April 1st. 2014- Tsunami

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I was sitting in the bar, checking out some of our surf videos, when Paul strolls in, calm as a cucumber, and says “There was an 8.0 earthquake in Chile, and CNN has all of Peru red for a Tsunami warning”   My first thought was, yeah right!   It took me a few minutes to realize he was serious, and after we put CNN on, I knew it was true.   I then get an email from my brother that says “8.0 earthquake in Chile, Tsunami warning, run for the hills.”

The El Faro hotel is right on the beach, and visions of Japan and Thailand’s Tsunami started to dance in my head.   “We got to get out of here,”  became the theme, as we made the group decision to leave.   This was only made worse, when the surf got real quiet.   Instead of the usual sound of waves breaking, I really could not hear anything.   Panic began to set in, as I began to think that the sea was receding, and the Tsunami was heading our way.   We all ran to our rooms, grabbed essentials like our passports, some clothes, and anything else we thought was important.   My first reaction was to get to high ground, but the hotel being a walled compound, we needed a way out.   As we ran to the side gate, I banged on the window of our neighbor, a Brazilian, and said “You got to get out of here, there is a Tsunami, check out CNN.”

I begged Maquenzie to open the side gate, and was ready to bolt out into the pitch black desert.   Luckily, Jeff, Paul, Mike, and Tom said “Wait!  We can’t go out here in our flip flops, into the dark.”   Panic really set in, as I thought we are running out of time, and the other gate was closer to the beach.   Maquenzie, being the great guy he is, opened the lower gate.  I didn’t want to leave him behind, and told him, “Maquenzie you got to get out of here.”  Being the good soldier he is, he stayed behind.    I began to run up the hill, trying to get to higher ground.   Meanwhile I could hear Jeff screaming “Whats the plan?”   Paul screaming “Phil, wait, what is the masseuse trying to say?” and the Peruvian masseuse speaking so fast in spanish, that it went right over my head.    It was even funnier to look back, and see her trying to keep up with Paul, as he too was running up the hill.

tsunamisignWe got to the highest point, but we still did not feel safe.  We had to get inland.   What was the plan?   Luckily, the sweet masseuse told us about another hotel inland, and even hailed us a taxi.   The driver did not want to take us all at one time, but we basically begged, and he relented.   After a few minutes, we were at the Hotel El Sol.   The plan became to watch the news,  get some more information, and figure out if we would go back.   At Hotel El Sol, the lady in charge told us not to worry.  “Pacasmayo is a bay, we don’t have Tsunamis”   To tell you the truth, just being away from the beach gave me a sense of relief.   We watched some TV, then made the group decision to stay overnight in the hotel.

We got two rooms, but all crammed into one, to watch the news.   Each of us was on the Phone, and internet, trying to get more information from our families.  We had some beer delivered, and when the delivery guy showed up, he asked us how many we wanted.   “Leave the whole case!”   The next few hours was spent drinking beer, assuring our families we were safe, joking about our ordeal, (Best joke was Mike’s -“We were Michael Bolting out of hotel El Faro”) and trying to decipher what the newscasters were saying.    As we drifted off to sleep, I kept thinking, “We are going to Chicama tomorrow, I am going to be really tired.”   About 1:30 in the morning, I woke up.   I checked my phone, and saw that the warning had been lifted.

The next morning, we caught some moto taxi’s back to Hotel El Faro.   Of course when we entered, my Peruvian friends were laughing!  “We don’t have Tsunami’s in Pacasmayo”   My Brazilian neighbor comes up to me, and says, “I thought you were joking.   Isn’t April 1st a joke day in the United States?”   I took it all in stride, because I knew we made the right call to get to higher ground.   In fact, when I got back to Lima, there was a newspaper article about which towns in Peru had a high Tsunami danger.   Pacasmayo was on the list.    I have to say this ordeal will live with me the rest of my life.   Something Tom, Mike, Paul, Jeff and I will always have as a story to tell our grandkids.