Mancora

So my beach vacation has come and gone and I am a little slow to update the blog about it.  It was a really great trip.  But it is really interesting how Mancora, is in the same department (state) as where I live, but it feels like a completely different world.  It was kind of an eerie trip because for most of it we drove through the desert, nothing but desert everywhere you look and canyons and everything.  For most of the trip, I just couldn't imagine that there was going to be this town at the end. 

So I expected that Mancora was going to be the peruvian equivalent to Cancun.  However, once I got there I was quickly reminded that I still live in a developing country, so even their popular vacation spot would be developing too.  Turns out, after all the hype I have heard about Mancora that it is really a small place.  Just a small strip of hotels, stores and restaurants.  But it all had a very authentic vibe just the way they looked and the materials they were built out of. 

Our hotel looked like something out of Mexico, it was really nice.
It had a pool   And when I walked up to the desk to check in the room, I started talking in Spanish, but the guy quickly started responding with in english with a heavy british accent.  Turned out this would be the way the rest of the weekend went, almost everyone we met spoke in english.  The hostel was filled with tourists and backpackers from all over the world, and they all spoke english.  That made for an even better vacation knowing I wouldn't have to stumble through my Spanish the entire time.

Now since it was a hostal, you kind of just get thrown in everywhere, so even though there were tons of peace corps volunteers there we still got broken up into rooms all over the hostal.  In my room I was with my two peace corps friends, but also with 3 other guys, 2 from england and one from California.  Turns out they were good guys and we didn't have to stress about them stealing our stuff.

So the rest of the week was nice and relaxing, we spent our days laying by the pool or on the beach enjoying the sun.  One night one of the volunteers had arranged for us to go on a little sunset cruise.  So we all walked to the pier, again expecting more then we should.  And when we showed up there was a rickety looking row boat and a guy waiting to meet us. Apparently my friend just convinced one of the fishermen to take us out, so that is exactly what we did.  There were no seats in the boat, so we all leaned against the side.  It actually was really beautiful, just a little scary at times when the boat started rocking like crazy.

At night we would search out nice restaurants to eat.  Fortunately Mancora had a great variety of food that we haven't had in awhile.  We went for delicious Mexican food twice.  I loved it!  One morning we went to a place called "Green Eggs and Ham", and I was actually able to get a waffle!  Turns out the lady who owns it also owns a store and she is from the United States, and her son manufactures and sells clothes in Peru.  I bought one of the shirts, actually really nice quality which is hard to find here.

So the night life was what everybody lived for.  I only went out once, the hotel was pretty popular and had good drinks and music so everyone hung out there for the most part, but when that ended everyone moved to the beach party.  When everyone kept telling me about the beach I was expecting some club that was on the beach.  It turns out the beach party is just people dancing and drinking on a sidewalk in front of a bunch of restaurants blaring music.  It was kind of crazy.  I didn't last very long down there, it was mostly peruvians. Drunk Peruvians.  So they stare or try and dance when they are really sloppy.  So I danced for a little bit there and called it a night.

The saddest part of the whole trip was when we had to leave and got back to site.  A few days after my boss was coming to visit and that meant I had a lot of work to do to prepare my meeting. 

I was really nervous about the meeting, because relying on some of the people in my town can be scary at times.  However, it turned out that a lot of them showed up and pulled through, there were 17 to be exact.  Almost all of my wonderful health promoters were there, a few teachers, and the nurse and technician from the health post (who is also a lt. for the mayor).  It turned out to be successful and my boss was very pleased.