Hotel Casa de Playa Mancora

... succulent steak (almost as good as Argentina) covered not with prawns but with a huge crayfish! Ang also helped herself to a superb swordfish fillet with prawns. Not to mention the ice cold beers and awesome dessert (chocolate brownies) all for under $40...

Sadly though, our time in Peru is at an end. 5 weeks of another awe-inspiring country seeing places, meeting people and doing things that we could not forget in several lifetimes.

Mancora, Peru theblakes

... doesnt matter. If you pick the right table and the right wave set comes along you can be sitting under an umbrella drinking beer with you feet in the water while you try to use broken spanish and english to order your lunch. Good times. Got a glimpse of the hostal we are moving to tomorrow, it is a great view and from the email I got from the owners much better than stepping into the dragons den. Tomorrow morning will be the final showdown with the great scaley beast.

... was when Antonio and I first met and heīs been so awesome.

Evan: Yeah, it was really cool of him to let us know that we had missed the immigration office leaving Ecuador since we were sleeping on the bus. I still canīt believe the bus driver didnīt wake us up! At least the border crossing wasnīt too far back so we could just take a taxi.

Sophie: So lucky once again. Also with the two Argentinian guys showing us where to stay and ...

We decided to spend our last few days on the beach in Northern Peru - what a wise decision. The weather was beautiful, no cloud in the sky and we just hung out all day long, read our books, tried some of the retsaurants we didnt go to last time we were there.. It was the perfect way to end the trip!

It was a recipe for disaster for sure... or if not disaster, at the very least it was bound to be a fun and eventful week!
Arriving in Mancora we were faced with the ocean, warmth, and sunshine. Exactly what we were expecting and hoping for. After the usual bed hunt (finding a room that was a thirty second walk to the sand, for just the two of us, and with our own bathroom for half the price of the popular tourist hostels), we were in our bathers and ...

... nowhere near the actual border.
We got stamped etc and we managed to find out through our limited spanish that we had been charged too much for our tickets by the woman who origianally sold them to us and there was also noone to meet us to direct us to second bus which went to Cuenca. Luckily a guy came and said he was meeting us but we had not got off at correct stop-lol we were never told-anyway it worked out ok. We are actually abit sick of locals trying to rip tourists ...

... didn’t have anything confirmed (it’s almost impossible to book accommodation in advance in Peru without days of notice and we rarely plan that far ahead). Needing some comfort badly, I croaked that we should go for the most expensive one. When Jacque mentioned the name of the hotel, the drivers went into a frenzy, baying for the ride. At this point I have to admit that I’ve come to enjoy the feeling of needing to rely 100% on gut instinct and this was a perfect example ...

... and by request, gave our email addresses to the peruvian authorities.. (still have not received any emails or facebook invitations from them) and got back into the bus for the rest of the drive.
Got into Piura about 7am.. was the busiest place weīve ever seen at 7am.. and walked up and donw the road with our packs asking for directions to the bus company that ran busses to the coast. Arrived in Mancora about 11am and Russ was exausted ...

... too. After cooking in every night in Lima we decided to splash out on a couple of nice meals, which personally included a lovely steak, a delicious swordfish steak and an unbelievable tuna steak. Mmmm, steak. The latter ******* spent four days eluding me - it was probably the thing I was most looking forward to in Mancora after four and a half months of wanting one (not to mention the disastrous munch we got on our first day here when my ...

... and locals as they would congregate at bondfires along the beach, and share drinks at bars and clubs. Also enjoyed the Artisan culture of mostly Argentinians and locals selling handcrafts and crystals in the markets places, and joining in on djembe drum circles at night. Some good restaurants, fruit vendors, and the coconut man. Beautiful beach to visit for short time before heading down to LIMA and then onwards to Cusco!