...and in the end

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We´ve finished the last leg of our trip. Our final destination stretched us across the Peruvian coastline to the tiny surfing village of Mancora. For the geographers in the house, Mancora is about an hour and a half south of Tumbes. Tumbes is the biggest town near the Ecuador border. Basically, we were up near Ecuador.

Mancora is a beach town about three kilometers long. The town is built around the panamerican highway. The highway is basically the only road in the town (other than the gravel and dirt paths that lead to the beach). So all of the different restaurants, liquor vendors, internet cafe´s and hostals were spread out either on the one side of the highway or the other.

Our priority over this past week was sun and beach. Our hostal was right near the beach making it quite easy to check off the beach category. The day we arrived the sun alluded us, but after that it was all sun burns and lotion.

We had originally heard about the spot as a favorite destination amongst vacationing peruvians but as we travelled we met enough travellers who were including the town on their tour de Peru. Though, what we saw the most of was vactioning Ecuadorians.

Anyway, we spent our lazy days lying on the beach, I would try my hand at surfing for an hour or two everyday (the town originally spawned as a surfing beach and remains a popular surf spot). We´d find a new place to eat everyday. We´d watch a beautiful sun set over the pacific, we´d take a nap, read, grab some dinner, and play cards at candle lit tables on the beach. Basically, we wound down from the past five weeks.

One funny moment we´d like to share:

On our bus ride from the town of Trujillo to Piura (getting from Huaraz to Mancora proved to be a little more difficult than we had anticipated) the bus attendant decided to show a Steven Seagal movie. We had seen some random movies on buses so the fact that it was a Steven Seagal movie only made me cringe a little, it was the next movie, Schindler´s List, which seemed quite odd and out of place.

We´re now back at Victor´s place. He and his family certainly have done more than enough to welcome and accomodate us throughout the whole trip. We spent 17 hours on a bus getting back to Lima and we fly out tomorrow night. We´re excited to return home and see everyone, share more stories and take a clean shower. We´ve enjoyed every minute of this trip and certainly had a valuable experience being down here in Peru for the summer. We can´t wait to see where we´ll go next!

See you soon,

Jonathan and Adina

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