Mancora, Peru

Mancora is amazing...not at all what we expected...but truely amazing!!! Hotter than we expected too! We stumbled off the very early morning bus into the small town through which the Panamerican Highway runs. We found a great (but basic) hostel just on the beach (Laguna Camp) (you can see our beach hut with Ro outside). Not much to do here except, eat, drink and surf/swim/snorkel etc... We tried our hands at some surfing but Orla discovered she really lacked the ability to balance (and was also terrified of killing some of the small children in the water with her board)! Found some great places to eat and everywhere seems to have a constant "Happy Hour"! Great place to eat is Sirena (if anyone ever comes to this town), change is short in the town ( but very important!), mosquitos are present so long sleeves at night are essential and cerviche is a nice local dish which consists of raw fish marinated in lemon juice, sounds awful but really very tasty!off now to Lima by bus, which is 16 hours and we plan to arrive by 10am which will give Ro four hours to find a suitable venue to watch the Ireland v France match!

Beautiful Mancora Sunset

Guayaguil

After Galapagos neither of us felt 100% so we decided to stay in Guayaguil for a few days to recover. We stayed in a comfortable hotel with all the amenities and relatively cheap. To be honest for the first 2 days we didnt think much of the city and didnt do much. On the last day we booked a late bus to Mancora in Peru and having time to kill and feeling better did some exploring.

We were pleasantly surprised to find a lovely modern marina and boardwalk with loads of nice shops, rambaling around took up most of our day (even got in a movie in english). Following the guide books recommendation we went looking for a swiss restaurant which was overpriced so we stumbled along until we found a really cool live band playing on a bridge with a good crowd of locals enjoying. We joined the fun, with some beers and hamburgers , the only tourists in sight.

We then ran for our bus, which was very comfortable and left us in Mancora early on Monday.

Just to let everyone know, the meteroite fell in the very south east of Peru, were currently in the Northwest. Distance wise its the equivalent to a meteor in Germany and us being worried about you guys, so all is well.

Galapagos Islands

We have to say the Galapagos experience was amazing and the place really is so different from everywhere else in the world. Really the photos are the best way of describing what we saw and how close we got to all of the wildlife on the islands. We left for the Galapagos with very few preconceptions of what the cruise would involve, our main hope was that the other 14 people on our boat wouldnt be old American or Japanese tourists (no offence intented), as they made up the majority of passengers on our outbound flight. In every sense we were really lucky, nearly all the passengers were between 20-35 and everyone spoke perfect english, the crew were wonderful and our guide (William) was superb. The boat itself the Monserrat II was even better than expected, it was both spacious and comfortable and the food was delicious, even if it did get a little rocky and night, but suppose we´ll have to blame the pacific ocean for that.

The itinerary itself was very exact, we breakfasted at 7 left the boat 8, returned at 12.30 for lunch returning to shore at 2.30 and returning at 6 for dinner. Our tour guide would bring us to various sites of interest and would never fail to answer every conceivable question regarding the islands. We flew to Baltra then visited Espanola, Santa Cruz, Santa Fe, South Plaza, San Cristobel. We got the opportunity to see some amazing wildlife in their natural habitat and also to snorkel with sealions and sea turtles and even a shark (scary). We also got within 15 feet of a mother and calf humpback whale, which was an added bonus.

The islands themselves are so incredibly different and even change over a few hundred metres from barren wasteland to lush forests, sandy beachs to lava formed cliffs with a few cactii for good measure. It was expensive but definitely worth it and we´d highly recommend it.

Cuenca

Cuenca was our fourth Colonial town out of five but in our opinion definately the best! It's the 3rd largest city in Ecuador but had the feel of a small town and felt very safe. We made the mistake of staying in Verde Limon (with our two new friends) which was dirty, noisy and run by crazy people but nevertheless habitable for one night especially after a few bottles of wine! The center of the city was lovely with loads of nice shops and restaurants (its only a pity we had so little time there!) but we did find a great panama hat shop and also invested in two raincoats which we hope we don't need! Then on to another 4 hour bus journey through the misty mountains of Ecuador (you could barely see a foot ahead in places...fair play to the driver!) as we had to be in Guayaquil (pronounced WHY - A- KIL as we discovered when no one would sell us bus tickets to GUY-A-QUILL...pretty similar in my book!!!) as our Galapagos trip starts in the morning!

