Nicole's Adventures

Bolivia started off a little rough.. Although I had read on the US Embassy website that Bolivia made it quite difficult for only Americans to enter requiring 150$, yellow fever vaccine, a letter of invitation, and hotel reservations, plus passport photos and an application. I had also read online you could easily show up at the border without any of these things and just go.... hahah last time I trust a travel blogger about the border. Once I arrived the attendant on the bus told me once we got to the border to skip the line and ask for the application. They wouldnt give it to me and said I needed an original copy from the bus company and the passport photos. So we had to make copies of the buses only form, then I had to run back into town in a mototaxi with all of my stuff, and if the bus was still there when I returned.. I could continue with the bus to copacabana. I rushed into town had to negociate with a taxi driver get the pics printed as quickly as possible and then hurry back ...

Inca Jungle Trail was very incredible. We had a briefing the night before so had a really good idea what to expect for every part of the journey. I had a really fun group which consisted of two guys from Argentina, two girls from the UK, and a girl from Holland. THe first morning we were picked up bright and early and taken to pick up the mountain bikes. From there a little breakfast stop at the kind of tourist places I hate but I had already prepared pb and j so none of that bs for me!  Then continued to drive up this crazy crazy huge mountain, like we were driving up to the sky literally. It was so cold when we got out. Luckily we got super cool outfits to put on to keep out the water and add a little warmth and warn cars in our orange vests of the road. It was all downhill with absolutely amazing bikes... I think even better than my dads! The scenery was incredible. We went 50km downhill in two hours! I really wanted to take a bunch of pictures but it was ...

So I last left you on the border about to catch my bus into Peru. The night bus was fine, nothing crazy I slept really well and the border crossing was cake. Two lines. Stamp out of Ecuador and stamp into Peru.. No questions asked. Arrived in Mancora at the lovely hour of 4 am... as always seemed to find more gringos on the bus. So I joined them and headed to Loki Hostel where they weren´t sure they had a room for us but we could sleep on their pool lounge chairs until the morning. This place was insane. And well for many reasons I actually didnt énd up staying there. I went down the street to stay at Runasimi or something like that for 15 soles or 5 dollars a night. It was really hot at night time and sometimes hard to sleep. I enjoyed the beach in Mancora and had planned to spend time there surfing however there were little tiny tiny waves. One day I visited nearby beach of Los Organos.. It was hard to compare beaches after being in Galapagos but it kind of reminded me of Cali in so...