by Abby Maley
I gazed at my father’s extensive book collection as I finished the last of my preparations. An avid reader, adventurer, and endlessly curious soul, my father passed down his love of exploration to me. His books are tucked into the aged stone walls of his hundred-year-old farm cottage in the Pennsylvania countryside.
Right out of college, he landed a prestigious job at Sports Illustrated and eventually worked for Time magazine and other major publications during the golden era of print journalism. As part of the international department, he traveled extensively, taking risks and immersing himself in the world. From an early age, he instilled in me the belief that travel isn’t just about seeing new places—it’s about learning, connecting, taking risks and trusting yourself to navigate the unknown.
One of my favorite stories of his is about his trip to Cuba. During an unexpected two-week break from work, he impulsively booked a ticket to the then-restricted island. Through some dodgy red tape dealings—and, I’m sure, a mix of charm and persistence—he managed to gain entry.
Once there, he teamed up with two French vagabonds he’d met along the way, and together they set off to explore the mysterious country. They relied entirely on the kindness of strangers, staying in people’s homes along the journey. Not being able to speak a lick of Spanish, my dad managed to communicate rather well with his hosts. There is a lot you can communicate through a thick language barrier he explained, which I later learned for myself to be absolutely true.
I’m heading for Peru in the morning and have decided I’ll only have room for one book—so I’d better pick a good one. “Kon-Tiki,” I murmur to myself, pulling the battered book off the top shelf. I remember hearing the story as a kid but only vaguely understood the premise. I could’ve sworn ancient sea gods and monsters were involved. The book is an account written by Thor Heyerdahl of his remarkable and daring expedition on a wooden raft across the Pacific Ocean. He was a man of risk-taking and undying resilience, undertaking a journey most deemed impossible. In the words of this famous explorer, “Borders. I have never seen one. But I have heard they exist in the minds of some people.”
Thor Heyerdahl, a Norwegian explorer and writer, set off to prove his theory that the Tiki people from South America had the capabilities to reach Polynesia by using trade winds and a balsa wood raft. The raft, “Kon-Tiki,” was named after the Incan god Viracocha. The expedition included five other explorers, among them Swedish anthropologist Bengt Danielsson, Norwegian sailor Erik Hesselberg, and military radio expert Knut Haugland. They began their journey on April 28, 1947, out of Callao, Peru, headed for the island of Tahiti. Over the next three and a half months, the team covered more than 4,300 nautical miles, facing great obstacles and making fascinating discoveries. Heyerdahl and his team, using unconventional methods, sought to prove the possibility of cultural exchanges between the early people of South America near modern-day Peru and the people of early Polynesia.
Fast forward to my own rather lengthy journey to northern Peru, full of great conversations, insane motion sickness and damp postcards, I found myself in the remote surf town of Huanchaco. I had been in town a little over three months and was beginning to feel at home. My days were full of sunshine and cold mornings in the surf.
Huanchaco was different than any other surf town I had found myself familiar with. It held deep ocean culture in a way I had never seen before. The town awoke and slept with the ebb and flow of the sea. The entire town walked to the beach to watch the sunset and the brave locals remained in the water to finish out a night-surfing sessions. I first learned how to surf in Stinson, California. I worked at a surf shop owned by a surf local who was not only a lifelong surfer and lover of the ocean but was also an original dead-head (Grateful Dead fan I quickly learned). He taught me how to surf the only way he deemed correct, grab a board, and let the ocean take you! You have to learn about the ocean and have a relationship with it before you can ride its waves, he explained. This method worked well after some months. I became very familiar with the ocean. I also became very familiar with wiping out. I also learned to love surf towns. It felt like the people living in them had a real lust for life. I found that lust for life in Huanchaco and found a new love that took me by surprise. I found my new travel companion, Paco, in the streets of the neighboring town, Huanchaquito. All 1.5 kg of this adorable canine was full of curiosity and “joie de vivre.”
