleting loss of one’s own shadow.

A conspiracy of young surf rats scuttles around, issuing a stream of putas. Every sentence in Peru includes this expletive. Locals use it like Mexicans use verga or Americans use “like,” its literal meaning subordinate to enthusiasm. Depending on inflection, it can mean “Goddamn it,” “Are you shitting me?” or “That’s really cool.” It’s as harmless as it gets. Peruvians are notoriously gracious and polite. The “whore”-rapping rats respectfully calm down and grin as they pass our table. 

Tudela charts our next few days. It includes a deep look at the points and reefs here in town—favored spot checks, paddle-out put-ins, angle shots, secret hideouts from ill winds. Punta Hermosa is a beneficially complex zone. Something for every approach, from rippable but imperfect reefs and beachbreak to shelf ledges to a foam-streaked granddaddy of a big wave. 

When George Downing made his first visit to Lima, in 1955, he went up in a small plane to check the frontier. Mere minutes from the capital, he found Hermosa. It was unknown to the city surfers. Downing guided them in, and Gen 1 pioneers like Miguel Plaza and Piti Block had the privilege of naming rights and the pleasure of laying first tracks. Kon Tiki, Señoritas, Caballeros, Punta Rocas, and Playa Norte are the go-tos. 

The Hawaiians had powerful influence here, even pre-Downing. Carlos Dogny Larco, an influential Limeño, discovered surfing on Oahu in the 1930s as a young man. He was tutored by no less than Duke and Rabbit. Inspired, Dogny returned to Peru to found Club Waikiki and advocate for further transpacific brotherhood. It’s Peruvian surfing’s New Testament, all on display at Club Waikiki and also at the Kon-Tiki Surfboards Museum in Punta Hermosa, lovingly owned and curated by august Peruvian surfer José Schiaffino. 

Tudela knows the place well. He knocks on the door of the private oceanfront house where the Kon-Tiki museum is located. A distinguished fellow in his eighties lets us in, offering us a pisco. The walls and ceiling catalog some 70 years. Tudela points up to a Greg Noll Films full gun, walking through the relationship between the spears Noll built for Pico Alto and the Pomar brothers. Modern Peruvian surfers on the whole seem comparatively connected to their surf history. Tudela’s no exception. He’s lived his whole life at Hermosa, steeped in influence, and while he’s a national sporting celebrity, people tend to respect his privacy. The town itself plays an obvious role in his success. 

“It’s one of the most consistent places in the world,” he says. “We have big waves, points, long ones and short ones. Any wind direction. It’s a great place to train.” 

By the 1970s, the town had become the home of Lima-area surfing. The waves of the nearby capital are, alas, bereft of any real quality. In season, the left point at Herradura stands alone as the only viable option. That’s why Tudela’s parents—both lifelong surfers—live in the south, hard against the rocky, kelp-riddled, temperate waters of Playa Hermosa. 

The importance of the surfscape can’t be overstated. Like the best of the best—Slater, Florence, Ho—Tudela is a weapon from 1 to 30 feet. Tubes, airs, bombs: All are in his range of fluency, and all can be on offer right at the base of the bluff here in Hermosa. 

His father, an early inhabitant of the town, paddled Miguel out to Pico Alto at the same age he first surfed it: 13. They made it a heritage session, a tribute. No wetsuits, no cords, no inflatable vests. Twenty feet, a mile out to sea. It left a mark, and Tudela considers Pico a part of his DNA. It also speaks to his fascination with large, serious, old-school venues like Waimea and Todos Santos, where sheer mass and terminal velocity connect him to those early go-outs with his father—and Peru’s surfing patrimony. 

Tudela’s local crew refers to Pico Alto as “the Temple.” Like many global big-wave venues, the place inspires reverence. The paddle-out itself can take half an hour. Often shrouded in fog, the glassy walls can go legit XXL, spooling off like a revved-up, cool-water Sunset Beach. First surfed by foundational Peruvian surfer Miguel Plaza and friends, the wave has played host to a catalog of big-wave freebooters, including Richard Schmidt, James Jones, and the late Mark Foo. 

