Hotel CasaBarco Mancora

... Hands down - The Inca Trail to Machu Picchu. Special mention to the unbelievable time we had volunteering and all the special people it was so hard to leave behind.

Lowlight: Getting stuff stolen from our hotel room in Pisco. Most importantly was the USB drive with all our photos. Luckily though we got it back after some other mates had stuff stolen too and they raised it with the owner who fired the cleaning guy and somehow got most of our ...

28th September 2009
la Posada, Mancora, Peru
It's cool but just right

The days here have been sunny and hot, just what the doctor ordered. not that we've been ill or anything, in fact we feel fighting fit at the moment. We were going to head off tomorrow but dave just didn't get round to doing the maintenance on the bikes today. It gets like that sometimes, even though you have all day to do something, you get to 6pm and realise ...

... us the 10 Soles (3.5 dollars) price for the room. Oh and how nice was walking on the beach and watching the sun rise right after 20 something hours on the bus?

Evan: Yeah and that beach is so beautiful with palm trees surrounded by dessert mountains - it´s like we´re on an oasis here in Mancora (Peru). It was so liberating to go skinny dipping at the empty beach so early, and smart of you to bury your valuables in the sand, just in case.
Mancora, Peru ewbarr

... on the sand by lunchtime.
Day one was your typical day at the beach... sunbaking (and getting sunburnt, oops!), cerviche and beer for lunch, having a few cocktails that evening, and all was good. It was a quiet night in town so we were well behaved little girls and in bed by midnight.
Day two and the daytime events were much the same as the previous day. Though being a Saturday we were planning a big night out, and so the afternoon consisted of ...

... its so common and gets so annoying-fair enough we have alot of money compared to them but at the same time we are their main income and its sickening to see so manmy tourists being ripped off.
Our 2nd bus came and it was another 5 hours before we reached our destination of Cuenca. The bus ride was horrible-it was no top class bus, we were the only gringos on it, the bus driver was absolutely crazy-we honestly tuaght we would crash. He was bombing it and passing so many cars. The ...

After doing the late-night border crossing between Ecuador and Peru in Tumbes, we arrived in Mancora bright and early Friday morning. Mancora is one of the more famous beaches in Northern Peru and it is popular among surfers.
We found accommodation at a surfer’s hostel called Casa Samara for 10 soles a head ($3.33), ordered breakfast, and started looking for a place to rent surfboards. Eric and I have had surfed before, but this was Andy’s ...

... scanned the wall of faces, mostly old, some smiling and some not and settled on an innocent looking, young guy and pointed my finger at him and said ‘you’. Predictably, the others all started swearing at me while we loaded our bags onto the motor taxi (or what I know as a tut-tut in India) and we started off into the dark. We travelled for about 5 minutes on a main road, through the centre of town and then hurtled onto a rough dirt road, bumping our way down the track in the ...

... he can´t sleep on the night busses. Decided to stay in a hostal just out of town since it was recommended by our guide book and there were moto taxis for $1 to go back and forth from town.
The lady with no teeth served us a breakfast with no eggs and we took a power nap before hanging out at the beach in front of our hostel for the day.
Went into town for dinner and found a good meal with ceviche appetizer and a choice(!) of entree ...

... de atun turned out to be a ******n can of tuna mixed with about four blasted onions, grrrr) due to a combination of closed restaurants, out of stock kitchens and obstinate eating partners, but I finally got my chops around one on my final night. Ordered medium rare it came out almost completely raw and cold in the middle (is that even safe?), and was exceptionally tasty. I probably would have eaten one every night if I'd known it'd be that ...

Slept really well last night.. super tired from surfing in Pimentel and swimming in Mancora and the sun and what not.. I know... it´s tough.. but it IS exhausting... :p I bought my ticket to Loja yesterday (70 Soles to Loja).. the bus leaves at 5.30pm and should arrive in Loja, Ecuador, tomorrow morning around 6am, when I´ll ...