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?

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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.

How Home Can Be More Than a Place

We checked in with Emma Baas,
co-founder of La Onza,
to continue our series
where we ask the team:

Why Peru?

Emma Baas

Emma is the co-founder of La Onza and a proud new mama to baby Rosie. As a global traveler who is starting her own family in Peru, we were keen to hear from her about what creates a sense of “home’ in Lobitos.

We asked: What does “home” mean to you now?

EB: For a long time, home was simple to me. It was the small village in the Netherlands where I grew up, my parents’ house. It was loving, safe, familiar. That’s what home is for most kids.

But even while growing up in such a beautiful home, I always felt there was something more out there.

Sacred Valley caputred in her lens

When I was 18, I left home and started traveling through Southeast Asia, Central America, South America, and Europe, and realized people define home in completely different ways. For some, home is the road. For others, it’s the smallest town you could imagine. I once met a woman in a tiny village in Miramar, even quieter than Lobitos, and somehow that was home for her.

For a while, the road felt like home to me too. But deep down, I think I was always searching for a place where my life flowed naturally. That place became Lobitos.

The community, the ocean, the culture, the slower rhythm of life — something here just fit me. Over time, it stopped feeling like somewhere I was visiting and started feeling like somewhere I belonged.

La Onza volunteers at skate class for the kids with local NGO Waves

And now, home has grown even bigger. I found home in my partner, and recently in my daughter too. This past weekend, I celebrated my first Mother’s Day here in Peru, and it hit me in a completely different way. I used to celebrate Mother’s Day with my mom in the Netherlands. Now I’m celebrating it here, with my own family, in the place that has become my home.

I still think home is fluid. Especially when you travel, you realize it can evolve throughout your life. The Netherlands will always be part of my home because my family and lifelong friends are there.

But right now, my home-home is Lobitos.

Emma leading a tour with local leaders

Three weeks left in Early Bird for the August trip to Machu Picchu + Lobitos.

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Why Peru Is Unlike Anywhere Else in South America

Our next group experience is a bit different, we start in the Andes with a Q’ero Shaman, then tour around the Sacred Valley, visit Machu Picchu and spend an epic night in Cusco. After that we head north to Lobitos for a week of surfing, community and incredible food. You can explore more on that here.

But why are we even in Peru in the first place? 
This week, our team takes a stab at answering— Why Peru?

Harold Koechlin

Our head of surf, born and raised in Peru with 30 years experience leading adventure tours all over South America. We thought he would be a best suited to kick us off.

We asked: What’s something about Peru most people don’t understand until they experience it?

HK: I think most people don’t realize how massive and diverse Peru really is until they start traveling through it.

You can spend time in Lobitos surrounded by desert, great waves, amazing sunsets, and this quiet little coastal community. But we have in contrast and at the same time the Andes, and the Andean culture. Which is drastically, completely different. The geography is itself a factor of change.

Machu Picchu at first light

The size of the Andes, the mountains, how big they are, makes our diversity more drastic. The distance between regions, the isolation— it’s shaped the culture in a really deep way. Food changes. Daily life changes. The way people speak and relate to each other. Every region feels like its own world.

Through stone windows

And then beyond the Andes, you still have the jungle, which feels completely different again.

It's something you have to experience to really realize. Because if you just see a map, you just see a flat surface, you don't really understand how huge it is, how many different climates, landscapes, ecosystems there are. I think that’s what makes traveling through Peru so special. It’s not one experience. The country keeps unfolding the more you move through it.

The Sacred Valley at dusk

Early Bird Registration for the August trip to Machu Picchu + Lobitos is open until May 25, 2026

Secure your place before the Early Bird rate ends.

Explore the Journey →

Majestic Cusco at night

The Wave I Didn’t Bail On

Sharing moments like this is why we created retreats. Early bird for June ends April 25, now including a complimentary wellness treatment. Read on or explore more.

I'm next in the line up, the sun is setting, it's beautiful out here, at the edge of the world. The waves are huge in Lobitos right now, for me at least. The surf forecast app Surfline says 6-8ft, which I'm sure is undercutting it. A wave is approaching with a nice long wall. That feeling hits me, this is yours. I paddle but not too much, I’m in position. It builds behind me, and I start to rise-- it's big.

Recently I've been wiping out pretty hard. Not more than usual (I generally wipe yout a lot), just harder. I'm kind of at that point where I can surf bigger swells, but when I mess up, the consequences are more intense. Harder falls, stronger whiplash, the ratio between surfing harder waves and bodily harm is "igual" (or the same, locally).

This wave, that I think I’m claiming is building, about to break, I tell myself "come on— you’re not bailing. You can do it, and you cannot deal with another wipe out."

Determination – or desperation – manifest into aggressive commitment. I commit to my power strokes: 1 -2 - 3, chin down, as the wave breaks I grab the rails as hard as I can and man-handle the board to angle down the face, parallel to the shore.

This is the moment I usually bail. My board is usually perpedicular, I ditch it (a major no-no), cover my head, and go over the falls. Through the washing machine, count to hopefully no more than 3, eventually buoy to the surface.

But this time, I'm not underwater, I am flying on my stomach along the wall. "Pop up!" I think. I push up into a cobra posture, step my feet forward, and I’m up. In this moment, I am the highest I have ever been on planet earth, or so it feels.

This alone is also momentous because I have time to think about my next move. I dig my back heel down, look over my front shoulder, and the board - freaking - turns! I'm in awe. I hear a resounding "yaaah" in front of me, so I start yelling too. Out of the corner of my eye, I pass my coach paddling out to the line up. He saw the whole thing. The stoke is shared, and it’s real.

We started hosting retreats a few times throughout the year to extend experiences like this to our community. The next one is this June and as a special offer we’re adding a Free Wellness Treatment (think: Deep Tissue Massage, Reiki, Equine Therapy) for guests.

Whether just starting out or looking to progress, moments of stoke are what define surfing. These seemingly small moments of unlocking radiate with inspiration that carry on far beyond the session and into day to day life.

Early Bird for June is open until April 25th, 2026, regular pricing kicks in after.

Discover all that’s included here or contact us with any questions.