global travellers

Jumping from an airplane at 16,500 ft

2013-07-26T04:57:00.000+02:00

Jumping-from-an-airplane !!?! (That's right!) Crazy! Awesome!!

This was one of those experiences that we both wanted to do during our trip around the world.
We had decided to do it in New Zealand for two main reasons: Safety and the incredible views it could provide (against it only one reason: the very expensive cost).

So there we were...,
all prepared and geared up for our jump, after getting our pre-flight briefing about safety procedures and sequence of events, we were feeling a bit like cool pilots in the Top Gun movie just before an important flight, with the difference that we were looking a lot more excited and dirty.

We were in Motueka, a city by the cost on the north of the south island of New Zealand.
This is possibly the ideal location to do such a jump, nearby is the Abel Tasman National park with a beautiful coastline, the Cook straight dividing the north and south islands, views of Marlborough sounds, mountains, dense vegetation and luckily a great sunny day.

We had been living inside the belly of our dear John Lennon, and let me tell you that after 2 weeks with no real shower and no real bed, hair and skin becomes (very) disgusting, a jump from form an airplane would for sure freshen up things a little.

16,500 ft is more than 5 km! (That's high enough! It's actually the highest tandem jump in New Zealand.

When I started thinking about taking such an adventure (a memory for the lifetime they say), it is natural to think that it might actually become the last memory of my lifetime).
Q: What if the parachute doesn't open?
A: There is another one!
Q: What if the second one doesn't work?
A: Chances of survival are very very very low. You became a human pancake!

So, no, I didn't want to become a human pancake! specially without having a nice good shower before! We were given some hats, made us look very silly, but at least would cover our greasy hair. Helmets were not necessary, as they would become part of the pancake too.

Luckily the chances of the 2 parachutes not working are very very very very very low. So it actually makes skydiving a very nice and attractive sport and also a very profitable business.

We sat directly on the airplane floor as there were no chairs or seats except the one for the pilot inside the minuscule cabin. We would be the 'load #1' of the day (made us feel a bit like test lab rats)..but hey, it's a dirty job but someone gotta do it.

It took us about 20 minutes to climb all the way up to our drop zone. Before that at about 12,000 ft on the way up we were given masks to breath through. The masks are used because the cabin is not pressurized and above that altitude oxygen becomes rarefied, without that people get dizzy, tired, loose motor skills, and loose consciousness. We didn't want any of that! so everyone got some extra oxygen.

...The airplane stopped climbing...This is it! ..heart starts racing.., by this time we had done all security checks, making sure that we were well attached to our instructors. yep we were tightly tucked to their chests.

Helena was sitting closer to the door but more to the right side of the plane, till then I had been trying to figure out if I was going to jump first or if she was jumping first.

...The door slides open..., a cold wind fills up the cabin, felt good since I was heating up inside my flying suit.

...Helena's camera men steps outside... What?outside?? there is no stepping outside? I don't see him anymore, but I know he is still there, attached to the airplane from the outside..
...Helena and her instructor crawl on their bums till the door, stay there for some seconds and in a blink of an eye they are gone!..

I scream, "she's goooone!!! She did it! I laugh loudly, I worry for her, I am really happy for her, my heart races even more!

Then my camera man steps outside, everything goes fast, and before I build my courage fully, I am already sitting on the door rim, the world beneath, the cold wind, the engine noise, the blu sky, land, ocean, mountains, some clouds, what a view! what a rush! and then ... the countdown!
I lift my head (its part of the safety) I can only see the sky now! and with two little swings we are OFF.

Oooooohhhoooooo, in a split second and we falling towards the ground like a bullet.

I see the camera guy.... he is floating? in the air in front of me! ? with his belly up. crazy guy!
I feel myself falling and the wind rushing through my belly, face and arms. it's almost like if I can embrace everything.

Yeeaah, I scream. and scream again, the wind is so strong that it's like my scream only exists in my head.

The camera guy comes closer, we hold hands, we start swirling and swirling in the air, I feel an increasing force force pulling us apart, then he let's go, and we separate in the air. I laugh like crazy. It is crazy.

Then he comes closer again, and he flies under me in front of me, between me and the ground. I see some clouds approaching behind him, we are going really fast!!

And then we are falling through the clouds, Uaauuu, i see only white and this crazy guy floating in front of me. !!!!

Then light again, we are out of the clouds!, I see the ground, the ocean, the coastline, the mountains some houses, we are getting closer! and then a force in my body pulling me down, parachute has opened and I'm sitting and falling smoothly. The camera guy has disappeared somewhere.

I have time to enjoy the beauty of the coast line, the green vegetation, some few islands, we turn gently in spirals, we are getting closer to land, I get time to recover my breath, What has just happened? I reconstruct images of the jump in my memory, I laugh loudly again. uaaauuu.

Then I see a large green field, we are heading there.
we align with the green and we are landing, I'm told to pull my legs up and land in my bum. I am exhilarated!

Below some videos of this adventure, survived:

The North of the South - Kaikoura

2012-03-13T23:10:00.001+01:00

Time was running out, as always...

We had spent more time than we had planned enjoying beaches, swimming with dolphins, seeing giant trees, cooking our feet in boiling waters, learning the haka, bungee jumping, climbing volcanoes from the lord of the rings, and more.. and still, we had only visited the North island of New Zealand.

"Should we go down to the south?", "we won't have time to see much..", "but for sure there would be nice things to see", "and probably there will not be another opportunity soon to see this side of the world...", "ok, lets do it !!"

With this decision came also a weather change, autumn was arriving, some wind and some rain were on the menu. But first a ferry boat ride through the Cook Straight from Wellinghton to Picton passing through the Queen Charlotte sound.

The Cook Straight is not that straight at all, in fact it is a huge patch of ocean that takes more than 3 hours to cross, luckily there were some 30 dolphins that decided to keep us company, hitch-hiking on the waves created by the ferry. The ferry then cruised into Queen Charlotte sound, a beautiful landscape, like a maze of cuts in the coastline which stretches further and further inland.

But where should we go? We had read that there was a chance to see whales in a town called Kaikoura, and that's where we were headed. The whale watching season was almost over and we were taking some chances...we also read about the possibility of seeing some seals but we were open minded for our plan to completely fail.

We drove down the coastline in a race against the sunset, it would be a lot more difficult to find a place to spend the night once it got dark.

Even if our home "John Lennon" had wheels, we always preferred to check the surroundings with some light. Campervans are everywhere in New Zealand, and there are legal places to park overnight, but most of the times one has to pay some money. We were cheap, and we wanted to do it for free, but safely, and we didn't want to park our "invisible" campervan in front of a police station and wake-up with a ticket on the wind shield.

We crossed some road signs saying 'seals crossing'...."are they kidding, or is it real?", we drove through some more bays and we saw some movement by the beach... seals?

We had to stop to have a look. Far down the beach there were some silhouettes that resembled seals, small, big..there were seals!! We were delighted, laughing like kids, but...

But, wait a second! whats this thing in the grass looking at me?

Am I disturbing?

Yep, BIG EYED one, looking at us! we had just been reading in the guide book about respecting the seals, to keep a distance, that some times they get aggressive..and by accident we almost stepped on one.

It was time to move and try to find a place to spend the night.

Kaikoura is an old whalers town, everywhere you go you see references to it. But nowadays there is no more slaughter, instead it has become a mecca for whale watchers and Lobster eaters, but that's another story. It is said that when whales existed in large numbers, before whale hunting, one could hear their singing from land, those days are long gone...

This is Paikea, I had heard of his story in the movie the "whale rider" (a great movie by the way).

It is said that the people of Kaikoura are descendants of Paikea, the whale rider, who came to New Zealand on the back of a whale from the pacific islands. Legend or not, his memory is still remembered in the town of Kaikoura.

...And we were not going to see any whales this time.., the morning woke up with rain and many clouds, and because of that the air planes that help spotting the whales from the air would not go out. Hence the chance to actually spotting whales during a tour would be very small and not worth wasting our money on.

Instead we decided to walk around town and try to see some more seals.....easy breezy.

When the whale watching season is over it's definitely the seals that own the place.

They spend most of their time lazying around in the beach, either that or looking for food. And it's like if they are schizophrenic: on land lazy and sleepy, in the water super fast and agile.

Since the water was too cold for us, we preferred the lazy version of watching them, ...in their dreams.

And we had time for a photo shot too.

The coast line is amazing, even in a cloudy and rainy day.

Ahh... I mentioned Kaikoura is famous for 2 things: Whales and Lobster right?

Since we didn't see any whales we had to wipe our tears with the second option, great meal! mhhhhh...

The Road to Mordor - New Zealand

2011-12-08T16:07:00.000+01:00

The day after the adrenalin-filled bungy jump, or rather bungy fall, we woke up quite tired and were fairly slow getting ready. The fault: a mixture of the come down after the jump, a bottle of nice NZ sparkly wine (belated birthday celebration), and some stupid guys filling up our adrenalin tanks for a second time by suddenly, in the middle of the night, show up and start driving in circles on the gravelled parking were we had found our 'haven' for the night.

Wakening up by a loud noise from someone working the gas pedal, followed by small stones being spluttered onto our camping van, and a feeling that 'they're out to smash into us from the side' - is fairly heart thumping. I felt very pleased that we weren't the only ones parked in this area, but also quite scared. What do these people want?

Well, it turned out they didn't want anything really. Other than having some stupid fun scaring tourists that is. Soon enough though they tired and stopped to continue drinking for another hour or so.

My heart was thumping away unnecessarily is seemed. And the next morning I was paying the price as I had hardly managed to sleep the rest of that night.

Still, the journey had to go on and it wasn't because of some nightly scares that Frodo packed up his bags and turned back home. No. Mordor was looming only a few hours drive away and albeit the fairly cloudy morning, we were destined to follow this path in our fight against the dark side...

The land of Mordor, Middle-earth is placed right in the middle of earth, or at least of the North Island. Surrounded by three volcanoes in the story, as well as in real life, it's the place of darkness with the volcano of Mount Doom, or for the non-Lord of the rings fans Mt. Ngauruhoe, looming high above. Mordor/Tongariro National Park is actually the oldest national park in New Zealand and also includes the two volcanoes of Mt. Ruapehu and Mt. Tongariro. As the baby in the threesome, Ngauruhoe is the most impressive as no ice age has smoothened its perfect volcanic cone. It's the perfect background for any picture, or why not, any film.

And it would be our background for the day. As we finally reached the hiking shop, at the base of Ruapehu, it was still fairly early for our habits, but at close to midday it was fairly late for organising the hike up to the crater lake that we had planned. The last guided tours had already left, but the shop attendant reassured us that the crater was easy enough to reach without following any guides. In fact, many people had already gone off that same day for the 3-4 hours return hike from the top of the chair lift up to the rim of the crater lake and back again.

However, it was getting late, she said, as the last chair down returned at 4p.m. But we could of course walk down the last part if necessary. That would only be an additional 1-2 hours or so....

The clouds had opened up by now and a beautiful blue sky had shown itself to be the perfect backdrop to this picture-perfect region. And this was only from down the valley. How much more beautiful would it not have to be once we got up to the 2'000 or so meters of the arrival of the chair lift. And as we would climb higher...

Still filled with adrenalin from the previous day, we spurted to the van to get some extra snacks, water and warm clothes, bought our tickets for the lift and off we went. The idea was that we could always just walk a little bit and check how it seemed. And if it was too difficult we could always just backtrack down again.

Yeah right! Like if I would ever give up halfway to some place.

The view was indeed amazing and we very much felt like we were in the middle of earth. Autumn had started to descend on NZ and to turn the world into techno colours. The harsh black of some of the rocks, the earth-toned red of others, it was a world of savage beauty that we were entering. Rocks just everywhere, as long time volcanic eruptions have created rock 'avalanches' for us to climb on like mountain goats. No nice, easy path to linger along here. Instead what we were facing was a day of real serious workout. That and an increasingly cloudy sky.

The first half an hour or so, we came across several groups of hikers on their way back down. Some even included children, or young teenagers rather. With the information on the best path to get to the crater provided by these successful returners and with some additional motivation from the feeling that 'if all those people had made it, well, then so would we', we continued the climb.

For a while it really felt like we were making good time and that we were walking along the best path and would hence make up for our late start by not walking around lost for an hour or so as one of the groups we came across had done. We should for sure be able to get to the top and back down again before the last chair departed.

And then suddenly the feeling changed. We realised that it had been a while since we had seen anyone coming down the stones and the path I was making us follow was becoming less and less secure. Were we on the right path? With the clouds looming overhead, a path that had suddenly 'disappeared' and an uncertainty if we would make it back in time, Nuno suggested that we turn around and give up. We had already seen the view of the valley, the view of Mount Doom, and probably the view over the crater lake would be obscured by clouds. His was the voice of reason.

Mine was the voice of stubbornness. I hadn't walked this far. Sorry, make that climbed! Hadn't made all this effort, to just turn around now. He could turn around if he wanted to. I was going to go and see that crater lake.

Stupid, stupid girl.

Perhaps it was the Mordor evilness that had captured me in its throngs. Luckily, after trying to persuade me for a good moment, succumbing to a few nice words that I'm not so proud of, Nuno decided to come with me. The most dangerous choice to make would be for us to split up. As it was obvious I wasn't going to cave in, he chose to make sure I would be ok. And he made sure to find the right path again.

