Mancora is a beach town with good surfing. A bit of a party town with our hotel being the main place!! As soon as we got wrist bands, this was a bit of a giveaway!! It{s like i am in a club med holiday for 18 to 30{s. It{s a nice resort, got a pool, right on the beach, bar. Every evening there is a drinking competition either beer pingpong etc. Just before we arrived, Shane and Prue who we met in Quito on our first night, had arrived, so we met up with them...

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 an...

Saturday After a relaxing morning, we checked out, and found a few others doing the same. At breakfast i had bumped into the English guy from Quito, he was heading to a jungle tribe for the night. Once at the train station, we got on a bus to Riobamba and then got to the train station. The Nariz del Pedlo (the devils Nose) train journey only goes on certain days, and it would have been a 2 hours bus from Riobamba to Alausi where the train now starts it{s desc...

Friday After having breakfast on the terrace, i suggested a 20km bike ride down to Rio Verde, as Adam likes biking. After hiring mountain bikes, we headed out of town. I seemed to have a hard time peddling as going up hill there was a lot of resistance and going down hill, my peddles just swung round if i tried to do anything before slowing right down! Adam sorted out the gears for going up hill, and i have content on the down hill bit. There was a quite str...

Wednesday We travelled to Quilatoa to see the crator lake which is 250m deep due to the volcano. This meant going to the south terimal to catch a local bus (where we watched Final Destination 1 in Spanish), to Latacunga, then change to Quilatoa. Once there, it ended up being a tiny little hamlet of a few houses, and the hostel was a few rooms out back of a family{s home. Very basic. Once we had a look over the side of the crator down to the lake (we had to k...