Mancora

Helloo!

I am currently sunburnt and sweating in an internet cafe with walls made out of bits of bamboo. Most of Mancora is in fact made out of bamboo. The guy who runs it clearly believes he was supposed to be born in South Central LA, not in North Western Peru, and is blasting some really bad music and nodding his head like an idiot. But let´s not jump the gun. Mancora is a tiny beach town very close to the Ecuadorian border. If you get your map out (which you won´t), the nearest big town in Tumbes. Now that you´re nicely orientated (at least those of you who got their maps out are), we can proceed.

We arrived from Trujillo in the very wee hours of the morning (about 5am), and took a moto-taxi to a hostel at the end of the beach. Moto-taxis are small motorbikes that have had two wheels welded to the back thus allowing to passengers to sit in comfort (and absolute fear). They are everywhere in Mancora, and by far the cheapest and easiest way of getting anywhere. Often they are driven by young children. Anyway, so after taking a tiny beach road through some fields, we arrived at the Point Hostel, located about 2kms down from the main beach, on the ¨Beach of Love¨(oooh). However, we arrived at about 5:30am, and no one could guarantee us a room until 1pm. So we did what anyone would do: we went to sleep in the Hostel´s bar.

When we woke up at around 9am, we decided to walk down the beach towards town to try and find alternative accomodation. After deciding on a place in the town, which was nothing more than alright (there was no urine anywhere in the room, and nothing had died in it recently, so it passed the test). While making our way back to the hostel along a dirt road, we wandered onto someone´s property, and noticed some bamboo cabanas down near the beach. They looked rather nice - the sort of place that would cost a fortune, so when we asked the owner the price, it was mostly out of mere curiosity. However, as it turns out, he let us stay in the bungalow (which sleeps 5) for the same price as we would have paid in a dorm room in the hostel. Score! The bungalow was made of bamboo (like the internet cafe), but had some really comfy beds, lots of space, a large bathroom with a semi-outside (yet private) shower, and a patio with chairs and a hammock. The best part was that it was on the beach. Step off the patio and your feet are sandy. Walk a few steps further and your feet are wet (and salty). Step a few steps further and, without previous swimming training, you will have drowned. You get the picture. Elated at our bargain accomodation, we settled ourselves in, before heading to the beach to have a celebratory rice and seafood in the sand (the food was not in the sand, we were).

That afternoon we decided to stock up on some fruit, so we hit the local market. We stood out at the local market. However, we emerged unharmed with a pineapple, some naartjies, some apples, some limes, some rum, some sugar, and some other random stuff. That afternoon we made our own mojitos (sans mint, although an old winkly man with dried mint promised to get me some of the fresh stuff, he turned out to be a damn dirty liar), and chilled out in the hammock, watching a great sunset. That evening we had a really awful dinner of cheese sandwich and half frozen hamburger. Afterwards we ventured to the Point hostel to meet some folk and have a drink at the bar (the very same bar we had slept in just that morning). After being told not to walk on the beach at night, we walked on the beach at night. We did this because it was only a matter of 100m to our bungalow, and it was the only way of getting home. Besides, as an Aussie in the bar put it, the next day´s newspaper headline would have read ¨Group of Peruvians mugged by two South Africans¨.

Instead of telling you what we´ve done day by day, I´d rather just tell you how we have generally been spending the days, because we´ve pretty much done the same thing everyday. At about 8am, we get up and go for a long walk on the beach (I swim in the middle of our walk). After that we return home and eat fruit (I cut the fruit up in an overtly masculine way using my Leatherman), before we head to town or chill out in the hammock. After that we head to our lunch restaurant (which is also our dinner restaurant - you will soon understand why). Firstly, I should clarify that ¨restaurant¨ does not mean a place where tuxedoed waiters named Wilfred serve you while a piano player plays Beethoven at the perfect volume in the background. This restaurant is not even indoors, its on one of the many dirt roads near the beach, and if you´re lucky, you get sprayed with dirty puddle water everytime a moto-taxi dodges a stray dog and almost runs you over. Why would we frequent such an establishment, I hear you ask? Well, the food is great, and it might just be The Cheapest Restaurant in the Entire Universe. They do not have a traditional menu with prices, just a chalkboard outside with their set menu choices, and a price of 5 Soles. 5 soles is about R12, and for that you get a fresh juice, a plate of ceviche to start, and a second course of Langostine Stir Fry. We almost feel bad eating there, because it feels like we are stealing. However, last night we stupidly ate there after they told us we´d be getting the last of the seafood. Thinking this was a good thing and that we were lucky, we ate our meal, which gave Nadia a rather bad stomach. Apart from that incident, the food has been great there, and although the ambiaaance is nothing special, I´m pretty sure we will never again eat langostines for under R10 again.

After lunch, we wait another hour for the heat to subside slightly before we head to the beach. However, by this time, the wind has picked up, and the beach becomes unpleasant, so we head up the beach to the section in front of our bungalow, which is more sheltered, where we dilligently lie in the sun and pass the time by reading, writing, learning spanish, and eating fruit. At sunset we drink a mojito and marvel at our surroundings. Then we slap ourselves repeatedly to make sure we are not dreaming. After the slapping, it is generally dinner time, so we return to our restaurant and after the meal, we slap ourselves some more when we realise we are living in paradise for a total of R140 a day. We repeat this cycle daily, and it doesn´t get old. However, one night we were, believe it or not, sick of eating cheap langostines, so we decided to splash out (something is wrong when you have to splash out to not eat really fresh and amazing seafood), and go to a grill house in town, where we satisfied our craving for red meat (Argentina gave us a carnivorous disposition which we cannot seem to get rid of). The other exception to our daily routine was that I surfed yesterday (my tattoo has healed), but was disappointed by the quality of the wave here and the fact that there are 25 people all fighting for the same wave. Peruvians seem to lack basic surfing manners.

Mancora is a rather special place. For starters, the weather is the best you´re likely to find in Peru. This may have something to do with its proximity to Ecuador, and thus the Ecuator (they mean the same thing in Spanish), and the fact that Mancora is at the edge of a semi coastal desert, and so has almost constant sunshine. Although this amazing weather does attract the fair share of visitors, somehow Mancora has managed to retain all its rustic charm. The roads all around the town (apart from the main road) are all quiet dirt roads lined with palm and bannana trees, where you can see locals riding their horses home at sunset and hear them say slightly rude things about you after you pass them. All the places on the beach, whether they are luxury B&Bs, or someone´s house, look the same - they are made of bamboo and have palm tree leaves on top of their rooves (is that how you spell the plural of roof?). Mancora seems like the kind of place where you could buy a large beach plot for very little money, and pretty much do whatever you want with it. Watching the sea for a while gives you a clue as to why seafood might be so cheap. All around, for as far as you can see, are various seabirds (of which the huge pelicans are the most striking) are literally having the time of their lives by divebombing the fish from high up in the air. They are all very well-fed birds. The locals in the town seem to share in this natural abundance, and have the kind of chilled out attitude that comes from not having to worry about too much.

Those are some random reflections of Mancora, which can hopefully give you an idea of the place. If it sounds nice, its because it is. However, despite it being like a paradise, we are moving on tonight, hitting the road once more, since we have many places to see in the next 2 months, and some ground to cover before we get to the Carribean coast at the top of this continent. If we stayed here longer we would be in danger of getting stuck here and not returning, slowly becoming coastal Peruvians. So at midnight tonight we board a bus headed for the frontera, and cross into Ecuador, headed for Montañita.

Until then,

Chau

Check out more pics at http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/steveo.zogg/Mancora