I got to Máncora yesterday and fell in love with this place immidiately... White beach, palms everywhere, the hostel really beautiful and many nice people, music, party etc. Oh, and of course around 30 degrees! So many people have spent more than a month here - not too difficult to understand if you see it yourself. I know I will have hard time leaving tomorrow as I will head off to Tumbes...
Well, as expected I was not really able to leave Máncora so quickly and ended up spending 3 nights there. I mean, how can you leave a place like that just after few hours... One night I was going with a friend for dinner to town and saw the sun go down. I recall us talking about if we have been robbed so far - well we didn´t which was about to change soon...We were heading to town for dinner (forgeting we shouldn´t be walking at the beach when it gets dark and enjoyed the sunset) as 4 men approached us and surrounded us. The wierd thing about it was we kind of expected it to happen so weren´t surprised or scared at all. They took his bag and searched me as well. Imagine, they didn´t find anything on me although I had like 10 Euro cash... It was worse with AJs bag though as he had his Visa cards as well as money inside. Fortunately I was able to speak to the guys in Spanish and asked them politely if they couldn´t leave us the bag. And they did! Searched it for a while unable to find money (which was in a big vallet, how could they not find that???) and giving us the sign not to look. After they managed to find about 3o Euro in his vallet they let us go. What a wierd experience, it just felt so surreal! Especially the dinner we could still get afterwards and a taxi back to hotel after being robbed :-)
You do get to think more after an accident like that though so as I crossed the border to Ecuador and had to get off the bus to get a different one and wait for like 2 hours I was quite suspicious although everything went well... Now I´m about to leave Cuenca for north (taking the train to Riobamba, hopefully still some space left on the roof) and then heading off to Baños...
Oh, and for those who worry about me - Ecuador seems much safer then Peru!
Well, as expected I was not really able to leave Máncora so quickly and ended up spending 3 nights there. I mean, how can you leave a place like that just after few hours... One night I was going with a friend for dinner to town and saw the sun go down. I recall us talking about if we have been robbed so far - well we didn´t which was about to change soon...We were heading to town for dinner (forgeting we shouldn´t be walking at the beach when it gets dark and enjoyed the sunset) as 4 men approached us and surrounded us. The wierd thing about it was we kind of expected it to happen so weren´t surprised or scared at all. They took his bag and searched me as well. Imagine, they didn´t find anything on me although I had like 10 Euro cash... It was worse with AJs bag though as he had his Visa cards as well as money inside. Fortunately I was able to speak to the guys in Spanish and asked them politely if they couldn´t leave us the bag. And they did! Searched it for a while unable to find money (which was in a big vallet, how could they not find that???) and giving us the sign not to look. After they managed to find about 3o Euro in his vallet they let us go. What a wierd experience, it just felt so surreal! Especially the dinner we could still get afterwards and a taxi back to hotel after being robbed :-)
You do get to think more after an accident like that though so as I crossed the border to Ecuador and had to get off the bus to get a different one and wait for like 2 hours I was quite suspicious although everything went well... Now I´m about to leave Cuenca for north (taking the train to Riobamba, hopefully still some space left on the roof) and then heading off to Baños...
Oh, and for those who worry about me - Ecuador seems much safer then Peru!