So on we went for another half an hour or so, and then we finally reached the crater! The visibility up there was close to nil. But we saw enough to find the path longing the ridge - a real path this time and not an invisible one over stones - and followed it until we reached its end next to a small hut. Tired, thirsty and fairly hungry, we sat down and shared the apple we had left, drank some water and became friends again, while hoping for the clouds to part enough for us to spot this supposedly magic lake.

The hut made us feel a bit better as in the worst case we could hide out in it while waiting for the next day. The worst case being if the clouds would continue getting darker and turn into bad weather. Instead, after a few minutes, there it suddenly was. A small opening, some turquoise colour and ahhhhh we saw the lake. Right then it did feel quite magical after all.

Considering that the weather was not getting worse, but actually seemed to improve, it was high time to turn around and try to catch that chair lift. We still had an hour or so before the last one would leave. So off we went. Longing the ridge, back down big rocks, smaller stones, a mixture of both. We tried to move quickly, but so did the rocks. It was a fairly slippery hike down as small stones would suddenly start rolling under our feet, and the bigger rocks sometimes shifted. This had of course happened also on the way up, but both the gravity and speed are different when hiking uphill. I must admit I was quite slow. I'm always slower downhill than uphill in relation to others. I'm worried I will twist an ankle or so, and I like to be in control. Well, most of the time...

Still I tried to hurry as much as I could. Tried to keep up with the mountain goat in front of me. But of course we missed the last chair anyway. Although we only arrived some ten minutes after the lift should have closed, the whole area was dead. There was no one left working the lift system, nor in the cafeteria. We were tired, thirsty and really really didn't want to have to walk the rest of the way down. So we went from building to building, hoping that perhaps somewhere, someone...

Maybe they had closed early because of the weather? Or maybe they were just very efficient in packing up and closing all down. Whatever reason, we were on our own again and the only way down that day was by foot.

Our poor feet. In our hiking shoes we were fairly protected, but still we had managed to hit ourselves quite a few times on the uneven surface. And the constant downhill. Boy, did we wish that we had cut our nails the day before.

We walked. And walked. And then we walked some more.... It was shorter and easier than the hike from the crater. At least it should have been. But psychologically it was much worse. And the eternal question of the day came back to haunt us: 'were we actually on the right path?'. We tried to stay close to the cables of the lift as they were for sure going to the right place, but we also tried to find some little road or something. Did they really bring everything up in that chair system? The visibility down here was perfect at least. Not a cloud in the way any more and at least we weren't cold. Thirsty, yes. But not cold.

And we were safe. The dark side had been defeated and our good friend Lennon was patiently waiting for us on the parking far below. Ready to soon take us off for more adventures as we continued our drive South.

A different birthday experience in Taupo

2011-11-07T09:22:00.000+01:00

When you leave to travel for a full year, it comes without saying that at one point during the trip a special day will sneak up on you. And what better place to celebrate ones birthday than in beautiful New Zealand?

It was a day filled with incredible gifts, starting with us awakening to one of the most amazing sunrises I have ever seen.
Well, once we had cleaned off some of the fog on Mr. Lennon's steamed-stained windows that is. The night before we had been to celebrate St Patricks day at an Irish pub in Tauranga, one of many such pubs spotting the country where you could almost believe to be in Ireland for the celebration, but had made sure to drive around until we found a nice, fairly hidden parking spot right next to the beautiful long white Papamoa sand beach before falling asleep.

My first gift was hence starting the day with a sky filled in colours so intense they almost reflected in the sand. My second gift came a few minutes later, as I pulled on my improvised 'running clothes' (a pair of silk pyjama shorts! - thanks Jessica, a black top and a sports bra) and set off for a long barefoot run. My goal was to run until the end of the beach and then turn around, but after some 5'000 steps, I gave up and decided to head back to where Nuno was patiently waiting together with a surfer's dog who had adopted him while his master was out surfing. A true gift that I treasure even more so now when I'm back running in Geneva, where I can only dream about this kind of barefoot runs on the softest of sand and in the cleanest of airs available to me so freely in NZ.

My third gift of the day, came from my mummy who gave me money for 'a special experience'. Little was she to know what I would chose to use that money on... However, that experience is for a later blog entry. Suffice to say that it involved great emotion, great views, and was perhaps the last thing my mother would actually have wanted me to use the gift money for.

My fourth gift was from the best travel partner in the world. Well, in general I would say. Right at the moment when I was to use his gift, after some days spent with our feet sunk into the stinking sulphide water in Rotorua, I believe I was considerably rethinking his greatness. At least for a moment.

Hence we find ourselves in Taupo.

This is the home of NZs biggest lake and a big centre for trout fishing, so much that it is actually considered the trout-fishing capital of the world!

Ahhh you say: 'So you got a trout-fishing experience as the fourth gift? Well that's understandable then, that you were starting to rethink Nuno's greatness as who would want to go trout-fishing for their birthday?'

And although you are indeed right, I would have had to seriously rethink his greatness, or rather his knowledge of what I like to do and who I am, if he would have given me such a gift. But don't despair. Nuno hadn't actually lost his greatness, it was rather that his crazy side was acting up. Once again.

My lovely gift was in fact a bungy jump!

New Zealand is afterall the cradle of bungy jumping. So what better place to try it out? And Taupo has a fairly famous jump with a splendid view over the mighty Waikato river. And a small drop of a mere 47 meters!!!

It didn't sound that high actually when we read about it while driving down there. Compared to jumping out of a plane it's nothing for example. However, once we had arrived and walked onto the platform, looking down, I had to swallow down a few gulps and started to seriously reconsider the whole business.

This place was high, high up in the air. And the only thing that would keep me from falling head first down, without bouncing back up again, was a small cord?! Yeah right. Right?

Well, I still had time to back out as we had yet to pay. However, since we had arrived in the late afternoon after having driven the whole day, it soon came down to 'now or never'. At least for this Taupo jump as they were soon going to close down for the day. Ok. Let's do it! Or? Yes, let's. 'Are you sure?', Nuno asks before handing over his credit card to the girl at the desk. Last chance to backtrack for me... Yes, I'm sure!

Not...

A few toilet runs later, and it was time to go onto the platform and get geared up. I was to go first as it was my birthday gift, I was more scared, Nuno wanted to make sure to get a picture and he had done this whole thing before. Cheater.

The guys working up there seemed professional. But fast. Wait a second, why are they so fast? What had happened to the Latin American slowness that I'd gotten so used to? Where was it now when I really needed some time to work up my courage? Fast, however, didn't mean that they were neglecting any security points as two guys double checked that the first guy had fastened everything correctly. But boy were they efficient. Everything was done, all was triple checked and fine. I was led like a prisoner with cuffed feet on a pirates ship onto the plank...well or to the edge at least, and instructed to just let myself fall forward. Not to jump, just fall.

Easy.

Just fall.

.....

No way. How does one just fall? How???? This is not happening to me? What am I doing here? I could possibly just take a big leap out and have it all over with. But letting myself fall forward? Every muscle in my body was contradicting this very possibility.

The instructor counted down for me. 3...2...ONE!

Nope. I was still standing on the 'plank', probably shaking like a little leaf. As he was a nice instructor, afterall, he informed me that I could still back out if I wanted to... Of course, no money back.

I was looking desperately for Nuno. Where was he? Why was he so far away? Ah, he was following his perpetual search for the best picture of course. Not so easy on this one though.

Another count down.... And you find me standing in the exact same spot. No way in hell. This was just not working. But I wanted to. I really wanted to experience such a controlled jump. I love thrills. Love to do semi-crazy things under controlled forms. It wasn't like Nuno's gift was a complete insanity. He actually knows me very well. But this falling forward? Just not happening.

The instructor was starting to get a bit impatient. It was the end of the day and our two jumps were to be the last ones probably. If I would ever jump that is!

So he suggested that he could push me slightly in the back, if I wanted, to give me just that little needed push to make the required movement forward. For some strange reason I found myself acquiescing. Me, miss control freak, having someone else push me?

3....2....OOOONNNNEEEEE

Holy shit. WTF. Help!!!! Aoooooouuuuuuuuuuuuuuuaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

Bounce. Small bounce. Tiny bounce. Bbbbbooouuunnnnceee and there I manage to grab onto the pole in the boat that is stretched out to me by the cool captain (not the pirate one of course, as he was left standing all the way up and already busy preparing for Nuno's jump, but the nice saviour captain sailing this river in the sole goal to catch crazy bungy jumpers and bring us back to shore).

So much stress. So much indecisiveness and in 10 seconds it was all over.

I spent some 5 minutes, at least, trying to make the fall. Panicking ever so slightly. And about 30 minutes before that running to the toilet, jumping up and down by nervousness, wondering what I was doing. And then I finally made the fall and before I could register any real feeling except for a big scream, it was all over and I was already bouncing up and down like a spider having fallen from its web, seeing the beautiful view from an upside down angle.

I would later find out that many people take up to 30 seconds before regestering anything when faced with a violent change of environments/situations. When it comes to bungy jumping, I'm definitely one of those people. Only later did I manage to think about what I had done. That I had actually done it. I had bungy jumped, in New Zealand, attached only to my feet and I had survived! Feeling slightly disappointed that my arms hadn't even hit the water, while Nuno got half emerged during his jump. Never sure if the instructor had indeed pushed me, or if just the thought that he was going to push me had been enough for me to make the fall. I just can't recall feeling his hand on my back. But what does it matters. I did it! Quite an amazing experience and such a good birthday gift for this slight adrenaline junkie.

And filled with adrenaline we were. So much that we decided to take on the forces of evil the next day. But that story my friends, is for another entry.

Going south in the Northern island - New Zealand

2011-06-23T19:40:00.000+02:00

Travelling around the northern tip of New Zealand was a good surprise full of amazing views and we sure enjoyed it fully spending twice as much time in that area as we had planned. It was time to head down south and experience some of the Maori culture.

We headed past Auckland again and continued on to Coromandel, a region of nice bays and hills. One of the main attractions here is a beach with thermal activity, a place where steaming hot water emerges directly at the beach.

The best time to visit the place depends on the tide, and in our case it was early in the morning. It wasn't difficult to find the right place on the beach to enjoy the natural hot pools with an ocean view, the Kiwis (people from New Zealand) are crazy about it, and come in all different sizes and shapes rigged with shovels ready to dig their own pool in the sand.

We had no shovel, and we didn't need one, very soon we were offered a place to sit inside some of the already dug sand pools.

The temperature of the water inside the pool is regulated by mixing the steaming hot spring water with the cool ocean water. But the sand underneath has an important word to say on the degree of cooking one wants some parts of the body to be.

The coastline is impressively beautiful with small enclosed bays hidden by very light colored cliffs.

We continued our way south to other beautiful beaches along the way, beaches without hot water sources, without shovels and with very few people, beaches so empty that we felt we owned some piece of them.

Since we we could not say goodbye to hot water, we had to visit Rotorua, the Meca of the thermal springs in Kiwi therms.

The air is filled with sulfuric acid perfume (in short it stinks) but a cloud of mist makes the atmosphere quite serene.

Next morning we woke up literally in the middle of the Saturday morning market, among fruits vegetables and more mist.

We followed in direction to Taupo a place of more volcanic activity, geysers and ancient Maori culture at the village Te Puhia.

Wood carving is still a fine art amongst the Maori, the place where their story is told from generation to generation.

At the park, we were received inside the house of a nice family, welcoming us following very specific traditional rituals and chants.

Here, men have large tattooed bodies, and very respectful large bulgy eyes. Girls are not to be less judged, as they can transform themselves from sweet hula dancers into frightening protective warriors.

This cultural village is also known by its geysers, one of the largest in New Zealand, the Pohutu geyser, explodes fantastically almost every hour throwing splashes of steaming hot water some 30 meters overhead.

We got really impressed by the Maori after this showcase, travellers of the pacific islands, in their long carved canoes or in the back of wales and with peace with their several gods.

Dolphins, giant trees, John Lennon, long soft golden beaches, and some more dolphins – welcome to Northland 3

2011-05-21T10:07:00.001+02:00

By now we had already spent three days up in wonderful Northland and although we didn't want to stress, we did want to visit some other parts of the country as well so after a morning run on the twin beaches and a dip in the sea, we decided to skip the drive up to the most northern part of NZ at Cape Reinga.

However, we did drive a little bit up this half island to have a look at the famous 90 miles beach (which is actually 90 kilometres long) before starting the drive down the west coast back towards Auckland.

As with the 100 kilometres long beach that we stopped at the day after, besides their length these beaches are not very impressive and far from as beautiful as some of the shorter, but still long beaches that we visited.

The sand on the long beaches are very compact and the beaches are used as 'roads', so not really a place you want to hang out for the day.

On our way back down we spotted one of the most beautiful sunsets ever over Omapere harbour where we then spent the night, and stopped to visit with the kings of NZ, the huge Kauri trees in the Northland Forest Park.

These trees are really impressive and it is easy to understand why the Mauris believe one of the Kauri trees is the father of the world. The place is filled with a mysterious feeling as one wanders under these huge wonders.

We truly loved the Northland region and could not have had any better introduction to New Zealand. A place we just wish we had planned more time to visit.

Dolphins, giant trees, John Lennon, long soft golden beaches, and some more dolphins – welcome to Northland 2

2011-05-21T10:00:00.000+02:00

The next morning was the beginning of what would become one of our absolute best memories from this trip. Memories that we will cherish for ever and can take out to remember whenever life feels a bit tough.

