Ecuador & Mancora, Peru!

I kept on saying to myself "I'm going to write a blog as soon as I get back from Holiday" but I have been avoiding it since I have got back to Ciudad de los ninos, I am still trying to catch up on sleep!

So it all started with a 26 hour bus journey from Lima with Cruz Del Sur to Guayaquill in Ecuador. It wasn't actually a bad journey if I'm honest with you and it seemed a lot shorter than our journey to Bolivia which was easily around 11 hours shorter. We must admit Cruz Del Sur is the most expensive bus company you can go with in Peru, but it is also the safest and most reliable company. Seeing as though this was a 26 hour journey crossing borders we went with this option and we weren't dissapointed! We got the cheaper seats which were basically bed seats they lent back almost completley and had a great space of leg room. There were DVD's playing through out the journey and Breakfast, Lunch and dinner was all included (yes we were on the bus that long to get all of these meals). It cost s/194 each which is like £50 which yh is pretty steep BUT we arrived all in one piece and very safely. Might I add that this time I did get through immigration without any problems (although my heart was beating at 1000mph when the guy checked my passport).

We arrived in Guayaquill at the bus station which is connected to a shopping centre, so the first thing we did was go to the food court and get something to eat. Funnily enough you can't find very "cultural" food in a food court so I ended up getting a KFC and Rachel got a Mc Donalds lol. At that point we hadn't sorted out our accomodation so it was a quick search through my Lonley Planet "South America on a Shoe String" book and we found one of the "cheaper" hostals called DreamKatcher (or something along those lines and yes spelt with a K). It was actually a nice hostal, we paid for a double room which was $23 for the both of us, but seeing as though it wasn't very busy in the hostal we got a room with around 4 beds. It was in a really quiet area, not the nicest of areas but still quiet. We got a cab there for $3 but we later found out you can get buses for $0.25, so funnily enough we used buses for the rest of our time in Ecuador.

Guayaquill was pretty chilled out to be honest, there isn't a whole lot of "touristy" stuff to do in the biggest city in Ecuador but we done about all there was to do. We heard about this place 'Malecon 2000' so we got a bus to the street nearest to it. It was a bloody long street filled with tonnes of shops and resteraunts. Malecon 2000 was just basically a really big peer, with a few things to look at, a nice walk way bit filled with all these tropical plants and all that stuff. Wasn't hugely interesting but it was nice. After a stroll through there we went on the look out for lunch, it involved walking up a hell of a lot of stairs and we found out half way we were walking towards some tourist sight which happened to be right up the top. Every resteraunt on the walk seemed to be closed which was SO annoying, we found one which looked open. Went and sat down and asked for the menu to which we got the reply "all we sell is beer" LOL so we ended up getting one each and enjoyed the view. We walked all the way to the top and it was like some watch tower and info about the pirates of guayaquill. Yet again not the most exciting Rach and I have ever done but I'm glad we did it.

After no luck in the food department along Las Penas we got something to eat underneath this bridge next to the exotic plants and this little lake in a nice little resteraunt, I got my favourite EVER dish, Ceviche, which is basically raw fish cooked in Lime; EXTREMELY TASTY! That kind of brought an end to our day and we went back to the Hostal and chilled out.

The next morning we got up early (not early as in Ciudad de los ninos standards) at 8am, packed our stuff and got on a bus back to the bus station as we wanted to go to this beach town called Montanita which we had heard so much about. Its around 3 1/2 hours from the bus station and we could've waited until 1pm to get a direct bus or gotten 2 buses at around 10am so we chose the earlier option. This was a locals bus and whilst the bus itself was fine, after getting off the second bus we found out that someone had put their bag of fresh fish ontop of my bag, now I had a wet and fishy bag which was horrenouds. That joint with the heat has left my bag smelling absolutely hidious.

Montanita was beautiful, the beach was amazing and the cocktails even better! The hostal wasn't 5* to say the least, we did go for one of the cheaper options $7 each and we shared a bed to get that cheap price lol. It said it came with its own private bathroom and to be fair it did. Although the bathroom was so small that you couldn't even sit on the toilet with your feet all the way round, and the shower had a huge clump of hair in it, big enough to make a wig. And oh yh lets not forget that it didn't have a door! So number 2's were banned in that room and Rachel and I did not use that shower for our stay there instead used the shared one.

