As with the majority of holidays in Peru people travel for New Years Eve. Matthew and I were lucky enough to be invited by our friends Ursula and Miguel and their college friends to rent a beach house in Mancora. Mancora is in northern Peru and is known for having the best waves, great surfers, and buenisimo ceviche! Matthew was really happy that we went with a bunch of meat lovers who pre-packed that brought tons of steak and sausage along (if you don’t know he’s allergic to seafood and fish) – we barbecued almost every night. Don’t have lighter fluid here’s another option.
Miguel taught Matthew the amazing technique of using a blow dryer to help increase the fire.Matthew and Paula
We had a relaxing week on the beach with a group of Ursula and Miguel’s college friends and two of their adorable daughters. Matthew and baby Paulita had a connection – I have to watch out for this girl lol. We got to work on our Spanish since the whole crew was Peruvian. Let me tell you I wish I would have paid more attention in Spanish class – “girl talk” in a foreign language is quite difficult lol. But they were great about it and threw in some English every once in a while. Everyone brought champagne so the champagne flowed every night. Riccadonna Asti was the brand of choice its pretty sweet – I like it! It doesn’t help with speaking Spanish though. We also celebrated Gonszalo’s birthday. His wife Rafaella brought all this party stuff down to celebrate it – how great! Besides that there were plenty of days relaxing on the beach and in the pool.
The guys!
New Years Eve was fun, the married folks stayed at the beach house, ate dinner and watched the fireworks, and the single girls and guy went out to party. Dinner was great Lorena made a delicious homemade pizza, we had barbecued steak & chorizo, and I baked potatoes on the grill. New Year struck and there were fireworks launched from every beach house and hotel in town.
The girlsMan On Fire!
And of course we ran across the Peruvian tradition of burning a dummy that represents someone evil from your past was live and in living color. What you do is you buy one of these lovely guys and post a note on him of why you want to burn him. Then you attach a few flammables to it like fireworks, and let it go! Now that’s cathartic! Talk about closure.
The dummiesYum Yum Yum
We went in to town a few times, I tried conchas negras ceviche YUMM, I could have eaten them every day! Thank you Celso for introducing me to them! The black shell fished can be found on the street that goes towards the beach from the main road (there’s only one street to the beach). You’ll spot it because it a place with a table with a bunch of black shell-fish on the table guys are opening them and serving it up in bowls by the masses.
The best part of the trip – me taking surfing classes and catching a few waves!
Getting to Know the World 