It was the day for swimming with these lovely, big, docile creatures that we both love so much. I have always dreamt about one day swimming with dolphins, but I never thought it would become true. And here we were on one of the few dolphin watching boats that have the permit to also allow passengers to go into the water with the dolphins, under restrictions.

The boat company did guarantee dolphin spotting, as the Bay of Islands where they took us is filled with these creatures and also as the catamarans that the company use attracts dolphins as they like to hitch a free ride on the waves created. They only use a third of the energy they would usually use when hitching a ride this way.

However the company does not guarantee the swimming part as it depends on what kind of groups one encounters that day. In fact, if the group has any baby or juvenile dolphins, then it is forbidden by NZ law for anyone to go into the water as the juvenile dolphins, that feed every 30 seconds from their mothers, will be too interested in the new play friends in the water that they might forget to eat for a couple of minutes. After only three or four missed meals they will start to become so weakened that they could die.

Likewise, to make sure that no harm is done to the dolphins, passengers are not allowed into the water if the dolphins are sleeping or eating as it can disturb them. In addition, only if the group seems playful and curious will passengers be allowed in.

It was hence not at all sure that we would be able to go for a closer up contact. As we were already happy just to be on the boat and see groups of dolphins swim around us and play with the waves, hitching rides and just enjoying themselves – anything more would just be a great plus.

But the luck was still with us and very quickly indeed. Only after about an hour on the boat, it was already time for our instructions – how to get into the water (no splashing as that means 'get the hell out of here' in dolphin language), not to touch them as it can harm their skin, safety measures and the need to swim fast to keep up with the dolphins because they cannot slow down as they then sink and act playfully to attract their attention.

On with the flippers, masks and snorkels and it was time to go in.

I was a feeling a bit of apprehension and stood at the end of the line. Nuno was super excited as always and was right at the top of the line. By the time I got into the water, he was already far away and was soon swimming next to a huge animal.

In fact, he had managed to catch up with two of the bottle-nosed dolphins and was swimming along with them for quite some time, while they were swimming around him in circles and jumping out of the water next to him.

I was far behind, closer to the boat with the majority of the group as my strong breaststrokes were far from enough in the fairly rough water and my crawling skills were, well, crappy. I was really trying my best, but felt like I was hardly getting anywhere and for sure would never be able to catch up with Nuno and that group of dolphins. I wasn't ready to give up but I was for sure cursing my lack of crawling skills as it felt like it would be impossible for me to actually swim next to dolphins that day, rather than just in the same bay.

Then the guys on the boat started screaming at our 'slow' group to look down. I didn't really think they were talking to me but put my face into the water right as two enormous dolphins swam right under me. WOW! Or rather 'yelp'. I was so not expecting them to be right below me, or anywhere close to be honest, and I wasn't expecting them to be so big! As I made my little gulp of surprised fear, I took my head out of the water right as another dolphin jumped right next to me. Yelp number 2.

At the boat they were now screaming; 'yes, continue to make noises like that, they like it'. Continue to make noises of fear? I think not, but I did continue to make some noises into the water. Feeling fairly stupid. But what don't you do to try to attract the attention of a loved one? ;)

For the next couple of minutes, I continued swimming around watching as the dolphins kept popping out of the water next to some of the other swimmers. It was truly amazing.

As the dolphins had continued on, we were called back into the boat, were we stood exhausted but very excited, breathing quickly and trying to get some energy back for the second swim. We were in fact allowed three swims with dolphins, as long as all conditions were fulfilled.

At the second swim no one managed to get close to the dolphins, who had already taken off by the time we had stopped the boat and made it into the water. We swam around for a while, hoping for a few of them to return but with no luck.

Again I had been at the back of the group both for getting in (but this time not by choice) and while swimming. Although I felt really quite exhausted, I decided that next time I would be the first one into the water so that I had a bigger chance to get close to my 'beloved' ones once more.

Another group was spotted and the boat slowed down. As the group had already managed to move quite a bit away, the orders from the instructor was to swim as fast as we could to try to catch up with them. I knew it was not for me and almost gave up, but I wanted to at least try it one last time even though there was no way I could swim fast enough to catch the group.

So I stayed at my place as the first one in line to get into the water once the boat had slowed down enough for it to be safe. Right at that moment, the photographer started screaming about another group next to the boat. I quickly let myself slide into the water, careful not to make a splash, and right as I put my head inside, three of the dolphins swam right under me. I was truly in heaven.

Shorter than the first time, but with more success than the second time as everyone got to be next to some dolphins again this time, this final swim finished too early as the dolphins had continued their way. We were called back to the boat once more, and one by one we slowly ascended. Happy by our day so far, but sad that it was the last dolphin swimming chance that we had.

All of us except for Nuno that is. He was still swimming around and away from the boat. Trying to see some more dolphins and catching up with the ones far away. As he was once more called aboard, he finally realised that he was the only one left in the water and made it back to the boat. As everyone else took off their equipment and put them into the disinfectant, he stayed on deck, looking into the sea, full equipment still on, refusing to understand that the fun was already over. Like a small child, he looked like someone had stolen his candy when I went to tell him that there would be no more swims. 'But, the dolphins still want to play with us. Look there are a few right there just waiting for us.'

The swims were over, but we spent another hour cruising the islands and watching other groups of dolphins enjoying the boat. We also saw two dolphins jumping high into the water and touching out of air. These were supposedly two male dolphins fighting for a female one. An incredible image.

The cruise ended with a short stop on one of the islands were we went from exotic marine life, to very English country style with sheep all over the green hills. The view from the top hill over all surrounding islands was magnificent though.

A truly amazing day that I hope to have the chance to do over once more in my life. Hopefully once I have learned how to crawl, although at the end of the day it didn't make much difference.

Tired but oh so happy, we said hi to Lennon again and continued our trip up to Karikan Peninsula where we then spent our only night in an official camping site. I went for a long walk around 'our' beach and then over a small hill and around the next beach before we cooked some dinner on the small gas stove, uncorked a bottle of wine and enjoyed a lovely end of the day.

Dolphins, giant trees, John Lennon, long soft golden beaches, and some more dolphins – welcome to Northland 1

2011-05-21T09:36:00.000+02:00

After hanging out for a couple of days in feeling-at-home Auckland, we finally picked up our new best friend, John Lennon, and after a thorough check that there were no 'real' bumps (small indentations and scratches do not count for this company) on the car, a bit of paperwork and some screams from me about Lennon being way too big for me to drive – we set out for the most northern part of the northern island of New Zealand: Northland.

As we had just realised a day or so before that NZ in in fact quite a big country, even if the population is at a tiny 4 million, we had decided to spend maximum two days in Northland before heading south of Auckland and hit the rest.

That was the plan that is. A plan that crumbled to pieces meter by meter, or perhaps kilometre by kilometre,
as we let dear Lennon lead the way for what was to become a 5 days stunt in this incredibly beautiful part of the country.

Because how could we but not fall in love with this north of the north, as by our first stop to rest and stretch our legs after a couple of hours of driving, in a long stunning sand beach called Mangawhai Heads, we were met with a big family of dolphins surfing the waves!
'Surfing dolphins?', I here you ask. 'How many hours did you say that you drove that Lennon camper van before stopping?'.

We were taken aback ourselves. Nuno spotted them first, and as I came out of the rest-room to join him, he was jumping up and down with excitement telling me to look down at the beach and tell him what I saw. I looked down and spotting the usual group of human surfers, told him that. In fact, a good surfer on a good wave could be enough to put Nuno in this state of excitement, so I wasn't completely crazy.

'Yes. But what else do you see?'; he asked. I was going to reply, 'body boarders', but then suddenly spotted some other dark shadows in the waves, some shadows that looked unmistakeably like.... 'dolphins', I cried out and we started running down towards the beach.

What an incredible sight and what an amazing welcome committee that the north sent out, just for us :)

There must have been around 20 dolphins playing in the waves and moving up this 10 km long beach. We walked with them as long as we could, but they were of course a lot faster than us. They were just so amazingly beautiful and it was great seeing them having fun in the waves, surfing with more skill than the best surfers.

Suddenly we didn't feel in any hurry to visit the rest of the country. We were here. We had arrived and it was enough. No need to stress as whatever we would see would be great and in the two weeks lovely Lennon took care of us, we saw a lot.We left the beach we will always associate with dolphins, and drove on north with big stupid smiles on our faces and enough energy to make it all the way up to Tutukaka were we spent the night on a small parking next to a calm bay. It was our first night finding a spot to park the van and trying out the 'bed' (three thin mattresses that we spread out on top of the wooden planks that made up the floor of the van and were used for storage and for creating a table with seats inside the van, and of course to sleep on).

"Come together, right now, over me" - John Lennn

We drove around for a while as we did not really know where it was ok for us to park for the night and as it had already gotten dark it wasn't that easy to see the good spots. We finally settled on a small parking with toilet facilities next to the bay as there were already two other camper vans parked there and we figured that even if not completely lawful at least we were in good company.

The night was uneventful and in the morning we woke up to a team of sea kayaking fans getting ready to go for their morning tour. On the way to the bathroom, I started speaking with an old NZ man who lived very close by and liked to come down to watch the sea every morning. He told us that it was fine parking the camper vans at this parking overnight as it had toilet facilities, so from then on we always tried to find places with toilets if possible, for one because it made life a lot easier, but also as it felt more lawful.

As we were still all excited about the dolphin sighting the day before, we told the old man about it and he said that it is very normal to see dolphins all over the coast area and that sometimes they even came in to that same small bay to swim around.

From this moment on my eyes were even more strained to catch sight of dolphins as soon as we were near to water, but with no further luck.

The only other time that we saw dolphins very close, was the day after, as we went on a dolphin watching and swimming tour out from Pahia.

This day, however, after a slow morning wake up enjoying camping life with a healthy breakfast of yogurt and muesli, we continued our drive up the east coast, stopping at a couple of beaches on the way including one where we went on a nice little steep hike to the 'mermaid lagoon'. A cool little place of natural rock pools that gets filled up with water during high tide.

That night, after a 'almost out of gas and where is the next station' scare, we had quite big problems finding a place to park the van as it was forbidden everywhere in and close to Pahia, but we did not want to stay too far away as we had to be back in the town at 7 am the next day for the dolphin excursion. So, we drove around for about an hour and a half, looking for some place that felt ok.

As we were getting more and more tired and it had gotten quite late already, we finally settled for a spot next to a small country road and just in front of a field with very interested horses who came and checked us out as we came out of the car and also came to say hello in the morning. It was probably the least legal place that we parked at during these two weeks, but it worked out fine and it was a very calm place to sleep with only the noise of the horses moving around on the other side of the fence.

Our campervan 'John Lennon' and horses

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There is only one Rio

2011-05-05T17:28:00.000+02:00

And finally Rio...

Rio had a special feeling on this trip: it would be the nearest place from home, staying with family, speaking my own language, and living the Carnaval.

It was also the feeling of the beginning of the end, the departure from South America, the catching of the only flight we had bought long before starting the trip and a big twist on our travel route before going to 'the other side of the world'.

It was the feeling of reaching an important milestone mixed with nostalgia...

..But as soon as we were received by our host, Carol, the nostalgia was forgotten and blended into the carioca spirit.

Helena and Carol connected so well as best friends from a long time, and it was not difficult, she was very happy to have us around and to enjoy finally visiting the Rio she never had the opportunity to visit before.

The weather remained covered during most of our stay with mild temperatures good for touring the city. We started by passing through some of the most famous beaches, the Leblon, Ipanema, Copacabana and ended up in morro do Leme with some fishermen.

On our way back we were ready for some action. 'Blocos' is the word to define street carnaval, meaning rather huge gatherings of people on streets closed for traffic except for the music truck the huge crowds are following. On top of the truck the local neighborhood band playing famous samba tunes that are amplified on powerful loudspeakers.

The crowd cheers, dances, sings, jumps and of course drinks. A lot!

In the middle of the 'folia' there is always some space for some improvisation at a local cafe, where people bring their own music instruments and gather around a table to try their own best version of samba.

And then we tried one of the best possible refreshments there is: Açaí, a traditional fruit.
Or rather frozen Açaí pulp mixed with granola. It's just too good. We became addicted. When will someone import this to Europe?

Next day, and now in the company of the well-humored Rafa (Carol's husband) we also visited some places where most tourists don't usually go and ended up having one of our favorite meals, this time super sized: all-you-can-eat Sushi. It was difficult to stop as it was so delicious. After 3 or 4 trays we were full and shy enough to resist asking for more.

That night we went dancing, in the famous Rio Escenario. Outside there was one of the longest queues I have ever seen in my life to enter a club, luckily it went super fast to get to the door. Inside a beautifully decorated place with great samba bands.

We had an amazing evening, danced danced danced, samba of course, or the best we could make of it.

Next day it was time for some more touring around to the Sugar loaf, a place with some of the best scenic views of the city, and itself a beautiful place to visit.

Carol and Rafa, our great hosts.

Rio de Janeiro with the Corcovado over the clouds.

And of course a great day can only finish with Açaí, we were indeed becoming very good at eating it.

We were so good at eating it that in the last day we felt obliged to do some exercise. Helena went running with Carol by the beach, and me and Rafa went walking on the calçadão of praia S. Conrado.

In the afternoon we went walking by Copacabana and got stuck in another massive 'bloco'. It was so big that we had no other choice than to stay there and dance with the crowd by the beach as the sun went down. Memorable.

