From the Amazon through the Andes to the Beach (in 24 hours)

Travelling on a cargo boat was an amazing experience, at times an idyllic one, sitting back in our hammocks gliding past the stunning Amazon rainforest and rustic villages that punctuate the riverbank. But after three days and nights, sleeping in hammocks with over 50 other people close by and listening to awful Peruvian folk music on other people's stereos, we were a little stir crazy and were glad to disembark at the muddy port of Yurimaguas, a town in precisely the middle of nowhere.

Bye bye, Amazon

Yurimaguas is only remarkable in that it has a road that connects the Amazon River to the rest of Peru. Three hours in a mini-bus took us to the larger, more relevant town of Tarapoto, which has connections to other parts of the country, albeit through treacherous windy mountain roads. Separating the Amazon Basin from the rest of Peru are the mighty Andes. Any bus trip from east to west in Peru inevitably involves a windy trip thorugh the mountains.

From the myriad of bus companies on offer, regrettably we chose badly. The lack of air-con didn't really matter, and ostensibly it was a good choice because the bus was very modern with comfortable seats.The problem was there was hardly any leg room between seats (known in the travel industry as "seat pitch") so when the people in front of you put theirs back, you are basically pinned to your seat and can't move your legs.

For Adam's lofty height of 6"5', this is particularly an issue. You can imagine the trouble he had sitting in his aisle seat, given that I was feeling squished in my window seat and I am only 5"8'. The 15 hour trip over the Andes, through winding mountain roads where virtually every bend was a hairpin, had us sliding from side to side every few minutes.

Where the Amazon meets the Andes

Worse still, at one point a guy got up and started preaching to the passengers - he was one of those evangelical christian fruitcakes, and he was standing right next to us, yelling all of this crap about god etc etc. At this point we wished we hadn't bothered to learn Spanish so we couldn't understand any of it. After a few minutes we both inserted ear plugs and tried to ignore him.

When we awoke the lush tropical rainforest had disappeared and we found ourselves in Chiclayo, a town in coastal Peru, in the middle of an arid, scrubby desert. We changed buses and headed 6 hours further north, to the small beachside settlement of Mancora right near the Ecuadorian border. The landscape change was stark compared to the verdant jungle to which we had become accustomed in the past two weeks.

Loki - pretty schmick for a youth hostel!

All we could see was a flat, yellow expanse of sand in every direction, interrupted only by dry-as-a-bone scrub and the odd sand dune, implanted with the curvy lines of inexorable wind gusts. The mountains were bare, and chopped their way all the way to the glistening turquoise ocean.

Mancora itself is little more than a collection of restaurants and souvenir shops clustered on the main highway to the Ecuadorian border. But away from the main road and on the beachfront lie a motley collection of palm thatch restaurants, guest houses and Loki, the mother of all youth hostels. Enormously curvaceous in shape, the white-washed walls of its accommodations are straight out of the Greek Islands. With two bars, a restaurant, a gigantic pool and a ping-pong table, its pretty flash for a youth hostel, especially when you can get a dorm bed for as little as $9 a night.

The only problem with Loki is that, while it might have been a great place to hang out a couple of years ago when it was a little-known backpacker getaway, the secret is clearly out. And that means knobs. Lots of them. Unfortunately it seems to be popular with Australian bogans. It's probably one of those situations where if we were five to 10 years younger (and single) we would have had a whale of a time, but listening to drunken Aussies who are practically paralytic by 5pm and singing the theme song to Home and Away made us feel violently ill.

Sunset view from our room at Mancora

The hostel had a plethora of organised activities, but they repelled rather than appealed to us, because they had this high school camp feel to them - for example, we studiously avoided the organised tug-of-war, beach volleyball and (especially) karaoke.

Peruvian food has been mighty carbohydrate-heavy. They heap mountains of rice on every meal, breakfast, lunch and dinner, and as if this isn't enough there is also the ubiquitous mushy plantain (bananas so gross you have to cook them), beans and potatoes.

Fortunately on the coast, its all about seafood. It is fresh and super-cheap. We are gorging ourselves on ceviche, where fish, prawns, squid and octopus meat are marinated in lime juice so it gently cooks itself but is still immensely tender. Served with spanish onions, garlic and chili, this ensures a deliciously tart flavour.