Adios a Mancora
Trip Start
Apr 17, 2008
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11
Trip End
May 04, 2008
Mancora, Peru
Sunday, May 4, 2008
For Eric and I, the uniqueness of Mancora began to reveal itself on Monday night, as we downed Cuba and Peru Libres with the improbably named Juan Hampton. Sadly, it was the last we would see of the self-proclaimed finance guy since he got so loaded on Tequila, he was unable to make it out again.
Things took an even more interesting turn on Tuesday night when we decided to give the sole sushi place in Mancora. Turned out that not only was the sushi better than a lot of places I've had it in New York City but the two sushi chefs who prepared this delicious feast, Oso (bear in English) and Wernique, originally from the Anmazonian jungle town of Iquitos, became our guides for the next three nights of chilling in Mancora.
Thanks to them, we met all the other characters that made Mancora a great place to visit and a very tough place to leave.
There's Carlos, a 19-year old who describes himself as a fisher. Although not in the traditional sense. What Carlos fishes for is Western backpacker chicks looking to add to their Peruvian foray by spending a few days at the beach with a Peruvian surfer playing boyfriend to them. From what I saw, he's remarkably successful at fishing.
Carlos' less successful partner is Victor, a boogie boarder with a hockey mullet and a sometime gig selling beer on the beach, who likes to spend hours talking about the different types of girls he likes but surprisingly little time actually trying to approach said girls.
Another character popping in and out was some dude who I believe to have his sunglasses surgically implanted on his face since I never saw him without them. Even after he finished surfing and still in his wetsuit stopped by our beach chairs to say hey.
Oh yeah, the beach chairs. A beachside cevicheria called Las Carnitas provided Eric and I with beers and two beach chairs to relax in, which were ours the entire week. Or, at least, until I broke mine on Thursday and we were relegated to ordinary and extremely less comfortable plastic table chairs.
We also met a Peruvian-Norwegian named, I kid you not, Thor. And he definitely looked like a Thor while his dad, who certainly spends time hitting the weights, looked like an elderly and sun-ripened Doc Savage.
Oso just might be the honorary mayor of Mancora. Which would make Wernique the honorary deputy mayor I guess. Since those two made sure that we knew which people might actually be dangerous and Wernique graciously bought Eric and I each a beer on Wednesday night even though it's almost certainly a much more larger chunk of what little disposable income he has than it is for Eric and I.
And then there's constant stream of travelers passing in and out, who become your friends for a couple of hours of drinking, chatting, and chowing down. Easily, the most interesting of those folks would be Leo, a Russian in his upper 60s, who lives on the upper east side in New York City. If the Peruvian authorities return his passport that is and he's allowed to live.
Striding into the sushi bar, as we had dinner last night, clad in a tight black wifebeater that said, of all things, f_ck you, covered in tattoos and carrying a golf club, I was sure that Leo was crazy and was going to start swinging the golf club at everybody eating there. While he didn't do that, he certainly seemed a bit crazy. Especially when referring to his arrest and couple days spent in jail in Lima, he said that compared to Russia, it wasn't so bad.
Like lots of good things, our time in Mancora had to come to end but I look forward to returning to this beach town someday and seeing what Oso, Wernique, and the rest of the folks we hung out with are up to.
