Lima, Peru

When we arrived in Lima, I had not slept at all on the bus. Some a-hole had insisted on playing music on his phone from about 4am on and then another guy started taking phone calls at around 6am...I was on the verge of a double homicide but somehow restrained myself. The other issue was that one of the ear pieces to my headphones had somehow gotten lost so I could only hear music in the left ear, leaving the right ear more vulnerable to the douchbaggery of others. Ughhhhhh
There were two different bus terminals in Lima and we had no clue which one we needed. Finally another English speaking girl was able to figure it out since she was confused as well and we got off at the second stop which was at the city center. The taxi drivers were hounding us as soon as we stepped foot of the bus which I definitely one of my pet peeves. We turned down multiple cabs as we still didn't even have our bags but eventually we began to price the cabs against each other. It's hard to know what price you are looking for when you have no clue how much the ride should cost. We finally settled on $20 soles for the ride to "Miraflores", which is the more touristy part of town.
We had wanted to stay at "Flying Dog" hostel but all three of their Lima locations were full so the guy working there helped us by calling around to see what was availableat other hostels. The only place that had a private room was "Condor's House", which is a little bit of a walk from the main part of Miraflores but was priced right at $70 soles per night ($26 USD). Condor's House is definitely new and though the rooms are bare bones, the downstairs area is nice. We walked the twenty minutes from Flying Dog to Condor's and were pretty exhausted once we were checked in and got settled. We still hadn't eaten anything all day so we decided to head out in search of a sandwhich and coffee (coffee is definitely necessary since it is cold and overcast in Lima).
We headed back into the main part of town looking at all of the little cafes. We couldn't dream of eating any more "comida typica" which means meat and rice...ugh kill me. We found this adorable little place called "La Lucha" and decided to try it. Sadly we couldn't figure out how to order from their menu so we both just opted for club sandwiches....bad move. In Peru, a club sandwich consists of ham, turkey, bacon, chicken, cheese, a fried egg and as much mayo as they can fit into the bread. Never has there been a less healthy meal! We ate it since they were $20 soles a piece but definitely felt sick after.

There was a Starbucks next door so we stopped in to get a coffee and cookie (since at his point, health was out the window) but the cookies were so salty we threw them out. So much for food today! I'm shocked that Starbucks would allow them to sell that crap in one of their stores.

Once back at the hostel, we attempted warm showers although the showerhead was completely retarded so you had to hold it the whole time- at least it was warm! We are now running into issues with plugs and 230v vs 120v for the first time. We don't give a crap about blow drying our hair to look nice (trust me, it goes up in a bun almost immediately, lol) but rather that its so cold in some of these places that your hair practically turns to ice. Sadly we can't get my apapter to work properly with the blow dryer so I'm pretty sure it's going to explode soon since every time we use it, it looks like a fireball.
I spent the rest of the evening reading downstairs while Alyssa was up resting in the room since she had a migraine. The hostel was full of people but they seemed a bit more cliquey than most backpackers so I didn't engage with them and was happy to finish my book. When I headed back upstairs to go to sleep, I found Alyssa in a terrible state. She was in a ton of pain, felt like she was going to throw up and was convinced she'd been poisoned. My sister is not one for dramatics and certainly not one to ever admit to pain or suggest that maybe we should take her to the ER. I was immediately alarmed but I had no idea what I could do to fix her. She decided against going to the ER but since she had gotten the idea of carbon monoxide or some other undetectable killer into my brain, I stayed awake until 4:30 watching her sleep and making sure she was still breathing. Finally I decided that if I hadn't felt the effects of anything after lying in there for five hours that the room was fine and drifted off for a few hours of sleep.