The days in Rio passed so quickly that it was already time to leave and to say goodbye and a Big thanks to our wonderful hosts, a little 'see you soon' as Rio is one of these places that one always feels like going back to, especially now that we have made good friends there!

Moving further North - Curitiba, São Paulo, Paraty

2011-05-04T14:49:00.000+02:00

Leaving the incredible Iguazu falls, we decided to do one of our 'favourite' travel combination: 1 night travel by bus + 1 day visiting a new place + 1 night travel by bus.

Well, that was the plan at least...

Our first stop was the city of Curitiba which was fairly highly recommended in our guide book. Luckily, as we were running out of time until we needed to be in Rio, we had decided to limit our time in the city to one day and take the bus out of there to Paraty the same night.

I say luckily, as although this is probably one of the nicer cities to live in Brazil with it being more environmental friendly and clean that most other big cities, it was really quite a bore to visit and a day felt like more than enough.

We did see some nice places though including the old town and quite a big park that was filled with exotic birds of all kinds, as well as an outdoor gym that we played around it for some time. Not a bad idea with these free outdoor exercise machines as it allows everyone to use a gym.

Our fun time a part, we were quite content to board yet another bus that same evening to move on more to the north and the sea town of Paraty. Or so we thought. The plan was in fact to take a night bus to São Paulo and then the early morning bus from there to Paraty. The only problem was that you cannot buy the bus tickets to Paraty with a foreign credit card, but as we had never had any real problems before with full buses and as we were to arrive at 6am and be among the first at the station, we figured it wouldn't be any problems.

At the end, we were lucky that we got any tickets at all into Paraty even though it meant having to wait 8 hours in São Paulo, as only two buses that same day had seats available and then all the buses to Paraty were booked full until after the end of carnival!

After a first slight chock reaction, as it was still only 6 in the morning and we had only had about 5 hours of sleep in the bus the night before, we decided to use this 'won' day to explore the huge city of São Paulo.

I had originally wanted to check out this city, but as we didn't have that much time we had decided to skip it during this trip and hopefully save it for another time.

But faith wanted differently and we spend a lovely, albeit quite rainy, day visiting this metropolis, riding the packed subways with the locals, eating some greasy breakfast like the locals and having lunch with a hoard of admin workers at a buffet by weight place.

The only grey cloud during the day, except for the ones in the sky, was that Nuno's back was hurting badly, so after lunch we decided to cut the day short and head back to the bus station making sure also this way not to miss the bus and not to have to stress to get their in time, for once.

So it was time to board yet another bus after a couple of fairly tiring nights and days. This time though we were supposed to arrive already at around 10 pm and hence be allowed a full night in a real bed.

'Supposed to'. Instead we finally arrived at around one in the morning after having passed partly flooded roads where only big vehicles like our bus could pass the high water. It was raining hard. The streets were covered in water. Our eyes and backpacks heavy. We were without a map and there was no one around to ask in the rain, just some homeless people sleeping in the covered areas of the small bus station. We were exhausted and our patience was wearing very thin. We desperately needed a place to stay, rapidly.

However, we were not the only tourists in town that night and we were for sure among the absolute last ones to arrive.

The first few places we stopped at were all full, but finally we found one where they had a double bed available in a dorm room with 4 other people already sleeping in the room.

Although the idea of sleeping the two of us in a double bed with strangers in the room felt very weird, we were tired and desperate enough to accept the proposal as long as we found a place to put down our tired heads.

As luck would have it, another couple who we had started out the search with but then lost somewhere in the rain, had made it to the same hostel a bit before us and gotten the last private double room. However, as they had just realised that the door to the room didn't lock they decided to take off again into the rain and night.

I guess they had probably slept the night before in a real bed as there was no way I was able to take off again in search for another hostel that same night, lock or no lock. Furthermore, I have stayed in dorm rooms before and they hardly ever have locks, so it didn't really bother me as long as I could have my cold shower to wash off three days worth of grim and then rest my head on a pillow for a full night. Bliss.

We had finally arrived in Paraty and although the weather gods were against us during our two days in this lovely sea town, we had a great time walking around the old, narrow streets, seeing the church plaza that seems to be flooded at every high tide and jumping over water to cross the street. We also enjoyed a beautiful vegan lasagna that was made with palm heart instead of pasta as the base and served with ginger rice, the best cachaça I have ever tasted in a special shop and some nice ice cream.

We missed the beaches that Paraty are famous for due to the weather as most of them require going by boat and you don't really want to spend 4-5 hours on a beach in the rain waiting for the boat to come back to pick you up. But we enjoyed being just the two of us again for a couple of days, as Nuno2 had taken the bus directly to Rio from Curitiba, leaving some intense weeks of travels à trois behind us before then boarding the last Brazilian bus to meet up with family in Rio.

Water power in Iguazu

2011-05-03T21:53:00.000+02:00

The Iguazu falls were one of those places in our list that we didn't want to miss out on, and we made sure we didn't. An old Indian tale says that the waterfall was caused by the rage of a furious god serpent that lived in the river and wanted to have the beautiful bride of an Indian warrior.

Whatever this story is true or not, the waters of the river are still furious and
the beauty of the girl might have conquered the landscape as this site is on the run for one of the new 7 wanders of nature.

After another overnight bus ride we arrived in Iguassu and crossed the Brazilian border to the Argentinian side.

After a belly full of incredibly good empanadas we entered the park. The park stretches through several kilometers in the higher and lower sections around the gigantic water fall.

We started our visit with a train ride to the devils throat (garganta del diablo), where the river takes a vertiginous drop and lands some 100 meters below.

Iguassu is known by its amazing waterfall but after spending some minutes there, one understands that this is also the place for beautiful and numerous butterflies.

Nuno getting to know the local butterfly community

The path to garganta del diablo is done over a wooden walkway that was specially made to receive princess Diana. After her footsteps, millions of tourists from allover the globe have have the opportunity to have a close glance at the fall.

The noise from the water crashing down below is heard long before sighting the waterfall and a cloud of mist announces the spot.

It's big! very big! A majestic construction made by nature over many years. The constant roar from the 'devils throat' speaks louder than anyone, the mist gets into our clothes and the size of the fall is too big to fit in my camera lens.

We then proceed our tour by foot to other view points. Information boards tell us to stay on the path..or...

...or the God serpent might come after us too?

The falls are very beautiful, from every angle. It's huge, almost as if the Earth is cracking in half and water is running through the slit.

As the light shines through it creates huge rainbows down under.

Tropical brown water rush to the precipice and in the vegetation around colorful birds are curious of the tourists' behavior.

Seeing the waterfall was not the same as experiencing the waterfall, so we decided to go closer and below. Well, the result could only be one; WET.

Next day it was time for some more beautiful views of the Iguassu falls, but this time from the Brazilian side. Beautiful waterfalls and beautiful butterflies.

And, the beautiful circle of life.

More water, more butterflies.

We could have stayed there for a lot longer but the park was closing and we had a bus to catch in the evening.

At the end of a full day at the Iguazu park it was time to satisfy our bellies with a traditional Brazilian meat rodizio. An 'all-you-can eat' type of meal experimenting all different types of meat a cow has to offer.

Swinging and surfing Floripa

2011-05-02T17:19:00.000+02:00

After an over night bus ride from the border with Uruguay, there we were in Florianopolis, in the first non-Spanish speaking country of our trip. Brazil the promised land for the best carnival in the world, happy people and great food.

Floripa, the short name of Florianoponis connects with Ilha Santa Catarina, an island renowned for some great surfing beaches and lagoons. Not having ridden any waves since Panama, I was very much looking forward to some action.

At the bus terminal we rented a tiny car fueled by alcohol and hit the road to the island. Without a specific place for spending the night, we spent the day hopping from village to village until sunset.

That's the advantage of having a car while traveling, one can stop, pause, play and fast forward at will, and its possible to get off the main path of public transportation lines and explore some places in depth.

By the end of the day we had reached the southern end of the island at pantano do sul and it was starting to get a bit late to find a place to stay.

After a few trials at some hostels that were either full or too expensive we finally found a possible good one.

The usual talk about what's included in the price was for the first time held in my mother tongue, Portuguese, but with a slight more musical accent.

-Is the breakfast included, I ask?
-ehrr...we have "morning coffee", the lady answers.

I know Helena doesn't drink coffee so I continue..

-Morning coffee? Only coffee? no milk or tea?
-hmm, yes we have milk and juice she said.

This was starting to get better, and I started to wonder if this "morning coffee" was maybe a bit more than that, so I reply:

-And what about bread..or toast? with butter or jam?
-Of course, she replies, we have all that and cake and fruits.

We were all laughing at the misunderstanding, as it appears "morning coffee" in Brazil is a very very complete breakfast, probably the best in the whole South America.

Next morning we took our time having our "coffee" and headed to the beach of Joaquina, where very nice waves were breaking.
Surprisingly the water temperature was not as warm as what is usually advertised in the Brazilian telenovelas, and if it wasn't for the extra energy of the morning breakfast I would have needed a thick wetsuit.

It was a good day at the beach and we all got more sun tan than we needed.

Next morning we went back to Florianopolis and had lunch at the local market where the locals were getting warmed up for Carnival. The night before there had been a party and they were getting ready for the next one. People from all ages were swinging to the rhythms of the band playing at the center of the square. The swing to the music and the smiles, the naked chests of the men drinking their beer. We asked for one meal to share, and it was more than enough for the 3 of us. We were in Brazil.

Before the evening bus to Foz de Iguaçu, we still made our way around the center of the town, and took a rest at a park under a giant tree to escape the heat.

But Carnival is everywhere and nobody can escape. Even in the calm park in the middle of the city some samba dancers where showing a bit more than their moves.

Ugly, Uruguay? Not at all!

2011-04-23T15:41:00.001+02:00

In our newly acquired tradition of adding countries last minute to our plan, and upon the insistence of Nuno2, we decided to take the boat from BA across to beautiful Uruguay on our way to Brazil.

A fairly small country, nestled among its giant neighbours, it does not seem to appear on most backpackers itinerary, but perhaps it should as it really is a lovely country, one where I could again imagine living (these liveable places seem to add on quite quickly during this trip... how will I ever be able to chose?).

The fact that many backpackers fail to make it down here, doesn't mean that he place is void of tourists as Uruguay does rank as one of the favourite destinations for the Porteños as it has the closest, good beaches from Buenos Aires. A fair amount of Brazilians also make it over, as well as quite a few backpackers. I guess it just feels a bit off the gringo trail.

Like most people travelling from BA, we landed in Colonia del Sacramento and spent a beautiful, but heavily windy, afternoon exploring this small town. And I am yet again in love! It's small, next to the river (it is not yet the sea up here), with beautiful old buildings and ruins. It is filled with quaint small restaurants, and all this just an hour away from cool, bustling, fun BA. Lovely!

As we were famished, we started the tour by attacking some very Argentinian-looking food and soon realised that not only the food was very similar to BA, but so were the prices. Regretfully. Although considered the placement of Uruguay between the most expensive country of South America; Brazil, and the most expensive city of Argentina; BA, this did not really come as a big surprise.

When we tried to pay quickly to make it to a museum in time, the lady in the restaurant looked at us doubtfully, just to let us know that she was fairly sure the museum had already closed as it was in fact 5pm and not 4pm as our BA time watches were telling us. We had in fact completely failed to realise that the 1h boat ride over to Uruguay meant that we had to change the time forward one hour. Nor did we really grasp why we, a couple of hours more to the East when we entered Brazil, had to switch the watches back an hour again.

It seems that Uruguay lives after its own time. Perhaps as a small revolutionary step against its big and invasive neighbours...

Whatever reason, it meant that we had missed the museum visit (which I was actually fairly happy about as I much preferred to walk the streets of the town), and instead we climbed up a light house and pretended to be in a remake of Titanic, as the wind up there was strong enough to make a sacred cow fly.

The next day we moved on to Montevideo, a place high up in the mountains where everyone plays video games? Or rather, a nice capital, down by the sea, with a lovely sea promenade, but not that much to actually see in the city. We therefore decided to make the stay short, walked around for a couple of hours, checked out the free view from the town hall, and then rented some bikes and took a long, nice ride down by the sea.

a fountain covered in locks, for 'locking' lovers

In the evening we ventured over to the market, which is more a tourist place with restaurants, but where there was to be a free tango party that night. The perfect place to test our newly acquired skills from BA!

"look mother, now without teeth"

Except that we quickly realised that what had seemed as high tango sophistication during the class and among our fellow students, was rather like Bambi on ice among these people that actually knew how to tango. We tried a couple of dances, and then decided that we had made enough fools of ourselves to be allowed to take a taxi back to the hostel in preparation for our early bus to the beach the next day.

Nuno2, who was sitting in the front seat next to the driver, later told us that not only did the driver have a big gun that he was happily displaying to N2 while warning him of walking the streets at night, but also that they could hear us perfectly from the front seat, although we could not hear anything they were saying from the back seat as there was a big plastic wall protecting the driver. And supposedly they were having quite a lot of fun listening to our conversation... Very good information for future reference.

The next day we took off to the lovely, and in no way devilish, beach town known as Punto del Diablo where we spent two days lazying about before continuing on to Brazil.

trying to make an assado (barbeque)

waiting for the bus

Tango and more in Buenos Aires

2011-04-23T14:49:00.000+02:00

Buenos Aires is the capital of Tango no doubt about it.

