We finally made it to Mancora on the north coast of Peru! Crossing the boarder from Ecuador to Peru was quite scary! We had to get off on the Ecuadorian side and wait almost an hour to get our passports stamped (meanwhile our bus took off with our backpacks and the other passengers - luckily it returned after a while, but it was scary to think ¨damn! we just lost all our stuff"
Then on the Peruvian side there was a guy who almost ripped the passports out of our hands, filled out the immigration-form for us and then wanted us to pay 5$!!! Nigel refused to pay that much and the guy got really angry! Holy shit! I seriously thought he was gonna beat him up... pretty scary! We ended up paying 2$ and then found out that normally they get paid about 50 cents. :(
Getting ripped of like that went on for the rest of the trip to Mancora... Busdrivers, Taxidrivers etc., they all just want your money, and if you´re not careful they charge you three times as much as the normal price would be.
We stayed the first night in Mancora in a pretty lousy hostel, paying 15 Soles (about 3 or 4 Euros) each for the night. Then we found this really nice place right next to it, nice rooms, an awesome terrace to hang out on right by the beach... for the same price!!! This was too good to be true. We found out the next morning that it costs 15 DOLLARS per person - a huge difference! We tried to argue with the lady cause she totally didn´t make it clear that she meant dollars! I mean, common?!? Who would tell you the price in Dollars if you have to pay in Soles anyway??? We both got pretty annoyed...
I guess we just have to get used to being really careful with what people are trying to sell.
Same thing with the busticket to Lima: we asked yesterday at one office and the guy told us it´s 80 Soles, we return today and find out it´s only 70?!?
Anyway, we´re just about to hop on the bus and somehow survive the 17 hours to Lima! It´s gonna be pretty bad but we figured that a flight to Lima and further on to Cusco is out of the question cause it´s way too expensive.
Apart from the whole getting-ripped-off-thing we spent some really nice days at the beach. We rented surfboards for a day and it was a lot of fun but soooo hard. When you watch them it seems so easy but until you get in the water yourself you have no idea how much effort it is! We were able to catch some nice waves and just lying on your board and cruising back to the shore was tons of fun.... kind of scary as well cause you get so much speed. We ended up with some minor bruises and cuts... but I´d totally do it again.
I´ve also learnt my lesson about using insect repellent and a mosquito-net at night(thanks again Julie!!! I´m so glad I have one with me now!) as I got bitten all over and had to spend the whole last night being super itchy! Really annoying... guess I´ll be more cautious next time!
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