Epic cross country adventures

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After a whole month in Salta I finally had all of my replacement credit cards and was ready to continue travelling. As I had been delayed for so long it meant that I needed to do a massive trip from northern Argentina to northern Peru in one hit to be able to meet up with James in time for Easter in Mancora. I set off at 7am with the plan to cross the border and be in Calama, Chile in time for the last bus to Arica. I had left a four hour gap to allow for delays. Unluckily for me, each of the border crossings took a lot longer than expected and we pulled into town half an hour before the last bus, which would usually be fine expect it turned out that my bus was not even going to the bus terminal, but instead some random back street in the middle of no where. Fortunately on the bus I had been practicing my Spanish and speaking with a local girl and not only did she find me a taxi and come with me to the bus terminal, but she also refused to let me pay for the cab and I had arrived with 5 mins until the last bus.



When I got to the terminal I went up to the ticket sales and asked for a ticket to Arica and the lady said no. Ahhh WHAT? As I turned around to process what this meant for the rest of my trip a bus attendant came past and asked if I wanted to jump on the bus anyways. Thanks to my semi-occasional acceptable Spanish skills I managed to not only end up on the bus, but I scored a free upgrade to cama.



My good luck managed to continue as I headed across the Chile-Peru border as I befriended some Chilian guys who were staying in the border town that I had 8 hours of time to kill in so it resulted in being able to shower and lie down and be entertained rather than having to hang out at the airport. I then took two flights from Tacna to Lima and Lima to Piura to cut out about 40 hours of travel time on top of the time I had already been in transit. My last bit of good luck came when a cute old couple from Lima offered to let me share their taxi from Puira to Mancora for $10 rather than having to catch a bus.



So after 38 hours in transit I finally arrived in Mancora and checked into the Loki there. I also met up with James who I hadn't seen in about two months. Although I was wrecked from all the travel I manned up and we headed to the bar and then out to explore the rest of the bar strip on the beach. Mancora reminded me a lot of Thailand. There were tuk tuks everywhere and there were bars along the beach pounding music until all hours on the morning and people trying to sell you drugs left, right and centre. After a few nights there we moved over to Kokopelli which was a similar set up with a swim up bar in the pool but was away from the beach so it allowed you to sleep at night.



On our final day there we decided to go swimming with the turtles. While in our minds we had images of crystal clear waters off tropical islands, in reality we were to go diving off a jetty that was shared with fishing boats (and therefore smelt amazing) into water that had such terrible visibility that you could not see a meter in front of you. Our guide kept on apologising and saying that she had never seen such bad visibility, but at the end of the day that didn't really help our situation. I did indeed get to see a number of turtles -they were huge and amazing, however I saw them while standing on the jetty and although I swam around in the ocean for what seemed like hours, the visibility meant that by the time someone called out where they were and you swam over they had gone again.



Overall I liked the North of Peru. The water was nicer and warmer than the south, the sunsets were amazing and I ate endless amounts of ceviche, however the beaches still did not have that wow factor and after spending time in Brazil I feel as though I will not see such nice beaches again until I hit the Caribbean ocean in Colombia.

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