Tudela is obsessed with the place, and constantly looking for ways to elevate his performance. “I’m really working on finding the exact board to do what I want on the wave,” he says. “I started building specific boards with [Al and Britt] Merrick, trying to find how small we can go and still paddle into them, but also turn like a shortboard. You want to get on those walls and just enjoy them, you know? Also, we’ve really studied rescue. We haven’t had any rides recently that ended up in the hospital.” 

Surfing the less scale-rigorous World Qualifying Series for the WSL finds him on the road, with at least five international trips a year—Europe, Australia, the US, South Africa. It’s enough of a gruel that he appreciates his hometown in ways that less geographically anchored surfers might not. Beyond that, there’s plenty of competitive inspiration here and in the country at large. 

“My inspiration was right here at home,” Tudela says. “Yeah, my favorite surfers from abroad were Mick, Andy, and Kelly, but my guidance came from Gabriel Villarán, Cristobal De Col, Sofía Mulánovich, and Gabriel Aramburu. The guys coming up—Carlos Mario [Zapata], Lucca Mesinas, Alonso Correa, Joaquin Del Castillo—are pushing everyone super hard.” 

“But,” he continues, “for me, Sofía is the biggest name in sport in Peru, and of course she changed everything. She made her dream come true—number one in the world. She inspired many, and also put surfing on the map for investors as a golden sport in Peru. We need to thank her for really making Peru be recognized as one of the best in surfing.” 

Loading up, we head to Miraflores, the cosmopolitan Lima district famed for its parks, rooftop bars, and outrageous criollo cuisine, the latter a perpetual eye-opener—like Spanish food if it went to saucier school in Lyon, grabbed a minor in Sinaloan shellfish, and finished with a Kanazawa sushi seminar. But it’s sui generis, not assembled from parts. It’s the top class of South American gastronomy, with no real second place, and an easily argued global top five. Breathe in the dense layers of a “simple” arroz con mariscos. You’ll have to take a knee. It can be attributed only to la brujería de los Andes—the witchcraft of the high country, the place from which all blessings (and the yellow ají pepper) flow. 

While the waves won’t snap your flag to attention, Miraflores is one of the most unexpectedly surprising cities in the world. Consistent—and consistently blurpy—beachbreak lies at the foot of the low cliffs, shapeless and vaguely Tourmaline-like. But it’s a fertile city, worth far more attention than it gets from the average visitor, breaking in their boots on their way to the tourist-clogged gates of Machu Picchu. There’s no closing time. Prowl the 3 a.m. side streets and listen, smell. Check the Martinez Tailor Shop, where you can get chalked up for a custom suit, find a hidden panel door, and tumble into a speakeasy crowded with Peruanas leaving lipstick on their Negronis. Soak up the revelry with a chicharrón sandwich and strawberry juice at La Lucha, one of the world’s finest fast-food chains. It handily waxes Thomas Keller–approved In-N-Out with their fries alone. (You might know that every potato on the planet traces its rootstock to Peru, long before Ireland or Idaho.) Pursue some psychedelic chicha, that rolling, ’60s-based Amazonian cumbia that still bumps if you have a clued-in fixer. Miraflores is the sort of place one could make a base of operations, darting up to Cabo Blanco or down to Cerro Azul when the charts flare…unless you’re Tudela. He’s on the discipline trip, with Olympic gold on his mind. The cumbia can wait.

Tudela is known among his young surfing associates as serious and driven. “He’s basically done it all himself,” his lifelong friend Jose Plaza told me. “He’s always been that way. He had to. It’s who he is. It’s not like he came from money. And he’s never been the type to just take what comes. He makes things happen.” 

Tudela is a fish who breathes—organized, high functioning, and well capable of crawling out of the shorebreak and onto the streets, résumé in hand, to find backing for his aspirations. Punta Hermosa isn’t Coolangatta or Ventura or the North Shore, however. There’s no phalanx of photographers stuffing memory cards with your every wave. That means the sole route to prodom is contest surfing, and the only real way to fund campaigns has been through international corporate backing. Trading on early competitive successes and reaching a zenith with his appearance at the 2020 Olympic Games, Tudela now has sponsors that include Billabong, La Roche Posay, Adidas, Monster Energy, Skullcandy, Channel Islands, and FCS. It’s a heady little portfolio, and speaks to his willingness to knock on doors. His surfboard relationship is a case in point. 

