We had to get up early to catch two buses, one from Cuenca to Huaquillas, to cross the border from Ecuador to Peru, and then another bus from there to Mancora. We took a CIFA bus, which comes as a two ticket part, it leaves at 7.15am. Once the bus dropped us off in Huaquillas, we had to wait for a new bus to take us to the border crossing. When we got on the new bus, it took another 15 minutes to drive to the immigration offices. There was the Ecuadorian office one side, and the Peruvian right next door. We had to get our stamp out of Ecuador, which took ages and we had some discrepancies with some peoople in the queue who thought I'd pushed in, when they were the ones who queued up after us. They told me to go to the back of the queue but I said no we were there before them, so I stayed put. It took long enough, as I was having to go to the back! After about an hour of waiting, I finally got my exit stamp out of Ecuador, and it couldn't come soon enough! Once that was done, we had to join another queue to get our entry stamp into Peru, luckily enough, this didn't take as long as the exit from Ecuador. We got back in the bus again after about an hour and a half of being at the immigration offices and the bus continued to Mancora. 

After a couple of hours, we arrived in Mancora, so grabbed our bags and got off the bus . As soon as we got off the bus, there were loads of moto taxis hovering around us offering to take us to our hostel. Our problem was that we didn't have any Peruvian Soles yet, so needed to get some before we went anywhere. Luckily there was a cash point nearby, so we got some out, but the smallest denomination it gave us was a $200 sol note, which is worth nearly £50 so that was pretty useless to us right now! We got a moto taxi as they were hassling us, but when we came to give them that $200 sol note, they didn't have change, so John had to run to our hostel to ask them to borrow some change. The hostel allowed us to add it to our bill and pay at the end. 

The hostel we are staying in is Kontiki bungalows, which is up a hill, well actually it's up a small mountain on the cliff side! It's a really steep path to get to the hostel and a real mission to get the backpacks up there! John had to carry mine up there as I couldn't! It was hard enough getting up there myself. I don't know why they don't have a proper path to get there safely as you could easily fall down there while climbing up . Eventually when we'd checked in, it was actually worth the climb, as we had a sea view right from our little bungalow! It was a really nice place, and as it was up the hill, it was away from the noise of this little party town of Mancora. We'd heard it gets really noisy in Mancora and that the music pumps until about 5am, so it was good to be up on the hill I suppose. By the time we'd got to the hostel, it was starting to get dark, so we watched the sun set over the sea. We have some hammocks and deck chairs right outside our room, so we chilled there until it got dark and decided to go out for some dinner. The lady at the hostel had warned us to be careful at night, and told us not to turn right past the hostel at night, only go left. So we heeded her advice and went to get something to eat. There were lots menu del dia restaurants around, and as we need to tighten our budget, we decided to eat in a place for about $8 soles which was about £2.00. For that price you got a starter, a main course and a drink, so it was a bargain . The food was surprisingly good considering it was so cheap, so we'll have to try and eat in these type of places more often. It could be that the food in Peru is good, well better than Ecuador, so we'll keep trying these places out and see what we get. We took a wander around what little of Mancora there was, it's a tiny little surfer town, and then after headed back to the hostel to get an early night as we were tired from the travelling. There are lots of stray dogs in the alley ways behind the hostel and a cute little kitten too. Mancora seems like a cool laid back surfer town, so we've got a few days to spend here. 

We got up early for breakfast as it's included in the price so thought we'd make the most of the free breakfasts. Where you sit is an open terrace looking out over Mancora and the sea views. We had our breakfast and after not long, we saw the Irish couple who we'd met in Banos, Kate and Shane. It's strange to think you can bump into someone in another country and end up at the same hostel . When we got their attention we started chatting to them. They'd got a night bus, so had arrived here early this morning and were here for a couple of days. We chatted for a while, then they went and checked into their room, so we got ready to go out for the day. As there isn't too much to do here, we decided to take a walk to the beach and sunbathe for a while. We sat on some sun beds and relaxed there for a while. There were loads of guys kite-surfing here so we watched them doing that for a while. It looks quite hard to steer those things and even to take off, as the wind can be so strong it can nearly take them up into the air too! We decided to go for a walk as a local man came up to us telling us that the cost to hire the sun beds for the day was €60 soles, so we made a quick get away and left not paying for them. We'd only been on the bed for about half an hour anyway. We took a walk further up to the beach that nobody was on, I think this section is for the fisherman. There were loads of sea birds around here, probably because the fisherman were feeding them scraps of fish! We saw some pelicans and even some frigate birds, which we saw in the Galápagos . So you don't just need to go there to see them. After our walk, we went back to get some lunch. A guy called us over to a little bar overlooking the sea, so we just ate a burger in there. Again, the food was surprisingly good, and we had sea views so it was cool to chill there for a while. When we left, we bumped into Shane and Kate again and they were walking up to where we'd just come from as we told them about the birds you could see there. We headed back to the hostel as I'm in need of catching up on my blog posts from the Galápagos, so most afternoons of late will be spend catching up on that. Later, when I'd done some of the blog, we went out to a restaurant for dinner and went back to the hostel to watch a film. It's handy having the laptop as we downloaded films before we left, and most hostels don't have a tv in the room, so it's good to have some entertainment. 

