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Published: March 24th 2013
Well I must say that Mancora, like the constant waves that roll into its shore was full of highs, lows, crashes, and beauty. Our travel day to arrive in Mancora was very long and, when we finally arrived at Tumbes airport after 12 hours of travel, we had to find our way to Mancora, an hour and a half away. We wanted to take a taxi, but it was very expensive. We were very tired with 50 lb packs, so didn't want to do the bus route. After trying to negotiate a deal with a cab with no success, we noticed two young guys with surf boards looking for a cab. We quickly went over and asked if they wanted to share and they suspiciously accepted. Turned out that they were two great young Chilean guys who spoke excellent English.
We had a very interesting conversation about life in South America. One of the guys owned his own business and the other worked for a national tv station. They were telling us how you had to pay for grade school education in South America, which helped explain to us why often, we would go to purchase things and the staff
would not be able to do simple math. After a long but interesting cab drive with a crazy driver and good conversation, the guys helped us find our hostel as they were Spanish. This was a great help and also cut the ride price in half.
The hostel was far up the hill overlooking town, and the owner agreed to pick us up to take us and our bags up the hill. He arrived in a beautifully beat up VW beetle, much like my old car. After stuffing ourselves and bags in the car we made the insane drive up the hill to his place. The road was washed out by a huge rain storm the previous day, and he was driving over and around holes 3-5 feet deep. I don't know yet how he did it. We arrived at his place and were shown our room. We asked for a private room with a private bath, but there were non available until the next day. Our room for the night was more like a hut with a bathroom and shower across a Gravel path in a moth and mosquito infested hut. The room itself was basic and rustic,
with huge holes in the walls and ceiling and thousands of Mosquitos. We tried to settle in to sleep and were quickly attacked viciously. There was a mosquito net over the bed, but when I took it down to cover us, rosalyn had an attack from the strong rancid stench which came from it. I quickly took it down and invented my own, using some bug netting we brought with us. To little too late, neither of us slept all night, as the sound and sting of Mosquitos drove us crazy. Not a great start to Mancora. The next morning we got up to have breakfast and switch rooms to the private bungalo, only $10 more and worth every penny.
Our first look at mancora from the top of the hill looked pretty. We waited for the typical two hour "10 minutes" you get in South America for our room to be ready, dropped our stuff off and headed down to explore the town and beach. Our first impression was that of being extremely underwhelmed. After just coming from Galapagos and one of the most beautiful beaches in the world exploding with sea life, we found a nice beach,
but a dead sea turtle, dead eels and fish on the shore, and a beachfull of vendors bugging you (like the mosquitos) everywhere, and a strip of restaurants, hostels and surfers.
The water was warm and the sand was nice, so we went for a dip, grabbed some overpriced food and and headed back up to our new room. The new room was much nicer with a beautiful view. We got set up and prepared for the evening war with Mosquitos. This time we were ready, with a proper net above the bed and a FAN, which we turned up to high two feet from us to keep our attackers at bay. It worked, a much needed good nights sleep. The next day we felt much better and were trying to decide how long to stay. After a long walk, we called a motorcycle cab (mototaxi) to take us to the beach. We jumped in and he headed down this strange side road weaving through a poor residential area in a direction which seemed different from the beach. I started to worry and told the driver "wrong way", he smiled and said its ok and kept going. I was
ready for a possible bad situation, but he turned the corner and we were at the beach, not the area we were used to, much nicer. All around us were much nicer resorts and the beach was beautiful and quiet.
We started going into places and asking prices and negotiating. We were able to get the prices down at most places by offering a longer stay, but most were $100-150 a night. We arrived at one of the nicest places to give it another try, to our surprise, after some tough negotiating with a lovely lady, we managed to get the price down to $50 a night For a three night stay. What a deal, the the place and staff were beautiful. The place was clean, right on the beach, with a great pool, and breakfast. Finally riding the crest of the wave! After a relaxing day and good sleep we got up and went to take showers, no hot water. We went and told the staff, they came but couldn't seem to get it working. The previous day they had showed me this beautiful bungalow right in front of ours, it had several bedrooms, huge bath with double
$20 a night
Bathroom and shower in the front, room in the back building.sinks, kitchen with fridge, lounge room with 42 inch LCD and English channels and leather furniture and right in front of the pool, one step and jump in! Always looking for an upgrade I said to them, we can just move in there for the next couple of days. The staff went away for a bit and came back and said sure. SWEET! We upgraded for the third time in three days. What a place! This was our honeymoon suite for sure. We settled in, feeling excited and guilty at the same time. It felt wrong at times living in such luxury, right beside areas of such poverty.
