Mancora madness

As you could probably tell, I wasn't so sad to say goodbye to Huanchaco. After our Cruz del Sur bus being 2 hours late (refer to me earlier post - travel tidbits) I was especially excited to be getting the hell outta there. 

We arrived into Mancora at about midday and checked into Kokopelli Hostel where both Brooke and Mel had recommended to us. As soon as we arrived we knew it was a good decision despite their low rating of only about 77% on Hostelworld. The place was a perfect mixture of party and chill with a cheap bar, graffiti art on the walls, a pool, and a table tennis table. I especially loved the artwork painted on the wall in our room. 

Of course it was straight down the beach to check out the waves and Jimmy was stoked to see it was going to offer him some good waves and I was even more stoked to see that the beach was free of dead birds, the sun was shining and it was somewhere I could happily chill for hours while reading my book. Which is pretty much how we spent our next few days. Both Brooke's food recommendations were worth the visit too. The Tex Mex place and the Japanese restaurant next to it were awesome. The Japanese was particularly amazing, almost like being back home with the quality of produce and presentation.

On day two we met an Australian couple, that live in Canada, Shaun and Tamazin and we ended up hanging out with them a lot. Shaun and Jimmy seemed to bring out the teenager in one another and before we knew it we were partying in our hostel until all hours of the night on numerous occasions. 

Unfortunately I managed to catch some kind of bug one of the days so had to spend it in bed (although I amazingly managed a session of yoga on the beach before crawling back into bed.) Otherwise, Mancora was all we had hoped for and more and I literally had to drag Jimmy onto a bus while reminding him we have only a few more weeks left in South America so we need to keep ourselves moving North in order to not run out of time. 

The hostel's resident puppy.

Charlie Brown cracking into Tam's coconut for her.

Enjoying a sunset drink at Charlie Brown's bar.

Before our night bus out of town we had one last meal with Sean and Tam as well as Kelvin and Ariel who had also just shown up in Mancora. The recommendation was from a girl we had met at one of the beach bars and it also happened to be the number one spot on Trip Advisor - La Sirena. It certainly paid off as it was so amazing. A five star restaurant for about NZD$15 each. What a way to end such an amazing time in one of our favourite spots on the trip so far.