Our next day was spent with Shane and Kate. At breakfasts we spoke to them for a while and went our separate ways, but bumped into them in town as it's so small. I wanted to have a look around the stalls and go shopping and so did Kate, so we went together, while John and Shane went to the bar to have a beer. So everyone was happy as the girls got to shop, and the boys went for a beer! After Kate and I done as much shopping as we could, we went to the bar to meet the boys and had a cocktail each. Well I didn't actually buy anything, but Kate bought a few things . We stayed in the bar for a while and we decided to go for dinner together that evening. We walked back to the hostel to have a shower and get ready and arranged to meet them at 7.30pm. There's a really nice restaurant in Mancora; La Sirena de Juan, which got rated number one on trip advisor, so we're going to try this place out. We walked down the hill to go there and found the restaurant, so went through to sit upstairs. The prices were a bit more expensive than our budget allows, but it was for one night out with travellers we met, so felt that we couldn't really say no to going there. While we were sat down, the cat who lives here made an appearance and I called it over to me and it ended up sitting on my lap. I let it sit there until the food came, and when it did, I threw some meat down so it would jump off my knee. The food was like gourmet food and was amazingly good. Expensive but worth it. Here in Mancora they have baby goat because it's sourced locally, Kate was adventurous and tried it, which I was surprised by! She liked it and said it tasted like lamb. John had some kind of barracuda fish dish, which he really enjoyed. As it was expensive, we skipped out desert, which is normally the dish I look forward to most. I did suggest that we go for some pisco sours (Peruvian drink of egg, pisco and lemon juice) after dinner, but they didn't really seem up for it. So we headed back to the hostel after the meal and John and I watched a film in our room again. 

The next morning we had breakfast and decided to have a walk to see the lighthouse we could see at the top of the cliff, so walked up the path past the hostel . We found it, but it was private property so we couldn't go and look at it properly. We ended up looking round the local shops as John wanted to get some havianas. He found a pair he liked and got some. We then went back to the beach for a bit until we were hungry and found somewhere to eat by the beach. We found another cheap restaurant so we could try and claw back some of the budget that we'd overspent yesterday. There was a fresh BBQ they were doing which was swordfish, so John had that and I had chicken. They were playing football in there so John got to have a beer and watch that to keep him entertained. People were allowed to smoke in here and it was blowing right towards me, so I didn't really enjoy it there much. There were loads of stray dogs around so I ended up giving them chicken, but at one point, there were loads of dogs crowding round my table, but some of the dogs were so skinny I just had to feed them. The staff kept shooing them away tho! We left the restaurant and I got an ice-cream and we headed back to the hostel. 

Today is our last day so we needed to go and find out about catching a night bus to Trujillo, so we decided to go and check out the local bus companies to find out prices and times of the buses. Kate and Shane are also leaving today to catch a night bus to Lima, they are taking exclusivo which have fully reclining seats. We'll go to them to see if they do buses to Trujillo, if they don't, we'll have to travel with another company . We missed breakfast is morning, so we went out to a cool vegetarian place for lunch, they do nice juices, smoothies and lunches. I had a nice falafel and John had a salad. After lunch, we walked to the bus companies, we found one called Emtrafessa and asked for the times and prices in there. The bus left at around 10pm tonight, so we´d have the rest of the afternoon to kill. We compared the price to another local bus company and we preferred Emtrafessa, so ended up booking it with them. We wandered around some local stalls for a while then went back to the hostel for the rest of the afternoon, where I tried to catch up on some more of the blog. Shane and Kate were just leaving so we said our goodbyes to them and said perhaps we'll see them again in the not too distant future. At around 7pm, the hostel shut the communal areas, so we then had to leave with our bags with a few hours to spare. We had to lug the bags down the mountain with us until we left for the bus, which was pretty inconvenient. We saw a local pizza restaurant, so decided to eat there and tried to hang around for as long as we could . There was another cute little kitten here that was being playful and it jumped up on my knee and sat there until my pizza came. I gently let it down and thought I'd try and give it a bit of pizza so it would stay down. I didn't think a cat would eat pizza, but it loved it, so I kept feeding it little bits. When I stopped feeding it, the kitten would cry like a baby, so it had quite a lot of my pizza! After we could kill as much time as we could, we left to go to the bus station. We had to wait there for around an hour an a half for our night bus to come. This will be our first night bus experience, so hopefully we'll be able to get some sleep on the bus. The bus came at around 10.30pm so we boarded and got on. The seats are not fully reclining, but I don't think any bus companies are apart from exclusivo. We went to their office, but their buses didn't travel to Trujillo so we'll have to wait until another bus journey to use them. So next destination is Trujillo, and we're only staying there so we can get a bus to Huaraz as that is the gateway to the Cordillera Blanca mountains.