Struggling with the god of weather ... or better: welcome to Patagonia

Once again it made me sad to leave Buenos Aires ... but I know I will be back end of January :o) A quick trip of only 22 hours in the bus beamed me almost instantaneously into Bariloche. Besides the pain of being trapped in a bus seat for ages, the landscape was quite amazing. Canyons and lakes with deep blue water. Looked incredible. Even more I appreciated the repeated drug controls during the bus ride ... I think we were checked like 3 times. At the very last control point some younger people in the bus even got some "very special treatment" by Mr. Drug Control Officer ;o) The moment I arrived in Bariloche the weather changed to windy and rainy and the next day it even started snowing in the valley at night. Perhaps I should have sacrificed some of the huge beef I had before departing to Bariloche to the god of weather ... but, yeah, I don't like to share my food! Being cold for one day was rewarded by a fantastic view the next days. All around the lake the mountains were white ... and that in summer :o) The landscape strongly reminds of the Alpes. Also Bariloche could easily be a European mountain village ... at least the fancy touristic part of town. I did some hiking and biking and enjoyed the once again rising temperature. The last day I could sunbath at the lake ... and got a decent sunburn :o)

Time to move on! Next stop Chile! Hence I took the bus to Valdivia. Going to a new country implies border crossing! Actually I thought Chile/Argentina is an easy one ... well, it is ... for me ;o) (Kisses for my passport!) After 2 extra hours of local people's paperwork and interesting alternative methods to search for drugs on the Chilean side (if the drug dog doesnt feel like sniffing, then there simply is no drug search) I made it, delayed as usual, to Valdivia. I have been here already 6 years ago on my first trip to Chile. I think the main attraction is the fish market at the river with the (fish) rubbish eating sea lions in the back of each vendor. Living trash bins!

Quick stop, taking the obligatory pictures and the next day I continued to Pucon. Well, to be honest, this was already my 3rd time to Pucon. Time to finish the unfinished business: hiking to the top of Vulcan Villarica! Since the god of weather was kind of mad at me once again I had to face his rainy day with good water sports. They call it Hydrospeed. You get a wetsuit, a pair of flippers and a thick body board and you float down the rapids. Great fun. Definitely better than rafting ... a bit like cayaking. To warm up I visited some hot springs at night. There nothing better than hotsprings, pisco and nice company :o)

The next day the god of weather had a day off and we were left with sunshine :o) Being equipped with snow boots, spikes and an ice pick we climbed through the snow to the top of the vulcano and had a fantastic view into the vulcano (though the lava was quite deep that day and we couldnt see it) as well as on the neighboring vulcanos around. Chile is full of vulcanos! Since hiking down in the snow is boring we used little sleds to slide down the vulcano. Great fun!

After too much snow I needed sun. Thus I took the night bus to Viña del Mar (close to Santiago). Today I spent all day at the beach :o) For the next 3 days I will work on my Xmas tan! Wednesday I will go to Santiago. For now sunny greatings from Viña y hasta muy pronto!

Chicas guapas, comidas buenas y futbol malo ;o)

This first week in Argentina was seriously enjoyable. A great opportunity to catch up on lacking nutrition. 5 weeks of rice and chicken is not good for the mind ... and even worse for the body ... I got skinny! Though here I seriously try to live a healthy life. I only eat 400gr of steak once a day ... so my second meal may only include ribs, sausages or milanesas ... I am looking forward to tomorrow ... once the stomach pain due to overeating is gone I can hurt myself once more :o)
After crossing the border from Bolivia we stayed some days in Salta. I didn't do too much expcept for a day trip to Cafayate. The tourist being had a break. Time for the cameras to cool down. Just eating, explaining to fellow travellers who Maradona (not the same person as Madonna! ;o) ) is, drinking and relaxing. In Argentina people know that beer needs and deserves special attention :o)

Friday I had a flight from Salta to Buenos Aires, the lazy and quick way :o) Definitely better than 22 hours in the bus ... there are still enough of these long bus rides waiting for me in Patagonia. The weekend I spent with friends in Buenos Aires. Was great to meet up again after one year! Gracias para todo, chicas! We went for a rock concert with niños ... but they were good, those little ones :o) Sunday I was invited to a lovely family asado :) I love asados :)

Sunday I had tickets for a football match. Ok, I am not too much into football, but once in my life I had to see that as well. Boca Juniors. To me Boca sounded better than it is. Boca is bad this season. And that's what they showed on the field. Could have been Axpo Super League as well. FC Wil am See vs Murmeltiere Ringlikon vom Berg ;-) Nevermind. The atmosphere in Bombonera was good :o) Boca won. And I got a free Choripan! More than enough for me!

Two more days of Buenos Aires and then I will move on to Bariloche. Mountains and lakes are waiting! Greetings from hot and sunny Buenos Aires to snowy Europe! :o)

High altitude days

Border crossing from Peru to Bolivia is an easy thing ... if you are not a local. Unfortunately, there were many locals in front of me in the queue. That meant waiting ... I think they almost had to submit their CV to cross the border ... well, I really like my passport :o)
Arriving in La Paz is quite impressive, since the bus goes down from the highest part of the city into the canyon. Looks great! Amazing architecture. Some vertical spots in the canyon might still be sold to interested real estate agents ... or better slum estate agents ;-) Though I had spent a lot of time in Peru on high altitude, La Paz still made me feel the altitude.