“When I made the decision to become a professional surfer,” Tudela says, “the best guys in the world rode for Channel Islands. It was the era of Kelly. So I decided to start at the top. I’ve never left.”

Last year, he was armed with 38 pieces of Britt Merrick matériel. A broad and deep batch, from 5’7″ plugs to 10’2″ guns for Pico Alto, Waimea, and his favorite Latin American wave, Chile’s Punta de Lobos. Thirty-eight boards would seem bratty and excessive to some, but when one makes their bones at Pipeline, at Pico, and well above the lip everywhere else, they are more than some expense-able flex. They’re daily bread. 

The next morning, we meet in Miraflores at the hallowed Club Waikiki. It’s a shadow-box display of golden-era Peruvian surf life, a mid-century-modern refuge for members only. In its heyday it was a blend of Casino-era Vegas and an Argentine polo club. Pisco sours on the deck, très sportif power brokers playing paddle tennis, board caddies, and brunette updos in bikinis. All still extant today. The populist leftists hated it, and when they fell into power in the ’70s, they paved a thoroughfare right over the beachfront entrance as a double-fisted fuck you. Yet here the club stays, a testament to Carlos Dogny, the Hawaiian lifestyle he chose to emulate, and the country’s connection to surfing itself. 

Tudela is an honorary member and trains regularly at the club pool. He’s treated with an easy deference, like a favored son. His trophies stand in a place of honor. The director arranges poolside plates of appetizers and drinks. After our meal, we drop downstairs to the locker room. It’s a mind-bending catacomb of surfboards new and old. Favored tankers from the Peru International Surfing Championships era. Forgotten designs from the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s. Hundreds of daily drivers racked for modern members. All told, there are more than a thousand sleds, all curried and clucked over by the same boardmaster who looked after the personal spears of Noll, Cabell, and Pomar. Of course, Tudela keeps a short-stack quiver on hand. Out front, the waves provide a reasonable facsimile of the beachbreakhash often found in the contest milieu. Chiba, HB, Rio. Tudela looks at it like doing burpees between sets at the Corcoran iron pile. A way to get reps in the sun for future battles. 

It’s been paying off. In flashes of brilliance, like his buzzer-beating McTwist that heartlessly dispatched Griffin Colapinto in Brazil. In straightup WQS wins, as he did in the Galápagos. In heavy-wave blitzes, like his semifinal run at the Volcom Pipe Pro. But the chance to represent his country in the 2020 Olympic Games brought him the level of national esteem normally reserved for soccer stars and F1 drivers. Like Mulánovich before him, he’s become the face of Peruvian sport. 

“It was a dream come true,” says Tudela. “I think every athlete dreams of the Olympic Games. Tokyo was an amazing experience, and one of the proudest moments in my life.” 

At 28 years old, Tudela has achieved journeyman status. His goals for 2023 include climbing a few ’QS slots in the quest for WCT inclusion. Beyond that, he’s focused on the Pan Am Games qualifiers for the 2024 Olympics and the possibility of competing for gold in Tahiti. 

Sitting on the deck of his oceanfront house at Playa Norte, Pico Alto in the near distance, one can see the faint outline of his future. The Temple booms through the night. One hundred board feet of CI guns are stashed in the spare room. The café is moments away up the hill. Ratings and contests aside, it feels like a catbird seat. Away from the hue and cry of traditional US and Australian surf centers, Tudela inhabits a fully round surfer’s life, living and working among friends, family, and the 90 or so surfers who call Punta Hermosa home. 

There’s an unofficial national anthem in the country called “Contigo Perú.” It’s played at soccer matches and is employed whenever Peruvians come together. When its lilting strains are first heard at events, everyone cheers and sings along. Not a dry eye in the house. 

Binding the coast 

Binding the mountain range 

Binding the jungle 

With you, Peru 

Binding the work 

Binding the sport 

Binding the north, center, and south 

To triumph Peruvians…

I’m here to tell you it sounds all kinds of splendid played on a phone, backed by the shorebreak at Casa Tudela. 

[Feature Image Caption: Sprinting for blue water at Jaws. Photo by Ryan Craig.]