afroboof on the road

Buy the Book (if you like)

2009-04-27T03:17:00.000-07:00

I've finally managed to make a book about my trip, featuring some of the best pictures also seen on this blog. I decided not to include a lot of comments or text, to be able to give the pictures more of an impact.

Here's where you can buy it:

http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/633332

Home

2008-09-22T01:00:00.000-07:00

I should be mid-way across the Atlantic by now, so this blog will soon cease to be updated. Unless I go on another trip of course.

Until then: thank you for reading, for responding and indulging me and my thousands of pictures.

Altos de Lircay

2008-09-21T14:39:00.000-07:00

Wow!

What started out as a simple idea of stubborn "back to nature"-ism turned into a great experience of spring-time mountains in the Reserva Nacional Altos de Lircay, just a few hours outside of Santiago.

Starting with my late-night arrival at a truly deserted end-of-the-line bus stop, walking for 2 hours to the park entrance, pitching my tent in complete darkness on a supposedly closed campground, watching the fog of death closing in around me while I cooked up a feast (not), cursing the clammy morning clouds, tip-toeing through enchanted forests, gazing at snow-covered peaks in brilliant sunlight, trudging through snow knee-deep, wading through icy mountain streams, shivering in my puny tent at night.

I need to go back there! I only spent two nights and one whole day there, but I really fell in love with the place. Plus I met an old mountain guide on my way out of there - whilst enjoying my first cup of hot coffee in two days - who told me about a great 4-5 day trek through the national park, up an old volcano (the headless or "Descabezado") and down the Argentinian side of the mountains.

I didn't take that many pictures thought - even though I had a fresh 4GB card at my disposal -which tells me it's time to head home and let things settle down awhile.

So if anyone is looking for either somewhat strenuous day hikes near Santiago or challenging multi-day treks , Altos de Lircay gets my vote. But beware, apparently it's very popular from mid-september onward, so for the first 5 hours hike from the entrance, you definitely won't have the place to yourself!

PS: oh, and there's no decent hiking maps to be had for the region. At least neither Conaf nor the IGM could provide me with one. The old guide told me that the map he showed me was one of a limited run produced some years ago and not available anymore.

Reception

2008-09-18T22:00:00.000-07:00

I should be safely ensconced in my tent in the National Park by now, so I feel you people living close to Frankfurt ought to start thinking about a rousing welcome for when I arrive back ;-)

My flight is direct from BA to FFM, arriving on Monday 22nd at 3pm. How about we meet up right after I land (5 or 6pm) in either Mainz, Frankfurt or Darmstadt for a couple of beers and some stories? I don't feel like going straight home and need to get nice and tired so I can thumb my nose at jetlag by getting a nice night's sleep straightaway.

Suggestions welcome. Marie, you'll drive me, won't you? :-)

Photos 5.1: San Pedro de Atacama

2008-09-17T11:00:00.000-07:00

Catching up on some episodes I didn't have the time to publish before, here's San Pedro de Atacama in northern Chile, where I arrived right after my Uyuni tour.

Rage is apparently transmissible through badly washed fruit and... can't read the rest. Pity, might have brought us one step closer to world peace.

Heading off into the ravines and tunnels cut into the Valle de la Luna near San Pedro, we were surprised by the stark features and wind whipping across the place.

I does look just like a lunar landscape.

Sand blown all over the place by gusts of wind was a minor nuisance at first, mostly notable for the pretty contours it created in the sand.

...however the headwind and sandblasting took their toll on us, even on Nicholas, who had biked most of the way from Lima via Uyuni. My lungs felt like they were being filled with liquid after some of the hills we ascended.

This was covered almost completely within 30 seconds by sand blowing over.

The sky was forbiddingly dark behind us, but we decided to head back down toward San Pedro anyway, for fear of being caught in something more uncomfortable than the odd sandblast.

Other people were heading in the opposite direction, straight into the wind. It felt good to get out of there, I must tell you!

Nicholas waiting patiently for me to snap away at the spectacular scenery.

And just for once, I'm in some of the spectacular scenery. Mind the shorts; I had my calves sandblasted for cleaner skin that day.

Evening brought a long-awaited fogata in my familiar little hostel. Lovely people, nice wine, excellent dead cows!

There's a story to this I can't even begin to write about on this blog. So go on, ask me for details while you're buying me a beer once I'm back!

Overall judgement on San Pedro: expensive, a bloody nuisance to get cash in, stormy and sandy in autumn but very worthwhile for all the sights all around. Oh, and the people make for a startling but nice change from Bolivia... once you've gotten used to the touristy side of things!

not been eaten, yet

2008-09-17T08:48:00.000-07:00

Now that a few concerned emails have arrived and I'm finally able to get to an Internet cafe: I'm fine, just not been within easy reach of the net.

To make a long story short, I had to ditch the idea of camping out of Mendoza and instead proceded to eat my own body weight in meat over the course of the next two days. Okay, so I also went on another short hike, with subsequent terrifying rappelling sessions down the cliffsides and surprisingly successful attempts at climbing up part of them.

Pictures off all this will have to wait, because they are now on their way to Germany. Yep, I managed to meet up with dad in Santiago over the course of the last 4 days.

Decadence started in Mendoza, because I decided to travel in style: the wide leather seats in the first class bus section were worth every cent. As was the suite in the Plaza in Santiago's Las Condes district. After months of staying in rock-bottom hostals, the views of the setting sun illuminating the snow-capped peaks as seen from the pool on the 17th floor were a nice change.

The food was spectactular, as was the wine, although the exercise room was the only thing that saved me from instant obesity.

