Swollen tootsies, vivid dreams and asking Crush his age

The 20 hour bus journey north to Mancora had some totally classic llama giggles 1. Daisy screamed out loud in the midst of a nightmare, panicking everyone on the bus and the language barrier proved hard in explaining that it was only a nightmare and all was okay. 2. Leaning over Lou to get into my seat, I heard my trousers rip right on the crotch which I think people thought was either a fart or some kind of white ginger thing 3. Waking in the early hours to swollen ugly ogre tootsies- can't say that was very comfortable! Turns out that is now a common thing for me when travelling, mmm sexy sausage toes! The journey hugged the coast all the way up, passing through a dry desert landscape and scattered favelas. As three- fifths of Peru is home to the amazon, it became clear that these coastal roads are the main routes for travelling north and south. Huge ice trucker looking lorries obviously travel through the night regularly importing and exporting to and from the city and furthermore I'm assuming into neighbouring countries. Yet more alarming to me was the fact that the Peruvian people travel for hours and hours by bus just as we had done, on a regular basis. My 9 hour journey during university days can't even compete with the miles travelled by the locals to get to and from different parts of Peru. I must add the pollution was shocking and gave off a very unpleasant smell- we probably weren't far off it ourselves after 20 hours of travelling. So we did finally make it to Mancora and it was very sweet stepping off the bus!

Mancora wasn't quite what we were expecting. I would describe it as a slightly upgraded Magaluf. We were staying at Loki hostel, a round the clock party- drink, sunbathe, drink more, dance all night, sleep and repeat! It had a very good energy and everyone was very friendly. During our short 2 night stay, we frazzled ourselves on the beach, ate some seriously good food and took a 30 minute bus to El Ñuro to go snorkelling with turtles. I know what you're thinking- 'wow, snorkelling with turtles, white sand, clear water'...but no, far from it! We arrived at a fishing harbour and at the end of the fishing pier was a small poopy smelling dock to jump off of into the murky poopy looking water. We paid for the most pathetic looking life jackets (in hindsight perhaps only Daisy needed this as we all know about her stint on Bondi rescue), jumped in and couldn't really stop laughing it was so bizarre. Not only was I more of an attraction than the turtles because of my luminous skin, the water was so murky the turtles weren't even visible. Although when the turtles did surface it was really incredible. I've never seen large turtles in the wild like that before, though I didn't like the fact they were sectioned within the fishing nets as a jammy little profitable business on the side for the locals. We had some delicious food in Mancora, from a tuna, avocado and caramelised red pepper salad with passionfruit dressing to an endless supply of fresh smoothies- I was really impressed! Despite not having the tolerance to live by the Loki 'motto' in the daytime (a corona at 9am isn't the most appealing) we got involved with beer pong and pool in the evening, although lou and I were having slight issues actually hitting the ball as the cue stick was so sticky from the heat, the friction stopped us from showing off our full potential...obviously nothing to do with the 'blood shots' (vodka, grenadine and red bull-vom). So one day in, our South America books to hand and some dodgy wifi, we looked into our next move. We came to the conclusion that crossing into Ecuador and flying south to Cusco would be too expensive and with our one week time limit before Machu Picchu it would mean a fleeting visit to Ecuador and so the saying goes 'quality not quantity'. This gives us the opportunity to truly explore Peru. It also meant bracing ourselves again for the same 20 hour bus journey that had dropped us only a day earlier from Lima to Mancora, and furthermore, another 4 hour bus journey from Lima south to Ica where we would get a taxi and stay in Huacachina. It's disappointing not to have made it to Ecuador, especially to the Galapagos Islands which look absolutely breathtaking, but what is there to complain about, we're off to an idyllic looking oasis to snowboard our way down some serious sand dunes and just as a serious surfing chiller guy said back in Mancora 'once you catch that first wave, theres just no looking back brah'...sure it will be something like that. Until the llamas trot again (trot...do llamas trot?), give me some "fin, noggin, duuuuude!"