We are all excited – we will go for a long weekend at the beach. It’s the last weekend of school holidays in Peru.

First difficulty – Getting out of Lima

At 3 pm Thursday afternoon we leave our rental apartment (found through AirBnB) located on the border between the districts of Miraflores and Surquillo. We head to the southern beaches on the speedway.

Less than a quarter of an hour later, we are at the exit of Lima. Everything went perfect. On the other side however, entering Lima, there is a horrible traffic jam for several kilometres.

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The Peruvian coast is a sequence of deserts and small towns. Apparently not everyone has a title to occupy these lands. You just put a little cabin on a piece of land – and it will be yours ! Sand, hills, sand again. Amazing.

We pass several seaside resorts including Asia, a city whose activity is fully dedicated to tourism. Holiday houses, a lot of hotels of all kinds, restaurants, activities for everybody – this is Asia.

Just after, we pass through the valley of San Vicente de Cañete. During our journey, we don’t find many of these little green valleys and that close to the sea. Here they cultivate many fruits such as grapes, figs, but also tomatoes… a beautiful vegetable valley.

It will take us two hours to arrive at destination. 2 hours for 170 kms. This is for sure a much better average than travelling home to Northern Peru. Thanks to the better roads. I guess however, it is better not to travel during peak hours because this might lengthen your journey considerably.

The beach house

We arrive at our vacation spot, the Wakama beach. The houses here are actually on the beach, you can’t get any closer. They have bright colours, and everything looks very pretty. The house has a large terrace, rooms below and above, two toilets and two bathrooms, one per floor. The floor is wood; you can see the sand 70 cm lower across the wooden floor. We love it!

Everybody in the water!

The boys, as always in a hurry when we approach the ocean, jump on the surf boards and are already in the water ! We enjoy the flight of the pelicans, these magnificent birds that we already loved when we were in the United States. Many other bird species frequent the site, we see them flying in groups. Sometimes a hundred birds are diving into the sea, getting food, and like this show us that these beaches are very rich coastal fishing areas.

This year, because of the phenomenon of “El Niño”, the ocean water is surprisingly warm, around 22 degrees. Well, it is not as in Zorritos or Mancora with its warm waters on the North Coast of Peru, but frankly, everything is fine! The waves are big, but not too big. But nevertheless, we are still careful with the courants.

A real holiday feeling !

During our stay, we have great weather every day. Sun, hot water, sand, well, this is holidays.

We stayed in our friend’s house at the Wakama beach. But you can also stay at the hotel a little further on the beach. It provides services like restaurant, massage… and even Sunday Mass in a small open chapel open to the 4 winds with stunning sea views.

Stay at the beach Wakama: Better be organised !

To stay at Wakama, you must be a minimum organized, because there are no supermarkets in the area. We pass through San Vicente de Cañete south and the nearest town is Chincha Alta, in the neighbouring region of Ica, 20 minutes away.

For the water supply, each house has two reservoirs of 1,000 liters each. The owners pay for year-round maintenance operations and regular monitoring to check levels of tanks and eventually order more water, that will come transported by a truck. Electricity has appeared on the beach less than two years ago.

A place to relax

From the beach, you can also see dolphins swimming just a few hundred meters away.

Our eyes are to the west, the pacific is in front of us. Every night we have beautiful sunsets.

To make things short – we had a great time at beach ! Thank you, Nora !

Weekend at the beach in Peru – south of Lima