Our travels to find the flip side.....

The journey home consisted of leaving Mancora at 5pm on a bus heading to Lima to catch our flight the following evening. The flight was to Madrid and then we had a connection to make from Madrid to Heathrow. We then had a train booked for 9.30pm the following day from London to Nottingham, where we were being collected by my wonderful mother and nana.

It was a long long journey, that didn't allow for too many errors, our time allowance was 7 hours delay for the bus, so when it turned up 2 hours late we were starting to sweat a little, we then sat in numerous bus stations for what seemed like hours and didn't seem to be making much progress. I then woke up with an eye infection on the scruffy bus, with no water in the toilets and little hygiene on the bus itself. It would have been an odd end to the trip if the journey didn't go without hick ups of some sort. We eventually made it to the airport with a couple of hours to spare; our bus driver must have put his foot down!

The plane was a big disappointment, no personal TV, the tiniest seats and disgusting food, Ibarra rubbish once again, but it flew by in our exhausted states! We were delayed but just managed to arrive in time for our connection to Madrid which had been delays by two hours! I attempted my first proper Spanish argument in customs with the man who took our rum off us which resulted in me leaving my ring in the basket. Not a good move on my part!

We boarded our plane and found out that it was to be delayed even longer, it was now becoming a race against time to make our 9.30pm train, the last train to Nottingham! We were hungry, tired and edgy but we made it through arrivals with an hour and a bit to spare, 50 minutes on the tube a marks and spensers picnic for the train and off we were on the way to Nottingham, tired, relieved and already feeling a little nostalgic for what had been.

The journey ended 50 or so hours later at 11.15pm pm the 9th March, the end of the most magical year of our lives so far.

We decided on Mancora for our last place as it was halfway to Lima, we knew we could get some decent, if not overpriced accommodation, with a pool and some really good food. We didn't have high hopes at all but compared to our first visit it wasn't as busy and the beach was much more pleasant also it was uninterrupted sunshine most days so perfect for a bit of pre England tanning and we had some lovely food and our awesome filled rolls. Can you tell we were craving some good food?! Unfortunately we had forgotten how hard Loki likes to party so we didn't quite get the sleep we wanted, we did get involved with muchos balcony rum drinking and some sunbed napping during the day! It was a nice end to the trip, chilled out, sunshine and good food. More like a 3 day holiday than travelling!

We did the border crossing nice and early and arrived in Otavalo in the afternoon of the day before the Saturday market. We stayed at a lovely lovely little place with the comfiest beds in the whole of South America, recommended by the Scottish couple. We then scouted the market to prepare ourselves for purchasing the following day. However we couldn't have begun to prepare ourselves for the size of the market. it was huge, sprawling from the main square down every side street. People in traditional dress everywhere, pig roasts, corn stalls and incredible smells.

It really was quite amazing, so many gifts we wanted to buy, however we would have needed a couple more bags to cart it all home in. The day began with Andy having a pig roast for breakfast, and then the shopping began. We didn't finish shopping till the afternoon, even Andy enjoyed it, to be honest he seemed unusually interested in the shopping, I think it could be the fact that he was gaining a new hat every hour, it seemed to motivate him!

We brought some lovely things and just about managed to fit them in our bags, well, after leaving a few items of clothes in the hotel to make space! It was definitely worth it though; we got some lovely things, hats, bags, nik naks. Definitely the best market I have ever visited!

That afternoon we hopped on a bus to Quito, then upon arrival jumped on a night bus to Ibarra making progress to the South of Ecuador and starting the journey back to Lima. We were going to head to Vilcabamba but we didn't quite make it as we loved Cuenca and didn't quite leave enough time to go South to come back on ourselves.

We found a nice hotel/hostel with the best TV ever, we were pretty broke after our Otavalo shopping spree so we spent some time exploring, chilling and watched a number of films. We went to a museum and saw the shrunken shaman heads, bloody crazy stuff, really interesting though!

We also found a lovely Indian restaurant that was pretty cheap so we got involved with some curries and in the day we had the traditional bag of corn, nuts, onion and tomato and lime juice. My absolute favourite South American snack, ummmmmmmmm!

We left, heading to Mancora early one morning for our last stop before the last stretch to Lima.

We arrived in Bogota after a long journey from the North, we only had a night here and we bumped into our Scottish friends at the terminal. We shared a taxi and headed into town, the accommodation was quite expensive compare to what we were used to but we found a lovely little place and treated ourselves, it was only one night anyway. We did some exploring, went to the Gold Museum and ate some lovely Veggie food before heading the following day to get a bus to the border town.
This journey was supposedly the dodgiest in Colombia with regular hold ups so we timed it so that the dangerous stretch would be in daylight and got ready for a long journey. The bus came and it was like an ice cream van! Tiny! The seats didn't even recline, it was such a long night and day, stunning scenery though. 27 hours later we arrived in the border town. We found a super cheapie, grabbed some of the strangest pizza I have ever eater..... Fruit pizza and snuggled up to watch a film or two.

We got up the next day and got a share taxi to a nearby church. It was built in the century into the face of a cliff and was absolutely stunning. A journey we were very glad we did.

We headed to Barranquilla with a room booked at the last minute, it was pretty cheap for carnival but not for our miniscule budget. We were dropped off on a main highway and left to fend for ourselves. We eventually managed to catch a town into the concrete maze that is Barranquilla and all seemed fine that was until the bus broke down and we were left stranded and clueless. We tried to get a taxi to our hotel but didn't have the right address. Colombia has a very odd numbering system that we never quite fathomed. We ended up walking around in a very hot and confused state for about 20 minutes till we stumbled upon a guest house. We figured anything was worth a try.

It was cheap, reasonably cheerful and the rooms seemed clean so we took it for half the price of the room we had booked. It was only as I was paying for the room did I see the sexo lube sign, hmmmm. This then prompted me to look at the price list, the hourly prices and 4 hour prices, half price during the week started to concern me. I kept smiling at the guy behind the reception, masking my fears and walked briskly back to our room. As I walked in it all clicked. The shower and toilet with no screens, the plastic bed and pillows, easy wipe down and the floor to ceiling mirrors. Oh well it had a TV, we clicked it on to find........ with wall to wall porn. it was a truly seedy little joint! However it did the job, providing you kept the fan on to block out the other noises and we did enjoy being the token tourists!

Barranquilla wasn't the nicest city, we found it hard to find the centre, and it was one big mass of concrete, however for carnival it was incredible, such a good atmosphere! The first day of Carnival we didn't pay for a seat so we just wandered around with the crowds and drank some beer trying to dodge the sun and see as much as we could from afar. We had so much fun there, the carnival was wonderful, the costumes were incredible and the after parties were equally as good. We watched the parade from a hill top on the first day then paid for a chair the second and it was completely worth it. A chair, a parade, a bottle of rum and some hot hot sunshine.

We finally got pick pocketed during the first day of carnival, it was inevitable as it was so so busy, luckily they only managed to steal a £5 and looking back it was pretty comical. Some guys were feeling Andy's legs so we tried to move away but because they'd felt his wallet they knew we were a 'sure thing'. They surrounded us, shouted hey gringo, foamed us in our face and robbed Andy's plastic Simpsons wallet! So not only were we foamed in the face but they took the liberty of relieving us of some money at the same time. Tactics! Luckily, we had divided all our money so it just meant we had to stop drinking a little earlier than planned, and no more areapa's for me!