Day 60: Back to Lima!

Our first day back in Lima, was spent shopping (which we definitely could not afford), pedicures for Clem, then the evening spent celebrating a girl we met called Ronnie in Cusco. We genuinely thought she was around 30, but she turned out to be 42 and was the most lovely person. The night finished off in McDonalds of course.

some cool artwork/graffiti in the hostel

Clem and her new friend

Day 56-59: Las Pocitas and Los Corales

We have checked into a gorgeous hotel on the beach called Las Pocitas just down from Mancora, its rather idyllic and we are in no hurry to leave so I think we are going to stay for a few days before we head back on the dreaded 20 hour bus to Lima!

A man getting some coconuts down

A Peruvian version of Pad Thai, it was actually really yummy

20 hour bus trip back to Lima, killer

Day 54: Bosque Cerro Blanco

Today we had a lovely bus at 5am back to Guayaquil in order to get another bus to Mancora. However, we had a whole day to kill so Clemmie found out that the last "dry" wood in Ecuador was fairly nearby so we thought we would go see what it was like. The bus station was a nightmare and there seemed to be endless queues of people (we couldn't figure out what for though) who really didn't appreciate two completely hopeless tourists with massive backpacks trying to squeeze through. Eventually we found a bus which would take us to where we needed to go and off we went. About 20 minutes later the bus stopped on the side of the road and the bus driver told us we were at Bosque Cerro Blanco, the only thing confirming this was a big wall with a steel gate with the words Cerro Blanco written on, but it didn't look very hopeful. We wondered up to the gates and it looked completely deserted, until a guard came out from a hut and unlocked the gate for us. We dropped off our bags and began up a little path to go and find a guide. The guard had warned us about the mosquitos but we had forgotten repellent and thought it would be fine. We couldn't have been much more wrong-within about 5 minutes we were already being bitten alive and it ended up us both having to watch each others backs and slapping the massive mosquitos whenever they landed on either of us. Several other people walked past and clearly found the whole scene hilarious and then kindly offered us some repellent. We finally found our guide who agreed to take us around for an hour or so and we managed to see quite a lot of lizards, lots of trees and sadly no monkeys. He said we would have had to hike a lot further up which in our attire (flip-flops and a dress) wasn't exactly going to be feasible, and also I think the amount of noise we made swatting mosquitos and complaining we were being eaten alive frightened any other animals away. Next stop was some mangroves- however, once we arrived we were told you had to be there at 4am so we returned back to the bus station again before catching the final bus that day back to Mancora.

Classic breakfast for Clem

The animals we would have seen had we been a bit less preoccupied with the mosquitos

Day 53: Manglaralto

A deserted beach in Ecuador; Manglaralto

Day 52: Montañita

We have arrived in Ecuador!! Montañita is a little beach town in Southern Ecuador where lots of surfers come for the waves. This evening we were able to cook our very first meal since being here, which was amazing and then watched another gorgeous sunset.

Day 51: Las Pocitas

We heard about this amazing beach about a km south of Mancora-so we took a little tuk tuk down an incredibly bumpy dirt track and almost got bounced out of the taxi. The beach we found was called Las Pocitas and was an amazing palm tree fringed stretch of sand-so we made ourselves very at home and lay around soaking up our first rays of sun- which for poor Clem would turn into a pretty bad burn. This evening we are going to be heading up to Ecuador to a little place called Montanitas-only a 12 hour bus journey this time.