Sunday

We woke up early and headed to the train station at the end of the high street. It took AGES to get our tickets but we made the 8am train on the Devils Nose train journey from Alausi to Sibambe. This is a 800m descent criss crossing the mountains. It{s an impressive journey and you used to be able to ride on the roof, but 2 japanese tourists died about 2 years ago, so now you can only travel in the carriages.

Once down the mountain we had some food and shown the traditional dance, which was good. They then picked people out to join in with the dancing, so the young boy came straight up to me...how could i refuse!! We danced for about 20 minutes before heading back to the train and back to Alausi.

The town had exploded. It had gone from a sleepy town into a fully functional market town. People were selling everything! We got our bags and got a taxi up to the top of the town and waited for our bus to Cuenca, which took about 4 hours. Once there i investigated getting the international bus into Peru. There was a bus in 3 hours time, so we got some food and i managed to charge my phone while watching a film in the main waiting area.

Our bus arrived at 6pm and off we headed to Machala. Here we got dumped at a bus station to wait for the international bus. It seemed to take ages, but i think that was mainly because we did not know what time the other one would turn up.

It arrived and we joined it, with there also being a lot of other travellers on their already. We then travelled for about another 2 hours to the boarder Huaquillas. We had to then get off the bus at a random place and get there exit stamp. Getting back on the bus, we then travelled for about 15 mins before getting off and filing into a building to get our Peruvian visa. We cleared this at 1.30am!! The trip to Mancora took another 2 hours. Adam had been told of of a hostel called the Loki del Mar, so we headed there, and managed to get a room at 3.30am!