Out of the nine-hour night bus from Ecuador at six in the morning. By tuk-tuk to the last beach hostel. Sleep in, set up the board, pump up, out onto the water. 22 knots sideon on an endless sandy beach behind wild waves. A flock of pelicans passes by. His soloist fishes undisturbed next to my passing kiteboard in the Pacific.
The waves break narrow and close to the beach, no comparison to Santa Marianita with its endless smooth waves at pleasant intervals. The wind here is more powerful, and sideon jumps are more exciting over ten centimetres post-shorebreak anyway. Máncora should be higher up on the worldwide kitesurfing map – plenty of space and lots on offer. There have never been more than seven kiters on two kilometres of beach within a week.
From the second day onwards, the wind was blowing around 14 knots for three days, which perfectly complemented the huge parties at full moon and weekends. The laundry loses my trousers, and the third tienda needs three SIM cards and an hour to boost me to a breathtaking 2kB/s regardless of WiFi. To work, I always walk a kilometre along the beach to the restaurants in the centre in the morning – the WiFi there runs at a good 30 Kbit.
After sushi and beer, the power goes out all over Máncora on the first night of partying with two good Swiss guys. The night watchman provides whatever the heart desires, and hearts desire a lot. The bonfire on the beach directly behind the last house fails, the music is too quiet and the stars are twinkling. Just after the second seal, at the end of the last road from Máncora, blue lights suddenly flash behind us. Three policemen warn us that it would be very dangerous to lie around here now. Poetry is of little interest to them. Our “Dust in the wind”, intoned just beforehand, doesn’t convince them of our fatalistic attitude either.
I ask the German barman for a translation of the situation. He: “People get mugged there regularly”. Me: “Even five?”. Without providing an answer, he serves another guest for a conspicuously long time. Me: “How long have you been here?”. He: “Two weeks”. Next guest – and my naked certainty that history has absolutely nothing to do with stories. Reassured, I sneak off for a game of chess against a drunken and brilliantly playing young Yank, immediately followed by bed and the Word for Sunday.
The Máncora Point Hostel is designed to maximise fun 100%. Pool, bar, beach, everything within a 50 metre radius. Volleyball, beach football and beer pong, with a different party every day. From one o’clock in the afternoon, the happy hours chase the crazy hours late into the night. The Peruvian naked dog looks like Resident Evil – but suffers very little from his neglect due to two kittens. I’ve always been afraid of party hostels, not my world at all and often just merciless system overload. This time is different. It starts with the fact that you can just leave your laptop open, anywhere. Nothing gets away.
I like to do the animal film maker Grzimek when people mutate into animals under the influence of alcohol. A few roosters also puff up their feathers dancing at the bar in the biggest club. But otherwise the mutations are limited. The average age is 22, but I rarely feel too old at 44. Something has changed. Grzimek doesn’t break through. The music is always the same international gráusamkeit mash, only in Spánish. That alone would have triggered a literary tantrum a few journeys ago. Here it lulls me to sleep, whispering softly from the bar 30 metres away. Nothing remains but good humour.
Kitesurfing spot Mancora: Windguru.cz provided the most accurate forecasts. On sunny days you can add another three to six knots due to the thermal effect. After four days of partying, the wind returns with a nice 20 knots. If it turns even more onshore with a stronger thermal effect, you should even be able to kite a mini lagoon 300 metres north of Mancora Point Hostel, 15 metres wide and 150 metres long. At Sideon, the width certainly doesn’t go far, and it has no drainage, so it could really be muck. Or a small Namibia.
The waves on the ocean in Mancora Bay come from different directions, it’s quite choppy. At high tide there is also a very violent and fast shorebreak over a few large pebbles. The only useful thing about these waves is the shallow water behind them. I didn’t catch a single good wave on a kilometre side-downwinder from the centre to Mancora Point Hostel. There are also practically no surfers.
A few schools offer surfing and kitesurfing courses. None of them are really busy. You can hire equipment for around $50 to $80 a day. Watch out! Some of them certainly don’t include insurance – and at that price the schools should be liable for the equipment. Launching and landing is fine at low tide, the beach is then about 30 metres wide. At high tide it gets a bit tight. Some houses have already been washed away. Advantage: there are enough attachment points for lines for self-launching. I was mostly launched and landed by briefly instructed travellers, there were only ever a few kiters towards the end of the beach.
UPDATE A few surfers are still there, in the bay at the far lee. Of course, kitesurfers don’t realise that the best waves usually mean reef. Reef:carbon fin 1:0. The shorebreak also caught me so badly once on the downwinder from the centre to Máncora Point that I almost smashed the kite into the ruins of a hotel…watch out…
Very nice site by the way: Rome2Rio. Running. The trip so far: https://www.rome2rio.com/de/trip/xtauxfhx
Frank Woelky, born in 1973. Kitesurfer since 1998. Since 2006, I have been combining kitesurfing and web design on trips lasting several months off the beaten track.