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Mancora plus bus ride to Lima

I woke up rested which I was very grateful for after my exhaustion the day before but sadly Alyssa had not slept at all. The raging party that we had to leave our prior hostel because of had gone on until 6:30am with a DJ screaming into the mic and blasting horrible Latin pop music. She looked on the verge of a nervous breakdown as we packed our stuff up for our 10:30am checkout. We were able to leave our bags at the hostel during the day, although they basically just stuck them in another room that was left unlocked (thankfully we have locks on all of our bags). We headed out in search of breakfast and wound up at a vegetarian place called "Angela's". They had great homemade yogurt although the rest of the items we got were a little bizarre- I just don't think I appreciate vegetarian food. Everyone there was very friendly though and they had great wifi which we had been lacking at Hostel Angeles del Mar.

After breakfast, we headed down to the beach where we spent the remainder of the afternoon. We were able to find a beach umbrella that no one was monitoring and lay under it for free which was nice (a guy did come over at one point and ask if we wanted a drink but he said it was only because his boss was watching and he let us go without ordering anything). We ran into Adam and Anthony a few times throughout the day which was still awkward (Anthony wanted to make sure I was smiling which was so confusing and made me wonder if I had been upset the previous night and blacked it out?) as well as our club promoter friend who Alyssa spent about an hour doing an "I'll teach you English if you teach me Spanish" lesson with. We packed things up and went to grab some dinner at 5:00. Sadly, the place we wanted to get food at had decided that they were not going to serve food (places do this all the time at any point in the day they feel like) so we had to hurriedly traipse around town looking for another open restaurant. Sadly, we ended up back at the vegetarian restaurant for a sub-par Mediterranean salad that my stomach was none too pleased about. We rushed back to our hostel, collected our bags, changed into bus clothes and made our way to the ticket agency by 6:00.
Once at the agency, they taxied us over to where the bus would pick us up. We were worried about whether the bus would be nice or freezing cold like other busses we had taken, but this one seemed good. However once on board, we found the unexpected flaw with this bus. The bus played movies constantly (granted, we left at 6:30pm so it wasn't time to sleep or anything) but even though each bay of seats had their own speaker and jacks for headphones, the bus blasted music for the entire level only out of the speakers above our heads. It was insanely loud. We complained but the guy said there was nothing he could do about it. Alyssa was able to sit in a different seat for a few hours, but when we picked up more people in the next town, the entire bus was full.
The ride to Lima is 18 hours and don't be confused, we don't enjoy bus travel. But it is soooo much cheaper than flying and if you take an overnight bus then you also negate the cost of a hostel for that night. This bus included dinner and breakfast since it was such a long drive. Sadly dinner was the blandest piece of chicken and rice I've ever seen so we didn't touch it. We settled in for the long haul, blasting music through our headphones in an attempt to drown out the noise in the bus. Unfortunately, the earpiece to my headset had gotten pulled off and lost somewhere so it was very uncomfortable in my ear and not nearly as loud as the other side. I decided to just deal with it for the evening tough, putting on my usual rotation of mellow music to try to lull me to sleep.

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Hungover day in Mancora

Thankfully I slept until 11:00 although when I woke up I was immediately in pain and decided to never drink again. Alyssa had been up for hours so we decided to go get some breakfast. On our way out of the hostel, we asked if we could stay for another day. They said that we could but that we wouldn't want to because they were closing the rest of the hostel for a private quincinera and that the party would rage well into the night. We had not been expecting this so we begrudgingly headed back to our room to pack, check out and find another hostel. Being hungover is bad enough but then having to pack and move...just kill me. We decided to go to one of the other hostels on the same street that we had checked out the day before. It wasn't as nice but would be fine for one night. We checked in there and headed off in search of breakfast.
Alyssa had gone out for a walk earlier in the morning and had scoped out a place called "Green Eggs and Ham" which had gotten great reviews. I desperately needed to eat since I was on the verge of throwing up so I thought that sounded like the perfect place. I ordered a pulled chicken sandwich with sweet potato fries and Alyssa got a turkey sandwhich with fries- it was great! I made sure to drink a large pineapple juice to try and revitalize myself and it seemed to help a bit.

