Surfing and Christmas Pizza

While our friends and family were complaining about their white Christmas, we decided we needed a white sand Christmas. Not only that, we were ready for a new country. Mancora, Peru was the perfect place and just one hectic day’s trip from Cuenca. The sand wasn’t exactly white, but it was paradise just the same.

We decided that we were good this year and deserved to splurge on our accommodations. We chose Las Olas Hotel which was right on the beach. At $60 per night, was by no means breaking the bank but was more than double our daily budget. We’re glad we did it. It was beautiful.

We didn’t exactly have the warmest of welcomes when we arrived after walking up to the reception and not finding a soul. Not much longer a young girl strolled in from the beach. We asked about a room but she didn’t try to understand our attempt at Spanish. She passed us off to a boy who could speak English to us. They agreed to show us a room. After following them up the stairs while they continued to chat with their friends over our heads, the girl opened the room and walked away. Not knowing if we were to follow her to see another room we flagged her down letting her know that this room was perfect. She shouts back in English, “You like? You stay!” Well alright. That was our check in. They never got our names or passport numbers. In fact, the owner, possibly the girls mother, saw us come in from the beach on our second or third day and asked if we needed help with a room. Nope, we’re staying here already.

The next few days were spent suntanning, watching the kite boarders and surfing. We received surf lessons on Christmas Eve and then tried on our own on Christmas Day. Both of us got up once by ourselves. Victory! We celebrated with a delicious Christmas pizza. We’ve decided that surfing and pizza could possibly be our new Christmas tradition.

Not only is Mancora a surfer’s paradise, there’s also kite surfing. This is the coolest thing we didn’t know we were missing. From the beach it looks pretty cool. When we got in the water to surf and the kite surfers flew by us, we were amazed. They were flying so high! If only we had more time to learn it. It takes several days of classes to get it down. That could be total crap in order to suck as much money out of us gringos as possible. Or, it could be a good precaution against your kite going down out at sea and having to swim your butt back. Who knows.

Cool, huh?

See more photos of Mancora here!

Details
Las Olas de Mancora
Phone: Fijo: (73) 25 8099, Nextel: 826*8211, Celular: (1) 9 826 8211
[email protected]
Matrimonial Room with Private Bath, Balcony and Ocean View: $60/night

Did you notice the Peruvian flag next to our blog title? No one noticed we had Ecuador’s flag up when we were in Colombia. Whoops!