Mancora in North Peru
A week in the north for kitesurfing…
We caught a bus from Lima to Mancora, a town in the north of Peru that we’d heard was good for kitesurfing.
We were a little trepidatious when the biggest kitesurf bag went on the scales at the depot, as we’d been told the weight limit was 20kg – and our bag is always 23kg.
On-line advice was to give the driver a cash incentive, but we breathed easy when they were loaded on without comment or demand.
It took 3 hours to leave the enormous capital city of Lima, the roofless houses stretching interminably.
This was a 21 hour journey, with brief interludes of green, but a shocking amount of rubbish.
This area of Peru is also very dry with an annual rainfall of just 32cm, and it stays pretty hot all year round.
But the coast has sun, sea and sand!
and loves tourists.
So we found the beach, found a kite club, and went kiting. Paul on the orange 12 metre.
Paul usually goes first, to check it out and make sure that I’m going to be ok too. I’m on our green 9 metre.
We always speak to the local kite club initially – get advice, and rent kite storage space, so that we don’t have to carry all our gear to the beach every day
The wind was great for the first 3 days.
Post-kite beers are the best 👌
Pauls favourite beer in Peru was the Cusquena Trigo. I was quite surprised to find I really liked their homegrown cola – Inca Kola. Despite it looking like neon-yellow toxic waste and tasting of bubblegum!! Perhaps because it was often the only sugar free option 🤔
There was a tricky 5 ft swell to get over on this beach – timing was everything! The big waves seemed to arrive in groups of about 6 or 7, then a few smaller ones, when I had to dash out and over them.
There were a good variety of restaurants and cafes in town. Not entirely sure about this giant sanwhich at an Argentinian place though.
We came across this little oasis, amidst the dry, dusty roads,
with Roseate Spoonbills, black-necked Stilts and a whole tree full of Egrets.
The site had been managed and donated to the local community by a Chinese benefactor.
After 2 days with no wind, Martin, an Argentinian instructor from the kite school, drove us 1.5hrs down the coast to Cabo Blanco.
The spot was completely isolated, surrounded by grey sand cliffs, and with a massive dead seal on the beach.
Two French guys also came along. It was just the 5 of us, not another soul in sight, and with a bigger shore swell than Mancora beach.
The kiting was great – I saw a whale playing and breaching about 100 metres from me – and an enormous turtle sat in the water with its head and front legs up as I whizzed past it. The turtle must have been 3ft in diameter.
We had a great day out!
Mancora wasn’t quite what we had anticipated, the back roads are unpaved and rustic, dusty and muddy, with many of the single story dwellings appearing unfinished.
The main Pan-American highway runs through the centre of town, so tiny tuc-tucs, bicycles and pedestrians jostle with huge juggernauts.
We stayed in Mancora for one week before catching the bus to Ecuador.
But that’s another story… 😉
