Mancora, Peru and Ecuador
About this blog
So , I shot up through Peru from La Paz as I desperately needed some sunshine and heard that Mancora was the Peruvian hot spot for sun and sand!
I checked into another Loki hostel with the intention of staying there maybe a couple of weeks then heading straight up to Cartagena, Colombia for Christmas and New Year.... several of the friends I'd met along the way were also headed that way.
Within a week however, I decided to start working behind the bar again, I know, I can't help myself as many of you know, I love the bar and if it paid enough I'd make it my career! And so, as has happened all throughout my trip, my plans changed again!! Every 5 mins, I have been changing my plans and destinations... the only thing I really planned a date for was Barranquilla Carnaval, but we'll come to that later!
So, a month of making friends, sunbathing and living an absolutely carefree life too close to the Equator to forget to put sunscreen on followed and I was very close to staying there for longer by taking on the bar manager's job and renting an apartment. But, again I changed my mind and headed off to Ecuador with my friend Iain who I worked with also.
The trip up until now had been a couple of months of working and not much travelling around, although I was making local friends and speaking Spanish with them. When Iain and I left Mancora, we decided to head to Cuenca in Ecuador, a very beautiful and to my surprise wealthy looking town where taxi's actually stopped to let you past and there were not a thousand taxi drivers waiting to pick you up from the bus stop, trying to clamber on before the bus had even stopped! Ecuador is a beautiful country and was a complete change of course from the dessert land of Peru, a welcome change to visit museums and part take in some activities other than volley ball. We went on to Baņos, after a very hairy bus ride.
The Pan American highway is where the bus drivers seem to have been told to put their foot down at all times, over take only on blind corners and see how close to the sheer drop of an edge you can get! Most south american bus drivers are like this and I don't usually pay that much attention but I was bracing myself constantly as we seemed to be close to take off by the speed he was going! Luckily the bus ride was only 10hours or so, not 20 like I was used to previously!
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