MANCORA, beaches, bright blue sky and a whole lot of sunshine

Yesterday Juliet and I went to the bus station at 11.30am ready to buy our tickets and get on the 1pm bus to Mancora. Unfortunately when we arrived we found out that this bus was cancelled and the next one to our destination was at 3.45. Let’s just say it was a long and very boring wait at the bus station until we finally got to board the bus and basically switch from one quite uncomfortable seat to another, except this one would be our seat for the next 18 hours (it actually turned out to be 19 as of course our bus was delayed). At 11am this morning we FINALLY arrived in Mancora. After driving through practically nothing, just desert land and a lot of fog, it was such a nice relief to arrive in a cute little beach town with bright blue sky and a shining sun.
This is what it looked like practically our whole journey…

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And this is what we saw when we arrived at our hostel…

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Safe to say it felt like we’d entered into paradise. Our hostel room wasn’t actually ready for us for another couple of hours so we wondered into the town to explore and grab some early lunch. Mancora is an open, clean, quite pretty town full of crazy tuck tuck drivers, surfer tourists and local market sellers. One side of the road is filled with the market sellers stalls where they sell everything hand made and everything has ‘Mancora’ written beneath it, even bracelets!
The other side of the road is filled with banks, drug stores and hundreds of cute, locally owned restaurants, one of which Juliet and I decided on for lunch. Firstly because it was two courses and a drink for 10pesos (£2), secondly because all the decorations, including table decorations and lamp shades, were made out of shells, and thirdly… Because the food actually seemed quite nice. (We definitely have our priorities set in backpacker mode)

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We then spent the rest of the afternoon unpacking and dumping all of our warm clothes and jackets (that we definitely will not be needed) in our hostel room and then sunbathing by the massive pool that the hostel has to offer. This evening, after a solid afternoon in the sun of course, Juliet and I headed back into town and browse the markets once again and find something for dinner that we really fancied. We came across a cute little Italian restaurant, lowly lit with red flowery table clothes and we’re sold. The food was delicious, we both had vegetarian pasta and it was so huge we couldn’t finish it!!

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It’s now 8pm and Juliet and I are both in bed in our room, nether of us slept at all well on the bus last night and it’s safe to say we are both looking forward to a very early night followed by a hard core sunbathing session tomorrow. We are in a party hostel however and the music is blaring, serves us right for being such grannies… Hehe (sorry grandparents! Love you all lots).