Lima - Gnarly scenes have been unfolding at Peru's famed La Pampilla beach, where riot police have clashed with surfers fighting to stop a coastal highway project they say will ruin their world-class waves.
The beach, a magnet for international surfers that has been the training ground of several world champions, is a narrow stretch of rocky Pacific coast abutted by the Costa Verde highway.
Each year, some 18,000 foreign surfers make the trip there to ride its legendary waves, which can reach up to two meters (6.5 feet) high.
But surfers say a project by the Lima city government to expand the highway, one of the capital's main arteries, will break up their waves with a retaining wall supporting the road's new third lane.
The situation escalated last week when the city plopped large rocks down in the middle of the beach.
When a group of surfers defiantly tried to ride the waves anyway, riot police waded into the ocean -- boots, uniforms, helmets and all -- to stop them, carting some of them off in nothing but their swimsuits as they tried to cling to their boards.
"This is a disaster for world surfing," said Karin Sierralta, the executive director of Peru's National Board Sports Federation and vice president of the International Surfing Federation.
"This beach is the cradle of Peruvian surfing, of South American surfing, which was born here in 1942. If you compare it with football, it's like they're tearing down the biggest stadium in the country," he told AFP.
"If this project continues, no one will be able to surf here anymore."
AFP
