Bye bye Ecuador, hello Peru!

After a day full of birthday festivities which ended around 5.00hrs this morning, we are now waiting for our luxury bus which is going to bring us from Lima to Ica. Since our last update - which is only a couple of days ago - we travelled from Galapagos via Guayaquil to Mancora, Peru. In Guayaquil we had a very nice hotel which was good, as the town itself is not that exciting and it was raining heavily. So, it was not a bad decision to stay a few hours in the hotel contacting friends and family via WhatsApp, FaceTime, Skype, Facebook, the old fashioned email and of course our blog. (No, we are not addicted!!!)

To get to Mancora, we took a bus (8.5hrs). We arrived late in the evening; around 22.30hrs. With a Peruvian version of a Tuk Tuk, we travelled the last kilometres to our hotel, which was only a few meters from the beach. Unfortunately, the next day (Thursday) the sun had disappeared behind clouds and some rain. So, we decided to go to a small village 10 kilometres from Mancora. As the coast is very nice in this area, and it stopped raining, we decided to walk back to our hotel over the beach. It turned out a bit further away than we expected; 15 kilometres instead of 10. So you can imagine how we arrived after 3 hours walking on slippers and no sun cream :-(.

Friday, we flew to Lima (1000 kilometres south) and stayed in a very nice rooftop apartment in the neighbourhood Miraflores, thanks to Airbnb. And then of course on Saturday it was the BIG day! Frank turned 44 years old! Henk prepared a nice breakfast (see video) and after a 10K run, we went into the old town, walked around, saw a wedding in one of the old churches and visited an old Fransiscan Monastery which had a very extensive library. After several hours being in the cultural modus, it was shopping time. Good for us as Peru turns out to be cheaper than Ecuador. In the evening we went to a restaurant called IK. We had a 9 course tasting menu which was a great experience. All Peruvian food was served a bit in the way as Ron Blaauw is doing it in Amsterdam. Delicious!!! We finished the night in a club where we danced till in the late hours on various kind of music as there were several floors with different music.

So with a short night, you can imagine what we are going to do when we get into the bus.........

Thanks all for your best wishes because of Frank's birthday. Check out the latest videos and the next update will follow in a week's time.

Best, Frank & Henk