I did make it to Mancora despite stretching time to its limit. About 15 minutes before I was supposed to arrive at the bus terminal, I was just about finishing my lunch at a cheap restaurant in Lima. Very quickly my situation became clear and I was immidiately in a taxi back to my hostel to pick up my bags. As my Spanish became incomprehensible in my rushed state, the only way I could get the taxi to wait for me was to rudely order the girl I was sharing the taxi with to stay put and keep the driver company while I got my bags. Leaving the hostel in bad traffic, I made the mistake of asking a Peruvian taxi driver to go faster. We proceeded to speed inbetween lanes of traffic until I eventually arrived at the terminal with less than five minutes before the bus was supposed to leave.

In Mancora I was reunited with Tom, Felix and Alex, who I originally met in Santiago and have bumped into at many points during my trip since then. We spent the first day hiring tuk-tuks and driving to some hot springs outside of Mancora before spending a very drunken night drifting between many bars.

After a painfully unsociable skype call home (I was in no mood to give an enthusiastic account of recent events and news of Brighton is always so boring compared to anything that happens out here), my second day in Mancora was spent lazing on the beach and the hostel until moving up to Ecuador in the evening.