Mancora - Sun, Sand and Coconuts

Where we spent most of our time in Mancora
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We are rapidly discovering that getting anywhere in Peru is a always going to involve trials and tribulations.  Not helping the matter is our Spanish language skills, rather than improve as expected I think we are getting worse.  Myself and Jo have different approaches, I am in the "if they don't get it the first time just say it louder" school whilst Jo just likes to throw random words out there and see what happens so far Jo´s approach works much better, so I pretty much just let her do the talking now.

Jo contemplating life
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As the title suggest we are now in Mancora which as far as I can tell is the equivalent of Lorne or Torquay only on similar latitude to Surfers Paradise.

Getting to Mancora involved three buses the first one was extremely dodgy, 10 minutes into the trip a guy got up and no shit talked for 15 minutes straight without taking a breath he was pointing out the window and gesticulating madly at the roof and at random people, everyone else on the bus was pretty much ingoring him so we just passed him off as "el Loco" although we were starting to get concerned he was going to keep it up for the whole 3 hour trip.  He then handed out lollies to the whole bus, did another 5 minute spanish tirade and then went around getting money off everyone, we gave him 50c for the lollies and another 50c not to kill us, which seemed to have worked as we are still here..... although I had to think surely there are easier ways to sell a few minties.

Jo drinking a cocktail and mixing a track at the same time...
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As per usual we chose the first hotel we saw and paid for a night in advance (which is the norm), then walked down the street and found a nicer hostel on the beach with it's own bar for half the price.....damn.

Jo has developed an addiction for drinking straight out of coconuts (at $1 a coconut it is a cheaper addiciton than most), she walks down the street happy as larry drinking away....although so far she is the only one I have seen doing it.

Well after 6 days of doing a lot of not much we have moved on to Quito.  Whilst I have perfected the art of doing nothing with years of practise, Jo is no where near as good at it and in the end started to impact on my enjoyment of lying around (plus my burnt and blistered white skin can take no more sun - Due to third degree burns on my feet I couldn't wear shoes for 4 days)

Caught another collectivo from Mancora to the Peru / Ecuador border, I don't have any paperwork for this but they may have broke the Guinness world record for total number of people in a van - counted 25 people at one stage.

We then paid a guy WAY too much to drive us accross the border stopping at the Peruvian Passport control to get our passports stamped, he then instructed us to make a donation to the Ecuadorian soldiers fund (read bribe) to let us in the back way to Ecuador, he then organised a bus for us which was the worst bus yet.  After that we had to get a taxi to the Ecuadorian Passport control to get our visa and then back to the bus station to catch the bus......12 sleepless hours later we arrived in Quito.