So now I'm back to travelling on a budget for the last few days before I fly back to Frankfurt. I've managed to get one of the last seats on a bus leaving for Talca, a few hours south of here. From there, it should be a relatively short hop over to the Reserva Nacional Altos de Lircay for a few days' camping and longer hikes.

Santiago is chilly and damp today, and I'm a tad apprehensive about snow falling on my crap tent in the mountains. But what the hell - for some reason I couldn't face the thought of the Fiestas Patrias madness here in Santiago so I opted for getting away.

I won't break into song just yet, but it seems I may just get my nature experience set up by tonight!

trekking & camping

2008-09-09T14:53:00.000-07:00

Right, even though my day has been filled with reading and general laziness, I have managed to circumvent the apparent impossibility of getting out of the city for more than a few hours ("¿Parque Nacional Aconcagua? No, hay demasiado nieve/es demasiado temprano/el temporal es demasiado fuerte" blablabla) by booking a one-day hike - they call it a trek, but it really doesn't seem like one - and possibly staying on at a small lake with my tent and sleeping bag for the night, before being picked up the next day (hopefully).

Will be taking off with bags packed for that possibility tomorrow, and if it turns out the wind/temperatures are too much for my crap equipment, I'll head back disappointed but safe. However, if it looks like I might survive a night on my own there, I'll sure as hell be staying to fight off the odd rat or feral cat.

In any case, I will be taking a bottle of wine along for the trip, so the day & night shouldn't be a total bust. Tried finding other people to go, but they're disappointingly conventional.

Wish me luck.

Photos 4.6: The last stretch toward Chile

2008-09-09T09:00:00.000-07:00

We kept going on the second day in the jeep along deeply rutted paths through the desert toward the stone tree (Arbol de Piedra), that I found nice but not particularly inspiring (photographically).

I've taken a lot of panorama shots over the course of the trip that need to be pieced together some time soon, so that's why there are so few other pictures from this stretch of the journey.

Jeep tracks were everywhere in the desert, especially as we approached highlights like the Arbol de Piedra or the like. You're definitely not alone out here!

Laguna roja (colorada? I can't remember...) with its red algae on which flamingos feast.

Fabrizio went for a wander toward the lake at sunset along with everyone else but was the only one who could be persuaded to make a fool of himself ;-) Grazie!

No, I'm not posing as Leonardo DiCaprio on bloody Titanic, this is more of a case of the wind blowing mightily in my face whilst I¡m standing on top of a hill that slopes down to the warm waters entering the lake.

Flamingos congregating in the setting sun make for spots of bright light on the dark surface of the lake's waters.

I think this above may have been one of the few pictures I took on the bloody freezing third morning of our trip. Slept badly (because of the cold inside my longjohns & thermals, inside my sleeping bag, underneath 3 blankets, inside the uninsulated and unheated barracks we slept in), woke up at 4:45 and drove for an hour or so until we arrived at the Geysers at sunrise. Never have I been so cold in my life. I swear that the windchill was such that, wearing my finger-free bike gloves, I got back in the cars and had to shake vigorously for nigh on 15 minutes for any feeling or colour to come back to them!

The Laguna Verde wasn't spectacularly green, seen from its shore. A few days later, I met up in San Pedro with Nicholas again, a french biker we had given a lift to and who decided to hop off close to the laguna. He said that, when seen from the top of one of the mountains nearby, the water was amazingly green. I wait for proof.

This is where my Boivian picture-taking draws to a close, since I made a very very short selection of decent ones to upload, couldn't access the RAW-Format ones and haven't had time to collate the panoramas. So bear with me and you may see some other nice ones come forth in future.

Apart from that, thank you to my co-travellers. I couldn't have wished to meet a nicer bunch of people. Hope you enjoyed the rest of your holidays in Bolivia!

Photos 4.5: Through the desert

2008-09-09T06:00:00.000-07:00

Still at the site of our lunchbreak on day 2 of our exploration of the landscapes in southern Bolivia...

...I almost overlooked the Zoro (or Fox) that was lying on the carpark not 100m from our car. Appears the poor beast had a broken leg and was fending for itself by eating scraps of food given to it by tourists. Not likely to last the next few days was our sad verdict.

Fabrizio and Ilaria, our Italian contingent, heading out from the lunch site for a stroll along the lake. Looking back at the pictures, I must say I think I became a bit jaded by the contrasts and the landscape in general. It seems so much more overwhelming when seen this way.

...or this way, for that matter; but that's due to the physics of the 300mm lens shrinking distances between objects in the picture and making it seem, that objects of different sizes are right next to each other.

The brazilians - Luisa, Leandro and Joana - waiting for our jeep to catch up to us and take us to our next stop.

...and - predictably - the jeep catching up!

The colours were amazing - especially when contrasted with the deep blue sky. Okay, so picasa may have helped the saturation along a bit, but the actual sights were every bit as impressive

The vegetation was either nonexistant or composed of little furry tufts of hair not unlike hamsters.

Vizcachas, little furry rabbit-like animals were everywhere - at least we think so, because they blend in quite well with the surrounds and hop away much like wallabies when scared. This one camped out in the shade next to the path when we drew up and couldn't be bothered to move.

Dry desert, high winds, colourful mountains and small piles of stone all over the place were a reminder of how inhospitable the land here was.

The riverbeds are very much in evidence, even in spring here, when there isn't a single drop of running water anywhere.

Our driver took a group photo of us all and skimped on the lighting a bit...

... and another better one!

Photos 4.4: Lagunas & Flamingos

2008-09-08T14:00:00.000-07:00

Right, so these pic-posts aren't necessarily structured by different days, only approximately according to topics. I get a bit confused myself and find I need to look at the EXIF data the camera has registered.