While preparing for this trip I packed a pair of shoes in the bottom of my backpack waiting for some dance lessons in Buenos Aires. I carried them on my back for many kilometres on South American roads and it was now time to reach into the backpack and let the shoes fulfill their purpose.
Buenos Aires was also the place to meet up with a good friend from Geneva (another Nuno), who would then continue with us all the way up to Rio de Janeiro.
We placed our 'base camp' in the center, close to the Obelisco, and soon realized the true dimension of this huge city. Walking a few blocks under the hot sun was very long and tiring and would take us almost nowhere outside the immediate center, therefore the best way to move around turned out to be subway or taxi.

Every travel book says that La Boca is not to be missed, and that might be the reason why La Boca sees the highest concentration of tourists in the whole city. Nevertheless it was worth visiting this artistic and picturesque neighbourhood. The taxi driver advised us to be careful and to not move out of the specific tourist area.

La Boca is a playground for street artists, musicians, dancers and painters. The touristic area is a mix of restaurants, art galleries and souvenir shops. The buildings are painted in strong attractive colors and the main street is invaded by the terraces of restaurants. Almost every restaurant has a set of performing tango dancers, and this is where it starts.

It, it the tango 'bug' that hit us all... The concentrated look, the care invested in the choice of clothing, the sweat that drips from the neck and forehead, the conjugated tension with every note of the bandoneón, the music that seems to advance in a slow pace to abruptly change into a rapid one, the embrace of the dancers, a struggle, a fight, a lovers game. Disturbing.

At lunch time we had meat, of course, in a patio where a lonely guitar player in his 60's entertained the audience. During one of his pauses he came to talk to us, after learning of me being Portuguese, he promised to perform a piece of Fado of the great Amalia Rodrigues. After a few minutes of conversation he went back on stage and performed 'Ai Mouraria' in a slight Spanish accent, a good performance that took us for some moments across the ocean back to Lisbon.

At the end to the lunch we realized we didn't have enough money to pay and we were escorted by a big guy with many tattoos to a near ATM, the restaurant people thought it would be safer like that. On the way to the ATM we met some friends of the big guy, they were all nice people, many tattoos, strange haircuts, but sympathetic. The neighbourhood is small and everybody is a cousin of everybody. We were offered Fernet, a traditional drink that was introduced to us in Cordoba, a mix between a very bitter drink called Fernet and coca cola. It is not easy to like at first but afterwords it becomes a very refreshing drink for the hot Argentinian days and nights.

After the incident we went back to the restaurant and decided to visit the Boca Juniors museum. Boca Juniors is one of the most famous Argentinian football clubs, the home of Diego Maradona, and the stadium is placed right in the middle of the poor streets of La Boca. Around the stadium the feeling is a bit different than in the touristic streets, here people go through their normal everyday lives and struggles.

the other Nuno and Maradona

After our visit to La Boca we were all convinced that we wanted to try Tango ourselves. Our first class was in a huge dance hall, a very popular place to go dancing Milongas. Here we were introduced to the basic steps of tango, and after only 1,5 hours we wanted more.

The next morning we were up for another dance class, this time private. We learned everything over again, but this time in a more depth; how to breath, how to walk, how to lead and how to be led. Now we knew the truth of what our teacher said at the end, its just a question of practice.

A few days later in Uruguay we put our guts together and went for some real practice, a tango night in the market, the place where the locals hang out. We were strong enough to lift our asses from the chairs and went dancing but failed miserably...we managed a few steps but missed most of the rest, and I am sure that in the middle of the darkness only us realized our mistakes, but we realized that we need a lot more practice. At the end we were proud we tried it and someday we will go back to school again.

We were lucky enough to be in Buenos Aires at that moment as it was the end of the summer and the city was offering a huge tango night, most probably the best tango show that there is to see, a show that travelled the best theatres around the world, the famous 'Tango Argentino' was in town and for the first time in open air and for free.

So for the next 2 hours we watched the show in complete delight, with the best tango stars in the world performing for us and a very skilled group of musicians playing some very intense tango music.

At the end, the public cheered out for more and was granted one encore. A local old man in his 80's screamed and cried his lungs out throughout the last performance, as he, and we, wanted more. That's how beautiful it was. A perfect summer night in the middle of February.

Long last meeting in lovely, liveable Cordoba

2011-04-08T08:11:00.000+02:00

When I was 18, I spent a year in Kansas City, Missouri, in the US as an exchange student in Park Hill High School. A lovely and very useful experience that not only improved my English greatly (although in an Americanized way) and opened my eyes for the many dualities of the American society, but also created many friendships with some truly interesting people.

One of these friendships, with my closest friend during that year, was with a fellow exchange student – the lovely, fun and brilliant Natasha from Argentina!

Fast forward a couple of years, or rather 15, and here I am finally in Argentina and about to meet this beautiful friend again and experience the city that she talked so much about all those years ago, and which was the first city, outside of capitals, that I probably knew about in Latin America.

I present to you: Cordoba.

As we managed to change the date of arrival about 10 times perhaps (Nuno and I are not the best planners as we like too much to follow a sudden breath of inspiration, such as the short, last-minute trip to Chile), we finally managed to arrive the only weekend when Natasha and her fiancé German were all busy with another visit.

Luckily we would be able to meet up with them on the Sunday evening and hence only had two days to 'kill' before that. Coming off the bus, we started talking about hostel options with a fellow traveller and she told us about the hostel where she was planning to stay. As we had no plans and it sounded like a good place, we decided to tag along and see what it was like.

A few failed attempts to catch a taxi later – they refused to take us as they said it was too close to the bus station – we set off by foot on what would shown to be a 30 minutes hike through the central town, in big summer heat, our backpacks weighing us down and the streets full of Saturday shoppers.

We finally made it to the hostel, and were lucky to get the two last beds. Fairly exhausted, we took the rest of the day 'off' and just strolled around watching the cathedral (also pink, just as the first one we saw in Salta) and pigging out in a café.

On the second day, we decided to make an attempt to walk in the footsteps of the young Ché and took the bus over to Alta Gracia, where one of the houses he lived in during his life has been converted into a very interesting museum of his life.

El Ernestito

Having visited the Mausoleum and museum of Ché in Santa Clara, Cuba, I was impressed by this Argentinian version which I found a lot more interesting. We especially liked to read about his many trips around South America – first by bike and later by motorbike. He was indeed a very interesting man.

El Doctor Che

Che's motorbike and the map of his travels

As it was Sunday, this small town was full of Argentines enjoying their favourite past-time – the barbecue of huge (and I really do mean huge) pieces of meet. As mentioned earlier, the meat in Argentina is not just big, but also very tasty. Walking around the parks and seeing all this display of food made our mouth water and we soon found ourselves in a restaurant in front of a couple of pieces of tasty bife de chorizo. Our attempts of being invited to one of the barbecues having failed miserably.

don't drink and drive, Harry Potter version

And then it was time to finally meet up with Natasha! To my joy she had not changed a bit. Still the same wonderful person, and looking exactly the same as well. Having spent the first day around the city centre, we now ventured into the Nueva Córdoba area where they lived. To our surprise, as we had not really read anything about this area in the guide book, it is a really great place where the best weekend night life seems to take place.

pre-carnaval in the streets of cordoba

Suddenly I wished that we had found the place already the night before as it would have been a lovely place to spend a Saturday evening, but we were lucky to now be guided around the cool bars, market and restaurants by our very knowledgeable local guides.

Palace Ferreyra or Evita Peron Museum

The main student area of the city, it seems like 'the' place to be and we spent most of the next two days examining it closer, while also examining all the different ice cream shops of Cordoba.

As my friends worked during the days, we met up with them in the evenings and enjoyed some good meals together, including a barbecue with them and a couple of friends 'of theirs in the friends' garden. Finally we got to experience a full on Argentine barbecue with the huge amounts of meat prepared, and it was indeed as good as it had looked and smelled before.

After these few days, it was already time for us to move on to Buenos Aires. Way too early I felt as I would have loved to spend some more time with Natasha and some more time, including another weekend, exploring the city of Cordoba. One of the places where I really felt at home and could imagine living for a longer period of time.

But no rest for the restless...

A couple of extra days? Why not a short trip over to Chile???

2011-04-06T05:37:00.000+02:00

After what felt like having run after time since somewhere in Colombia - as we had still so many places we wanted to visit before our only booked flight, out of Rio a couple of months later -, we suddenly found ourselves with too many days left before we needed to be in Buenos Aires. What to do?

It seemed that we had miscalculated the days, and instead of about 5 days until we were meeting our friend Nuno2 in BA, we actually had 10 days. As it was already our third day in Mendoza, the travel urge was starting to lift it's head and we were starting to contemplate where would be the best place to spend this time gift.

We first thought about going down to Bariloche, which is supposed to be a beautiful mountain village. But the more we heard about the place, the more it indeed sounded like a lovely place, but also as very similar to what we are used to from around Switzerland. Not exactly what we had come all the way to Argentina for.

The choice instead fell on Santiago de Chile. We had originally planned to skip Chile for this trip and come back there another time to see Chile and southern Argentina.

But here we were! Only 7 hours away by bus (time perception seems to change drastically as you travel! Back in Switzerland it used to feel rather far to go the less than 4 hours to Zurich from Geneva, while in South America, a 12 hour long bus trip was rather normal), it suddenly seemed like the perfect destination.

And it was! We both liked the city immediately. It has a good vibe and felt like a place where I could definitely imagine living for a few years. On our first day there we joined a 'free-tour' group and spent 3.5 hours walking the streets of the centre and getting the history and current affairs of different monuments and buildings, as well as pointers to some good restaurants, other places to visit and the best ice cream in town.

I wrote 'free' tours as these tours aren't really free. Well, they can be as you only pay the amount that you think is correct at the end of the tour. Hence it can be free if you chose to not pay anything. But in general it seems like the big majority of people joining the guided tour do pay. And most pay the amount suggested by the guide.

Salvador Allende statue

A flag with the size of a tennis court

It was however a very nice tour of the city that we felt was worth the money suggested, especially as it is quite a lot cheaper than any traditional guided tours. It was also an excellent way to start off our two days in Santiago since it gave us a good idea of what we really wanted to do, such as visiting one of the houses of Pablo Neruda. The tour also gave a good orientation of the city, and some good pointers in general. The ice cream in the suggested place was indeed really good ;)

Old reflected in new

As we had come all the way to Santiago, we felt it was necessary to pay a visit also to Valparaiso as it is highly recommended as one of the more beautiful cities in South America and included as an UNESCO world heritage site.

The city does have some pretty parts, especially the hills with old colourful houses. But we were rather disappointed as it was far from as beautiful as many other places we had already visited and as it the whole place seemed to smell really quite bad. We suddenly wished that we had kept the travellers fever down and had settled on an extra day in lovely Santiago instead.

However, as we had gone all the way there, we decided to have a good time anyway and set out to discover the city, walking up and down its numerous hills and lunching on the best empanadas I have tasted which were bought from a small tobacco shop funnily enough.

On the last, extended day, back in Santiago, we enjoyed visiting the house where the very famous Chilean writer Pablo Neruda lived partly.

Telecom building with a shape of a mobile phone

A crazy concoction of several building, I much preferred the original house where his then-to-be wife lived before they officialised their reunion.

Nuno also went to the museum of contemporary art for a couple of hours, while I enjoyed a nice stroll of people watching through the neighbouring areas.

Mendoza: The best chorizo is not a sausage!

2011-04-03T07:36:00.000+02:00

Next stop going south was Mendoza, where it felt like being in the middle of the countryside having some tasty meat accompanied with red wine, but the city is actually one of the biggest in the country.

Its rigid structure of calles and carreteras is only interrupted by parks and squares, with an European feeling of modernity in its architecture.

The summer days are hot and dry, and the best way to enjoy it is in the shadow having an ice-cream, or reading a book under a tree in the park. Since it was holiday time for most Argentinians, after lunch and around siesta time the city felt strangely inhabited, in contrast with the evenings where most streets around Plaza de Independencia would gain a new life, with music and magic shows.

We enjoyed ourselves in a slow pace through the city and enjoyed also the regional gastronomy, which involves meat and wine. I ate, probably, the biggest, thickest, juiciest, tastiest chunk of meat in my life, the famous Argentinian 'bife de chorizo' and although at the end of the meal I promised I wouldn't need to eat more meat for the rest of my life, a few days later there we were again.

Since a piece of meat that size doesnt go down on its own, as a side dish there were fries and a bottle of malbec to share by two. We were very satisfied at the end.

Since we had been stuffing our bellies with food, we decided to do some sports, and what better way to do some sports than riding a bike through some of the famous vineyards and doing some wine tasting?

So, next day, it was time to put our legs to work, but that doesn't mean that our stomachs were sleeping, no, we went went wine tasting, empanada tasting, beer tasting, olive oil tasting, dulce de leche tasting, and absinthe tasting.

Ufff, I feel full only by thinking of it right now, but we learned a lot, the different grapes, the different vineyards, the different methods to produce wine, and of course the different tastes.

The highlight was maybe the beautiful Trapiche cave, which feels more like a mansion, where everything is clean, organized and with purpose.

Or maybe the highlight was before having the absinthe, where instead of toasting 'cheers', the owners of the place wished us 'good luck', so that we would survive our tiny glass of almost pure alcohol.

So we were happy in the end, of course, ready for another good meal in the city.

