July 14 - Mancora to Huaquillas, Ecuador

All I can say is that the Hotel looked much better in the night time...but the sign should have been a clue....

We hit the town in search of food and realized this little town was a party place... hostels everywhere, young back packers and music playing... luckily it was off season, so the place was relatively quiet...expect for the fact our hotel was next door to the world famous Loki chain of Hostels.  When we checked into our very simple room, it was apparent it shared the same wall as Loki's dance floor...and with "Sexy and I know it" by LMFAO playing...no one was sleeping ! Mateo wanted to go and check out Loki...Gabriel was bouncing off the walls from being in the truck all day, Marnie was tempted to go dance...but we needed to get some sleep.... [Make sure you check out Mateo and Gabriel's blog page for their video/thoughts on Mancora and leaving Peru]

We asked to change rooms...which they did and we wondered why they hadn't put us in this room initially.  That became apparent in the morning...lets just say thus far this was the worse room/ bathroom we have stayed in....

The following morning we were able to appreciate the beautiful ocean while having a great american style breakfast at a restaurant close by.  We kept our promise to the kids and hit the beach....the warm calm ocean water, hot sand and strong sun was all we needed to forget about the hotel room.  We also found this town a bit on the expensive side, compared to the rest of Peru.  Breakfast was $60 soles (CND$22) and the room was $80 soles (CD$30)...a rip off actually.

We said "goodbye" to Mancora with Mateo telling us that we wants to travel and stay at Loki Hostels when he's a teenager...we told him he had to be an adult.

We drove the short 125 km north and hit the Peru/Ecuador border!  We always knew border crossings would eat a chunk of our day, and although everything went well....it still took us 2 hours to cross.  The immigration line in Peru...then in Ecuador, then we had to find the customs office....only 5 km down the road... then had to find a customs officer...then we had to find an Insurance office to purchase the local third party liability insurance.  

All relatively "easy" but nevertheless the day was pretty much done.  It was 5 pm and we we decided to stay in Huaquillas... we found a great hole in the wall, local diner with surprisingly good sea food and cold beer adjacent to the main square.  The night ended with us planning the next couple day's and Gabriel doing cartwheels in the town square.