I didn't think this needed emphasising, but being a bit of a geek at times, my title for this pic would be one from... yes, an old Star Trek episode (both from the original series and DS9, if you must plumb the depths of my geekdom). "The trouble with tribbles". I shall say no more.

So at the end of day 1 of our exploration of the Salar de Uyuni, we headed to a small town near the western edge of the salt flats, where ugly low prefab buildings cowered against the flanks of the mountains overlooking this quiet little town.

...or at least it would have been quiet had it not been for the overzealous, soccer-crazy french who invaded the pitch and sent the neighbourhood donkeys screaming for cover. These were the same french people whom we had rescued from a 4-hour forced march from where their car had suffered from a punctured tire. After 2 cars had driven by without bothering to stop, we helped out with out on-board compressor unit.

Just goes to show, it's a dog eat dog world wherever you go!

The next morning, we drove on to a small village an hour out and while people went to the bathroom and the local store to stock up on sweets, I poked around the place to find out where the tinny sound was coming from. Turns out it was a monday morning and school was in session! What I assume must have been the Bolivian national anthem was played with much gusto on an accordeon (reminding me of the old Far Side cartoon: "Welcome to heaven, here's your harp; welcome to hell, here's your accordeon) while everyone around stood to attention except a little kid with a ball under his arm who looked on rather sceptically.

And then we were out in the middle of the mountains, moving rather gingerly with our jeep along rough paths with much bumping and rattling. Coming to the first of the Lagunas (which, I can't remember), the setting was overwhelming.

This little bugger hopped right up to me and stared curiously for a while. Can't imagine how he survives up here, because there was still ice on the ground in full sun by the time we got there around 10am.

The lake itself is covered in places by a mineral whose name also eludes me (must be the Argentinian wine). So that's not ice or salt the flamingos stand out against.

I'm afraid this is another of those occasions when I need to subject you to inexpertly photographed and rather bland wildlife pictures.

... although properly cropped, they could well be okay. This one of a group of flamingos taking flight - if only for a short distance - looks a bit like a merged picture of multiple exposures. If you don't know what that means, just think of it as pretty. (Me, condescending? Never!)

Ice-frosted plants at 10am in full sun? Must have been a bloody cold night!

Vicuñas were in evidence everywhere. Their long necks and slender build is instantly recognizable. There were a lot more on the Salar, but we didn't stop near them and I didn't feel like snapping away from the moving car, so that's the best you'll get!

I'm thinking this picture was taken at the Laguna we stopped at for our lunch break. The flamingos were really close by, well-fed by the algae that abound in these lakes (and which make for some of the colouring in them).

Neither quite flying nor quite striding across the ground, these two performed something that looked more like a nuptial dance than a form of locomotion.

Our lunch break, made to look more peaceful and isolated than it was; there were about 4 more jeeps in evidence within a 100m and the bathrooms - jealously guarded - were available for the horrid price of 5 Bolivianos!

Not meant for flamingos, nor for Vicuñas, obviously!

Photos 4.3: Salar de Uyuni

2008-09-08T06:00:00.000-07:00

Having finally arrived in Uyuni after a tiring 7 hour trip out of Potosi, leaving it behind to be beleaguered by celebrating crowds from all over the department.

I managed to scrounge enough money together (despite the power cuts and non-functioning ATMs) to get myself on a tour leaving the next day to see the Salar, the Lagunas and the deserts toward the Chilean border.

The first big stop was Isla del Pescado (so named for its shape), with the blinding white of the salt flats stretching toward the mountains in the distance.

Seeing people ride their bikes across the flats was reasonably common; but the tiny spots cycling along slightly darker paths on the immense white plains were an impressive sight to behold.

When the contrast on the pictures is turned way up, all the tire tracks criss-crossing the salt are visible. We were told that in high season, as many as 40 vehicles with up to 7 tourists on board would arrive at the island to have lunch and then scramble to the top. Luckily for us, there were only 8 vehicles there with us.

...and if you waited long enough and mucked around with your camera for ages whilst at the top, all the eagerly scrambling tourists would go down again in a bit of a hurry and leave you all alone for an hour or so before your jeep left.

The scenery was quite surreal, with the pure white of the salt, the deep blue of the skies, the green cacti and the scorching sun.

The mountains bordering the salt flats were hardly more than slight shadows in the distance.

Looking down toward the "carpark" side of the island from the top.

Characteristic patterns of the salt flats, a little farther out from the island

Need I say more?

Our vehicle had basically no tread left on the tires and a cracked windscreen but a safe and fun driver who was quite young. The tires weren't much of a problem on the salt flats (even though we had to help out another vehicle with our in-built compressor on the way) but when we finally got to the mountainous part, where the ride was very rough at times, I was very surprised the tires held up.

Photos 4.2: Potosi, Bolivia

2008-09-07T15:07:00.000-07:00

Would you believe there was a whole week after my trip to the jungle when I DIDN'T take a single pic? Well, that phase had well and truly passed by my second day in Potosi.

So while you were still watching jungle pics, I discovered the city - famed for its mountain of silver, the Cerro Rico - from above... alright, a little bit above.

First, though, I spent a couple of hours at the casa de la moneda - Potosi's famous museum detailing the history of the town. Since taking pictures doubled the price of entrance, I didn't (a video tripled the price). I'm not particularly inspired when taking pictures of museums anyway, so you're not missing out on much!

What I discovered afterwards, though, was a theatre tucked away uphill from the cathedral on the main square, seeming inside an old concert hall. Somewhat dilapidated seats stared vacantly at a small stage...

...while the ceiling held some of its former glory, looking down splendidly on a small stage.

And then there was a mirador or viewpoint for a supposedly decent view over the rooftops of the city. Turns out that was very much worth the 5 Bolivianos.

