Parting Peru

Well following my time in Lima, I decided to take the chance to board an 18 hour overnight bus to Mancora, a little surfing town, in the north of Peru.  Very surprisingly, 18 hours in a bus here is way more pleasant than the same period of time in a plane or Australian bus.  Here you get bells and whistles you thought never possible.  You have seats that are as large as lounge chairs.  Each seat reclines to a ridiculously flat angle and the leg room provided is equivalent to another seat space!  To top it off, you get a host/hostess, meals and even a game of bingo.  Neat!

What can I say about the town of Mancora?  It is a nice little surfing town that has been totally over run by Gringos (tourists).  The locals seem absolutely bemused at what is happening there and it seems all too chaotic for me. 

For accommodation, I ended up staying at a hostel called Loki.  This hostel was more like a resort.  There was a centrally located pool, an outdoor bar, pool table, volley ball court, palm trees etc.  You get the picture.  It also has a reputation as a party hostel and that it definitely was!  One thing I really came to love about the place though was the amount of Aussies I met here.  There were dozens!  It is nice to be around your own kind once in a while.  Lads that is.

 A Mancora sun set

I met some interesting guys during my seven day stay at Loki.  It was during this time I made plans to travel with a group of 7 others north to Ecuador and possibly Columbia.  There were two guys from Sydney, two from Perth, one from Hobart, one from Brazil and another from Israel.  The guy from Israel was called Dor and he is a bit of a weapon.  He serves in the Israeli Special Forces as a killing machine (put simply).  Example: one night his lady friend got her wallet robbed by some bouncers at a local club and when the bouncers were confronted they took offence to being caught out.  Well Dor was put in the sticky situation where he had to straighten a few things out.  And that he did!  He was a little one man army. 

Anyways, I digress.  Together all eight of us travelled to Montañita in Ecuador.  A very interesting bus ride indeed.  We crossed the border at 3am in the morning and it was here where Bill one of the Perth boys was brought aside for a “random” drug search.  Digging through his possessions one of the officers pulled out a piece of paper and proclaimed “you have cocaine in your bag!”.  Bill looked at him and said “no I don´t” (because he didn´t) but the guy said “yes, yes you do, I have found some”.  Knowing the situation was a set up, Bill hit the officer up for how much this was going to cost him.  $50 later and all was ok with the world and we passed through the border on to Ecuador.  The lesson learnt here wasalways carry a little money for bribes!

Montañita ended up being a surfing town much like Mancora.  Over the party scene, both Sam (the Aussie from Hobart) and I got up one morning quickly packed our bags and bought the next bus ticket out of town for Guayaquil.  This was the best thing we could have done as I don´t think we are the party travellers the other are.  We are more interested in the travel experience. 

Guayaquil served as a quick one night stop over on our master route to Baños in the north.  What a dodgy town!  Walking around there we were constantly on edge due to the uneasy general vibe we perceived from the place.  The next morning we were all too happy to buy our onward tickets to Baños.  Having now arrived in Baños, the place seems awesome.  It is up in the mountains at the base of a very impressive active volcano.  It is dirt cheap and the list of activities we are finding here is more than impressive.   This might just prove to be a nice little resting point in Ecuador prior to Sam and I making our way north to Columbia.       

The main cathedral in Baños

Sam and another backpacker, Kelly, recieving master tutelage off me regarding how to take a night photo...