Iguanas and the city

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From Trujillo, we headed north to Mancora, a gringo's paradise. A quaint little surfing village, with mainly English speaking establishments, in the very northern part of Peru. When we arrived, we tried to check into the famous Loki hostel, a massive hostel complex, resembling a hotel moreso than a hostel. As it was the final of the World Cup while we were there, we wanted to stay somewhere with a good athmosphere. Unfortunately, there was no room at the inn at The Loki hostel, so we booked ourselves into another small hotel nearby. We watched the World Cup in the Loki hostel and the Dutch fans were out in force. So I became a fairweather Dutch supporter for the day, to fit in with the crowd. Unfortunately, we were disappointed, the Dutch fans presumably more than me. We spent the day boozing and retired rather ungracefully to our hotel. Much to our dismay, there was a banging nightclub across the road, so we spent two sleepless nights listening to the worst music imaginable, before checking out and moving onto another hostel that had been recommended to us - The Point Hostel. The Point was located outside the village, but this worked to our advantage, as the walk along the beach into the town, was beautiful. We shacked up in a beach hut for 3 nights and partied with the other guests, drinking one too many on the beach. We went surfing and swimming, I didnt quite make it to stand on these waves, as the waves were scarce and when one finally came, it was a race between me and 30 other surfers to ride on this small rarity.

Following Mancora, we crossed over the border to the city of Guayaquil in Ecuador. It was here that we decided that we would splash out and spend a week on the Galapogos islands. As we arrived in Guayaquil on the Friday, we discovered we couldnt fly out to the Galapogas until the following Monday, so we decided to soak up what the city had to offer for the weekend. First up, Iguana Park, this park was a small square in the middle of the city, packed to the brim with iguanas! It was a bizarre sight to see iguanas in any location, but iguanas in the middle of a bustling city, was quite surreal. Along with iguanas, there were plenty of turtles in the pond. We spotted one small turtle, whose head was bleeding, which led us to believe that most likely sequence of events was that someone had tried to throw a rock at their shell and missed and hit the little guy's head instead (this may not have been the case!). Poor little dude.

Apart from the Iguana park, we hiked up Cerro Santa Ana, a colourful, touristy district, remniscent of Caminito in Buenos Aires. After this we took a boat ride to take in the sunset, which was a pleasant boat down the Guayas river. Our hostel was located outside the city, so location wise, it wasnt the best, but on the plus side it had a pool with a diving board, so we had plenty of fun bomb diving and belly flopping!

Next stop - the intriguing, wonderful islands of the Galapagos

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