Climbing up an hour or so before sundown, I was faced with blue skies...

...the typically cluttered view into streets mostly packed with buses engulfed in exhaust fumes...

...the pockmarked and pitted Cerro Rico in all its splendour...

...and a bloody freezing wind.

To stay warm, I had me a nice hot chocolate in the cafe below and resolved to climb up again at sunset to capture this fine piece of jumping lore!

Now all the pictures from my excursion to the depths of the mine - including me holding a stick of dynamite with an unlit fuse and looking slightly unhinged - are on another card that I haven't been able to access so far. Be patient.

almost...

2008-09-06T01:00:00.000-07:00

I was very close to uploading the 105 pics I'd selected from the ones taken over the course of the last 10 days, but then I touched the power cord...

So that was about what my reaction was when the screen went blank:

I now plan to get a bottle of Argentinian wine of my own and a huge steak, having arrived in Salta from Chile a few hours ago. The uploads will have to wait. Oh, and tomorrow, 8am, I'm going rafting. Pray for me, please!

Literary tour d'horizon

2008-09-05T17:02:00.000-07:00

I know you've not asked for this and probably don't care, but as long as this is a mostly one-way medium, I do what I bloody well like on this blog :-)

No pics today, I'm afraid, because my card readers (yes, that's the despairing plural) are acting up and power outages are making nonsense of prolonged uploads anyway. Rather, I've decided to tell you about some reading I've done, I'm doing and I'd like to be doing. I've lots of time for this on bus journeys, but the quality of reading has been very uneven due to lack of suitable book exchanges in places.

What I've most enjoyed reading so far:

Jon Krakauer - Into the Wild
John Hemming - The Conquest of the Incas
Joseph Stiglitz - The Chances of Globalization (in German)

What I'm currently reading:

Amin Maalouf - The crusades through Arab eyes (in French)

Authors I've learnt to loathe with passion for their vile use of language and utterly hopeless style and won't touch again with a ten-foot pole:

Michael Crichton
Robert Ludlum

What I'd like to be reading instead of writing all this :-)

A note on rising food prices
The Doha development agenda : what's on the table?
or simply another good book by Haruki Murakami

All in all, a fairly mixed bag, although my list of to-reads has grown in length as my access to quality has waned. (I know I'm multiplying my requests for donations here, but please consider giving my Amazon.de wishlist a look ;-) I've no shame anymore, if you must know.)

PS: yes, I managed to get some money out by travelling for 3h to the next biggest town and back; yes, whilst your reading this, I should be crossing the Andes into Argentina... by bus, not on foot! And yes, I met some interesting people - current and past Chilean revolutionaries, French-speaking Chileans with Swiss accents and people to share some good wine with and jabber on about the state of the world!

Thank you for your expressions of concern :-)

Middle of nowhere

2008-09-04T21:00:00.000-07:00

I think I might have found my middle of nowhere.

After having been given that fantastically enticing book "Middle of Nowhere" a while back (thank you!), I've been keeping my eyes peeled for my middle of nowhere experience over the course of the last months.

Strangely enough, I've not been disappointed by places that were filled with tourists, nor did I expect to find myself as the first/only person in any of the places I went to.

So suffice it to say that this person has some rather strange ideas about travelling.

On the other hand, today I may just have found a place where the middle of nowhere was within reach:

Renting a bike and cycling out from San Pedro de Atacama to the Valle de la Luna is one of the nice, supposedly relaxing things one can do out here. And if you get going early enough (before noon, that is), you may not find the place swamped with tourists. And if you go in September, and a mean wind is whipping up a sandstorm-like experience for your benefit, you may find that you are indeed the only one there.

I met a nice french bloke called Nicholas on our Uyuni tour; he was biking from Lima all the way down to Patagonia and hitched a ride with our Jeep after having ridden through a large part of the Salar de Uyuni down toward the Bolivian border.

What could be more logical than renting a bike and accepting his offer to ride along to the nearby Valle de la Luna on a slightly overcast day? Turns out we misread the weather, because a bugger of a headwind greeted us just beyond the park entrance. It reminded me of biking down the river Neckar in March, albeit with the slight difference that back THEN, we had the same wind in our backs for some of the way.

When very find sand is mixed in with the wind and you find yourself holding your breath as gusts of sand-laden air blow in your face and sandblast your exposed legs, all the while climbing a steep-ish incline, things get ugly.

Fortunately, side-trips by foot into small gorges carved by rain and wind (what else?) offered some protection from the worst of the sand. We ended up eating our empanadas on a small rise after crawling through small cavernous paths within the eroded gorges.

All we heard whilst we ate our lunch was the cracking of the salt within the cliff faces.

Sure, there were footsteps from previous visitors leading there - it was a marked trail after all. Sure we knew we were less than 10km as the crow flies from bars, restaurants and the usual bustle of San Pedro.

But the point is: if you closed your eyes and just listened to the slight cracks and creaks all around you, while the wind whistled gently by, you could for a while forget about it all and just about believe you'd reached the end of the world.

...provided you could stop munching on your empanadas for a second, that is!

ATMs

2008-09-02T13:12:00.000-07:00

Okay so I'm getting jaded and sidetracked again, you might say:

so I've been to the Salar de Uyuni - spectacular - I've frozen my arse off on the shores of Laguna Colorada after getting up at 4:45am - *grumble* - I went for a dip in the hot springs on the shores of a laguna in the middle of the desert - soooo good! - and I've finally made my way to San Pedro de Atacama in northern Chile, where it's FINALLY warm again in the evenings.

BUT, since Uyuni was in the grips of a 4-day power cut and things in San Pedro seem downright loopy, all ATMs have been either out of order or out of money (in a tourist town at that!) since the 27th of August... and THAT's ticking me off majorly.

