The Stories of Lobitos, told by Lobiteñans
What started as a conversation around the table at our Dolphin Tank dinner has grown into an opportunity for young women in Lobitos to tell the stories of their community through their own lens.
Lesson 1: perspective changes everything.
If you've ever spent time in Lobitos, you know the version of the town that visitors fall in love with. The point breaks. The fishing boats. The desert meeting the sea. The feeling that somehow, in a world moving too fast, this place still operates on its own clock.
It's easy to arrive and think you understand a place. It's much harder to know its stories.
The real Lobitos exists beyond the waves. It lives in family kitchens, schoolyards, fishing docks, dusty streets, and conversations that happen long after the surfers have gone home. It's a place filled with people whose lives, histories, ambitions, and challenges rarely make it into the stories told about it.
So back in March, during our final Dolphin Tank dinner, a question emerged:
What if the stories of Lobitos could be told by Lobiteñas themselves?
What happens when creativity is given a camera and a little encouragement.
This week, that idea took its first real step. Together with Coast2Coast's Mujeres y Agua program, we've launched the inaugural photojournalism course in Lobitos for a small group of local girls.
Over the coming months they'll learn photography, interviewing, storytelling, and visual narrative. They'll experiment with perspective, composition, and observation. They'll learn how to ask questions, how to listen, and how to find stories hiding in plain sight.
A camera changes things, suddenly you’re paying close attention.
The real work is helping young women discover that their perspective matters. That the things they see every day are worth documenting. That their experiences, their communities, and their voices deserve space in the conversation about what Lobitos is today and what it might become tomorrow.
The best stories are still to be defined, but we suspect they will come from the fisherman who have watched the coastline change over decades. The grandmothers who remember some of the most intense El Niños in history. The oil rig workers who transitioned from a life of fishing for the more lucrative petrol business. The young women who dream big and have something to say.
Those are the stories we're interested in. Not stories about Lobitos. Stories from Lobitos. We'll be sharing their work as the program unfolds. For now, we're excited to watch what happens when a group of curious young women are handed a camera and asked a simple question: what do you see?
Come See for Yourself
You can read all about La Onza’s wider commitment to community on our Impact Page, and if this is the kind of project you’re interested in supporting, scroll to the bottom to donate.
Then this August, we'll begin in the Sacred Valley and journey to Machu Picchu before heading north to Lobitos for a week of surfing, sunsets, and life on Peru's wild northern coast where we’ll have a chance to meet some of these amazing girls. We'll return again in November for our classic Surf & Yoga Retreat in Lobitos, for a more immersive experience in the ocean and community.
→ Explore More for August and November retreats.
If you've ever felt drawn to Peru, not just to see it, but to understand it a little more deeply, consider this your invitation.
