Peru! Mancora...

Leaving Ecuador:

We left Montanita bus station at 5:00 PM on Saturday, the 31st, and watched a corny movie (as usual) on the ride to Guayaquil terminal.  We entered the terminal, and quickly found the bus company "CIFA," who makes the international journey, and bought our tickets for the night bus, which left at 11:30 PM.  We had a couple hours to kill in the terminal, and had a bite to eat, jumped on the internet for a bit, and then at about 11:40, boarded our bus.  Biggest bus I'd ever been on, it was a double decker, and we were in seats 1 and 2, upstairs, right in the front window, as if we were the drivers.  Finally fell asleep after a couple hours, and woke up at the international border of Peru.  Very, very simple border crossing to be honest, and within about 10 minutes, we were back on the bus, heading for Mancora.  I would imagine that doing this crossing during the day must be a lot busier!

We arrived at about 7 AM, to the MOST annoying introduction of cab drivers begging to take us to our hostel destination...Having not gotten the best sleep, I was not prepared for this.  Either way, we denied the cabs, and began our walk, and search for a cheap hostel, which ended in, possibly one of the shittiest hostels in town...

We stayed the night at "Angeles Del Mar," which had an internet connection, but wide open walls at the top, and we were completely ravaged by dive bombing mosquitoes all night, no thanks to their "mosquito net" over the bed, full of huge holes...Despite a slightly shitty night of sleep, we would spend the next two nights in Mancora, right next door at "Amanecer."

Amanecer was 5 Soles cheaper than the prior, and didn't look much better, that's for sure.  The room was tiny, but had a private bathroom.  Once inside that private bath, there was, for one, no toilet seat, and no shower curtain...You get what you pay for.  The water also didn't work for the first half of the day, but like I said, why complain?

We nonetheless had unbelievable ceviche in Mancora...We had it 3 or 4 times there, and it was to write home about!  The rest of Mancora was bleh...Surf town, no waves, no tourists at that moment, and all of the locals were restless, yelling out "California" whenever we'd walk by, trying to sell us drugs.  Despite the hot sun and beautiful sunset, I'm glad we continued on...We had in fact, found another volunteer gig down the road, in the Andes, to spend a couple weeks working on an organic farm...We had our time frame set, and needed to get there for the gig...

Mancora sunset

Unbelievable ceviche!