No excuse! The World's Most Dangerous Road is waiting! Great fun to go down on a mountain bike. Actually a fairly easy downhill track ... though little mistakes might be punished quite severely ;o) Have a look in wikipedia. It might summarize the road's death tolls. Since the road has been closed for public traffic (and been replaced by a similarily deadly paved road - the better the road, the faster they drive) still every year one or two bikers take the flight down the cliff ... and these cliffs are up to 700m deep. That can hurt a bit. Our guide mentioned the decease of an owner of one of the biking companies who, while taking pictures of his tourist group, did the famous one step backward ...

After some more hiking in high altitude I continued to Uyuni. Time for salt flats. We started a jeep tour for three days and visited the largest salt flat of the earth, Salar de Uyuni, and the deserts nearby. Amazing landscapes!

It turned out to be a fantastic jeep tour with our incredible driver Milton. He was slow, but safe! Many jeeps stranded during these three days, but Milton got us back home safely. And Milton also knew how to safely transport toilet paper on bumpy roads!

After three days on bumpy, unpaved roads in a jeep the desire to get to Argentina got greater. Hence we took the next night bus to the border - 10 hours on unpaved roads in a bus ... have you ever slept on a massage chair? More shaken than stirred we arrived at the border and made it to the country of beef! Bolivia is a really wonderful country with lovely people, but somehow it felt good to be back to Argentina!

Inca Trail aka Inca Stairs

Next stop: Lima. Having a two hour flight is definitely much nicer than torturing myself for 24 hours in buses for ... well ... "smaller" people. Have I mentioned that I feel quite often like that guy in Gulliver's Travels? Especially interesting are small-sized baños ... ;o) Unfortunately I couldn't enjoy Lima too much since I still felt sick. Luckily pharmacies replace doctors and I finally got the wonder medicine ... without description ... without anything ... but it worked! Overall I think Lima wasnt too impressive ...
So I quickly continued to Arequipa, beautiful colonial town further south. I did a nice tour to Colca Canyon and enjoyed sipping Pisco Sour in hot springs in the mountains :o) The biggest attraction had been yet ahead. Inca Trail :o) For that I again had to take a night bus with direction Cuzco. Actually I had the best seat in the bus. Cama primer piso! Actually this means that you can fully stretch your legs and have comfortable sleep ... if you're not taller than 160cm ... back to Gulliver ;-) After another night of body twisting I reached Cuzco. Beautiful city, once the heart of the Inca Empire! Beautiful houses and streets and seemed quite peaceful.

Next morning 6am pick-up for Inca Trail. 4 days hiking (or better climbing) the Inca Trail (stairs). Luckily it didnt rain during these 4 days except for one night. The group consisted of really nice people so it was great fun. Special greetings to Ireland in Montana here! At the last day, after getting up 3:30am in the morning just to sit and wait for 2 hours until 5:30am, we reached Puerta del Sol ... usually there is this wonderful view on Machu Picchu. For us it could have better been called Puerta de las Nubes with view on No mucho picchu. Was kind of funny to see all these deeply disappointed tourist faces sitting and waiting for the clouds to disappear. Nevertheless a fantastic spot to take a picture :o) Just imagine Machu Picchu in the back ... I could copy paste it in photoshop ;-)

Though after a few 100 metres of hiking down we got the fantastic view! Luckily! It's seriously amazing!

After 4 days of hiking, limited washing and adventurous rest rooms (wow!) it was time to have some well deserved drinks! And yes guides, you were drunk!

No time to recover! After Inca Trail the next bus for La Paz was waiting!

Time to start the blog ... :o)

Hola chicos!
Well, this is a rather empty page, so I think it is time to work on that. After travelling for two months I have finally arrived in Argentina. Right now I am in Salta and I am waiting for my flight to Buenos Aires. It have been two fantastic months. Travelling in Mexico and Costa Rica was awesome. Fantastic places and nice beaches :o) Found some time to work on my Spanish as well though it's still pretty humble. But better little knowledge than no knowledge. At least it proved to be quite useful so far ... but until I will start writing diaries in Spanish it might take a decade ...

My first stop in South America was Ecuador ... Quito. Actually Quito is an interesting place though pretty dodgy. It made me feel quite unsafe so I tried to reduce my exposure to being relieved by valuables (this includes "life"!) ;-) That meant better drink in a hostel with foreigners than go out clubbing and end up being mugged. Luckily I still had the opportunity to meet locals ;o) Quito is surrounded by mountains and offers lots of opportunity for hiking. So I spent the rather safe daylight climbing up Vulcano Pichincha (4680m).

Back in the hostel, my safe alcohol consumption zone, I met some guys from Ireland and Australia and we decided to continue to Vulcan Cotopaxi the next day. We stayed over in a hostel type mountain lodge close to the vulcano with a lovely jacuzzi. Having beer on 3500m in a jacuzzi is the best way to relax after going down the vulcano on a mountain bike :o)

After some days (we had to stay longer cause roads where closed due to the end of a national holiday ... that means roads only go into Quito ... on both sides of the road ... other traffic has to wait) we continued to Baños, a nice tourist place in Ecuador close to an active vulcano (as far as I know this area was close to being evacuated some months ago). Baños is great place for vulcano hiking, mountain biking and chilling in crowded hot springs. We did a mountain bike tour starting at the vulcano and ending down in the Amazon basin. Great fun. Pubs and clubs are also not scary in Baños so it was time to go out ... Cheers! A special local dish in Ecuador and Peru is cuy ... roasted guinea pig :o) Yummy :o) I will try to cook that when I will be back in Germany :)  Anybody has a spare guinea pig? Ask your sisters ...

After ruining my stomach in Baños it was time to go on. Our little group split and I continued to Cuenca (nice colonial town) and Guayaquil to catch my flight to Lima. Yeah, I got lazy and I dont have oceans of time ... ;o) And yes, travelling deseases suck!

Last day at work!

The best way to get started is having plenty of time ;-)