Sometimes, days pass by and at the end of it, you just sit back and think “What the f**k just happened today?!”. Sometimes, you can not do anything else than just drop your jaws in admiration for some of the madness you have seen during the day. Sometimes, you find yourself in a crossfire of a territorial beachwar, where relatively innocent tourists end up in fistfights with ex-convict and drug traffickers.

Máncora is normally a quiet place�where locals and tourists live in relative harmony. There are kitesurfers here, there are surfers here, there are latinos prowling for their next pray on the beach and there are small families playing in the sand. The beach here in Máncora does not separate much from other beaches where harmony seems to reside amongst the people on and around it. But under the smooth surface, danger and unpleasantness lurks. Furious as a bull, inconsiderate as a striking shark and with a brains of a dinosaur, one local man has singlehandedly made life unpleasant or more than one person. The owner of the beach hotel, Las Olas, seems to monopolise the right to be on the beach. The owner of Las Olas, named Gustavo, really makes an effort of making himself look like an absolute idiot in front of all of his potentional customers. The rumor says that he is an ex-convict and an ex-drug trafficker. I have no reason to believe if it is true, but I have no reason not to believe it as well.

I have been hanging out with two guys from Sweden for the last couple of days. It seems that my time here in Máncora is to seriously prepare me for my return home. I have not done anything else than been together with Scandinavians during all the time I have spent here. First, I spent more than a week with two Norwegian girls, then I spent some days with two Danish girls and now - my last days here are with two Swedish guys. We have not done anything particular, apart from kitesurf whenever the opportunity presented itself, but yesterday, we manage to unleash the untamed beast of Máncora. Little did we know, of the nature of the beast.

To be able to kitesurf, you need to lauch the kite up in the air. Unless you are a really experienced surfer, you would need help to do this. Kitesurfing is a buddysport and people normally help eachother out, whenever there is a need for that. One of the Swedish guys, Josef, wanted to launch his kite and I helped him. Launching a kite, also requires some space, as the lines of the kite is approximately 25 meters long. They need to be fully stretched before the launch, so a stretch of 25 meters of the beach is needed. A bit inconsidered, we tried to launch between to small groups of people - an operation not recommended by anyone. Unfortunately, the lines of the kite hit a woman and she kind of emotional, went to talk to Josef. As a guest in a country, you would normally be very humble and keep a low profile, but Josef made one mistake - instead of offering an apology, he asked them to move and brushed her off. After we moved to another spot, and after the kite was launced, the woman continued to talk to Josef, somewhat more agitated and still no apology were offered. Standing at least 25 meters away from them, I could not here what was said and I did not get involved until I saw the woman throw a punch at him.

One thing I have learned on my trip, is that most South Americans�has a temper. This can be both positive and negative. They are very passionate about many things and they express all their passion with their whole body. In this situation, I guess she was passionate about yelling - and not in the positive way.

I have previously mentioned, that reasoning with South Americans seems futile. This situation did not differ from any previous reasoning experiences and while trying to talk calmly and sensible with the small group of people, that were gathering around the poor Josef, the volume of at least 4 locals voices, started to rise dramatically. I was trying to be as diplomatic as possible, separating Josef from the crowd and try to get any kind of control of the situation. More people gathered around and even more people tried to make us understand how to behave. Apparently, all the woman wanted, was a apology - and I have nothing but understanding for that, but my comprehension for human behaviour stops, when a situation blow totally out of proporsions. Everyone seemed to know everything about what just happened and everyone were yelling the same things. But strangely, no one really added any value to the situation and everyone seemed just to make it worse. We were saying things like “we know we did something wrong, but there is no need to start hitting people” and they kept going on with the same thing about there are many children at the beach, that we are not really welcome here and that we should look at how many children there are present at the beach. The also yelled something about looking out for the children at the beach.

The strangest thing is, that they are very protective of their children here in South America. Everything seems to spin around the children. They love children and whenever they want to make a point, they use the children as an argument. Strangely, they are not particularly considerate, when it comes to shielding them from unprovoked anger and violent human interaction. It seems that this kind of behaviour just backfires on the South Americans, but who am I to judge.

The situation calmed down and the groups separated. On my way away from the last person of the opposing army, I threw a comment: “you need to control the women” and little did I know, that this comment actually could have started world war III.

