We could have stayed in Cusco for a real long time. If it was warmer, we would have.  It may have been mentioned in an earlier post that we didn’t pack much at all for cooler weather.  It was more like…”Oooh. South America…sounds warm everywhere. Let’s not bring pants…”

But it wasn’t shorts and t-shirt weather at all, so we moved on. Took a 22+ hour bus ride straight back to Lima. We took the fancy bus, as we have been doing with the excessively long rides. So leather seats that lean back to 180°, meals, electrical outlets, and all your favorite movies that you probably would have never even considered seeing if you hadn’t taken this bus. (Taken 3, Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2, Last Vegas, Fast and Furious 7, and a few others.) Also, since you’re on a bus for that long, you save money by not having to book a room for a day.

We stayed in the same place we did the first time we rolled through Lima, the private apartment run by Hostel Kaminu, in the cool Barranco district. Very importantly, we were once again half a block away from Luchin and his giant, delicious, and stupidly cheap sandwiches.

It was a little different this time around. We got to hang out with Kristine and Dustin. I worked with Kristine at Starlu back in the day, but we probably hadn’t seen each other in 8-9 years. It’s still great to see familiar faces. They were actually headed back to the states after working wine harvest in Chile, and have actually been away from home for years. YEARS. Like multiple years. It’s pretty cool. It’s also nice talking to people and you don’t have the same travel conversations you always do. The usual progression of those conversations goes like…Where are you from? Where have you been? Where are you going? How long have you been traveling? How long are you traveling for? What do you do back at home?  Things like that. But with Kristine and Dusty, we could talk about other things like…What is first thing you’re gonna eat when you land?  What movies are you gonna see? How weird is it going home? Is the ketchup in Chile weird, too?  It’s just nice to talk about stuff with people that know where you’re coming from.

We tried a couple sample flights from the Barranco Beer company. There were a few passable brews. Overall, the beer situation down here is shit. There’s few microbreweries around. Keyword: FEW.  We walked around Lima some. Ate some Dunkin Donuts. Found a decent organic market/fair thing. Ate some street meat. Got high fives from 50 people who were walking down the street together singing, chanting, and giving out high fives. Got some of best Pisco Sours in town. Drank beer late into the night. Ate again in the morning at the locally famous Canta Rana (Singing Frog) restaurant. And we were off again on another 20+ hour bus ride.

Lima was kind of in the middle of the coast.  It was never really warm there. The sun rarely showed itself, and just for brief periods. We checked the weather other places along the coast. It looked mostly the same. Until Mancora. Mancora looked nice. We wanted nice.

The sun was super bright when we got off the bus. It tends to be bright outside when you’re on a bus that long. Got a ride to our hostel. the hostel was awesome. If you stay in Mancora, stay with Luis at Casa Mancora.  It wasn’t right in town, but it was only a few minute walk to the beach and town. It was nice and quiet, there was a kitchen to cook, some hammocks, and a great vibe. After the first night, we decided to stay a week, which quickly turned into 2 very short weeks.

So Mancora is sunny. Like all the damn time. It got pretty warm, but never hot. You would see some clouds trying to creep in, but it never rained or even really got cloudy. I spent a good amount of time topless. Natalie did not.

There was lots of quality time spent at the beach. The beach in Mancora had lots of people lots of the time, but you could walk just a little bit down and find your own quiet spot. There were lots of kite surfers. And regular surfers. We don’t surf, but if we did, this would have been a great place. There’s a really long left break.  Guys were on these breaks for what seemed like a few minutes at a time, going so far on one wave that you’d have to take a taxi back to your original spot.

The hostel dog, Toby, would follow us to the beach. He seemed to know who was staying at the place, so he would just follow whoever was going out there.  If we were coming back in, and one of the guest was leaving, he’d just go with them. He would even follow us into the markets, grocery stores, pharmacies, restaurants…wherever.  He also loved to fetch. If you even thought about a stick, he would bark at you until you would play with him. He was very persistent and mildly annoying at times. People would think that he was our dog, when in reality, we were just his humans for the day.

For some reason, there were lots of dead sea lions up and down the beach. Sea lions are not small animals. We wondered if some of the local fishermen had something to do with it. It smelled terrible. Since dogs like to roll around in stinky shit, Toby would take it upon himself to roll IN (not next to, but IN) sea lion carcasses. Yum.

There was actually a decent market in Mancora. It was more of a collection of shanties and ramshackle buildings, but you could get all the fresh fruit and vegetables you wanted. If you went early in the morning, you could buy meat and fish. You don’t want to buy any of that shit if it made it to the afternoon, because no one keeps things in the fridge. Except resting bitch faced chicken lady. We would get chicken from most grim-faced lady. She had the most unhappy expression while she would hack up your chicken with a big ass cleaver, and then give you change with her blood stained hands. But she kept her chickens in the fridge. And the blood was from YOUR chicken that she just hacked up for YOU, so it was all good.

We cooked most of the time, but there were a couple thing we went out for. One was fresh juices. In the mornings, near the market, a bunch of juice stands would pop up. Nothing better than ordering a juice with pretty much any fruit you want, having them cut it right there and blending it up for you.  And its not this bullshit, watery juice.  These juices were close to milkshake/meal status, being close to a liter of juice for 4-5 soles. We got juices pretty much every morning, and there were several multi-juice days. We had one stand that would bribe us with free bananas so we would keep coming back to them.

The other thing was cremoladas.  These were kinda like slushies, except made with just fresh fruit juicy goodness.  We had two primary suppliers of cremoladas.  One was this couple that sold it from a freezer on their front porch. Sometimes they were there, sometimes not. Just whenever they felt like slinging some slush. The husband worked as a guard on the malecon, so we’d see him around town. Their cremoladas had larger granules, and usually required a spoon to eat. They had the best marycuya and guanabana flavors.  And it was 2 soles (60-something cents) for a big cup. Our other supplier was a truck. There was a guy in the back of a truck with a generator powering freezers to keep his stuff cold. Sometimes he would park in different places around town, so we’d have to hunt him down. Not that it was hard to find, because there was really only one kinda big road in town, but sometimes we had to walk a little further.  There was more than a couple times when dude was just sleeping in the back of the truck, and we had to wake him up to get our fix. His cremoladas had a much finer texture, being closer to the consistency of a slightly melted sorbet. Absolute yum. His strawberry and mango flavors were the best things ever.  And he had multiple sizes, so you could get one as big as your face for 8 soles.  Almost everyday was a 2 cremolada day.  And while very rare, we did manage to attain triple-cremolada a couple of days.

One funny thing about Mancora was the taxis. There was just an army of Tuk-tuks/mototaxis. This town was not that big, so the most you’d pay was 3 soles($1-ish) to go anywhere. And again, there was an army of these things. Every other vehicle was a taxi of some sort. You can imagine how hard it would be to make a living doing this. So pretty much every driver would solicit rides when you by, and when you politely decline because you just felt like walking the extra 2 minutes to where you’re going, they promptly ask in a not so hushed tone of you need drugs. We were asked 117 times in two weeks if we needed drugs, and we declined all 117 times, which has to be some kind of record.

There’s also a place where a few enterprising villagers decided to start feeding the sea turtles so they’ll hang around the dock and then charge me to go swim with them. It wasn’t really swimming with them…it was more like they swim around and bump into you while trying to eat the raw bits of fish the ladies throw around your head. The setup was kinda hokey, but big ass turtles are cool. Except for the cold, beady eyes.

Anyways, we have a few pictures. And we have been gone 4.5 months, and are 2 months behind on the blog.