Punta del Mar Mancora

... family oriented as well and tend to live with or very near the rest of their family. Traditions are strong here and people are friendly, smiling and generally accepting of the gringos wandering around taking pics and huffing and puffing up to Machu Picchu.

Peru really is a gem of a country with so many adventures to be had, so much history to learn and endless things to enjoy. To say we will miss it here is an understatement... We LOVED Peru.

... great place to swap information about trips (as I type I'm half listening to people talking about their recent Galapagos trip) another group are thinking of booking up to go on the Inca Trail (you can't do the trek on your own, you have to go as part of a guided tour). later we will be picking the brains of owen, an Aussie motorcyclist who rode into town earlier today from the south. I have my Bolivia book at the ready.

laters

... many new and amazing foods in Mancora. Even though there´s still a lot of pizza and hamburger places, I think we had more authentically native foods here than anywhere else so far. Some of my absolute favorites were the crazy fresh Ceviche while sitting right on the beach with my new favorite snack - roasted choclo (huge kernels of corn), and the Anticucho de Vacca (cows heart) from the lady grilling on the side of the street. The drinks like Chicha ...

... on a kite-surfing holiday. They of course bought us drinks, and the remainder of the night consisted of more drinking, a whole lot of dancing, making some new friends, and finally heading to bed at around 6am. Good times.
And the next morning was when we realised our cameras (mine and Barb´s) had been stolen the night before, probably in the nightclub, and out of Barb´s bag. Damn, damn, damn. But of course a trip to South America is not complete ...

... him. The dog paddled faster than the kid, which was just funny as the dog caught up to the kid and tried to climb on the surfboard. The kid shoed the dog off, who then paddled after a nearby girl on her surf board, caught up to her, and tried to climb onto her surfboard as well. Even the dogs like to surf in Mancora! She didn’t share her board either and eventually the dog swam back onto shore. I don’t know how people don’t like big dogs ...

... on the bus (I don’t need them to read but they stop my eyes getting tired if I read for long periods (something I’m planning to do a lot of on this trip)). We spoke to Javier and he spent about an hour yelling (literally) at people on the phone. Javier is one of those wonderfully larger than life, artistic guys (apparently he has a gallery in Lima and Miami) who was born with a thousand volts of energy and a faulty transformer that delivers an equal mix of charming and ...

... promptly went all over her top. So we got off the bus at a town called Piura, checked into the closest hotel, Milli changed and tried to sleep but still hd to get up every 20 minutes or so to spew. We thought it was just a tummy bug from dodgy food but when in the middle of the night she passed out in the bathroom mid spew we knew it was something more serious.

Straight to the local hospital in the morning where she was admitted over night - Seems Milli had ...

... clennou vypravu a tak kdyz bylo asi 10 minut do odjedu autobusu my jsme stale nemeli zaplaceno. Doslo ,ostatne jak uz nekolikrat, k zde asi bezne situaci. Zastupce prepravni spolecnosti na nas volal ze uz mame jit nebo nam ujedou, nas pruvodce naznacoval vrchnimu ze odejdeme bez placeni pokud si nepospisi s uctovanim. Nacez vrchni v naprostem klidu stale manualne pocital nasi utratu vedom si toho ze dokud bude stat ve dverich ochranka se samopalem tak nikam neodejdem. Ale jak ...

... when the bus stopped on a random road and had not gone any further by the time every one had awoken at 7am, obviously there must have some reason for the non movement of the bus, well, on stepping out of the bus, you could see a long line of buses parked up infront of us, behind us and in the opposite direction. After a few hours, information eventually filtered back to us that there was a artesanal miners strike who had blocked the road as part ...

... walking around checking prices and then I´ll go to the beach when the sun goes down a bit (since I´m still a bit red from Pimentel). Overall the town is kind of what I had in mind... lots of foreigners walking around, and I´ll check out the beach in a bit. Pretty damned hot. Yeah, I guess that´s about it for now, and I´ll update soon, probably in Ecuador.