But it was not only us, gastronomic tourists, that were stuffing ourselves to death, in one of our strolls around the city, we discovered a very interesting place where we were the only ones apart from the locals. Through a small gate in a building we entered something that looked like a local market, but instead of fresh vegetables, fruits and other goodies, there were tables with people having dinner.

There was also a stage with a solo singer and guitar player. Although we didn't know any of the songs, the locals did and they were clapping, singing and cheering like if it was the best concert ever, soon after we found our selves clapping too, as it would be impolite not to participate.

I have to say that the food here was not very healthy, most of it was fried, and even an innocent sandwich was accompanied by fries and the bread was toasted in a pan.

Next to us a family was having an interesting meal, a 'pizza burger'. Imagine a pizza cut in half and placed like a sandwich, stuffed inside with some meat, pieces of ham, fried eggs, sausage and a few vegetables, as a side dish: french fries. That was their meal.

But not everyone in Mendonza was doing these bizzarrities, and sometimes we give too much attention to what we find uncommon, but that was very curious. I think portuguese lovers of 'francesinhas' still have a lot to learn.

In Mendoza and in general in Argentina people are fit, and like to do sports and take advantage of the spaces available in their cities.

A glass of salted rioja

2011-03-31T14:20:00.003+02:00

Our first stop in Argentina was to stay a couple of days in Salta close to the Bolivian border. Well, close for Argentinian standards as we are still speaking a 7h bus ride away! But as we would soon discover, by spending more and more hours on buses, Argentina is a huge country!

Still fairly unaware of what lied before us, and after a lazy morning of just relaxing and catching up with some e-mails, we ventured out into the streets of the hugely popular city among the Argentines themselves. If I understood correctly from the various Argentines that we would later meet during our trip - Salta is a favoured summer destination as it has cooler temperature, good night life and is beautiful.

And it is indeed a nice city. But we didn't find it very special. Rather, among all the places we visited in Argentina, it was my least favoured one. It's an ok place to hang out for a couple of days if you have time but that's it. I have heard however that the nearby Quebrada de Humahuaca is supposed to be magnificently beautiful. Regretfully we only realised this as we had already gone further down to Mendoza and too late to backtrack up there.

The fact that this was my least favourite place in Argentina doesn't mean that we didn't enjoy ourselves in Salta. We did! We had a lazy first day just recuperating and then strolling into the centre, checking out the place, seeing a pink church for the first time, having a nice meal and generally just enjoying the atmosphere.

After a late lunch of milanesa and beer (very typical), we just bought some cheese and Malbec and returned to the hostel where we bumped into the guided group who were having a small party in the garden to celebrate Australia's independence day with wine, balloons and silly hats. We were convinced to join them (not a difficult task) and a bit of wine and many laughs later, we somehow ended up also joining them in the taxis for a night out in town.

Being in the middle of the week and fairly early at around 11 pm (Argentinians go out a lot later and were still having dinner at this time), the bars we went to were mostly empty. That didn't stop us from having fun and dance, nor did it stop us getting stared at - but perhaps that was more explained by the silly hats and balloons that had followed us into town.

After a first bar that was very empty, we moved onto another one as soon as it opened at around 1am and then stayed there for the rest of the night. Luckily this one soon filled-up as our plans for an early night went down the drain.

The next morning's early rise to go horseback riding after first having to check-out was a bit tough as we had gotten back at around 3 in the morning. However, after some breakfast and the drive out to the farm we were more than ready to jump onto the horses for a nice long ride.

It soon dawned on us though that the ride was not too happen anytime soon as they couldn't 'find' the horses as the farm gauchos lets them roam freely in the forest when not used.

In the meantime, we amused ourselves with learning how to throw a lasso and, mostly, failing badly. We got an instruction on how to do it and then three shots to get the loop around a trunk. If we didn't manage within those three shots we had to run across the lawn while one of the gauchos tried to catch us.

Only one of the group managed to get the lasso around the trunk. All the others failed and had to run, and almost all of us were caught by the lasso. It seems it was easier for the gaucho to catch us running than it was for us to catch an unmoving piece of wood. Years of training I guess.

As most of the horses continued to be in hiding, the group was split into two and the smaller one including Nuno, I and another couple took off on the horses that had actually shown up. Or horses and horses, the other girl actually ended up riding on a donkey. Not really the same thing. We were lucky though and ended up with two lovely white sisters.

The owner of the farm took us into the forest on a small path with bushes grabbing at our arms. A path which didn't seem to see much traffic usually and I wondered if this was really the right way? As the owner stopped to listen a few times for the sound of other horses, claiming that often they would come to join the group when they heard them pass by, my suspicion went up a bit further.

I was still hoping that once we made it out this dense forest we would be allow to gallop for a bit since the owner had initially said that it would be partly through the forest and partly time for galloping.

It turned out however that the second part with space for galloping was actually only for about one minute before we returned to the farm. While the first part of riding through dense forest had been for about an hour - which still did not add up to the 2 to 2.5 hours that we had paid for.

We weren't very happy coming back as the experience had been far from what we had expected. However, we thought that the tours of this company were just bad in general.

As we came back the other group was diving into the included barbecue and we quickly went to join them for some incredibly good meat. At least here the standard of the outing was at least as high as expected. Ok, they had run out of potatoes by the time we made it back, but the meat was incredibly good and there were loads of yummy salads and some nice wine so that was fine.

Some of the really cool/friendly group of travellers that we met (for the first time in Uyuni) and their fun guide.

It was only as the other group set out on their tour that the real unfairness of the day finally became clear to us as we heard that they didn't need to worry about the branches as they were going another way.

It turned out in fact that they were riding the 'normal' path on a bit wider road up a hill with a view over Salta and with lots of room for galloping and enjoying the horseback ride to the fullest. It seemed our doubts about the path we had taken were right and we had most probably been used as 'bait' to try to find the rest of the horses with no consideration for if we had a nice time or not.

A bit disappointing, but as we both love to ride it was still a lovely day as we did get to be on the horse back and enjoy the interaction horse and (wo)man for a lovely moment. I definitely think that this is something I will want to pursue when I get back home as the feeling is amazing.

And it was rather lucky that we were not in the second group after all as they returned after our bus had already left in the evening as the half-day somehow turned into a full day. We made it back in time though and after a short interaction with a group of young local boys, who asked Nuno; 'do you know that Messi is the best player in the world, better than Ronaldo?', once they found out that he was Portuguese. The boy that asked it had a small mischievous smile lightning up his eyes as he asked the question. To my surprise Nuno agreed with him making me reevaluate my boyfriend with renewed respect.

Then it was time to leave for another couple of nights spent in buses as it would have seemed that we had already forgotten the joy of trying to sleep in a non-reclining seat. It is a good way of saving money though as it means paying for one less night of accommodation and it is a good way of saving some time as one can still enjoy the day and just travel at night when one should anyways sleep.

We were lucky this time as the bus for La Rioja had reclining seats for both of us and hadn't adopted the lovely night-light terror of the previous bus. Neither had the bus from La Rioja to Mendoza that we booked as soon as we arrived in La Rioja the next morning as we only intended to spend a day visiting the national park know as the Valley of the moon.

And we did indeed take the bus that same night from the cockroach-infested bus terminal (in fact most of La Rioja was infested with cockroaches making us feel rather happy not to be spending the night there even though it is otherwise a nice city), but we did not make it to the moon. Although we had arrived very early in the morning it was already too late to join any of the group tours and we decided that it was too expensive to take a private guide for the day.

These are things that happens when travelling. Sometimes you go to places that where not at all in your plan and sometimes you don't get to go to places that were. It all depends on circumstances and luck, and sometimes on the size of your wallet.

No loss though as we spent a nice, lazy day in the city instead enjoying the beautiful tree-filled main square where we watched the locals go about their lives - from the business cloths in the morning, to the more leisure ones in the evening -, enjoying some shade from the very strong and hot sun during the three hours the whole town shut down during siesta (we were lucky to find a place for lunch before as most places stopped serving it by 13.45). We played close to a hundred games of speed probably, read, slept and followed a group of samba-resembling drummers and dancers around for a bit.

A very lazy day when we didn't really do or see anything special. A nice break from the 'work' of travel to recharge our batteries and just relax.

Only train ride in Latin America and the bus ride from hell

2011-03-31T08:12:00.001+02:00

Coming back with our minds almost overfull of the amazingly beautiful images, bizarre smells and intense three-day 4x4 journey around Uyuni, we booked ourselves into a hostel for a couple of hours as our train was booked for 2.30 am and we couldn't imagine spending the 8h leading up to departure walking the rain pounded streets of this small town.

A wise decision that allowed us to have a hot shower to wash away the grit of the three days, a place to repack and store our stuff, and a couple of hours of stretching out our bodies on a straight soft surface after having spent 12h in the 4x4 car and before boarding the train for another lovely 8h of much comfortable seat sleeping.

Venturing out for dinner,
trying to find our newly made group of friends from the trip, we soon gave up as no one seemed to recognize the name of the pizzeria they had told us and the town was for some reason stuffed with pizzerias (I guess the fact that this place mostly exists due to tourism might have something to do with it). We settled for another pizzeria where the pizzas smelled and looked yummy, ordered a liter of beer (normal size here, and so cheap) and set up to play some 'speed' (a card game we had just learned during these three days, which would then make up our favourite pass-time for the next couple of months).

Instead of playing we started up a conversation with a couple sharing our table, or rather, the couple who's table we squatted as the restaurant was full. And we quickly found out that they were not just travelling on the same train as us later that same night, but that they actually had the train tickets that we had originally been promised! You might remember that Nuno mentioned that we had problems finding tickets out of Uyuni on the first day when we arrived.We were finally promised some by the organisers of our salt tour, but for some reason they never wanted to hand the tickets over, although we had paid them already. They promised us to give them later, and assured us in every way all was good.

As promised, they had finally handed over the tickets when we had returned previously that evening, but to our surprise the seats were not together as we had expected. Too tired to make a big fuss about it and for some reason deciding to believe the promises that it would be easy to switch seats with some fellow traveller once aboard the train, we had left it at that and just been happy to actually have tickets away from the dead town of Uyuni that same night.

Which finds us back at the pizzeria realising that the couple at our table had bought their tickets from our 'guide' that same day. And they had seats next to each other! They had originally been offered two tickets with seats apart but hadn't been interested in those, and then the seller had offered them the joint seats instead. Our tickets were hence in their hands.

Nothing to do about it though as it wasn't in anyway their fault. And it didn't seem as such as big thing either as it was just a six hour train ride during the night, so the plan was to try to sleep the whole way.

That is, not a big deal until we boarded the train and realised that 1) there was no way that we would be able to switch seats as most of the people on the train had already been travelling for hours and were sleeping. 2) Nuno's seat was not just in another wagon, but was at the very end of the wagon. Meaning that instead of a quite nice reclinable seat, he ended up with a seat that didn't recline at all due to the wall behind him, although the seat in front of him reclined fully, leaving him a few centimeters of breathing space. In addition, his seat was a bit more narrow than the already very narrow seats of this train, he had a heater burning his left leg and cold condensation dripping onto his head from the window. A lovely ride...

I was a lot more lucky with my seat. A normally sized seat that, although very narrow, reclined fully. The big bum of the lady next to me pressing into my leg the full night as she took up a seat and a half, can just be seen as additional coziness. After all, she was there before me right. Ah, and the couple making out - or to be more precise were involved in very intense love-making, just with most of their clothes on - for an hour right across from me, where in fact just a good excuse for me to quickly find my ipod and blast it into my ears to avoid hearing their sucking noises...

Somehow we both managed to sleep most of the way though. Until sometime in the early morning when we suddenly realised that 1) the train seemed to have stopped in the middle of nowhere, and 2) people were starting to mill around outside or press their noses against the windows to check what was going on.

Being naturally curious (some would say to curious), I dragged Nuno out of the train and went out to investigate what was going on. A pressing need to pee while the toilets were all locked due to the stopped train had of course nothing to do with it...

Natural needs having been dealt with, we followed the stream of people to about a hundred meters in front of the train and finally understood why indeed the driver had felt a need to stop for a couple of hours.

The train track was in fact covered with a couple of meters of small stones, dry mud and other train unfriendly substances as yet another small landslide seemed to have passed over the train track (we had been stuck with our bus coming into Uyuni due to a river having opened up across the road four days previously and had followed the spontaneous bridge building by the drivers with great interest at that time).

Here a machine had been sent out to clear the tracks and two hours delayed we finally continued out trip with no further delays and with no other problems crossing the boarder except for a desperate need to find a working ATM on the Argentinian side while our taxi driver waited patiently outside first one and then a second bank (we were told that Argentinians do not really trust banks that much since the economic crises started and a lot of people lost their savings, and hence ATM's are not that common and they often do not work very well).

We did however manage to finally withdraw money, to pay the taxi driver and to get our bus ticket for another hellish bus-ride as the bus stopped about 15 times during the 7h ride from 9p.m to 4a.m and every time the driver turned on all the lights in the bus, just to plunge us back to complete darkness as soon as we would leave the terminal. Making it impossible to do anything else than sleep, but a sleep interrupted by strong light every 30 minutes. Isn't this one of the torture methods used in bad places by bad people such as in Guantanamo?