Can't stay, for want of money (San Pedro is expensive), can't leave, because I'm 1000 Chilean Pesos short of the fare for Salta, can't use my cards because contrary to the big VISA or MC signs on the doors "sorry, we can only do card transactions for groups of 5 people or more!", can't get tanked because that'd leave me even worse off!

Aaaarrrggh!

So I'm wasting a bit of what cash I have left writing my troubles away... and I can tell you it's not working!

Apart from that, I'm good, thank you for asking.

Charity - I'm not above it

2008-08-28T13:00:00.000-07:00

Okay, so if you liked the pics but wished they were sharper/better, please give generously to help me go from this:

Sigma 70-300mm, f4.0-5.6 APO DG Macro

to this:

Canon EF 300mm, f2.8 IS USM - starting at around 4000EUR

Fat chance, ey?

Parque Nacional Madidi - 6 - Dawn over the Lake

2008-08-28T09:00:00.000-07:00

Okay, so this post starts off much as the one before it did, but the clouds and silhouettes of the trees, together with that big ball of fire just did it to me. Having been in the mountains for so long, I hadn't seen a decently spectacular sunrise/-set for ages. To put it in the words of a good friend who is much enamored with open spaces: "so viel Himmel!"

I'm not quite sure who was sleepier: me - having gotten up at 6am - or the birds. That's one very good reason why there will be no pictures of me taken at that ungodly hour.

Kingfisher and his pole. Didn't see him dive for fish, but he did tease us by letting us draw just close enough for a picture and then taking flight.

So we went out on the canoe again, this time just the two of us. The eagle is a regular on the lake and doesn't seem to scare easily. "If you don't move while the canoe sails right past him, he won't scare and take flight!" Well that was Rodolfo's take on things...

...but apparently I had moved and did so repeatedly: it's hard holding a 300mm lens steady for a few minutes at eye level without moving! But basically that's what most of my shots from the jungle are like: half-captured shapes, blurry and of slightly different colour than the surrounding vegetation.

Another case in point, Macaws: we repeatedly saw green/red as well as blue/yellow ones flying far off in the distance. That's the original size pic at 300mm and f/8 (450mm in reality, due to the small-size sensor on my Canon EOS 350D). Zooming in a lot, you can find patches of colour on the birds, but the details and sharpness fall apart, because I had to use ISO 1600 to avoid motion blur, thus making it very pixelly. Frustrating and of absolutely no interest save to photography nuts.

A typical view of most of the birds on the lake: flying away from us when we drew too close. All of the sudden, piercing the morning stillness, there'd be a mad rush of wings and reed being pushed aside and a shape would emerge from the totora.

The selfsame Mr Longneck seen in the pic above (I think), watching carefully.

When I say "piercing the stillness", in fact that's not quite correct: there was a constant background din of howler monkeys justifying their name that started up around first light and kept going for 10-15 minutes on end. It's just that you get used to it... I even went to sleep at night in spite of theor noise.

The first person who comments on the fact that it's pretty much all blurry in this picture has to invite me out to dinner (drinks included).

The laughing longlegged birds just before taking flight and laughing at us some more.

Ah the Serere or Hoatzin, an incredible clumsy bird and apparently a bit of a remnant of a bygone evolutionary era. A pure vegetarian, it carries with it an extra load of bacteria in its stomach to digest the tough cellulose, much as cows and other ruminants do. The precise biological details are lost on me, suffice it to say that due to all that crap it has to carry around, this bird can't really fly very far! 20 meters is about the maximum anyone has ever seen it do.

So as far as birds go, it ranks with the Ouilleouilleouille for sheer entertainment value ("Vous savez ce que c'est un Ouilleouilleouille? C'est un oiseau avec des toutes petites pates et des grosses couilles et quand il se pose il fait ouilleouilleouille")

Okay, so refinement has definitely gone out the window...

These little yellow and black birds build their nests hanging from branches, so that they look like oversized fruit. They keep up a constant chatter and flutter around them, but unfortunately I didn't really get a good pic of them.

Is it a heron? Do you think? Love the neck!

Okay, so I mucked around quite a lot with contrast and saturation in these, but they're nice because JUST FOR ONCE, there is little motion blur. And that would be due to the fact that the bird doesn't move its wings very fast, for which I will be eternally grateful!

Patos (Ducks, they called them), seeing us off as we travelled upriver toward Rurre again.

And that's pretty much the end of my jungle trip. Okay, so pics of cockroaches and rats could have been taken over the next 18 hours until my flight left for La Paz, but that's just not so pretty.

Overall, a great place which I can recommend on account of the people, the sheer exposure to nature, the flexibility of the schedule and the serenity. They even do longer trips into the jungle, so if you fancy spending 20 days on end at the beginning of the rainy season, they can help you out (not sure about how sane you'd have to be to do that).

Drop Madidi Travel a line or swing by their La Paz or Rurre offices for more info.

Thank you for your hospitality to all the staff at the lodge and their offices, especially to Rodolfo for putting up with my plodding progress across the jungle (stopping every 20m for pictures) and to Rosa Maria for her enthousiasm and interest in my pictures!

Parque Nacional Madidi - 5 - Sunset over the lake

2008-08-28T07:00:00.000-07:00

Pretty cheesy, isn't it? What you can't see here are the swarms of mozzies that awoke around dusk...

So the end of the second day at Serere tailed off with a canoe ride over the lake and into the reed on the opposite side of the main house.

Long-legged little bastards moved so fast in the fading light that this was the best I could do. Plus they kept up a constant stream of inane laughter, much of which I think was directed at us.

The colours were amazing! Changing from yellowish to red and purple - all the ingredients needed for a typically kitsch picture.

