We got off the bus in Mancora, sleep thick in our eyes but looking as good as ever. A man came from the shadows and put our bags on his infeasably small trike. We piled in and shouted "to the beach", we promptly pulled up at the gated compound that was Sol y Mar hostal located approxiametly 0.5m from the golden sand that makes up on of best surf beaches in the world. After crashing out, following our horrific bus journey, we woke to see the sun, the sea and the surf. We promptly lubed up with factor 40 and exposed our so far mountain carcasses to the equatorial rays. This became a fairly common occurance, and we like to think we have taken the edge of the moon tan (josh tribute). By sheer luck our room turned out to be one of only a few penthouse batchelor suites in Mancora: TV, En Suite, Electricity,Sheets and an amazing view of the beach and bay. Our first night saw our livers beginning to absorb the Mancora culture at 6pm that night: consequence being NWA sung at top volume on the PanAmerican highway and bed by 11pm.

The next day we awoke and hit the beach. We played football against some mildy phsycopathic locals, sunned ourselves further and sat watching the surf, plucking up the courage to join the surf dudes in the outrageously powerful waves. That evening and following a quality curry by an ex-pat bar owner we had a couple of beers and prepared for a big one. It turned out to be a ghost town so we returned and went to our beds. Tom did not and went to the reception to investigate the apparent burglary and theft of 300 soles ( fifty quid), he did not return for a good hour, having evidently become distracted. Teo went to investigate. Ten minutes later we were all assembled in the foyer at midnight ready to start saturday night again. This time it was made easier by a dozen Irish lads and a handful of gap year girls and what appeared to be 50 bottles of the finest rum. Round two was a success and we ended up on the beach at 5am with clothes being ripped off and with our fellow gap yearers we ran starkers into the still intimidating surf. After returning to see our sandals of all things stolen, the camp fire was lit and tales we shared until the sun rose. The bed was now beckoning and we spent sunday relaxing/recovering on the beach. Our peace was rudely broken by a very familiar face jumping from behind going ¨you didn´t see this coming", it was the hardened ecuadorian traveller, Jimmy ´skew. From this point he features in all our adventures.

The next few days; we sunned ourselves more, relaxed in the leather sofas of Milky Joés watching the football with our new gap year buddies Gudrun (Teo*) and Laura, not before a touch of brekky at Green Eggs and Ham. There was more blood spilt in beach footy with locals and we finally took the boards to the waves (no success as we just ended up a good 500m down beach due to the rip, much to the amusement of the locals). We socaliased more and love was poised to flourish (see above*), until we promtly left realising that the border into Ecuador might infact have opening hours.

We took a two hour bus ride to Tumbes and were instantly put into a taxi with two friendly looking Peruvian chaps, and were then subject to a clearly pre-planned taxi scam. Having ripped us off with a blatant display of dishonesty they promised to escort us through the border crossing, so with no choice all six of us remained in their taxi. We assured ourselves that despite their gun four of us would still hijack their taxi and drive to the border ourselves. On the other hand, given that this crossing was highlighted as extremely dangerous by both our guides and the guides we were glad for the company. This is mainly because the hundreds of police present at 5.59pm are absent at 6.01pm. Cleverly we arrived at 8pm in Aguas Verdes in Peru and scurried across the packed footbridge across the border into Huaquillas, with cries of ´your dead´ echoing through the lethal streets surrounding us. This was not helped by the fact that we we were still in full beach attire including party shorts. Here we jumped on the bus at 9pm and at 6am the next morning we arrived in Quito.