As we stand on the wall in front of El Gringo, the wave braking in front of the pier of Arica, we`re well impressed with it`s size and strength of the perfect barrel. There is quite some guys out showing their moves to the audience. As the waves brake so shallow that they get up really close , nice for me as I can see really well, but a lot less for the guys themselves as one got pinned to the reef and another one just broke his board, many others would follow that week, honouring the nickname of the reef called the surgeons table..
Very reasuring as I`m about to spend the next few days watching Grom do the same. Thank god he decides he`ll go for the wave on the other side of the pier which looks a bit less intimidating. That gaves me the time to catch up on my reading ans sports photography. As we do want to have a good record of Grom`s surf performance for the future generation.
" Yes, that is gandpa, still with hair, showing some oldschool moves kids."
After 3 days and lot`s of longingly looking at it, Grom decides he is gonne have a go at El Gringo himself and see if he can lose his el gringo virginity along with some skin, as he puts it himself. I can`t help but cheer when I see him catch the wave. Unfortunatly he needs to pay the price for that as well and gets wopped a bit as well, but hey, what can you do. At least he and his board arrive in one piece back to me.
We keep on planning to visit the mummy`s but it never really seems to happen as we spend the remaining of the day`s wandering around through the pretty city center, shopping, drinking fruit juice and trying the local cuisine. They happen to have a very nice formal dress shop as well, were I sit Grom down and try on half of the shop before buying a great designer dress for the wedding of Coen and Madelon. It feels nice to do some decadent westerny things again like shopping instead of sightseeing.
We think we have a great deal buying a laptop, but we find out soon it is a big disaster. As the thing turns out can`t be changed into english. You would think that the sales man would have thought of that when he needed a colleague to translate for him in order to sell it to us. But hey ho. The next two days, Graham spends trying to get the laptop to convert to english and the final one camping out at the place he bought it to get his money back. I`m well impressed with the amount of Spanish we come up with finally ending up in the managers office fully in formal outfit(hippy/surf look probably doesn`t help). But there is sweet victory at last, which we celebrate over home made pizza with a Corona as we discuss our travel plans with the other surf dudes in the guesthouse. It`s a pity we have to leave again, but the Inca trail awaits and we`re well rested for that. Bring it on!