At 4 in the morning, it was with great relief that we got off the bus in Salta, that we followed the guide of the group of super cool people that we had gotten to know during the salt trip (we had failed in finding them at the pizzeria but met up with them again in the train and crossed the border just in front of their group, and as we tried to book a place in Salta as we realised we would arrive in the middle of the night, their guide offered to check with their hostel for us), and that we lied down our tired heads and aching bodies in a real bed for a couple hours more of sleep.

Tired after the last days of travelling that had included:
1 night in a noisy bus going down a bumpy road to get to Uyuni
3 days spent in a 4x4 car, with 2 nights in cold hostels and loads of loads of new impressions
1 night with a couple of hours in a hostel bed, to then wake up at 1.30 am, get on the train by 3 and spend the rest of the night trying to sleep for Nuno in the seat from hell / for me with a bum pressed into my leg
1 night spent in torture-bus number 1

An awesome, beautiful part of the trip with memories to cherish forever. But all in all we now felt we deserved a couple of nights in a real bed in Salta before moving deeper into Argentina.

A lot more than just a desert of salt, Uyuni 3

2011-03-29T02:35:00.000+02:00

When we have the space, we jump of excitement.

On the third and last day of the Uyuni trip, when we woke up it was still dark and very cold, we were now at about 5000 m high, close to laguna colorada. With a short night sleep and an empty stomach, we packed our things and got in the Jeep. Our driver was in a hurry, and drove like crazy through the darkness before we arrived to our first stop.
In the middle of the darkness, from the ground a cloud of hot steam extends vertically in a wisle blowing airplane engine loud noise, the best way to wake up! We were in a thermal activity area with geysers and bubling sulfuric mud pools.

Close to the pools the soil was slipery tricky but was warmer than the cold night air.

The shadows of the other travelers started to gain shape as the morning light filled up the sky.

A bit warmer but still confused with all the morning rush, we continued to another lake, this one had a natural hot spring pool adjacent to it.

Of course we had to go for a dip. The water temperature was perfect, after two days of cold showers, and the main difficulty was to get out of if.

Some of the nice people we met in our trip

The journey then continued through incredible views close to volcano tops, unpaved paths that seem not to have an end and beautiful surrounding mountains. I wish I had a camera that could take 360 degree pictures.

On the way, we saw some other wild animals other than flamingos, these are called Viscachas and look a bit like giant rabbits. They look curious and like to stand on the rocks. I don't know what they eat, because at this altitude I haven't seen any carrots!

The trip continued through laguna verde. The color comes from the high content of arsenic, so this time we didn't go for a swim. In the back you can see one volcano top at around 6000m, that's Licancabur.

From there we were very close to the border with Argentina, but also Chile. We went there for a quick jump to take some of our fellow travellers that continued through the Atacama desert.

On our way back we passed again close to Laguna Colorada, here the waters look pink, and the sky has a particular strong blue. We took our time enjoying this beautiful setting.

Many many flamingos.

As we made our way back felling the roughness of the path under our bums on those uncomfortable seats, after taking in big amounts of wilderness, beauty in such a remote foreign place, nostalgic and introspective thoughts started flowing through my mind...just in time to meet up with some old friends for lunchtime.

After lunch we were followed by a huge thunderstorm most of the time, we would have made it clean if the clutch of the jeep would have survived, but it didnt.
So we were stuck under an impressive hale storm while the driver/mechanic/coca-leaf-chewer was under the car fixing the problem.

Lightning crashes (also a great song) in a not so far away mountain.

A lot more than just a desert of salt, Uyuni 2

2011-03-28T17:25:00.000+02:00

So, it's been some time since the last update. Two main reasons: We've been very busy traveling and internet is not always easy to reach when you're on the road. But we will make an effort to bring you up-to-date with our adventures.

The last post was about Uyuni, and although we spent 3 days there immersed in beautiful landscapes, we only told you about the first day. Its time for some catching-up.

The second morning started cold and very early, we were going to say goodbye to the salt flats, and ride into a desert of rocks to discover beautiful lakes.

The main reason for the early start was was that since it had rained in the previous days some regions had been flooded, and the Jeeps had to take a longer, but fortunately not less scenic route.

One incredible place we stopped by was populated by red rocks sculpted by the erosion of time.

Some formations were so weird that reminded me of waves, and of course, I took the opportunity for some tubes.

The place is also great for meditation, and Helena decided to become a kung-fu master.

This trip was actually a lot about meditation, feeling the landscape slowly changing, and getting inspired.

We stopped close to a lake where we saw flamingos. The lakes are very rich in minerals that were laid out by earlier volcanic eruptions, it makes it a perfect habitat for the growth of a type of plankton that flamingos like to eat, which gives them the pinkish color.

These are beautiful, elegant animals, and its on itself a great joy, just to observe their behavior in their natural environment.

We continued our journey to one famous site called "arbol de piedra" or stone tree.
It felt unreal to find these magnificent sculptures in such an isolated place. I guess nature chooses wise where to display its best masterpieces.

Me and Helena on top of one of the stones.

A lot more than just a desert of salt, Uyuni

2011-03-05T16:06:00.000+01:00

After a long bus journey through some of the best Bolivian roads (still just another good dirt road where bridges are built by it's users, see last post), we finally arrived at the town of Uyuni where we had booked a 3 day tour to the Salt flats.

I have to admit that I had some expectations on this place, I had made the mistake of checking some pictures online and all of them looked beautiful, almost like from an unreal place. What I was not aware of was the extension of the place, what the exact route would be and what it would feel like to be there, so it was with a big surprise that during the next 3 days I found myself in the middle of volcanoes, beautiful colourfull lagoons and thermal springs.

Our first problem in Uyuni was how to get out of there, the town itself has not much to offer apart from a good starting point to the Salt Flats tour, so the first thing we tried to do when we got there was to book our train ride out of there for 3 days later. Surprise: everything was fully booked. So we wondered during the next half hour what the solution would be: taking the bus instead, waiting 2 extra days for the next train or trying to fix our tour to finish in the border with Chile and find a solution from there. Luckilly our tour operator had booked extra seats on the train, so we were promissed that there would be no problem for us to travel on the wanted date but under some other person's name.

Everything sorted out and we were sitting inside a jeep with 5 other people and a driver, while our guide was in another jeep with 6 people more. First stop, the driver's house to pick up some food and a plastic bag full of coca leaves that he kept on chewing through all the 3 days. The first 'real' stop was the 'trains cementary'.

Here we've seen the remains of old trains covered with rust, in what once was an important repair point for trains of the mining industry.

Next stop, was one of the villages surrounding the salt flats, here everybody and eveything has something to do with salt. Either you are a salt producer, or your house is made of salt, or you make souvenirs made of salt or your car is completly destroyed because of salt.

After that we went for lunch in a salt hotel in the middle of the salt flats, and we had our first lama steak. We played with the illusion created by the homogeneous background, and tried to take cool pictures.

From there we left most of the crowd behind and headed to the 'isla pescado'. Since it had rained some days becofore, most of the salt flats were inundated going there, and we were very lucky that our tour operator was still crazy enough to drive for those next 1.5 hours. The reason why they are called salt 'flats' was explained, as for kilometers after kilometers we drove the jeep over a layer of about 10 to 30 centimeters of water on top of the flat salt surface, this made any ripple created in the water to be damped really fast. The result was a perfect mirror that seemed to double the horizon and a sensation of floating over the sky.

We finally arrived to isla pescado, an island once covered by coral reefs, which is now inhabited by giant cactus. It also used to be an important place for the inkas, to somehow connect with one of their gods, the mother earth (pacha mamma) and ask for a good year of crops by making some offerings and rituals. It sure felt like a special place, being in the middle of a desert of salt covered with water that reflected the skies, at about 3500 meter of altitude in an island covered by coral reefs and giant cactus.

It was difficult to leave such beauty behind, but after some time it would get dark and would be difficult to find our way back to 'firm land' in such an absence of reference points.

We made it back to another salt hostel just before the sunset.

The skyes here were particularly beautifull, with some vivid colors and snow-capped mountains far away in the horizon. As the night arrived we shared some travellers stories around a salt table with the other travellers.

Facing death in Bolivia

2011-02-21T23:36:00.000+01:00

Ater an amazing time in huge and very beautiful and interesting Peru, it was time for us to hitch the next bus south for a short stay in Bolivia.

From Puno we booked a 'direct' bus to La Paz, but after taking us through border control, the bus stopped in Copacabana on the Bolivian side of Lake Titicaca and we were told we had an hour and a half before the continuing bus left for La Paz.

Having heard from some fellow travellers that Copacabana was a dirty and horrible place, we were very pleasantly surprised to find that this town was just like any other South American town, full of merchands lining the streets and selling anything you could ever dream of, and an improvement to many other places it had a whole street lined with nice-looking restaurants.

And it wasn't dirtier than most of the other places we have visited, although in difference with Puno, the harbour - called 'the beach' - smelled really quite bad.

We spent the time doing a quick sightseeing and looking for a pair of alpaca gloves for Nuno, before boarding the new bus for La Paz. And here started the bus difference between Peru and Bolivia.

Giant inflated corn seeds.

Having started to gotten used and spoiled by the Peruvian buses that keep a class a part with comfortable, reclining seats, televisions, quite good leg room and seat belts, we felt slightly claustrophobic in the new bus as we were squeezed into a small space with very little leg-room, where all our personal space more or less disappeared as the person in front reclined their seats. In comparison to the buses of northern Central America, like Guatemala and Nicaragua, this bus was a clear improvement. It is, however, very easy to get used to comfort and the feeling of safety, hence the swap of countries were a bit of a cultural bus choc for me.

Arriving in La Paz after 9h of travelling (they forgot to count the 2h stop in Copacabana when they told us the trip would take 7h), we were sent away from our chosen hostel as it was fully booked. As luck would have it, we found a really nice room with private bathroom in the Republican hostel across the street.

A good turn of events, I would say as it was very calm rather than the often party hostels that we had been staying in during most of the time in Peru. The hostel also sported a travel agency with really good service, and because of our late arrival to the city we decided to book our biking tour for the next day through them. (Usually we would have talked to a few different companies rather than going through an agency, but this time we did not have the time). And this turned out to be a good choice, as we ended up with what seemed to be one of the absolute best companies going down that track, with better equipment than most of the others.

Having taken care of the day after, we attacked the city by night and ventured over to the central part of town, checking out the San Fransisco church, and making it to the 'witches' street almost by accident. We first wondered why the street was named such a thing, but a few steps down the street made the reason very clear to us. The usual merchands stands were here exchanged for stands with any kind of ingredient that one could possibly think of in order to make potions and protection of the former.

From all sorts of different herbs, to ceramic amulets representing different sacred symbols. From dried toads, to dried baby lamas and lama fetuses. The street was highly fascinating, highly disgusting and a bit scary, due to its mysterious feel. Having seen a restaurant sign for lama steak earlier and originally having been interested in trying this supposedly very rich meat, we quickly changed our mind and ended up having vegetarian sushi and chicken murka in an Asian restaurant. The first sushi that I had dared since leaving Geneva almost 5 months before, it was succulent. So good in fact that we returned to the same restaurant for our last lunch before leaving La Paz.

On our second day in this high altitude city, we had an early start as usual. Having had some problems with my maestro card, I took the opportunity of calling the bank before lunch-time in Geneva, to get the bad news that someone had copied my maestro card during my travels and had retrieved more than 2'000 USD in Domincan Republic with it (more about this in a seperate blog entry).

So I started the day in what you can imagine was not the best of moods and spend the one hour bus-ride to the take-off place being happily quiet as Nuno chatted away in Portuguese with the Brazilian couple that made up the rest of our little group of 4 (the day before the same company had had the standard 15 participants, so we were really lucky). I think I even sat up on my bike in a fairly crappy mood, although putting on our crazy outfits - knee and elbow pads, jacket and trousers, gloves, and a full facial helmet - did start to make me feel a bit happier.

However, after a couple of minutes on my bike, going down the first 25k made up of an asphalt road, managing to staying right after the guide all the time and holding a really good speed (I guess the training of having done approx. 35k in pooring down rain in Peru a week before made this ride on a mostly dry paved road a walk in the sunshine - although there was not much sunshine and as we started up at 4'700m at 8.30 am, it was freezing cold). By the first stop after perhaps 10 minutes, a big smile was plastered on my face and then stayed on for most of the rest of the downhill trip.

It was beautiful, with amazing scenery around us, starting with snow-covered mountains, followed by a crazily steep canyon that we encircled, and finishing in the deep green of real jungle. After the 25km were done and after a short time back in the minibus for the uphill the real fun could begin as we attacked the road (in)famously known as the 'Death Road' or the 'Most dangerous road in the world'.

For some security reason none of the companies allow you to bike the part uphill, possibly the security reason they mean is health as we were still very high up and many tourists have problems with altitude sickness and hence uphill biking could mean too much strain on the hearts.This was not the case for us though as coming from such high lying places as Cusco, Puno and lake Tititcaca, we had gotten well acclimatised to the altitude before arriving in La Paz and hardly felt anything going up steep hills, in stark comparison to when we arrived in Quito and thought we would die the first day .

This road used to be one of the main roads up to La Paz with heavy traffic going in both directions on a thin slice of dirt road which at many places looked to narrow for even one vehicle! Hence the road earned it's 'lovely' name as approx. one vehicle per week went off the road for a few hundred meters free fall. It was indeed at this time the deadliest road in the world. After 15 years of work though, the new road was opened up 5 years ago, and the old dirt path is now mostly used by bikers, with only a few, local vehicles still going up or down the road. (It should be noted, however, that the biking on this road actually started 10 years ago, hence a full 5 years before the road was closed to most traffic).