Riobamba and the The Devils Nose Train

After scouring the internet in search of up to date information about the famous Devils Nose Train we jumped on a bus to Riobamba - not knowing whether it was going to run or not!! Riobamba as a town is pretty irrelevant so we were lucky that the train ran on Fridays.

For all those who google the Devil Nose Train it's scheduled to leave on Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays at 7. We arrived at the ticket booth on Thurday afternoon to get Fridays ticket...unfortunately we were told that tickets would be sold at 6 am the next morning instead. As our hostel (Tren Dorado) was full and we guessed everyone was after the same thing we joined the queue at 4.45 am. We ended up about 20th (with a max of 40 tickets available) so the early rise was worth it!

The train itself left at 6.30 so we were last on, it turned out that the normal train was broken and so didn't run on Wednesday...we ended up on a vehicle similar to a bus driving on tracks!

Train wasn't that scary and brought you through the mountains of Ecuador which meant we saw some great scenery. The reversing down the mountain at quite a speed with the edge of the cliff less than 1.5 feet away may have actually been scary but the views of the Devils Nose (mountain shaped like a nose!) wasn't outstanding in comparison with the rest of the journey.

Contrary to the huide books the journey only took 4 hours and we hopped off at Alausi at 11.15. We then had a very warm and slightly uncomfortable bus journey to Cuence where our search for the Panama hat continued!

Baños

Banos probably serve the worlds strongest and largest drinks measures - which even Ronan struggled with (hopefully this won't have put more hairs on him anyway as the "travel beard" is progressingly far too quickly!!!). Having struggled with language barriers for so long now we decided to brave it and took 4 hours of Spanish lessons which was a good idea to get some basics anyway...and so Ronan is now busy practicing by asking hardware shops for a UK to South America plug adaptor in his most fluent Spanish...needless to say we haven't yet got our hands on one but as the Nintendo DS has no battery left I'm sure Ro's presistence will pay off soon!! Baños was small and safe (even if my credit card and wallet (with little money) did go missing from our hostel room - the thief clearly was very deserving as they only tried to take out $15 from the ATM before my card got sucked in!!!!). The baths were hot, less natural then we had expected but fine none the less! Being the tourists that we are we went on a night volcano trip which involved looking at a big black mountain from about 3 miles away, could have been anything really!! Great meal in a restaurant called Casa Hood which is in all the guide books but seriously good value for money and fantastic atmosphere with jazz and blazing fireplace! We then packed our bags and off we went to Riobamba on a bumpy bumpy bus!!

Quito

We arrived in Quito last night from BA via Lima, the flights were grand, we flew taca which was much the same as aer lingus, apart from the fact you got free food and drink and paid alot more !!

We went to the Mongolian BBQ for dinner, which was $5 each and strong cocktails were only $1, still an expensive dinner by ecudorian standards. We booked a Galapagos cruise from the 9th-13th actually was cheaper then we though, it was $100 more to book first class rather than tourist and as it was only bout $20 a day more will probably be worth it. Our room last night was on the busiest street in the world, apart from the millions of people and cars it seems like there was 15 planes flying overhead every minute, I still dont understand who had all the fog horns, so we didn´t get much sleep.

We therefore moved to an hostal across the road which is just as nice and half price. Just got to watch the Liverpool goals from the Toulose trashing and hopefully the 6 from earlier will be on the Liverpool FC website later.

Go on the superpool !!!!!

PS: We found out the name of the town that makes Panama hats so we will be paying it a visit on our way to Peru from Ecuador (Ronan Allen)

PPS: Thanks saoirse for Marioland, its keeping Ronan busy!!!!

well exciting times as we headed out of Quito - discovered that DHL charge US$176 to post home less than a kilo of holiday paraphernalia! Needless to say we quickly decided to continue lugging the stuff around instead! Went to a fab andy warhol art exhibition (see picture) which was a bargain at only $1 in - we accidentally presumed it was prints and so us taking a photo of the original marilyn picture didn't go down so well!! Anyway we discovered we had missed out on Quitos big claim to fame and tourtist attraction "Mitad del Mundo" so headed out there in search of yet another kodak moment so got to stand either side of the equatorial line! Bus to Baños was absolutely mental (with a conductor literally hanging out the door the entire journey!) and stopped (or more accurately slowed down a little bit!) every 2 minutes (of the 4 hour journey that possibly should have been an hour long!) but we arrived there safely, if a little cold!