We spent the rest of the day laying on the beach which was just fine by me since I just wanted to lay down and die. A lady rented us an umbrella for $20 soles which we definitely needed since the sun was so strong. I finished my book and just people watched for a few hours. I had been wanting to try kite surfing (and would have despite my state) but apparently you have to do a three-day kite surfing school that we did not have time for...so sad. Tons of people were out promoting their clubs various parties for the night so we spoke to a lot of people on the beach.

Adam and Adrain wanted us to meet up with them to go out but I decided nothing sounded worse. There was some odd vibe between us all when we saw each other again and I could tell Adam remembered nothing from the night before but that I must have confided some things in Adrian since he seemed to have a knowing smile (although he barely speaks English and I barely speak Spanish...not sure how deep the convo could have gotten?).
Alyssa and I went out to dinner by ourselves to a TexMex restaurant called "El Aji". We got a passionfruit margarita (which Alyssa drank, I had a virgin pineapple coconut juice) and we each got a chicken burrito which was huge! Something about Mexican food is so glorious when you're hungover though.

After dinner, we headed to a cute little bar called "La Sirena" for a drink. The bar/restaurant was staged as if you were in someone's living room which I found sort of comforting. We ordered Pisco and passionfruit juice but I only got a few sips down before I gave up and let Alyssa finish my drink. I am not as resilient as I was in my younger years, lol. We headed back to the hostel early although the parties were raging in the streets all around us. We could hear the music blasting from our beds but I was so exhausted from the day that I quickly drifted off to sleep in spite of the noise permeating through my earplugs.

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Peru!

We got up at 6:15, packed and got a taxi to the main bus terminal to catch the bus to Piura that left at 7:20am. We had a front seat which I always like because then you don't have anyone in front of you to contend with for space but I have to say that staring at the giant picture of Jesus right in front of our seat for 12 hours was a bit unnerving.

The bus ride was fairly uneventful making few stops. When we got to the Ecuador/Peru border, the immigration desks from both countries were literally right next to each other in the same room so there were very few questions being asked and no payments needed- really simple which I like.

We had originally planned to go to Piura but decided instead to get off two hours sooner in Mancora since we had heard Piura had nothing in it and that Mancora was a nice beach town. I am so glad we did! Mancora was a lovely little town with a beautiful beach. We had met a guy on our bus named Adam (from the UK) who tagged along with us as we went to the bank to exhange our US dollars for Soles and found a hostel. We stayed at Hospidaje California and he ended staying at the hostel across the street from ours since ours didn't have dorms, but we still met up for drinks after we got settled in.

It was 2 drinks x $20 soles happy hour all over town so we ordered mojitos and giant beers. It was a great place to sit on the terrace over looking the beach and watch the sunset.

Adrian was another guy from Ecuador staying at Adam's hostel that accompanied us to dinner. We ate at a great seafood place that served some sort of teriyaki fish-mmmmmm.

Alyssa wasn't feeling very well during dinner so she went back to the hostel to go to bed. Once we had finished eating, the boys and I walked back to the hostel to check on her. I banged on the door for about 5 minutes before I began getting worried. She had said she would leave the door unlocked for me but when I arrived, the door was locked and she wasn't answering. Immediately I imagined her being abducted and began to panick. I asked the hostel if they had another key so that I could open the door but they said that our key was the only one to the room...are you kidding me!?! I went back to the door and pounded on it so loudly I thought I would break it down, all the while screaming her name. Everyone else in the hostel came out of their rooms to see what the hell the crazy American girl was doing. Finally, the hostel realized my distress and came with some pliers and a credit card to jimmy open the door. I was concerned that they broke in with such ease but immediately happy to be in the room. There was Alyssa, all curled up in her blankets, sound asleep. I was very relieved and grabbed the key so that I could leave her locked inside. After my ordeal, the boys took me out for some beers and dancing at the local club "El Timao". I was the only white girl in that bar and clearly stuck out but it was a lot of fun. Adrian was trying to teach me some local dances that involved a lot of shoulders and hips and were hilarious. I clearly had way too many beers and at some point Adrian was nice enough to get me some water and walk me home since this was not a safe town for a lone, drunk woman at that hour. We had lost Adam earlier since he was also way too drunk. He had been on a 36 hour bus ride the day before and then came straight out drinking with us without a nap- not a good plan. I was safely in bed by 1:00am but knew already that I would regret those beers the following morning.