Rosa Maria accompanied Rodolfo and I on to the lake and while I kept a lookout with my camera, the two of them exchanged stories about animals, plants and life in the jungle. It seems they were so into their stories that Rodolfo got his oar stuck in the muck and reeds and had to frantically paddle back using the piece of wood he was sitting on.

Waiting for dinner do arrive as if by magic. There are very few times over the course of the last two months that I've eaten as much as in the course of these three days, yet my belt had to have another hole punched through it just a few days later... go figure!

Ad nauseam

2008-08-26T14:36:00.000-07:00

Hatte ich schon erwaehnt, dass ich nunmehr seit fast 3 Wochen ohne MP3-Player reise? Okay, im Bus vergessen ist nicht besonders klug!

Ganz ohne Musik? Nicht ganz, denn genau 5 Songs waren im Laufe irgendeiner Spielerei auf meinem Handy gelandet, so dass ich jetzt bis zum Erbrechen blechern toenend folgende Playlist hoeren kann:

1.) Chimene Badi - Je viens du Sud (franzoesische Schnulze)
2.) The Arcade Fire - Rebellion (Lies)
3.) Arctic Monkeys - Mardy Bum
4.) Modest Mouse - Float On
5.) Die Aerzte - Langweilig

Grrrrr, deswegen muss z Zt Lastfm als Jukebox bei Internet-Cafe-Aufenthalten herhalten.

Parque Nacional Madidi - 4 - wildlife galore

2008-08-26T13:00:00.000-07:00

*** Right, first of all, I have to admit it seems I spoke too hastily as far as ticks were concerned.

Ended up plucking three fully-gorged little bastards off my skin this morning. The dears must have been drowsy from the freezing temperatures at night, the cold shower I was forced to have this morning ... oh and of course all of my blood they feasted on.

I gotta say, though, there's nothing quite as satisfying as hearing the sharp crack as you crush them between glass and the tiled floor! ***

So this is still Day 2 - please don't ask how many frames I shot that day, it makes me want to weep. Suffice it to say I had to dial down the quality to Large JPG in order to leave some space on the 16GB card.

All of a sudden, Rodolfo grabs my arm and stops me dead in my tracks no farther than 3m from this little one.

He didn't hiss, didn't budge, almost didn't show his tongue and I'm sure I wouldn't have seen him for all the looking around I as doing. First time I was glad my macro function had a minimum focal distance of about 150cm.

This Mariposa sat perfectly still while I pranced about changing lenses and mucking about with settings in the semi-darkness. I sometimes wish some of my human motifs showed as much patience!

The anonymous ones again - scooting through the canopy above us.

Ah yes, something straight out of Peter Pan: remember the Crock that had swallowed Captain Hook's watch as well as the had holding it? Well, every time the crock drew near, Hook would get unnerved by the tick-tock-tick-tock.

If only there'd been some sound from the Caymans lying in wait for us!

We had to cross this rickety bridge-contraption on our way to lunch, and I was convinced the planks were more suitable to a Cayman-buffet, being within easy reach of their jaws as they laid in wait underneath it. Rodolfo crossed very gingerly, and I was practically tiptoeing across, all the while looking out for a telltale ripple in the water.

We found one of these beautifully-coloured butterflies trapped inside the mosquito netting of the hut we rested in...

...and it was nice enough to allow us to take a peek at the inside of its wings... okay, so it didn't altogether do this voluntaril, but I assure zou we were gentle.

Ah, and then there was this little guy - a lesser anteater or Southern Tamandu, if you must know - who was shuffling around the forest floor before spotting us and trying to climb to safety.

Unfortunately he picked a much-too-slender sapling, that bent backwards under his weight almost all the way to the ground again and had us laughing our heads off...

...which he commented with loud hissing noises and an acrobatics number, worthy of a circus artist.

Once safely ensconced high above, he glared at us reproachfully for a while, and I finally had the time to change lenses; because of course, if you just happen upon an animal close by, you'll be sure to have an utterly inadequate lens mounted on your camera!

Parque Nacional Madidi - 3 - Jungle Paths

2008-08-25T10:00:00.000-07:00

On Day 2 of my stay at Serere, Rodolfo and I went for a 5-hour walk/crawl/bash through the jungle; first keeping only a few meters from the lakeside, then walking alongside a small creek and finally heading off toward a more isolated lake through denser jungle.

Ants were everywhere, from the very smallest that you'd also expect to find in Germany, to the largest - 3 to 4 cm in size - moving very swiftly and apparently constantly fighting one another.

That little bugger was teasing me by folding his wings whenever he sat still, making it impossible to see the bright blue colouring on the inside.

Very uncomfortable insects, guarding their nests and dispensing what Rodolfo assured me with a grimace were very painful stings against perceived intruders made us take large detours from the path.

Spiders were also plentiful; mostly we encountered very dense, very large nets with huge numbers of small offspring in them. This ought to be their ancestor.

Testing my macro function, I was fascinated by the little bristles on the long legs of this spider.

Capuchin monkeys were bountiful and relatively easy to find, making so much nois during their treetop forays for food.

This branch, reaching out over a small creek toward our position must have held some incredibly tasty morsels, because the shy capuchins came out right to its tip, all the time keeping a weary eye on us and stuffing their face with the fruit.

Yet again my memory fails me, as I try in vain to remember these little guys' names. They came along after the capuchins and feasted on the same fruits.

A very rare sight, this bird was so well concealed against the banks of the creek that it took me a while to spot it, even as Rodolfo insistently pointed towards it. The amazing thing was the design on the inside of its wings, which it deigned to display upon taking flight - a pair of brightly-coloured spots smack-bang in the middle of the wing when unfolded. What a sight!

