Click on the play button above to see a video of me and Sarah (the tour leader) on a Motorbike taxi ride which stops to refuel... Listen for the little girl at the house yelling gasolinnnaaa.. Its very cute!
Punta Sol/Mancora, Peru
In Punta Sol we stayed in a very cool little hostel on the beach.. We spent 3 relaxing days here with everyone doing a lot of reading and i finally finished reading the REM biography which was good..
¨The Anacondas¨ won the beach volleyball tournament that consisted of two teams.. On grand final day ¨The BoaConstrictors¨ really didn´t have the skills to compete with the power that ¨The Anacondas¨ brought to the ¨sandy beach¨..
Sarah, our tour leaders birthday fell on the last day of August and we all went out for dinner in Mancora.. Even though i had led the team to vicory, my fellow Anaconda team mate decided to spill red wine all over my tshirt and recently proclaimed favourite shorts.. But in her defence she did pay for them to be washed and they came out as good as new... :)
Punta Sol was about half an hour by motorbike taxi from Mancora (the main town of the area) and we all spent a considerable amount of time transiting back and forth between the two towns to use the internet, do washing etc.. By the end of the three days we all had sore bums from the damaging vibrations of the taxi trips..
Huanchaco, Peru
Our next stop was Huanchaco which was a very small beach town that must be a summer surf town or something because the town was quite dead.. We only stayed here for one night.. The first night here we went and got dinner at a local restaurant and then after me and Andrew went out to get a couple of beers before heading back home... On the way to find a pub we had a run in with a Texan guy who was a great insight into how people can turn out!
He was sitting out the front of his hotel completely drunk... Imagine a guy with a massive Texan accent and who speaks at about double the volume of everyone else and slurring every word... He was very excited to show us around his restaurant and especially his barbeque/grill! It was the love of his life.. He then went on to tell us about the pig that he was buying the next day to turn into sausages and of his dream to have a spa outside his restaurant and have ¨Jungle girls¨ not wearing much serving his customers sausages.. It was quite an interesting experience and something that me and Andrew would laugh about for days to come!!
The next day we visited some pre-incan mud ruins and archelogical sites which were very hunky-dory.. And then that night we caught a very comfortable overnight bus to Huaraz..
Huaraz, Peru
Again we only stayed in Huaraz for one night... Here we went on a 7 or 8 hour trek starting at 4000m and climbing to 4600m and at the end were rewarded by the bluest of blue lakes with a waterfall flowing into it... The trek was awesome and by the end we were all completely exhausted! But all 4 of us agreed that it was one of the highlights of the kumuka trip (well the quito to lima part anyway as most of them continued through past lima)..
We again caught another overnight bus (this time we were in first class!) to Lima..
Lima, Peru
Well Lima was interesting... Let me start by saying that the whole trip i had been scared of Lima hearing that it was probably the most dangerous city in the highly visited South America area (besides columbia and venezuala). I swore i wouldn´t stay there long as the Kumuka tour finished in Lima and i planned to leave there after spending one night there and moving on down to Cusco... but the plane schedules didn´t really allow that so i was stuck there for 4 or so days..
Well on the first outing into the streets of Lima a guy ran up behind me and ripped my bag off of me breaking the strap and running off with it... (¨Haha¨ i can hear Toby saying again! :)) Andrew who i was with (i was more worried about getting a knife in my chest) gave chase but the guy ran into an alley and then back around to the street he took it off of me on and jumped in a car with another guy and drove off... With my ipod and camera in his possession... Yay.. Good times again.. Luckily they are both insured.. But yeah i have a severe lack of photos of lima and cusco now.. And no music to listen to.. Im getting withdrawls... Seriously! i keep going to internet cafes to go to bands myspaces to listen to music!
Also in Lima we visited the black market where they were selling electrical products (including ipods and cameras which probably got there through similar situations as mine were taken from me). I considered buying a new ipod from there but changed my mind as i thought that it would be a tad too ironic (basically buying my own stuff back off of someone who took it from me)..
We had a night out in Miraflores where we visited the casino and a brazil bar which was pretty cool...
All in all Lima was fun but i still don´t like it.. Everyone pretty much got the same impression that it was dangerous and no one really felt safe walking the streets alone.. I don´t wanna go back there..
I flew to cusco on the 10th of September awaiting Soph´s arrival on the 19th..
