Life As Canvas

Beach. Long stretches of golden silky sand under waving palm fronds and sparkling aquamarine waves lapping at our toes – is what we had in mind. So we set our sights on Mancora, a little surfer town in the north of Peru, where the getting was said to be good. As we have no guide book (and like it that way) we asked around a bit, just to be sure.

“Mancora?” The ex-pat Frenchman shook his head. “Don’t go there. Skip it. It’s just dirty and full of drunken people who all run out into the street when the bars close.”

Our dusty, beach-thirsty backpacker hearts broke. But the curiosity in us couldn’t help it and we went anyway. We got to town around 6am and took a moped taxi to some cabañas on the edge of town. Bamboo walls and grass rooftops, sand and palm trees, hammocks everywhere, 10 bucks a night for the both of us.

There is no hot water, but this is a good thing when the sun cooks the sand and everything in between and a cool shower is about the best thing you did all week.

We watched the sunrise as a few joggers bounced by and the first surfers came out to take advantage of their solitude in the waves.

Mancora. You can sit on the beach and watch the surfers bob in the waves while the birds float above them, have some ceviche (which I avoid, lately) or other seafood delights, or take a taxi for a buck to another beach called Organos and walk South until you’re the only one there, lay down in a long stretch of sand, and let little crabs scuttle by, coming up to inspect you and then shying away into their holes. But the best part of the lazy day in Mancora is the sunset. It begins a long marmalade smear across the horizon and then bleeds intense orange into the foaming blue waves below.

The off season in Mancora. It doesn’t boast the Caribbean’s glowing teal waves, but it’s clean and friendly… and we stayed an extra day.

Next stop: somewhere in Ecuador. Either mountains or mangrove. I’ve got two weeks left on this continent and Ecuador looks like it’s full of things to do. Luckily, it’s a small country.