I have been procrastinating writing in my blog. I know. I'm sorry! It's just that this is going to be a long entry, a lot has happened since I last described my life. But, after multiple inquiries from my many devoted fans (aka my parents) I finally decided to stop using my free time to watch Modern Family episodes (ok, I watched one) and WRITE.
The Main Event: MANCORA
Last Wednesday night, a group of us from the house decided we were going to spend a long weekend in a small, coastal town in the north of Peru called Mancora. I don't have class Mondays or Fridays and we had a day off on Tuesday for Santa Rosa, the patron saint of Lima. I think it was her birthday. Possible deathday. Anyways, with the extra long weekend we decided to travel to a place farther away, 20 hours by bus to be exact.
Initial stresses: 1) While trying to buy bus tickets, my card wouldn't work. I don't know why, it works everywhere else her. Mari had to buy ours with her card while I tried to calm down from the online shopping experience. 2) I only had brought my hiking backpack and daypack as luggage to Lima. Therefore I had to pack my embarrassingly large bag and endure the criticism of my traveling companions (mostly in my mind).
Despite these setbacks, we arrived at the bus stop early to have them not understand our tickets for just enough time for me to stress out again (I'm beginning to think I am not cut out for travel planning). Yet, finally we boarded the bus. The bus which we were to spend the next 20 hours is best described in what it lacks; adequate leg room, toilet paper, lights, and general cleanliness. But ok, I had some motion sickness medicine and they were going to play movies! The results? I fell asleep from drowsiness during the light part of the day and the was up during the pitch dark/no functioning lights part.
And the movies. First, we watched Taken. Taken is the story of tourist girls traveling abroad who get kidnapped and made into sex slaves. I AM A TOURIST GIRL TRAVELING ABROAD!! This didn't go over well. Taken was then followed by a moving detailing the virtues of christian marriage, one involving Rob Schneider toughening up for prison, and one where a girl is made into an assassin. Please also remember these are dubbed in Spanish. Not quickly enough, the movies ended, we "slept" and ended up in MANCORA!
Upon exiting the bus, we were immediately swarmed by taxi drivers. After politely and then not so politely refusing them we walked to a hostel I had scoped out on the internet, Kokopelli. Lucky for us, Kokopelli had a room with 8 beds in it (how many of us there were) and they were all free! So we got a room to ourselves, that had its own bathroom, and clean sheets! What more could we ask. Kokopelli ended up being a great hostel the whole time, with friendly staff and lots of hammocks.
The next day Mari, Natalie, Katie and I took a guided tour of the Mangrove reserve, close to the border with Ecuador. Our tour guide was the incredibly cool Ursula, an Italian-German Peruvian who grew up in Lima and spent here time being a Marine Biologist (with a huge belly scar from rescuing dolphins!) and giving adventure tours throughout Peru before meeting the love of her life, a jewish, middle-eastern Peruvian and settling down in Mancora.
The day started with kayaking/canoeing through a protected Mangrove area. Mangroves are trees which can only grow in areas where fresh water mixes with salt water, making them pretty rare and pretty endangered. In the reserve we got to see 5 kinds of these trees, as well as many crabs, birds, and other little creatures. The kayak was a two person deal, which we swapped using. It was HARD. Hard to steer and hard to move, as we were against the current for awhile. After some initial confusion and a lot of me yelling "MARI" we got the hang of it just in time to maneuver our way through a maze of trees and even have the pleasure of lying flat to fit under a fallen branch. Finally, it was lunch.
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