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Published: November 29th 2007
We have been on the go now for almost two months and after quite a lot of adventure and rushing around, we decided we had earned a rest.
With this in mind, we decided that a beach break was needed and booked our journey from Huacachina to Mancora, a beach town in the north of Peru.
After a 5 hour bus ride to Lima and then a 17 hour bus ride on to Mancora we arrived to be greeted with a wonderful blue sky, mild breeze and beach, beach, beach and beach....!
We were met at the bus terminal, as usual, by touts trying to persuade us that the hostel that they were spruiking was the one for us. We agreed with one of them and set off in the back of his moto-taxi (effectively a tuk-tuk) for the 15 minute drive to the ¨Hotel Costa Blanca¨. We liked the look of it so decided to check in for a week of relaxation.
Essentially it was a week spent doing very little. The most energetic activity being a daily walk along the beach into town to check out the street market stalls and buy icecream.
The
Swimming in the pool
Having fun at work everyone???town of Mancora itself was fairly chaotic with moto-taxis, cars, trucks and buses driving eratically and beeping trying to find customers to ferry around town or to the surrounding beaches. At night the town took on a more touristy feel when the travellers who had spent the day on the beach came to eat at the restaurants and drink at the Surfers Bar. Happily, most of the restaurants and bars had great happy hours to get people in the door!
Our beachfront bungalow looked straight onto the Pacific Ocean and each evening we lucky enough to see Humpback Whales breaching not far off shore. We have never seen anything like it!
We ate most nights at either the restaurant attached to our hotel, or at the restaurant at nearby Playa Bonita hotel. Both restaurants were great: the food perhaps slightly better at the Costa Blanca. and we were even given a free drink just so the bar tender had something to do!
We were sad to be leaving Mancora after a relaxing seven days - however, we had made a last minute decision to fly to the Galapagos Islands so we booked our onward bus trip to
Guayaquil, a port town in Ecuador and the gateway to the Galapagos Islands.
We had heard horror stories about corrupt immigration officials on the Peru/Ecuador border who trick tourists crossing the border into paying a large visa fee before they were allowed to cross the border. Accordingly we were quite wary, and although we were not the victim of any scams aimed at separating tourists with their money, things did not go smoothly.
It was an 8 hour bus ride to Guayaquil and we successfully exited Peru immigration and headed for the Ecudorian border. However, the bus driver failed to stop at the Ecuadorian border control to be stamped into Ecuador and this was not picked up until we were almost an hour past the border at a police checkpoint.
The police were quite helpful and tried to think of a way they could help, unlike our bus driver who just offloaded our luggage and left us there. Unfortunately, there was nothing we could do but get on a bus going back the way we had came so we could be officially stamped into Ecuador.
We then had to pay for another bus ticket to continue
our journey to Guayaquil. All in all we were quite lucky as we only lost about 2 hours backtracking and our buses arrived almost immediately each time, but it was annoying losing the money on our initial bus ticket which we had paid quite a lot for.
We arrived in Guayaquil at almost midnight, four hours later than anticipated, and caught a cab to our hostel - Dreamkapture. It was a nice hostel run by a Canadian/Ecuadorian couple, and quite close to both the airport and downtown Guayaquil where we pottered around for a day before taking a flight to our next destination, the Galapagos Islands!
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Rob
non-member comment
You both are officially off my xmas card list because (a) I don't think I am going to know where to send it and (b) I can't be bothered spreading the joy of jesus's birthday to those that seem like they are having more fun than I am!! You both look very content... keep up the good work. BTW - Jules it was hard to tell your feet apart from Lynsey's, if it wasn't for the faint wisps of hair those chicken's feet look quite feminine.