After another day of reading by the water and chatting with fellow travelers, I ran into a woman outside the local market. She had the air of someone who’d seen quite a bit of adventure and seemed to know everyone. She flagged me down as I walked out of the market with my arms full of warm bread and asked me the whereabouts of a nearby hostel. I hadn’t heard of the place, but I offered to help her look. As we walked side-by-side down the sandy streets, she told me of her travels. Her name was Dr. Margaret Jasckson, she was an archaeologist from the University of New Mexico and had been traveling to Huanchaco for some time. There was an excavation site fairly close to the town, and today was her last day before heading back to the United States. I told her I was here in Huanchaco doing some writing and had discovered a fascinating story, known by most of the locals, about surfing’s true origins. She smiled and told me she had a very good friend who’d be happy to help with my journalistic exploration of Huanchaco, and its history as the official birthplace of surfing. She invited me to the hotel she was staying at and agreed to introduce me to her friend, Carlos Antonio Ferrer. Ferrer, a local historian, lifelong surfer, and Huanchaco World Surfing Reserve representative, had a knowledge that built a story bigger than I could’ve imagined.
Thanks to his passion for surfing and his life’s work, he had made plenty of friends who
were regarded as surfing legends—among them Peruvian legend Felipe Pomar. Known for pioneering surfing in Oahu and famously riding a tsunami, Pomar had traveled the world advocating for more exposure for his home country. He is a firm believer that surfing was born in northern Peru, not Hawaii as most of the world believes. Pomar claims that fishermen in northern Peru had been building surf-like reed boats and riding waves for over 3,000 years. Ferrer also told me that Felipe Pomar was good friends with the explorer and frequent Peru visitor Thor Heyerdahl. Thor Heyerdahl? I was shocked. This random journey I had found myself on began to feel anything but random. Thor Heyerdahl, the almost mythical adventurer I had read about as a child and the man who had written Kon-Tiki—the book I had haphazardly pulled from my father’s shelf and had been reading religiously for months—was also the best friend of surf legend Felipe Pomar, whose life had been dedicated to telling the story I so desperately wanted to write about. The collaboration made sense. Felipe Pomar had seen the deep historical roots of surfing in Peru firsthand, and how surf culture from Peru had certainly influenced surf culture in Hawaii. Heyerdahl, meanwhile, had dedicated much of his life to proving the existence of this ancient exchange. My mind was blown, and I was filled with excitement. My new archaeologist friend explained that much of the pottery and artifacts they had been uncovering offered pr
oof that surf riders in Huanchaco predated early surf riders in Hawaii by thousands of years. All of these discoveries were rather recent, she added. I had stumbled on a gold mine of discoveries, I thought to myself. It was a story I was eager to write. I had been let in on the secret of surfing’s humble beginnings along with surf legends, world travelers, and the fishermen who still braced the early morning waves for fish on top of their ancient totora rafts.
There I was, sandwiched between the female Indiana Jones and her surf legend companion in a remote fishing town in Peru, where I had unknowingly followed in the footsteps of my mystical and seemingly fictional explorer idol, who’d felt a similar excitement when he came to this beautiful and mysterious place. Later that night, I pulled my book from my damp backpack and flipped through the pages, skimming over words I’d read about a hundred times. This time it felt different. We weren’t so different, Heyerdahl and I. Sure, he was a madman and an inspiration for daring to cross the ocean on a raft to prove a theory I probably wouldn’t repeat. But this place, which had fundamentally changed me and filled me with curiosity and wanderlust, had done the same for him.
As I read about the moment he first devised his outlandish plan, his passion, and commitment to seeing it through made all the more sense to me. I, too, felt inspired enough to sail across the ocean with nothing but a raft and wanderlust after falling in love with the birthplace of surfing, Huanchaco, Peru.
Eos. “Sunday Joint, 10-25-2020: Felipe Pomar’s Surf History Bun Fight.” Encyclopedia of Surfing, 3 Nov. 2024, www.eos.surf/joint/sunday-joint-10-25-2020.
“Kon-Tiki.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, inc., www.britannica.com/topic/Kon-Tiki-raft. Accessed 4 Nov. 2024.