These frogs are highly poisonous, as evidenced by their bright yellow and red colouring. Their toxin apparently stops vicitms breathing and is used by indigenous people to coat arrows for hunting.

The bright red of the parrot's beak is always a great sight, especially against a backdrop of deep green.

Even though we crawled along every conceivable path through dense vegetation, I don't think I caught any ticks or other nasty insects. Rodolfo even went as far as stalking a cayman who was making characteristic noises in a dense piece of brush alongside a pond. Must admid I felt a tad queasy at every noise and rustle of dry leaves in there.

Crackpot interlude

2008-08-25T07:12:00.000-07:00

An incurable sceptic thought he had discovered Bertrand Russel's Teapot hovering in one of my pictures of the night sky above Isla Amantani on Lago Titicaca:

©jfh2008

"If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time."

- Bertrand Russell

I for one firmly believe there's space for an Invisible Pink Unicorn and a Flying Spaghetti Monster in there...

Parque Nacional Madidi - 2 - Serere

2008-08-24T12:05:00.000-07:00

Still on the first afternoon of my trip, having just arrived in Serere, Rodolfo and I made for the jungle paths for a short exploration of the surrounding area.

This appeared to mean he'd occasionally put himself in mortal peril - within easy reach of the cayman population while attracting them with throaty coughs...

...and although they didn't take a bite out of him, a curious specimen found the action enticing enough to observe us closely from no more than 3 meters.

Birds are plentiful around the lodge, being built right on a rather large lake with lots of reed around the edges.

The sunset was really something to behold, as the howler monkeys started up their characteristic chant...

... as caymans came up to gaze curiously from a safe distance...

... and the reed and trees were perfectly still, due to the absence of any wind at all.

If it hadn't been for the mozzies - and thank god for Autan forte, my trusty 99% reliable insect repellant - I could have stayed there for hours.

I even got to see the Milky Way, stretching across the night sky as a band of white-ish stars, which I did my pathetic best to capture while not being eaten alive by either the mozzies or the sneaky caymans coming up from the lake for a midnight snack.

Parque Nacional Madidi - 1 - The jungle calls

2008-08-24T08:30:00.000-07:00

After exhaustive consultation with relevant authorities, I decided to head off for 3 days at Serere Ecolodge near Parque Nacional Madidi.

Just 40 minutes by prop plane from La Paz, you land at Rurrenabaque, or at least we would have if the dirt strip hadn't been deemed unsuitable for operations on the day of our arrival. So we were diverted to nearby Reyes landig strip, a 45 minute bus ride out from Rurre.

From Rurre, I was taken by boat - being the only guest at the lodge for those days - down the rio Beni for 3 hours to the landing.

As a first taste of what was to come, we saw a host of birds, most too far away for me to be able to take good pictures of.

My personal guide would be Don Rodolfo, always smiling, always at hand with a story or an anecdote about the park or animals he'd encountered. The man saw EVERYTHING! Absolutely amazing, the details, animals and plants he'd picked out without the aid of his binoculars.

The river is relatively turbulent in parts, largely fast-flowing and occasionally downright dangerous due to submerged trees and what I can only assume were rocks.

And then this happened:
Why is everyone so excited?
...is it a tree trunk?
...a cow?
...oh, would you look at that: ¡un tigre! or what we'd call a jaguar.

Swimming across the Beni in plain daylight, just 30 minutes out from Rurre!

Amazing sight, as he apprehensively watched us draw closer, crinkled his nose, put on an extra bit of speed and once near shore dashed as fast as he could across open ground for the safety of the trees!

... and we hadn't even gotten to the actual Lodge, deep in the jungle yet!

Photos 4.1: Bolivia - Lago Titicaca & La Paz

2008-08-24T08:00:00.000-07:00

Catching a bus from Puno (PER) to Copacabana (BOL, still on the Lago Titicaca), I found I was enjoying the bus ride. And since the hotel I had picked out was full, I just kept going to La Paz.

Welcome to Bolivia!

In La Paz, I jumped at the chance to take a tour to Chacaltaya mountain (5400m) the day after my arrival. That one above is nearby Huayna Potosi which rises to 6100m.

Sitting gingerly above a realtively gently falling mountainside, I felt a bit off, not on account of the height but rather because slight bouts of vertigo gave me a hard time.

A little more at ease, with a great view behind me.

A 5 minute walk away, you could feel the warm air blowing up from the valley.

The San Francisco monastery in La Paz was a great 2-hour visit...

... after breakfast in a nearby cafe!

Translucent Alabaster "windows" in the church make for great swirling displays of cloudy white.

Apparently, in the 50s, city planners decided the monastery's main court had to be chopped down to a quarter of its size to make way for a large street.

Monks made their own wine for mass (ha!) and in order to generate a bit of revenue.

The entire monastery - or what's left of it - was given a thorough noce-over by conservationists a few years ago. I have no idea what made them think Yves Klein's YKB blue would make for a good paint job!

Photos 3.5: Island Hopping

2008-08-24T05:00:00.000-07:00

With a bit of a delay happening here, I'm finally getting up to date on the posts. Couldn't be bothered before :-)

So the train ride from Cusco ended in Puno, an ugly little town on the shores of Lago Titicaca that dumps most of its refuse untreated into the lake.

Even though the Lonely Planet said the tours of the Titicaca Islands - the floating islands of the Uros, Amantani & Taquile - were mostly disappointing and downright exploitative, I decided to sign up willy-nilly with some random operator for a 2-day tour with one night to be spent on Amantani with a local family.

The Uros' floating reed islands were a bit of Disneyland on water. Basically, the traditional way of life was to cut free reed growing in the lake (including the roots) and tie several large pieces together to get a floating island with the actual float being up to 3m thick.

