Cerro Azul, Peru

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Cerro Azul ("Blue Hill") is a fishing village and formerly a commercial port in the Cañete Province, Lima Region, Peru. Located 131 km south of Lima, it is frequently visited in the summer by its residents, and those of San Vicente de Cañete. The village has come to depend more heavily on tourism than on fishing.

The beach forms an attractive bay that ends in a rocky point where the waves it is famous for break. The renowned quality of its waves is mentioned in the Beach Boys' song "Surfing Safari." However, the quality of the waves changes seasonally and from year to year, as the sand and stones that make up the beach are chronically withdrawn by the sea to form a bank where the waves break.

South of the pier is the area known as Puerto Viejo ("old port" ), where all the holiday homes are and where most of the surfing takes place (left breaks). To the north of the pier, the beach is much longer, less curved and much sandier. There are no holiday homes on it and in the winter is empty. During the summer, it is popular with campers and day-trippers. It is possible to surf here too, when the swell is high, particularly adjacent to the pier, where the waves are fast and the rides tend to be short. For some more pictures, see here.

Cerro Azul's main feature is the pier which was built by a British company around 1900 for the export of locally grown cotton. The pier has been disused for over 60 years and is now frequented by fishermen and tourists and is one of the main tourists attractions.

The village also has an attractive main square and the remains of Pre-Inca mud buildings, half buried by sand between two hills, one of which is made of bluish rock, hence the village's name. The other hill features a derelict lighthouse from the days when the area functioned as a port. It sits above craggy, vertical, dangerous cliffs, where birds in the area make their nests. Of note is the Inca Tern, a bird endemic to the Humboldt Current, which sweeps the Peruvian coast. Other wildlife of note commonly seen in the area: porpoises, pelicans, sea lions, herons and, on rare occasions, sharks. The village prides itself in catching the largest shark in Peruvian history (in 1989), a 5m long Great White.

Behind the village, across the Pan-American Highway, are pretty fields and winding valleys in the foothills of the Andes.