Apparently, there are two groups of people that you are not suppose to talk about in any agitated conversations - especially when it comes to conversing with Latinos. Never mention someones mother or their women. Little did I know, that the woman puching Josef, was the wife of the owner of Las Olas, Gustavo, who liberally goes under the alias “The Ogre“. The Ogre was out kitesurfing and was luckily not around for the scenery. After my comment about controlling violent women, the situation totally got out of hand. Even more people gathered, yelling even more loudly and shouted questions like “what did you say??”, “do you know who that is??” and other not so nice things. I was still behaving very calm and diplomatic and from out of nowhere - Gustavo comes running sideway with his kite in the air and with a very angry look on his face as he is shouting a lot of foul language. He probably just saw the commotion on the beach and thought that he needed to come to the rescue. He didn’t even know what it was all about, but that didn’t stop him from charging at me and throw a punch in my face. Clearly eager to start any form for fistfight, even while holding his kite in the air, this is the single most stupid thing I have seen in South America. They clearly want kiting on this beach to be safe and they want us to be careful with our kites when there are children around, but starting fistfights while having a very powerful kite in the air does apparently not fall into the category of wanted safety. If you loose control of the kite, it could potentially kill - but I guess they don’t really care about the children while being mad.

While trying to stand tall against this attack, some loud phrases passed the air as Gustavo was more than eager to land his kite to pick more fights. I was not really in a fighting mood, so I hoped there would be none. While all this happened, Josef had already left the beach and were surfing more or less happily on the wavy Pacific. Gustavos focus kind of changed after a while and after yelling aggressively at me for a while, he looked out towards the kites on the water and shouted “I am going to fucking kill him. I am going to rip his equipment. I will fucking kill him”. I had no reason not to believe the meaning of his words, because he really looked like a person who was both capable and eager to perform this somewhat unfriendly action. Walking away from this situation, just swallowing the silent frustration that builds up inside you is the only way to handle this sort of situation, unless you really want to start a fight with a group of mad locals. Reasoning is a skill that no South Americans are capable of - this has been proven to me at several occations. I have no problems turning my back against a situation where I talk to ears that won’t listen.

It seemed quiet for a while, until Paulo, the manager of one of the towns definitely best pizzerias, encountered me out on the water while kiting. “Tell you fucking friends to …” I managed to hear, before the sound of the waves swallowed his words. I was keeping an eye on him, to see if he would return to repeat the message. That did not happen, but to my surprise I saw him head straight for Josef, jumping from his board and try to punch him in his head. A bit surprised about this behaviour, I also saw the other Swedish guy, Kristian, swim around in the water with his kite as a really messed up piece of canvas in front of him. I went over to him to see if he was OK and he shouted at me “that motherfucker tried to kill me. He ran me down”. So the situation was like this: An angry Gustavo punched me in the face, for doing nothing. Paulo, the friendly pizzaguy, had been sent out on the water to revenge the beach scenery, ran down the one person who was not even involved in the whole thing and tried to throw a dangerous punch at the actual sinner. I got the feeling that I was kind of safe, because I have previously talked to Paulo, but I found it best to head for land, to see what all this was all about.

Josef did the same thing, after he was punched at, and found himself in the middle of a battlefield. He didn’t even get to land his kite, before Gustavo came running towards him, punching him and pulling his lines to the kite so he would potentially fly up in the air. This is absolutely not something you want to do, unless you want to seriously harm the kiter or the people at the beach. Loosing control of the kite could definitely kill a small child playing on the beach, but I guess they don’t really care about the children when they are angry. Josef managed to land his kite and after realising that the Ogre had stolen his board and taken it into his den, where he was waiting with his little mob, Josef had to go and get it. Nothing violent happened, but everyone where shouting abusive phrases to him and making him know, that he was not welcome at the beach at all.

And as if this was not enough, Paulo, the calm pizzaguy, showed up on the beach and wanted to kill everyone. I was not one of his potential victims, but he shouted at the Swedes while standing not more than an inch away “I kill you both. I don’t care where or when - I kill you both right now”. I thought “there seems to be alot of desires to kill around here” and I remained calm. After a bit of pushing and “hey hey hey”-ing, the situation died as soon as it came to life. He went on shouting at some other totally innocent guys, I went over to him to try to talk to him. And he said “they should be more careful. There are children here and I have told them before to be careful. If they are beginners, they launch their kite away from the people, but still they are doing it right next to the children. They do not respect me. As long as they do not respect me, my friends, my family, my home, my house, my beach or anyone else here in my town, why the fuck should I respect them?”

I asked “but does that give you the right to go out and run them down on the water?” and he replied: “As long as they don’t respect me, I do not give a fuck about them. I kill them here, I kill them out in the water and I kill them anywhere. This is my home and they should respect me”. Being a perfect rolemodel for the numerous amounts of children on the beach, I kind of understood his point - but I still do not agree that the situation were handled nicely by the pizzaguy and The Ogre.

This was just one more experience of South American reasoning - it is just not exisiting.