Friday 13 September - Sunday 15 September

Mancora, Peru

With our tickets already booked from Guayaquil (Ecuador) to Mancora (Peru) we were relieved to have made the connection in time. We were due to arrive in Guayaquil the night before so we used our booking at a nearby hostel to shower and grab a few hours rest before getting back on the bus. We left Guayaquil at 2pm on the comfortable Cruz del Sur coach and arrived in Mancora at about 11pm that night. Thanks to new border complex just away from Huaquillas, the crossing was a breeze.

Our hostel here couldn't have been more aptly named.....Misfit Hostel. Run by two hilarious travelers, Rodrigo from Portugal who has developed a mixed up accent of his own and Adam from the UK who sounds like Russell Brand. They lease four basic, rustic but charming beach cabins from the more well established hostel next door called The Point. Misfit is right on the beach, the sun sets on your balcony, and is a work in progress, albeit slow progress, but we had a cracking time here with these guys and their unwanted but kindly adopted stray dogs. The kind of place you can hang out for a week at least, even a month.....wish we could have.
A 10 minute walk up the beach to the town center which is packed with restaurants and bars serving up good seafood and great Pisco Sours. They party hard here, locals and travelers alike, we enjoyed nights at the hostel though, drinking cheap beer and Adams' cocktails around a bonfire talking about philosophy and shaved chimpanzees thanks to a weird Swedish website that Martin, one of our fellow travelers was interested in.

Sad to leave the beaches of Mancora and the misfits, but a date with Machu Picchu can't be ignored and we headed off on a tuk-tuk to catch our 5pm overnight bus to the capital, Lima.