By bike, the road can still be dangerous as the curves are often sharp, narrow and with no protection against falling off into a base jump with no parachute. It is especially dangerous when the mist is filling the valley as the curves are more difficult to distinguish and measure. Since if you come with to high speed into one of these curves it will most probably mean death.

In 10 years of biking tourism on this road, about 35 participants have actually died. A better account than when the road was heavily trafficked, but still enough to scare the shit out of some more sensitive people - like me. Our excellent guide, Luis’, pendant for telling us some of the gory stories didn't make my hold on the brakes any less hard, as he told us about the Italian curve (named after an Italian guy who on a misty day went into that curve in too high speed, and met his death flying) or the French girl curve (named after a French girl who, having gone off her bike to let a truck pass, took a step backwards on the side of the road without looking behind herself, and walked right out onto nothing). We also stopped next to a nicely carved stone of an Israeli girl who met her fate at the high age of 25 years.

All this information probably influenced me to be more careful. And it for sure influenced the Brazilian girl to be very careful as she did not feel too comfortable doing this downhill to start with and went down on a very slow speed indeed. I doubt, however that the information influenced in any way the speed of Nuno and the other guy as they speeded on behind the guide, having loads of fun.

But the road by bike on a clear day like the one we luckily had with quite a lot of sunshine even, did not actually feel that dangerous, (the day before it had poored down with rain the full 4h of the downhill path, much like the weather we had on the way to Machu Picchu). The path is very narrow for a car, not to speak about a bus or truck, but for a bike it is really quite large. As long as you control your speed, and are not super unlucky like the French girl was, it actually feels safer than many other roads in the region due to the lack of traffic. We never actually met any traffic during the 3 hours we spent going down on the dirt road. Only a couple of vehicles went past us while we were having breaks, but none while we were biking.

Instead, we enjoyed ourselves watching the great scenery, going under 2 waterfalls that actually falls onto the road, mastering the rocks that makes up much of the road and which means that both hands are usually needed on the steering wheel, and crossing 2 rivers that flows over the road (which were nothing like the 9 quite deep rivers that we had to cross in Peru).

It was a fun, great day and it was really cool to be in such a small group as although the boys usually had to wait a minute or so for me, and we then had to wait an additional 5 minutes or so for the other girl, it was still fine. Only once did I get a bit irritated with the slowness of the girl as I got stuck behind her going through the last river and therefore had to put both my feet into the river as I did not come with enough speed due to her blocking the way.

The day finished with lunch and a dip in the swiming pool at the end of the road in Coroico, before we all fell asleep in the minibus going back to La Paz on the new road. Well, new and new. This road is a lot better than the 'Death Road', but it is far from a good standard road as the asphalt is often gone, one track quite often closed and the road filled with rocks etc, but it does have 2 lanes and is not built leaning over the side of a deep canyon.

Our last day in La Paz was spent taking it easy with a nice sleep-in until 9am, and taking care of important things, before hitting the city for a last couple of hours of sightseeing, the sushi lunch already mentioned, and a view of the change of the presidential guards before picking up our laundry, re-packing, and jumping on a taxi to the bus station for a lovely 11-12h bus ride to Uyuni.

This bus, where I am actually writing this post as most people have fallen asleep already, has more space than our first Bolivian experience, but so far we have stopped twice on the side of the highway for the bus-team to work on something... At the moment, this road keeps a nice smooth surface though, and I only hope that we will make it to Uyuni in time for our tour to the salk lake, and that we will make it safe and sound

[comment written after arriving : we did make it safe and sound, although 2h late as we had to stop at around 6am as the dirt road that we had by then been travelling on for a couple of hours had broken down as a new river created by the downpoor had decided to cross it, and a truck had gone into it and was stuck. However, instead of just waiting for assistance – which would probably have been the case in Europe - men from the trucks and buses wanting to cross therefore spent about an hour and a half creating a temporary bridge out of rocks. After a first truck tried its way across this nice craftmanship, only moving a few rocks away that had to be replaced – the rest of the trucks and buses managed to cross and we made it to Uyuni in time for our departure.]

I must admit that we have not been the best tourists in La Paz as we only spent a couple of days and did not visit that many places. So besides the witches street, the excellent sushi, the funnily dressed women and the excellent bike ride, my main memory will be seeing a poor man being pushed to the ground by 2 policemen and then half-carried, half-dragged into a courtyard out of reach for the curious and worried eyes of the bystanders. I feel bad that I did not interact. I try to blame it on not knowing if that man had indeed done something wrong. But really that argument does not work on me, as for me police brutality is wrong no matter the circumstances. Justified violence to protect the policemen and any bystanders is another thing, but brutality can never be excused. And although there were loads of locals around and none of them intervened (but who knows what would have happened to them if they did), I still feel like a real chicken. It is indeed difficult to act in these circumstances.

The highest navigable lake in the world, and the people that navigate it with their islands

2011-02-18T16:17:00.000+01:00

Our last stop in Peru was the famous Lago Titicaca. We bussed our way down there from Cusco to the cold city of Puno that lies at the shore of the lake.

Having heard a great deal about this lake and the different islands in it, we booked a day tour to see the Urus floating islands and the autonomous island of Taquiles.

The Urus islands were very touristic but due to the uniqueness of the people living there and the way they have decided to live, it was interesting enough that the touristic aspect of it was not so important. There are some 40 odd islands in total, placed next to the 'totora'/reeds that the Urus people use for everything. And when I say everything, I do mean everything as their whole lives circulate around this greenery.

In fact, they use the roots of it to create the base of their floating islands - and as the ‘sargaço’ itself floats, so does the islands build with its roots. On top of the roots, squares of which are attached together with ropes, several layers of reeds lied down. As the bottom layers rotten, they are taken away and a new layer is spread out. This change of the second layer of the islands is made every 5-6 months and seems to require quite a lot of effort.

On top of this base, which is fairly bizarre to walk on as it moves slightly, is soft and spongy, and sometimes lets some water up, houses are created from the same plant - these houses have to be rebuild approximately every 10 years. But the usage doesn't stop there. The plant is also used for making the furniture, as fuel for the cooking fires, and to build spectacular looking boats. In addition to harvesting the reeds and creating things out of it, the main occupation of the Urus people is to collect eggs from the ducks living in the plants, to shoot the ducks, and to fish.

The Urus people that we met on the first island we stopped on - the second was more of a tourist trap and did not have any authentic feel to it - were very friendly and told us a bit about their lives. The kids goes to school, the younger ones in one of the three schools on the islands and the older ones in the secondary school in Puno, half an hour away by boat.

They also informed us that each island belongs to one family and has around 10-15 people living on it, all connected through family ties. Our guide told us that before, marriages within an island were quite common, but today they are only allowed to marry a person from another island and hence the population is healthier today. The chief of the island we were visiting also told us that if one person/family unit stops contributing to the communal work of the island, the chief will bring justice by cutting the piece of land surrounding that person's house away from the rest of the island. Quite a punishment I would guess as keeping these islands working seems to take a lot of work.

One last cool thing about the islands, except for the colourful clothes of the women, is that they are anchored with poles into the roots of the reed on one side, and with big rocks on the other side, facing open water. This means that if the chief decided that there is a better place for the family to live, they can just lift anchor and move to the new spot. In close mirroring of their ancestors, who actually built their houses on boats, using the same material for both, as they flew the invasion of the mainland by the Inkas.

Jumping into the boat again, our next stop was the island Taquile, a 2 hours fairly boring boat ride away – so luckily we had brought a deck of cards (it was especially lucky for me at this time as for some reason I couldn't stop winning after our day in Machu Picchu - this luck lasted for several weeks and only ran out as we crossed into Chile).

And for me this additional trip soon felt fairly unnecessary as, although an autonomous island owned by the inhabitants, the place felt like a big tourist trap. Starting during our 30-40 minutes walk up from the harbour, and continuing all the way through, the locals were selling bracelets and anything else that a tourist might like. The whole place actually felt like it's existence is completely based on the loads of tourists arriving here every day. It probably isn't. But that was the feeling I got and it made me feel highly uncomfortable.

In addition, as we only had a couple of hours on the island and one of them was spent having lunch (which was excellent by the way with a yummy quinoa soup and delicious fresh grilled trout), and most of the other hour was spent walking up from or down to the harbours - it really felt that we actually just went that whole way for the lunch.

A bit of a disappointment, in fact, and if I would do it again, I would spend a bit more time visiting the Urus islands and would skip Taquile altogether.

Still a nice day though, that we finished off with a stroll through the main plaza before using about half an hour collecting the ingredients for the dinner of pasta with vegetables and guacamole that we were planning for the night. Each set of ingredient having to be bought from its particular stand. But we finally got it all together and enjoyed a nice home-cooked meal. Something which I can miss as we most of the time eat out.

Marvelous Machu and piccante Picchu

2011-02-17T14:49:00.000+01:00

So as the alarm went off in the early morning ( make that the middle of the night) we sleepily made it out of bed, into our clothes and out into the street where we started to walk towards the bridge, the first ‘port’ on the way. Opening at 4.45 in the morning, it was already lined with about 50 people queueing up by the time we got there at 4.30.

The air was full of tension as everyone was getting ready to take off and be the first ones to the top, a bit like in the beginning of a sprinting competition.
And it was a bit rough in the beginning, with a group of people trying to sneak in front of everyone else with their guide, and no one letting anyone else pass, even though they were walking uphill relatively slowly.

After a while though, people started to succumb to the steepness of the hill, the constant downpour and the pitch darkness not making it any easier. Nuno and I kept a good pace though and started passing groups after groups of people, made easier at this point by everyone starting to be a bit more courteous as they lost energy.

Although we had passed a lot of people, we kept our speed as we were also competing against the first buses, that leaving Aguas Calientes at 5.30 would be arriving up at around 5.50 (one way of getting one of these 200 tickets is actually to take the first bus. But to be on the first bus you have to start queueing at least as early as we started walking).

And we made it ! Arriving up at around 05.45, we had made the hike uphill in about 50 minutes, quite a good time, allowing us a place in the queue after perhaps 35 people and before the first bus made it up.

And it was definitely worth it as the view from up Waynapichu was amazing. Plus, there are also some ruins up there that are quite interesting.

Our guide giving the first instructions under cold rain, with the promise that the magic Machu Pichu would send us some sun (most of the hikers didn't seem to believe)

For a little while though, as we stood waiting for the rest of the group and our guide to arrive and were freezing in the cold rain, I wished that we had done it the bus way instead. I have rarely been that cold before and the first half an hour or so of the tour I followed the guide around shivering. But still happy that we were actually, for real, in the Machu Picchu !!

We were amazed by the ruins that we could see pointing out from the clouds. We could only see a little at this point, but were still very taken by the skills, the magic and the beauty.

As the clouds slowly started to evaporate and revealed the whole city, we were almost speechless. As Nuno explained to some fellow traveller afterwards, it probably felt like it must have felt for the first people that found the place those a hundred years ago. No matter that we were surrounded by hundreds of other tourists – as the clouds dispersed it was like if we were the first ones ever to have lied eyes on the place. Amazing.

Having a fairly early deadline, as the travel agency had decided to book the two of us on a 3h30 train instead of the 19h train agreed to, we took off to explore the place by ourselves as soon as the nice guided tour ended.

Our first stop was the ‘Inka bridge’ that is build out of llama skin and tree trunks from a steep cliff over a big empty drop. It’s a bit like the Inkas looked out over the valley and decided that the smooth mountain side at one side of the city would in fact make a great passage and then they went and built the bridge and the road. Not the most beautiful or amazing view in itself, as the bridge is fairly small, the place that it has been built in is utterly breathtaking.

The next stop, or rather steep climb up slippery stone stairs, was Waynapichu. An about 45 min climb up another narrow Inka trail (they did indeed have an inclining for putting stones everywhere), the classical postcard view of Machu Picchu lied out in the shape of a condor – the symbol of the city and one of three magical creatures in the Inka mythology together with the puma and the snake - rewards you to such an extent that a small pause to catch ones breath, both due to the exercise and the view, is recommended.

We spent quite some time up here, but it felt like I wanted to stay there for ever. Or at least a couple of days to just take in everything. Instead, I tried to catch as much as possible of the magic during our half an hour up there. And perhaps I managed to capture some of it, as I got unbeatable in cards for a couple of weeks following this morning ;)

Our final hike of the day was up to the Sun gate. This is the arrival point for the classical Inka trail and one of the reasons many people want to come that way – but during the rain season it is actually a lot better to go up there a bit later in the day when the clouds have dispersed.

The view from there was also amazing. You get the same kind of overview of the whole city as from Waynapichu, but from a different angle, and with different mountains as the backdrop.

We again stayed gazing down for quite some time, before remembering that we had a train to catch and hence running off a bit in a scurry. However, as we were going down the hill it started to rain again, so it didn’t seem that we missed that much by leaving ‘early’. And with the amazing day that we had, our faces were so plastered with big smiles, and our minds so full of beauty, that it was indeed time to call it a day.

Machu Picchu is for me really a once in a lifetime experience. One of these places that somehow manages to keep all its magic no matter that it is slightly overrun by tourists. And so worth the time, money and sweat spent going there. As there are talks about restricting the number of visits soon – go now if you can, before it is too late!