Manzanillo

So we made it to the beach! Manzanillo is only a short bus trip from Colima, made longer by the fact that we took yet another second class bus. All in all it was still only about 2.5 hours drive and we had accommodation awaiting us.

The ocean

Sometimes when we arrive in new towns/cities the route from the bus station to where we are staying is easy and obvious, other times we need to ask for assistance and use Google Maps on our phone. Manzanillo was one of the later. It’s quite a large city and very spread out along the coast. I likened it to a lot of small towns which have merged together over the years linking up the coast line. Because of this we weren’t actually staying anywhere near the centro. Our hostel was in the Bahia Santiago, an area near some beaches but as we discovered not touristy at all. The touristy areas were both further down the beach near Playa Miramar and back towards down-town and centro. Overall we loved the area and stayed for a week as the hostel was fantastic as well.

At the beach! Sorry for the water drop in the photo

Colima

Via our longest, windiest bus journey yet we made it to Colima; with no travel sickness. Although an 11.5 hour bus trip sounds tedious it actually went by relatively quickly and we passed though some gorgeous mountainous scenery. There were many armed checkpoints on the way but we were only stopped at one. An armed officer boarded the bus and asked to see a few peoples id’s, ours included, and then the bus was allowed to continue. All in all we were stopped for less than five minutes and once the officer saw our New Zealand passports he wasn’t very interested in us.

Arriving at about 7pm without a reservation at a hotel or hostel was one of our less than successful ideas. We had an address of a hostel with great reviews which we headed for. On arrival the place had no lights on an no one seemed to be home. Quite strange for a hostel with an apparent 24 hour desk. So with nothing else to do we hefted out packs back towards centro and found a cheap hotel for a few nights.

Pretty building