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Guayaquil, Ecuador

We got packed up and headed to the airport for our 11:10am flight. The airport is only 3 minutes from town and once I got there, I realized how it could be so close. It was so small! I had lost some bullshit piece of paper that we had to buy on the way into the Galápagos (who knew you needed to keep it for the return flight?!?) so I had to buy another one. It was only $10 but I was so angry about it. Thank god it wasn't the $100 one!

The flight to Guayaquil was very quick and once we landed, we said goodbye to Brad and headed out to catch a taxi. I had researched some of the hostels in town and "Funky Monkey" seemed to be really close to the airport, bus terminal and a big mall so we headed there. Sadly they did not have any private rooms available but there were no other hostels close by so we decided to just stay in the dorms since we would only be there for a night. The hostel was ok although the people who were staying the were kind of strange so we left ASAP to check out the mall. Alyssa still needed a new jacket which were able to find at a large department store for pretty cheap. We also checked out the movie theatre and found out that they played movies in English with Spanish subtitles! We decided we would return later that evening to see a movie. We grabbed some quick sandwiches at Quiznos and headed into town in search of the bus terminal so that we could book our tickets for the following day. The terminal was a lot farther of a walk than we'd anticipated and the sun was going down by the time we reached it. Luckily they had space on the early morning bus for the following day so we purchased our tickets and took a cab back to the hostel.
We got some warmer clothes on since it had cooled down once the sun set and headed back to the mall. We had noticed them setting up tons of chairs during the day throughout the mall and we couldn't figure out what it was for but now the entire mall was filled with people playing a giant game of BINGO- it was absolutely crazy!

We saw the movie "Oblivion" with Matt Damon and Jodie Foster which wasn't amazing but was definitely action packed...and to be honest I didn't care as long as it was in English! Ironically, the movie had a lot of parts where the actors spoke Spanish and those parts would have English subtitles which the locals seemed to enjoy. After the movie, the mall was closing up so we headed back to get some sleep before our early morning bus ride. Since we were sleeping in dorms, Alyssa and I were sharing a bunk bed and I think I about drove her nuts with my fidgeting since it shakes the entire set of beds. I think in the future we need to steer clear of bunk beds, lol.

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San Cristobal day trip

Today I woke up before my alarm clock and headed down to breakfast alone to catch up on some reading.

If you can see the little finches in the picture above, I spend a good amount of my days in the Galapagos playing with them. They are not at all afraid of people and will hop right onto your plate or eat food from your hand.

After Brad and Alyssa joined me downstairs, we decided to go on a day trip of the island. We had been told that you could just get a cab to drive you around pretty cheaply so we found two other travelers who were planning to do the same thing (Laura from Germany and Jenka from Turkey) and secured a taxi that would take us around for $10/each.

Once we started heading away from the ocean, the climate completely changed. Suddenly it was like being in a cloud forest and the foliage was green and much denser.

Our first stop on the tour was the giant tortoise breeding center. Luckily we arrived right at feeding time, so we got to see tons of them congregated together.

At this breeding center, we learned that the researchers are actually able to manipulate whether the tortoises that hatch are male or female by the temperature they incubate them at. The tortoises that are born in the wild are predominately male because of the cold temperatures on the island so the researchers keep their incubators warmer to ensure they will get females.
After we left the breeding center, we headed to Puerto Chino beach. This beach was beautiful and once was again covered in sea lions, sea turtles and blue footed boobies.

I spent a while reading with all of my finch friends who loved to be right next to me.

We then headed up to Junco Lagoon which is the only fresh water found in the Galapagos. The lagoon is inside of a volcanic crater and was completely covered in clouds and mist. We walked the trail around the lagoon, checking out the view of the ocean and observing the frigate birds.

We then headed to "El Ceibo" which is a hotel room built in a 300 year old Ceibo tree; one of only three Ceibo trees on the island.

