Fun times in North Peru!

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After a great time in Cuenca, it was time to move on to Peru, somewhere we had wanted to go for a long time before this trip. We left the Scots in Cuenca and the rest of us got the bus down to the hectic border crossing into Peru and after a long day of travel we got to the fairly bleak beach town of Mancora. After being in the mountains for so long the heat in Mancora felt absolutely savage.

Mancora was supposed to be the surf capital of Peru, but with only about a 30 metre stretch where there was a break onto some rocks and about 50 people on top of each other in the water with their surfboards it was fairly brutal. After a day on the beach and not much else in Mancora we headed on to the town of Chiclayo to see some pre-inca ruins & the gold museum. The town was lovely and the people really friendly. We ended up meeting a few locals & going on a right good session which was great fun. the ruins were not at all impressive, since they are pyramids built out of mud so didn't survive terribly well. But 'El Señor de Sipan', the lord of Sipan was found buried nearby and the mountain of gold objects found with him are on display in the museum which was really amazing.

After Chiclayo, we moved onto Trujillo, another town with some pre-inca ruins, a city called Chan-chan which wasn't really great since it's just being totally rebuilt at the moment. Spent a lot of good times in Trujillo eating turkey sandwiches with real gravy (amazing) and going to the casinos. On the downside, Jess had her camera snatched by a taxi driver as he drove past. He very nearly got mashed by a truck as he sped off.

We decided we had had enough of the coast and the heat and headed back to the mountains to Huaraz where we did some hiking and downhill mountain biking. The biking was class and the scenery amazing It's 50 km downhill to lagunas Llanganuco and you start off high up at a glacier, just throw the bikes up on a local bus and get them to drop you off at the top of the mountain. The bikes weren't great though and my pedal broke after 5 km but it didn't really matter, I just rolled the whole way.

We left the Canadians for a while and moved on to the wine and pisco producing town of Ica just in time for the week long wine festival. We went to visit some wine Bodegas (vineyards) for free tours and plenty of free samples. Every night there was a carnival with different events on. All the local producers had stands there giving out free samples so we took full advantage of that. Next to Ica is the small chilled-out oasis town of Huacachina where we bummed around in the pool for the day and then went sand-boarding in the evening...great craic altogether!

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Photos

The pride of peru?!
Terry with some very attractive peruvian hairless dogs

Made some new friends in Chiclayo..
..but they didn't like sharing us with anyone else, telling us how dangerous everyone was!