The Reed Boats of Huanchaco

The caballito de totora is a cigar-shaped bundle of reeds, bound tight and tapered at one end, ridden astride and paddled with a split length of cane. The same shape is painted on Moche pottery and modelled by the Chimú, which makes it one of the longest continuously used boat designs anywhere. The reeds are grown in walled pits dug behind the beach and fed by the water table, cut, dried in the sun and lashed; a finished boat lasts a couple of months before it waterlogs and is replaced. At the north end of the beach they stand upright in rows, drying between tides, which is the image most people come for.

What you actually see

• The drying rows - boats stood on end along the beach between tides.
• The reed pits - the walled totora beds dug behind the shore.
• Boats going out - fishermen paddling out through the surf at dawn and late afternoon.
• The pier - the long jetty with the whole bay and the reed boats below it.

When to go

Year-round, though the coast is warmest and clearest from December to April. Boats go out early in the morning and again in the late afternoon, and in between there is nothing to watch but the drying rows. Weekends bring day trippers from Trujillo and the beach fills. There is no schedule and nothing is staged.

Honest expectations

This is a working craft in decline, and most of the men doing it split their time between fishing and rides for visitors, so the authenticity is real but thinning. The beach is grey sand, the Humboldt current keeps the water cold all year, and the town behind it is a plain low-rise strip of guesthouses and surf schools. Turning up at the wrong hour means seeing nothing but reeds.

Nearby

Chan Chan is a few kilometres inland; Trujillo's colonial centre is twenty minutes away.