The tree house accommodations weren't bad and for only $20/night, I could see the draw for some people to stay there, although the town of El Progresso where El Ceibo is located has absolutely nothing going on.

Down through the trunk of the tree, you can climb into an underground room which I found fairly terrifying- it reminded me of something you'd find in a horror movie when they hold someone hostage. That was my cue to leave, lol.

Once we got back to town, we grabbed some lunch at a local spot on the water. They weren't serving normal food since it was past lunch time, only their local snacks. I decided to try to "patacones with cheese" which I had seen many times on the menu but had no clue what they were. Turns out they are fried plantains rounds with a piece of cheese- not bad but way too many!

Alyssa and I took a walk after lunch to "Playa Mann" which was the closest local beach to town. There we found the most people we had seen the entire time we'd been in the Galapagos. We hung out for a while watching some four year old children antagonize sea lions and then run away from them. The kids looked like they were having a great time, but we were fairly sure we might have a front row seat to a child being mauled. After the beach we walked over to the "Interpretation center" next door. This was a sort of museum about the Galapagos which told the chronological history of its development. I had no idea what a sorted history the Galápagos had! It was basically a dumping ground for the criminals of Spain and was plagued by murders, crime and a complete misuse of its resources for centuries. The US even built an Air Force base in the Galápagos in 1945 to provide protection for the Panama Canal without any agreement between the two countries (during which the US blew up a bunch of land with dynamite in the process of building the base). After learning about its history, it's a wonder there's anything even left to see!

We met up with Laura and Jenka again for dinner at a local restaurant which serves a set menu: juice, soup, fish, salad and rice for $3.50! If you eat what the locals eat, it's actually pretty cheap and it was good! The four of us went out for a few drinks after dinner, ending up at our hotel bar. Alyssa and I were fairly sure that something might be brewing between the two of them, so we excused ourselves early to leave them to their own devices.

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Kicker Rock

Today we got to sleep in a bit since our tour to Kicker Rock didn't leave until 8:45am. Our hotel made us a wonderful breakfast in the morning, which we ate on our patio in front of the water. Our tour group had three other couples in it who were all very nice and English speaking. We headed out on our small boat to do our first snorkel, which was really just a test run for the two people who would be snorkeling to try their equipment.

Luckily the water was calm so there weren't waves to contend with but it was freezing! I was glad to have a full length wetsuit on! We swam with some sea lions which love to play with you in the water and Alyssa followed around a sea turtle for a bit.

Once everyone's gear had been tried out, we headed to Kicker Rock.

Here we were supposed to be able to see reef sharks, galapagos sharks, sea turtles, manta rays and tons of fish. Unfortunately, the currents had changed a few days ago making the water extremely turbid. We could barely see 5 feet in front of us. I did manage to see two sea turtles but only because I happened to be right next to them. It's unfortunate because it was actually the prettiest reef we had seen in the Galápagos with tons of colored fish but we really couldn't appreciate it.

After the snorkeling, we headed to a nearby beach to have lunch and hang out. The sun was out and it was the first time I had felt warm in weeks. I lay on the beach for an hour but had to be fully covered because there were sand flies constantly trying to bite me. It was great to be warm! Once again, the terrain of the Galápagos was very barren- I can't get used to it!

We headed back to Kicker Rock for another dive and snorkel but most of us did not want to get back into the water. It was so cold and if you weren't going to be able to see anything in the water, there really was no point. We did some bird watching while a few people snorkeled, checking out the blue footed boobies and frigate birds. We soon headed back to San Cristobal since there were a few people who were leaving on the 4:00 ferry back to Santa Cruz island.

There isn't a ton to do on the island so I got a nice $13 bottle of white wine and sat on my lovely private patio overlooking the water.

We decided to eat downstairs at the restaurant in our hotel since we weren't very hungry. I tried a "tortilla del verde" since I had absolutely no idea what it was. It was sort of like a little, round tamale and was actually delicious! We hung out downstairs, drinking beers and people watching.

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