A warpus in Peru

Not any exceptional time to load. I'm actually accustomed to much larger pictures. And my connection loads CFC slow most of the time in any case.

Arrival in Mancora

Day 19 of trip - Thursday May 24th

We arrived in Mancora at 5am and it still fully dark and CRAZY.. Every gringo getting off the bus was immediately bombarded with taxi & hostel pamphlets, deals, and offers. We had just woken up so we were groggy and sleepy as hell and we didn't really want to put up with all the nonsense.. but we had no hostel reservations so we kind of had to.

We sorted through some of the offers flying our way as best as we could and picked a hostel. The pictures made it look decent enough - they had a private room available with 2 beds and a private bathroom, it was a 5 minute walk to the beach, and the price was reasonable.. Our cab proceeded to take us there, through the little town's small streets

It's a bit of a crappy video, but it actually conveys how we were feeling at the time fairly well. The cab was one of those bike/cab things, if you know what I'm talking about.. If not, there's a photo of one somewhere in this thread


Link to video.

We arrived at the hostel and the cabbie allowed us to check it out while he waited outside (so that we could go to a different hostel if we wanted to - I guess he thought we were indecisive @ the bus terminal or something).. So we went in, talked to the guy working the front desk, and asked to be shown a private room with 2 beds, etc.. The guy took us to a separate building that basically just had 1 bedroom and bathroom and nothing else.. It all looked very tropical - the roof was made of hay and crap.. Seemed pretty good, right? We looked around and checked in, then went back to the cabbie, paid up, and went to sleep.

Or so we thought.

The first thing we saw in our room was a GIANT cockroach casually strolling around, like it was no big deal.. My camera was out of reach, so I did not get a photo, but the thing was a couple inches in length, maybe 4 or 5? It was by far the largest cockroach looking thing I have EVER seen. It was kicked out of the way by Steve, and.. it went off somewhere or other. He totally should have killed it but I guess he didn't want that gunk on his shoe

This freaked us out.. but.. hey, we were near the equator, right? About 200km south of it, almost as far north in Peru as you can go. That means larger insects, right?

A map of the local area wouldn't really be useful, so here's one of South America.. Mancora is basically on the Pacific coast, almost as far north as you can go in Peru



Our beds had bug-protector things all around them.. which made us wonder what sort of other bugs were in the area and what sort of bugs might be crawling around while we slept.. I do not have a photo because was went to sleep right away (at about 5:30am). Or at least tried to.. Someone at the hostel was playing music.. fairly loudly.. We couldn't sleep. The toilet in the bathroom? Didn't fully work.. The bug-protector things over our beds? There were holes in them and they made everything look very cheap and unsavoury.. The beds? Not very comfortable.

At 9am we checked out of the hostel. To hell with it! We had already paid for 1 night but it was only about $7 each.. We did not care. We asked the guy working the front desk to call us a cab and we headed to Loki hostel - the party hostel we stayed at in Cusco and Miraflores. We had bad experiences with Loki in that they were LOUD.. at night.. We are not party poopers but that sort of thing just doesn't work very well when you're backpacking through a foreign country & and are exhausted from a crazy amount of hiking.

Either way, we knew what to expect there: it was a bit more expensive than other hostels, but there was usually a bar on premises, with food, beers, people who spoke English, other people our age, and most importantly of all, since this was Mancora, we would likely run into hoardes of 18-30 year old girls in bikinis.

Off to Loki we went.. Once we got there yes - there were girls in bikinis and the place looked just AMAZING compared to what we had encountered at the last hostel.. but.. they did not have room for us, at least at the time. Check-out was 11am and we were instructed to come back at noon or so. We added our names to the waiting list, left our bags in a secure location, went online for a bit to look up alternate hostels (just in case we couldn't get in @ Loki), and then went to check out the beach.

