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Published: February 20th 2008
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Man I´m a sucker for the beach. I guess when you´ve lived thousands of kilometers from the nearest ocean your whole life you have to soak it up while you can. Mancora has been good times. It´s a little town on the coast in the north of Peru, not far from the Ecuadorian border. I was lucky to find a room right on the beach, or just to find a room period. The place was pretty full and there aren´t many single rooms available. Harldy anyone travels in South America is traveling alone and I can see why. It´s quite a bit more expensive for accomodation when you can´t split a room with someone.
I think the most common form of work is selling chiclets on the beach. People from 8-80 are out there making a buck where they can. I guess the best part about Mancora itself is that the beach is nice and the place is laid-back. But the best part for me was meeting a great friend. My first morning I was just minding my own business and playing some guitar on the beach. Then from behind are here this voice, ''Hola, de donde eres?´´
Aco and I
Aco traveled with a little bongo drum so we were on our way to do a little beachfront jammin´. (Hi, where are you from). Then this guy proceeds to try and tell me in broken English something along the lines of ''It danger for you guitar if on the beach and you in the sea.´´ Nice enough guy, probably just as lonely as me and looking to make friends. He´s from Argentina and his name is Andres Garcia. So I was hanging out with Andy Garcia in Ecuador. Haha he seems to hate the actor though. The word for ´ìmposter' must be similar in Spanish becuase he said that he is the real andy Garcia, not that imposter actor.
His friends call him Aco, so for the next week I hung out with Aco on the beach (and in the bars of course). We didn´t really say much because I only knew the phrases in Spanish that I need to survive. Aco said he ''didn´t like English very well´´ but I owe a lot to that guy because he helped me out with my Spanish quite a bit. He was very patient when I asked questions and didn´t mind doing charades to provide me with answers. One night over a bottle of wine I tried for 20 minutes
beach beers
Aco and some chicks from Lima. to explain the word ''try´´ and find out what the equivalent is in Spanish. But wow to see his English improve! By the last couple days we were actually having some chats in English...and his English was 100 times better than my Spanish by that point.
So yeah it was great to have a friend for a week. I learned lots of other things from Aco. He was a real budget traveler so he wasn´t going to settle for an unjust price or a bad meal. And man did this Aregntinian like his wine. Every night we would buy some from the market and hit the town. And by the town, I mean the few bars at the end of the dirt road which was the town. Now, all this boozing every night became a problem. Our plan every night before bed was, ''Ok we will go surfing for sure tomorrow´´. But every day was the same....find that shady spot under the palm tree and be hungover. Every day! What a waste of the most famous surf spot in Peru. Not once did I give it a try.
Six days flew by pretty quickly and Aco and I
Yours truly
Complete with greaseball moustache! decided to head up to Ecuador. There´s a town called Tumbes along the way so we decided to stay one night and take off the next day. Unfortunately for Aco he spent that whole night errupting body fluids from both ends. He must have had food poisoning. I´ve never seen a person puke and poo that much. I somehow got lucky, because that evening we ate exactly the same food and I was fine. At 4 am he was still hurling like you wouldn´t believe. He was such a good sport though, joking about how ''his body is shit´´. I decided the poor guy would need some water so I went to go out and get a bottle. The city must be dangerous at night because the guy working at the hostal wouldn´t let me go out even though I told him the situation. Poor Aco had to tough it out till the next day and he just slept and felt better later on. I ran into some girls I had met in Chiclayo before and we just spent the day walking around seeing the sights. Beyond that I didn´t do much in Tumbes.
The next day we were
Mancora at night.
I prefer bamboo over bricks any day. off to Ecuador. I didn´t know it at the time but this was the most dangerous border corssing in South America. It was really peculiar, even moreso than Cambodia when I had to bribe the immigration guy to let me in. There were people just waiting to rip you off, including a guy with no uniform who tried to get me to hand over my passport. I aint that ´stupid, and anyways Aco was ahead in line keeping an eye on me. Later back on the bus a lady tole me that two guys had planned on robbing me or something. Anyways, no worries, the worst border on this continent and I had a fancy new Ecuadorian immigration stamp in my passport.
Aco and I were heading off to the beach again but we had to stay a night in Guayaquil, Ecuador´s largest city. The city was expensive and this made Aco extremely wallet shy. He figured the whole country would be more expensive than Peru and his budget didn´t accomodate for that. He only had a few hundred bucks left and he still had to get home to Buenos Aires. So the crazy guy hopped on the next
bus back to Peru in hopes of getting a cheap flight home from Lima.
Now, here I am in Ecuador. At the beach. On my own again. I might be here a while. This place is great!
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Emily
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scotty 2 hottie
that mustatche is what i think of when i think of a dirty sanchez. in mustache form. making you a dirty sanchez in human form. oh scooter, you complete me, lets get drunk.