The three muskateers hit up the beach!

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We finished Macchu Pichu (which I will write about after I have finished the blog) and then moved on to Lima. We had a rather eventful journey when after three hours on the bus the policia boarded only to tell us we had to turn around and go back to Cuzco. It turned out that our driver had been involved in an accident earlier that day and was currently driving drunk. The bus was full of Israelis so you can only imagine the commotion when our full cama bus was taken to the bus station and our replacement bus was…semi cama! Personally I didn’t care that much but an army of 6 Israelis were bent on making themselves heard when they crowded around the Peruvian police shouting (in English). Surprise surprise their protest came to nothing (as always with South American police).

We arrived in Lima and as I have mentioned it had very little impact on us, we were eager to get as quickly as possible to the beach. We first went to the backpacker town of Mancora in northern Peru before we hit up the hippie Montanita. Mancora was an interesting place. It was dominated by Loki hostel while the rest of the town was a dire shithole. The drug availability in Mancora was insane (we knew we were getting closer to Colombia). When we got off our bus we had six or seven men harass us (it was 8 o clock in the morning) shouting “Cocaine, Marijuana, Cocaine, Marijuana). They are all taxi drivers (if I haven’t already mentioned taxi drivers are gringos best friends as they are the main vendors of drugs in ANY city, it will be overpriced and bad quality but gringos don’t know any better). Instead we just got a taxi, they seemed disappointed but to appease the taxi drivers we made a promise that we would buy some drugs later, maybe after breakfast. Little did we know that our taxi driver would take us seriously and two hours later when we left Loki we saw our driver waiting for us, feeling bad (purely out of sympathy because drugs are bad) we thought fuck it lets buy some crows. The crow was expensive (by South America prices) but still a bargain compared to London. It would do us nicely for the next three days.

We were settling in nicely in Mancora, we had our crow, our slushies (vodka slushies at Loki went down a treat in 30+ degree heat, who cares that it was only midday its on a tab!) and we had the beach, which we had yearned for after the Andes. On the first night I managed to hustle a free drink by helping some posh boys in the pub quiz, we befriended the boys and got lashed gap yah style but it ending grimly with one projectile vomiting over his own clothes, Dom falling asleep in the bar and me getting in trouble with the Loki owner. I had the arrogance to think I could bun a zoot bang in the middle of the bar, the fat owner walked over and gave the usual “no drugs in Loki” and confiscated the zoot, I probably didn’t give the best reply with “What, I just sparked that” and then informed him that probably 90% of his clientele were doing coke in their rooms now. The reply of the Loki staff (the next day) was pretty disgraceful, they mentioned that coke in someone’s room is undetectable but anyone can smell weed. We would get in trouble with the fat owner again two days later for “looking suspiciously high”. This was largely down to me, who bought more crow thinking we had lost the original, we hadn’t and were left with stupid amounts of draw two days before crossing the border.

The highlight of Mancora (which by this point was going downhill, partly because Loki) was the beach Punta Sal. A month earlier in La Paz we had met a Peruvian who told us if in Mancora we have to visit Punta Sal, the way he described it made us all want to go there. He talked of a deserted beach, soft sand, warm seas. He wasn’t far off, we made the 45 minute excursion on a tuc tuc (45 mintues in a tuc tuc was JOKE) and jammed on Punta Sal. It was a postcard beach and was beautiful. We then returned to Loki, bored and ready to leave Mancora which had proved to be a drug haven, dangerous at night and the only thing to do at night was drink in Loki. We had enough and made our way to Montanita.

We crossed the Peru/Ecuadorian border and made our way to Guayaquil (the biggest city in Ecuador). We were not there for long only a night so I don’t have much to say about the city except for it was notably richer then the rest of Ecaudor. We moved on to Montanita another backpacker beach retreat however for me this place had a much nicer vibe. Loki didn’t dominate it, there was a lot to do at night and the beach wasn’t half bad (although to be honest Mancora was nicer). Montanita is famous for surfing and it was fun to go down to the beach and watch how talented the locals were on the board. On our first night we met some Aussies who we would spend most of Montanita with. They shared a mutual interest in hedonism and we would indulge ourselves in $2 cocktails. I probably indulged too hard that night and had to take a tactical chunder (although it wasn’t that tactical). As the night progressed they claimed to know us from Loki Mancora, in her drunken state Bella went “Yeah, you’re the poms with the bad beards” little did we know we had a reputation in Loki Mancora as “the boys you can buy weed off”. I am not sure where this rumour started, but too my knowledge I didn’t sell any drugs. Montanita was a much nicer place, it was safe at night, there were some gringos but we didn’t dominate it. One night we were invited by Doms surf teacher to some hippy thing on the beach, my natural aversion to hippies meant I wasn’t that on it, but Dom seemed eager so I went (much against my will) when drum circles broke out I felt I was justified in saying “hippies are freaks”. Nevertheless it was fun because we got to know South American bunning culture and bunning songs. We went to visit cocktail alley again on our last night but it didn’t have the same buzz as the first night, especially as it was raining hard! Montanita is definitely a place to go, you can jam for a few days, enjoy the beach, visit the American bar run by an Ecuadorian with a love of 70s disco and visit our friend on cocktail alley. We met a Colombian who is a hotel manager who informed us that a big new hotel is going to be built in Montanita, personally I think that will ruin the entire vibe of the place but who knows, I am probably wrong.

Next instalment from my London based blog will be…Ecuador!

Much Love
Tom x

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