Imgur is being really stupid right now so for now here's 1 pic. Mancora is a small (pop 9,000) and really popular beach town, but it was just after the tourist season (december - march), not to mention early in the morning so it's not too busy (the way I like it)



The town is famous as a surfing spot, for its clean beaches, and is known for it's laid-back atmosphere

Máncora - Part 2

Day 19 of trip - Thursday May 24th

Our trip through Peru was winding down just the way we eventually wanted it to: on a sandy beach with palm trees. Initially (before we even set foot in Peru) our potential plans called for the last couple days of the trip to be spent in Lima, but.. plans had to be altered when we didn't end up doing the second hike, near Huaraz.. and a beach with palm trees, beach babes, yellow sand, and an adequate amount of sun turned into a more and more worthy goal as we made our way through the country.

(Beach babes not pictured)



These Magnificent Frigatebirds (no really, that's what they're called) were just sort of floating there in the wind



We walked down the beach to explore the surroundings.. Mancora isn't very large and our hostel was right at the edge of town anyway - we started walking away from town to get a better idea of what sort of stuff was around.

There were several decent looking beach homes



In Peru virtually nobody travels via boat - we were told that any ocean-bound vessels we'd see would be fishing boats, cargo transports, military vessels, and perhaps a foreign cruise ship or two.

Here's a bay we saw off in the distance



and a dock



There were a lot of what seemed to be fishing boats in the waters just beyond the dock above



Hmmmm very tempting.. but not really



This was the beach closer to our hostel

You could have included the beach babes....

Use your imagination

Máncora - Part 3

Day 19 of trip - Thursday May 24th

So yep.. We were taking in the sun, enjoying the nice weather, and generally having a good time.

These 2 photos were taken from a restaurant overlooking the beach. See that bike/cab thing? That's exactly the sort of thing that took us to our hostel that morning.





More exploring of the beach and the surrounding area ensued





Ooooh a cute little crab! This part of the beach had a whole bunch of little holes - I'm assuming they were all full of little crabs as well. (or whatever they are)



I'm not quite sure what sort of fruit this was, but.. it was something!



A fishing fleet



After a relaxing day it was time to head back to the hostel.. The sun goes down at about 6pm that close to the equator, so that basically means that we were back at the hostel by about 6:30 or so. Steve found our dorm-room-mates doing coke in our room, which amused us greatly (or at least me).. seeing as we were at a party hostel that had "NO DRUGS" posters and signs plastered all over the place.. It was pretty hypocritical. On one hand there were those posters - on the other several staff at the hostel wore Bob Marley-type t-shirts and clearly partook in the party culture that was encouraged there.

The "Keep quiet after 10pm" and "No drugs allowed" posters were obviously put up for show.. Behind the scenes the hostel was a huge party place with all sorts of shady stuff going on left and right.. It all seemed pretty safe though - there WERE rules that were followed. I'm not exactly sure where they drew the line, but I did not at any point feel unsafe. The place was packed with kids in their 20s and several in their 30s, so I did not feel out of place.. but I did feel slightly more mature than most of the people we ran into there. So while I understood the vibe around me, I also felt like I could take care of myself if weird crap went down. What do I mean by weird? Who knows! I was ready for anything..

We went out for dinner at a restaurant just outside of our hostel, returned to the hostel.. played some pool, had some beers, played some ping pong.. The rest of the night was pretty uneventful.. The sun kinda got to me though - and I'm not quite sure if it was just the sun.. or if I was just feeling run down due to the hectic nature to most of the trip.. or what.. but I wanted to sleep.. and the bar was blasting loud music so between 10pm and 2am I spent long periods of time online.. catching up, paying #fiftychat a visit, and so on.. every once in a while returning to the bar for a drink & taking a look around to see if anything interested me.

Our room had a smoking hot Swedish girl in it, but she was "with" 2 Australian blokes.. They seemed like decent enough people, and we got to know them a bit.. but they seemed to be right in the middle of a party-infused trip, while we were just finishing up a hiking-intensive-and-generally-tiring adventure. We were in totally different states of mind.

I crashed shortly after 2... right after the music stopped.

I'm not exactly sure where they drew the line

Click to expand...

On a mirror typically, right?


Anyways....
Peculiar that those fishing ships are so close to the coast.

