Bugs, Beaches, Buses and Boats

After Machu Picchu we took a bus to Mancora, which is a little beach town in northern Peru. We took an overnight bus and paid the extra $15 for the "first class" section of the bus. I really don´t think that there was any difference between the first class and the rest, although we were separated from the toilet by a door that kept the stink out. Maybe that was what the extra money was for. It was a pretty typical bus ride. The food sucked, there wasn´t enough room, the movies were bootleg copies dubbed into Spanish with the volume turned down to low to hear anyway. Also, as is typical, we had no idea what was going on when the bus made its various stops.

We got off in the morning, got our bags out from under the bus and started walking towards what we hoped was an area with hotels. We hadn´t booked one ahead of time. After not walking very far we decided it would be best to ask someone at the bus stop where the hotels were. At this point they realised we thought we were in Mancora, but we were actually in Los Organos. Mancora is not a big town by any stretch, but apparently Los Organos has absolutely nothing. Apparently not even one hotel, because that tipped the lady at the bus station off that we were not where we thought we were. As the bus started to pull away someone caught the attention of the driver and he let us back on, now with our huge backpacks as carry-on luggage.

It was only like another 20 minutes or so to Mancora. When we got there, we were instantly bombarded with offers for a mototaxi. A mototaxi is a motorcycle that has been converted into a three-wheeled taxi with a bench for the passengers and a little rack on the back for luggage in case you didn´t know. There are approximately 238 mototaxis in Mancora. I only counted 147 tourists while we were there, so the market for taxis is already grossly over-saturated in case any of you were thinking of a career change. Our potential taxi driver pulled out a map with a list of hotels/straw huts in the area. We remembered the Casa Blanca from the vivamancora website and it was cheap (around $15 per night), so we had the guy take us there.

The room looked clean except for the dead bugs on the bed and the live ones in the bathroom, so we decided to stay there for a few days. There was a nice wide beach across the street with a great break that attracted only a handful of surfers each day. There were also a lot of bars and restaurants that line the back of the beach. It was nice to finally be somewhere warm and sunny after climbing around in the Andes and visiting cold places like Lake Titicaca.

In Mancora, the party starts around 10 or 11 and lasts from between 3 am and 8 am. We really only partook in this on Stef´s birthday, so the other nights we spent trying to fall asleep to music that sucked to bad to be played in the States and was exported to lands where people don´t know any better. Most nights we were so exhausted that that wouldn´t have mattered, but the constant reminder of biting bugs and the sound of rats in the thatch ceiling all combined to make for some pretty poor nights of sleeping. We enjoyed our time on the beach eating ceviche and other good seafood and partying with some people we met from Oregon. So all things considered, this was a good last stop for Peru.

Yesterday we took a bus from Peru to Guayaquil, Ecuador. When we crossed the border into Ecuador, I finally thought things looked like South America should. There were banana trees and jungle covered hills as far as I could see. When we arrived in Guayaquil, it seems just like any other big city down here. Last night it seemed much nicer to me when we walked to a place for dinner. In the light of day, however, it looks pretty crappy. At least the part near our hotel looks pretty gross. We are only here for a few days and then off to the Galapagos. We bought a cruise that was expensive for us, but pretty cheap as far as Galapagos cruises go. It is 8 days long and from all accounts of other travellers and guide books, we won´t be disappointed. We´re looking forward to that and I for one am looking forward to exploring Ecuador (assuming that it hasn´t been ruined by some hippy from Oregon (not the people from Mancora) that lived here some years ago).