Peru

Mancora for New Year!! We arrive in the small fishing village type town after another fun bus journey and our first land border crossing of the trip in the sunshine......yes, finally, SUNSHINE!!
We pre-booked our hostel, which it turns out is more like a resort than a hostel! We didnt have to pay at the bar (everything went on a tab....dangerous!) and although we were right on the beach we were fenced in and had a nice pool, bar and hammocks to relax in.

View from our room

The hostel!!



It was a hard few days!!

 It was nice to relax and enjoy the sunshine for a few days with the odd cerveza......well, maybe a few more than the odd one! A couple of nights before New Year we had a couple of relaxing drinks after dinner. We were just having a couple of beers until happy hour rolled round....a couple of vodka´s...no harm there right?? Normally, probably not but when the shots were 50ml standards and Alana had the equivalent of 250mls/8+ shots in about 40mins plus the previous beers it didnt make for a pretty end of the evening!! Well, so I'm told, I passed out as she hugged the toilet.......

The next few days were spent chilling out by the pool and enjoying the sunshine.
New Year rolled round and we got set for a big night. Once dressed in yellow and gold (the colours for Peruvian New Year - to symbolise Incan colours and prosperity for the coming year) we headed to the bar and started slowly, watching a group of Aussies do Centurion/the hundy-club finishing at 8:30pm!! God only knows how they managed to carry on till 5am!!
We were quite sensible and only got a little drunk, socialised and danced the night away! It was a great night and we met a lot of good people.

From Mancora we went to Lima. Although a massive city, we both quite liked it. We visited the Catacombs at Monasterio de San Francisco and saw the collections of bones from the 70,000 plus people that have been buried there.
After strolling around we went for a nice lunch where we had the most amazing cerviche (raw fish with lime and chilli) and our first pisco sour (the national cocktail). In the afternoon we went down to the coast and walked through Parque Del Amor (Park of Love).

Monasterio de San Francisco

Huacachina was the next stop. A tiny town surrounding a lagoon in the middle of the desert surrounded by mountainous sand dunes. We only spent the one day there but had a great time going dune buggying and sand boarding.

Next stop was Nazca for a flight over the 'Nazca Lines', we were all booked in and ready to go but when we arrived we were told that we were unable to fly! Apparently there was an accident a couple of months ago and so the government brought in a lot of new safety requirements. This meant that out of 18 companies that used to do the tour only 3 were now still in business!! On the day we arrived there were only 2 companies working as the other was grounded for maintenance. We asked to be booked in for the following day but they were only able to secure one place. Alana kindly let me take the spot, however when we arrived the following day and took the flight there was infact a space free next to me!! NOT HAPPY! Apparently they leave open spots for people that just turn up to the airport and are willing to pay horrendous amounts of money!!
The flight itself was quite good but it was difficult to enjoy it fully while bouncing around and trying to take photos of the different pictures in the desert. Only the hummingbird was clearly visible, the others were sometimes a little difficult to make out but it was great to see them in real life rather than on National Geographic!

The Hummingbird

The Spider

From Nazca we headed on yet anbother long bus journey to Cusco ready to start our Machu Picchu trip!

Ecuador

Quito

We arrived in Quito for Christmas Eve and arived at our hostel......our dark, dank, horrendously overpriced hostel! Given the prospect of spending Christmas Day in this place we opted for going on a tour to the Otavalo Markets - the largest open air markets in South America - visiting a few other places en route including a chance to stop and take a picture on the Equator line.
We had a quiet Christmas Eve night with only a quick Margarita and a meatfest of a burger and went to bed early.
Christmas Day came but alas, Father Christmas obviously got lost on his way to find us as my stocking was empty!
We joined the tour on a surprisingly full bus first stopping at a shop that made models and figurines. They were crap! Remember FIMO when you were younger, the dough that was baked in the oven......well this place made a living from it.
We then went to a bakery to see and old clay oven in progress......but actually we didnt because there was no baking going on(!) and then on to the Equator line. This was a brief stop but quite interesting. Equador is the only country on which the Equator runs over a glacier and is the best one for astrology as it has fixed points on the horizon, everywhere else is too flat or dense with jungle.

At the Equator as marked by GPS

Having Christmas in both hemisphere's!!

The markets were quite good with all sorts of touristy tat for sale by indignious sellers. We bought Alana a bag, Alpaca wool jumper and the two of us some art work. We even came across some Alpaca fur hats.......which I may well still purchase (much to Alana's horror!!).

Should it be this one??

This one?

Or maybe.......

On the way back we stopped at a lake before going back to Quito for Christmas dinner. We cooked our own at the hostel thinking nowhere would be open (turns out loads of places were because only 45% of Ecuador is Roman Catholic) and had steak and veg.....well we thought it was steak, on reflection it may well have been some old car tyre!
A bit of a disappointing Christmas, but these things happen and we still had New Year to come!!

We also went south to the town of Cuenca. Old Colonial style buildings and really chilled out. Had we have had longer apparently the surrounding mountains and jungle are pretty amazing!
It had a nice river we walked along to some old Incan ruins before visitng the museum to see shrunken heads!
Another highlight of Cuenca (for Alana!!) was me ordering a 'Chocolate Especial' - from the hot chocolate menu - thinking that it would be hot chocolate with marshmellow, cream, maybe even a couple of hundreds and thousands.......but no.What I actually received (as Alana laughed at my crushingly disappointed face) was a hot chocolate with cheese! YES! Thats right, CHEESE!! Its actually a speciality here but to be honest I didnt find it that special!!

Travelling from Cuenca on to Mancora in Peru for New Year was an interesting/nerve racking experience. We travelled for about 4 hours on a wet, muddy single lane dirt road with drops of 100-200m on one side. Meeting other vehicles coming the other way was interesting as we inched past the other vehicles and fish tailed around corners in the mud. We did eventually make it back on to paved road and finally to the Peruvian border!

The river in Cuenca

Not fallen out yet!!