Heading South

After heading back from Galapagos, Nick came to meet me in Quito! We headed straight for the coast, to a place called Montinita, which is known for its surf and parties. The town was unusually quiet after the easter long weekend so we were a little dissapointed with the nightlife, and there weren{t many other travellers around to meet. We did take a surf lesson one day, and then practiced our skills some more other days, had many fresh pina coladas and ceviche on the beach, and checked out a 24 hour club one night. It turned out it was ladies night which meant that I payed for cover and all my drinks were free... sweet! After a night of dancing we decided to spend one more day on the beach and then head to Peru.
We arrived in Mancora at 3am (oops) and decided that it would be best to grab a hostel. Went for the closest cheapest one, and then in the morning headed for Loki, which is the best hostel I have stayed in so far! It looks more like a resort, with a poos, volleyball, big bar, and beach access. We only planned on staying here for a few days, but after our first night of drinking and hanging out by the poos, we decided we better stay longer. My friends Jay and Nathan who I met in Uruguay had both landed jobs bartending here.. which meand dangerously strong drinks and a convieneniently small bar tab! Plus we all got to hang out again, which was great! So.. we spent days at the beach and pool, playing volleyball and other ridiculous drinking activities that the Loki staff came up with. Some of the highlights include an award winning performance of Backstreets Back at Kareoke night, Coming in dead last at Loki Olympics (I think the iraqi team was definitely on steroids), Doing reasonably well in the poker tournament, and almost winning beer pong (by almost winning, I mean we weren{t close at all, but we did kill our first opponents). We met another Canadian couple from Edmonton, who we spent lots of time with by the pool and by the bar! After a full week (we had to stay for the pirate party) we decided to head to the mountains so our livers could recover.
Unfortuneately en-route to Huarez I got really sick and had to spend a day and a half in bed in Trujillo before I was well enough to even get on a bus. Thanks to lots of Antibiotics I recovered in time to do some hiking the day after we arrived in Huarez. We hiked up to Lago 69 (4600m).. and I was definitely suffering from a combination of altitude and not eating for 3 days. The hike was worth it.. the lake and glaciers were beautiful! I really enjoyed Huarez.. I wich we could have spent more time here.. we met lots of great people at our hostel and the city is really beautiful, but we are in a rush to see some other places before our treck in Cusco!
From Huarez we headed right to Huacachina.. back to the heat! Here we went out in dunebuggies to the desert to go sandboarding. The dunebuggy ride was awesome (a little scary at times, but I am still alive).. more like a rollercoaster over and around the huge sand dunes than anything else.. and sandboarding swas lots of fun as well.. definitely different than snowboarding though. The best part was flying down the dunes on your belly.
The next morning we went to Islas Ballestras (they call them poor mans galapagos). You can{t get off the boat and walk around, but we saw lots of penguins, more sea lions, boobies, and tons of other birds. We also saw the candelabra.. which might be one of the nasca lines (there is some debate about this).. it may also be a pirate marking, but it{s still pretty cool!
After this we headed straight away to Puno (almost missed our bus transfer). Puno is freezing cold, aand there isn{t much to see in the town, but toorrow we are heading to the Uros islands for two days. The islands are made of reeds, and maintained by the people that live on them, and we should get to do some fishing and other things with the locals!