We spent the day on the beach and the evening in the bars, they weren't jam packed because the busiest surfing season has just finished but it was busy enough. We got dinner first in this resteraunt/bar called Hola ola, my meal was absolutely MASSIVE i proper enjoyed it, but if I ate like that every day travelling, I would come home a very fat Tanya. The next club I can't even remember the name had a magic show on and one of them shoes were theirs the material tied to the ceiling and they do all this gymnastic stuff on it, can't remember what its called but it was really cool. We danced the night away to some reggaeton & salsa then came back to the room well into the early hours of the morning and conked out. As soon as we woke up we headed back to Hola ola for a cholestoral filled breakfast, I had a yummy omelete stuffed with EVERYTHING and Rachel ate a heart attack inducing breakfast of fruit pancakes and ice cream yummmmm!!! The rest of that afternoon was spent nosying around the stalls then at around 1pm we got on a direct this time to Guayaquill.

After the 3 and a half hour bus journey we had to wait 2 hours until we could catch our 9 hour bus to Mancora. Yet again we got on a very cheap bus which was a locals bus. The amount of stuff these locals try and bring on the bus is actually hiliarious, and they dont even bring it in suitcases. This woman actually filled up a washing basket with stuff! I mean is she honestly for real???? The bus was either really hot/really cold and windy due to the fact the air conditioning didnt work so the only way you could get ventilation was through the windows. There was a serious lack of space with the seats and rachel had a huge fat columbian sitting in front of her who was ademant he wanted his chair lent all the way back and more leaving rachel squashed to the point her bag was now at her chin. Anyways we got through Immigration fine and got 180 days this time and arrived in Mancora at 2am after around a 10 hour bus journey. We immediatley caught a moto taxi to Loki hostal and got our room which I had reserved a month before.

The Mancora Loki Hostal is more like a bloody resort than a hostal it is HUGE with a swimming pool and bar and everything right on the beach. Me and rach just chilled out on the beach and went swimming. Whilst we were getting ready and I was showering I heard a voice call my name that wasn't rachels, after a few seconds thinking who the hell is it I realised it was Claire and Tamara two of the other Project Trust girls who are working in Piura they came down to see us yayyy, then they told us that 3 more were coming, Hannah and Jenny who are working in Chiclayo, and Izzy who is working in Trujillo. The next few days are self explanatory to be honest, 7 18-19 year olds out on the beach in the sun with alcohol? Yh so we won't go into details but it was SO much fun. After 3 days in total it was time for us all to head off on Sunday, Rachel and I were first and it was actually really sad saying bye to the girls, some of them we may not see again. It was so good being with them because they are the only people who can honestly understand what it is we have gone through, we exchanged horror stories of work and all that. But yh it was a wicked time overall.

This VISA run was defo more of a holiday than the Boliva one, not because we didnt enjoy the bolivia one we absolutely loved it, but this time we spent the majority of the time on a Beach LOL, literally i think the only time we werent on a beach was when we were on a bus or that one day in Guayaquill haha.

So I've been at work for over a week now and it doesn't even feel like I've had a break, we are literally thrown right back into it! Still loving it as always but it is a hell of a lot of work I must admit. Im just in my room doing this blog as I have had to sneak away from work as the past 2 days I've had these bad migraines waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa but meh all is good.

Once again thanks for reading the blog, the next one will be written whenever I can be bothered to be honest, nothing exciting should be happening in the next few weeks. Rachels birthday is in under a month now so I need to start planning something AND RACHEL IS RUNNING A MARATHON on the 15th May. I can't say I'm going to join her LOL, running is not my thing, tell me to dance for 24 hours straight I'll do it, a naked bike ride you know anything LOL but you will never catch me doing a 21k run unless I was running for a charity with about a years notice loool. I'm going to look into renting a motorbike or quad bike to follow rachel and take pictures of her hahaha.

7 weeks exactley until I head off to Brazil and see my dad :)

Simply signed, Simply Compas
xxxx