A quick walk before our bus this morning also brought us back to the harsh reality of the noise, rush and smells of a big city, we could easily have stayed in Huanchaco longer but we are still in the search for some real warmth and we could feel the start of that in Piura.
Just before boarding the bus today we were fingerprinted - maybe for identification if we crashed, who knows? In Peru the bus companies have different ways of registering their passengers - we've been videoed, photographed, and now fingerprinted - what next, blood samples perhaps?
No movies on this bus for a change, but instead we were the unwilling audience for a snake oil salesman. We had seen this elsewhere in Peru (for example, on the bus from Cusco to Arequipa), where a "passenger" waits for the bus to get going, then stands up and starts with a loud spiel on the healing powers of some amazing product that cures everything from cancer to impotence. Amazingly every time we've seen this at least one other passenger falls for it and buys the product.
One downside of having the upstairs front window seats is that you have first hand experience of the quality of the bus driver, sitting further back you are oblivious of what is going on. We had a really scary driver who played chicken with every vehicle on the road that was smaller that us, he would pass continually regardless of whether there was oncoming traffic, he would just make them go off to the shoulder and he would keep barreling through, he even decided he couldn't wait for the signal where the road was down to one lane, jumped the queue and forced a car coming in the other direction onto the shoulder.
We arrived safely in Máncora and tried to check in to what we thought was a balcony room with a sea view, only to be told that no such room existed in the hotel! Luckily the other two places we had been considering were next door, so some fast negotiating by K saw us with a lovely room overlooking the beach and a gorgeous balcony. By now we were really hot and sweaty so changed to shorts and headed to the beach for a late lunch, but by the time we sat down the weather had changed and we were cold - what happened to the warm weather?
Later that evening we headed out for a pisco sour before dinner only to be told that no alcohol is permitted to be sold this weekend as it's the general election weekend for Peru. This is to ensure that when people vote they do so with a clear head. We were surprised by this, and the waitress couldn't comprehend that we had no such rule in Australia! (P.S. We've since found from a Yank that it's similar in the US - no alcohol for sale on election day!).
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