Where else would you put them.....

I think that might be a bit of an optical illusion - I don't really remember the boats being *that* close to the shore. I mean, they weren't very far away either, but they weren't super close or anything.

I don't know much about off-shore fishing, but I assume they all go where the type of fish they are after go. In Huanchaco fishing was done by the incredibly oldschool boats (3,000 year old design), and those didn't really get very far from shore either... That was 8 hours south via bus from Mancora, so I'm guessing there must be a lot of fish hanging out just off-shore. Again though, I'm nowhere near being an expert on anything related to fish... I wouldn't be surprised if the waters got very deep very quick though.. I mean, this isn't really anything to go by, but if you start heading inland the elevation change is quite severe

The Pacific coast of South America is one of the world's great fishing regions. And as you say, much of the reason for that is because it gets so deep so rapidly. So many small boats off the coast makes a lot of sense to the local people. The difference between what you've pictured and, say, the coast of Maine, where there are also large numbers of smallish fishing boats, is that what you have pictured has them offshore rather than in a myriad of small coves and harbors. Peru seems to have them in the open ocean itself. Which I suppose tells you that the sea is calm enough that they don't need the shelter. Or also that they just don't have as many small harbors.

Interesting. It has been pointed out to me by several people there that Peruvians don't really travel by boat - maybe implying that they don't have many harbours (big or small) in the country as a result.

It's probably more a geology thing. Did you notice that the coastline tended to be fairly smooth without a lot of indents?

I guess so, but I didn't really make a conscious note of it.

What I did make a note of was what it seemed common for a steep cliff face to be there right beyond the beach - a beach "at the bottom", a very steep incline, and then the city up top. All of Miraflores and large parts of Lima seemed like that, as well as Mancora and parts of Huanchaco.

Mancora

Day 20 of trip - Friday May 25th

Last full day in Peru

This would be our last day in Peru.. Not technically, as our flight home was Saturday, but that doesn't really count.

We spent the day lounging around, relaxing, spent a couple hours on the beach getting a tan and a bit of a burn, had some beers, good food, then our hostel had a "Loki Olympics" tournament with silly games.. like.. sumo wrestling in those silly & giant costumes, and.. drink and swim.. and.. heck, I can't even remember. We declined to participate, but I watched most of the events from the comfort of a hammock.. which was oh so nice.. Seriously.. Those things always seemed to be taken but I got lucky.. I stayed in there for a couple hours - with my overpriced copy of Farenheit 451. I alternated between reading and napping.

Here's our hostel. There's a bar/restaurant just to the left, you can just barely see it. All in all a pretty sweet setup. The photo is taken from almost the exact spot where the hammocks were.





As soon as you exited our hostel, you were faced with a road and a bit of a change of elevation right afterwards. I'm not sure if this is a restaurant or club or what, but they must have had a great view of the city, beach, and surrounding area



By 5:30 or so we were back at the beach, in anticipation of a sunset. A giant ominous cloud was coming in from the north-east, making things very interesting.







For a while it seemed like the cloud was going to interfere with the sunset.. but it ended complimenting it somewhat

Cool building.

Which one? hostel?

I have one or two more batches of photos (probably 1), then that's it.. but I'm in the middle of a rather large application launch that I've been lead (and only) developer & system architect on.. so I probably won't be able to post them for a bit

A warpus in Peru?

As in there's more than one?

I'm not only a person but also a state of being. It is possible for others to embody this state of being and temporarily become me.

Mancora - Part 2

Day 20 of trip - Friday May 25th

Last full day in Peru

It was a pretty sweet sunset so there's a lot of pics of it. I'll probably have to break them down into 2 posts.



It seemed to be a very fitting ending to the trip..



I really like the random-elements-of-roygbiv effect going on here



She's on a horse



This was the best sunset I saw in Peru by far. My new camera seemed to like it too





Well, crap.. I TOLD YOU TO STAY STILL YOU STUPID BIRD

Mancora - Part 3

Day 20 of trip - Friday May 25th

Last full day in Peru