We made a plan to take surf lessons the next day. That evening we decided to go for a walk around the area with my camera to take some photos. What an experience, less than a block from our room we were in another world of wooden, straw, and mud houses no bigger than our living room back home, with tarps for room dividers and gaping holes where you could see the meagre possessions inside. As our hearts began to sink, we quickly noticed that all around us the locals were
smiling and happy and very friendly to us. Not looking for anything, that was their nature. Children playing with rocks with no shoes, adults sweeping of the front of there homes to pristine condition. You really start to realize how horribly spoiled we are in north america, and how the way we buy into the consumer machine actually makes people more miserable, always working to pay for things you don't really need, sending us into the unending cycle of buy, work, buy, work.
Moved by our experience, particularly with a group of four children having so much fun playing with my camera, we returned to our room with a new perspective on our lives. We went to sleep looking forward to our surf lessons the next day. We woke up to a surprising breakfast of omelettes as well as the usual bread tea and juice. Heading down the beach, we noticed the waves were bigger than normal, around 6-8 feet. We began to get a bit nervous as well as excited. We were promised English surf instructors, but when we arrived, we were greeted by a man who spoke some English, who spent about 5 minutes supposedly showing us
how to get up on a broken board on the floor of the surf school. He then said you are ready, and handed us off to two guys who's only English was "paddle, paddle" and "get up". We tried to figure out who had better English for rosalyn, as she does not swim, and they promised not to take her over her head. He put the strap around my ankle and started saying paddle. We headed out into huge waves, with him on the back of the board with flippers on. Now my instructor weighed about 250 lbs, and was putting all his weight on my feet, continuously slapping them in under him, scraping off the skin on the sandpaper like coating on the board. He lined us up with a huge wave, yelled paddle, paddle, paddle, then yelled up. Without thinking I stood up and rode the wave right into shore. Awesome, this isn't too hard I thought. That was the only time a rode a wave all day. Without a second rest, he threw me back on the board and yelled paddle. On the way out, I found rosalyn, way over her head, telling him to go back
and he ignoring her. I yelled to him to take her in as I passed and luckily she did, but unknown to me at the time, he took her in, said lesson over, and left her there after 5 minutes with no refund of course. Meanwhile I spent the next hour paddling out and being beaten up by the waves as I tried to ride them, the whole time having my feet torn to pieces by the instructors weight. Exhausted after an hour, as he would not stop, we headed in frustrated, beat up and bleeding. Inside the shop, the original guy saw my toes dripping blood. He looked at the instructor who got a plastic cup full of water and poured it over my toes. The other guy Said, I'll fix, grabbed a bottle of alcohol from behind the bar, and preceded to pour it over my feet. He looked at me and said fixed, that was my lesson. Definitely not riding the wave at that time.
We decided to go back to our hotel area and enjoy ourselves with access to the pool, beach, sun, and visits to the local areas with friendly people around us. We
Avoided for the most part, the busy vendor areas. However sometimes the vendors were a nice surprise, like the old woman selling scrumptious cakes on the beach! The chocolate cake was heavenly. Later we discovered a local bakery that had sweets out of this world! On our way back to our place, we experienced another example of community and compassion rarely seem in North America. The road into our area of town was closed due to road construction. Since the roads are dirt, they just dig a three foot trench right down the middle. They had extended the trench across the main entry road, so no one could get in or out. We happened to be heading home just as the locals were getting off work. There were two workers with shovels filling in the crossroad. As the locals approached the intersection, one by one, with work uniforms on, after probably working 12 hours in 100 degree heat for less than $10 , they jumped in the hole and started shovelling. Within a couple of minutes there were 20 locals in their best work cloths with shovels laughing, singing, and shovelling. A short time later, the job was done and
the locals jumped out of the ditch and continued on there way. It was obvious to me that this was common by their mannerisms. People needed help so you help. What would have taken those two workers easily another full day in the blazing sun, was completed in near minutes by the community. Good waves.
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Helen
non-member comment
Hi
WOW, what an experince, one never knows what one while run into while travelling. Looks like your having an interesting trip.