Track our Journey!

Monday, 26 November 2012

And into Peru!

Gypsies. They're the same everywhere. On our otherwise pain-free bus journey from Cuenca across the Peruvian border, our main delay was at the border check itself while queueing to exit Ecuador and enter Peru (and get the all-important stamp!). While the rest of us were waiting patiently in the queue, along come about 10 gypsies, seemingly from Chile (about 3 generations of the one family) who run straight to the top of the queue where they proceed to rant in Spanish, clearly not being able to read or write as they hadn't  a notion how to fill up the forms. So while the singular female official was trying to deal with all of us plus the swarm of gypsies, our bus driver was waiting patiently for us to clear the customs check before continuing another 2 hours on to the beach-side town of Mancora.

Mancora's pretty much like Montanita in Ecuador, just with less hippies and pricier hostels. Our hostel, Loki del Mar is pretty much the priciest place here, but it's right on the beach, has a lovely pool and pretty decent food at the bar, despite the drinks being ridiculoulsly overpriced. The sea here seems to be freezing and the wind blows sand straight up your nose when you're lying down, so the poolside deckchairs at the hostel we well used, definitely! There's noise here for sure at night, but we found it was not so much from the hostel bar as the really roudy nightclub next to the hostel which seems to go Monday to Sunday without fail. There are some beach bars too which will pump out chart music (well, at least it's not salsa) even if there's not a soul in the place. even the dogs start howling at night, but you will eventually get to sleep at 2am once the music stops! The weather equals beautiful skies every morning. even though the sea is quite cold, it does look like turquoise water paradise, complete with palm trees.
Loki del Mar Hostel 

Mancora sunset


We bumped into a good few faces we had met in Ecuador, so we had some beverages with them in their hostel as it was much cheaper than ours (Kokopelli), so what followed was a pretty fun night of catching up with others and arranging to meet up again further on in Peru. As the beer flowed we did the usual - danced ridiculously to 90s pop songs, solved world political problems in one conversation and found that the drunker we got, the more fluent in Spanish we became.....

And one of the best things about Peru? It being home of the Potato, we found ourselves mashed potato for the first time in 7 weeks............. I ate the plate and all.

Where we stayed; Loki del Mar http://www.lokihostel.com/mancora
How much; 43 soles (about $16) per person per night, double room, private bathroom

No comments:

Post a Comment