Thing is, the whole thing looked and felt highly artificial, from the presentation of how the islands were built down to the people dressed up in traditional clothes and only being there for tourists.

Nevertheless, as we made our rounds and I staunchly refused to buy anything from the small stalls set up everywhere, you could get some small insights into what life on the islands was really like...

While most of the people on our tour went for a ride in a reed boat, I elected to stay behind and was promptly joined by one of the locals; we got to talking and as well as finding out that he was taking french lessons and hoping to get a tourism degree and a job on the mainland - as were most of the young people - he also told me that child mortality ws incredibly high on the islands. What with living mere inches above the water, temperatures dropping down to sub-zero at night large numbers of children up to the age of 5 years were dying of pneumonia or drowning by accident, as had happened to this young man's first child.

Our guide also commented that the only thing keeping people and their lifestyle alive were tourists and the money they left, the lake being so polluted close to Puno and overfishing having reduced the catch in the rest of the lake, that the Uro's traditional occupation of fishing was mostly reduced to a pastime.

While I'm not saying that some of the tours of the Uros islands won't be exploitative, in this case it does depend on what you make of the tour: a rather disappointing reed Disneyland experience, or a peek behind the scenes of how people live, whose only resource is tourism and who put up with sometimes appalling conditions to keep up a pretty facade.

We kept going on our little boat through the reed-edged waterways toward the open lake after that brief interlude. A biting headwind made me gear up in fleece, windjacket, gloves and hat despite the intense sun. When on the lake, you are at close to 4000m altitude!

Hidden in the reed - called totora locally - a corrugated iron shed stood... to no apparent purpose.

Arriving on Amantani, the first, and lesser-visited island compared to Taquile, we were assigned to our guest families and taken off on a 20 minute climb up the gentle slopes to their respective houses. The deep blue of the water, the sparse and dry vegetation and small farming plots made for great views.

Pabla, our host, was of exemplary patience, as the french girls and I who were staying in her house kept her waiting time and time again, establishing a bit of a reputation for getting to every meeting point last.

She and her husband Demetrio were very welcoming, cooked for us, provided us with a bit of an insight into their life on the island and showed us every conceivable kindness! Demetrio takes care of the local library of one of the nine communities on the island. He told us that he had trouble providing enough books for children who wanted to read and learn about different things and later proceeded to show us the library: a shack with 4 rows of benches and tables, set out like school with one meager half-full cardboard box in the corner, in which all the books were kept. I think he had one english-language one to go around.

Heading down to the pebble beach so we could pretend to have had a dip in the lake - bloody freezing water! - we happened upon a group of kids tending their flock of sheep. The little black one was almost adopted as part of their outreach program :-)

Our next date was with the setting sun, best seen from the top of the highest hill of the island, that also housed a Pachatata shrine (the Pachamama - mother earth - antipode).

Looking across the island from the top of the hill was amazing.

Sunlight slanting across the stone enclosures used to divide the fields made for a great play of light and shadow.

Looking due west from the hilltop into the setting sun.

The moon was out in force as well.

Unsure of which position to adopt for that picture, and because I saw strictly nothing looking into the sun, I opted for cool.

I think I may have done my retina some permanent damage, squinting into the sunlight in order to get that shot. The two german girls also on our tour look a bit otherworldly...

Ah, sweet jumping pics...

... in front of the setting sun ...

...while some can't quite manage to look good doing it ....

... but things turned out alright in the end!

I don't think I've ever seen skies as dark blue as the ones over Lake Titicaca, with the possible exception of Australian skies and ones seen from cruising airliners at 40,000 feet.

The moon screwed with my avowed aim of seeing the Milky Way laid out before me in all its glory. When it's full moon, stars are overwhelmed by its awesome shine.

Some pics turned out alright. I'd appreciate it if anyone could tell me what constellations I'm looking at here.

After a restful night on Amantani and an early start, we headed over to Taquile - the more touristy of the two islands. When we got there, a band started playing and I was assailed by nightmarish visions of another Disneyland experience.

In fact, it was a wedding party arriving on Taquile from another island to start festivities for an inter-island wedding, something quite inconceivable a few decades ago.

While we tourists huffed and puffed our way up the islands paths, they played their instruments - horns, trumpets, tubas etc - as they went without being out of breath. Okay, so a little Chicha - locally brewed maize alcohol - seems to have helped!

I think this might be the Cordillera Real off in the distance on the Bolivian side of the lake. Makes me want to climb them!

Dry yellow earth, a few trees - including some Eucalyptus trees - and the deep blue of the water. Quite a sight!

Everyone was dressed up - either for the wedding or for the tourists - and kids were flying kites while distinctly alcoholic-smelling adults wandered about. Alcoholism is a hug problem on the island, as our guide told us.

Looking across the island and its fields. Nowadays, tourism is the only money-earner here and is the only prop that keeps traditional costumes and lifestyles kicking. Strange customs such as having a child first and spending a few years together as a couple as a prelude to getting married still prevail on Taquile. The rule is: if you're unable/unwilling to conceive, you split up or leave the island; same if you're determined not to marry.

Colourfully decked-out with wild flowers, a portal welcomes the bridal party.

The setting is very picturesque, the buildings for the most part fit in well with kitschy cliches of traditional island life...

...it's just that, from looking at some of the idol-like statues. I wasn't ever quite sure whether catholic faith really had taken hold here,.

Our tour group waiting to be taken to lunch - I couldn't resist that one.

Little girls coming up to you with a can of fingernail-paint and a brush aren't always guarantors of a job well done, as the french girls found out when they turned up later with only one hand done ... and red paint smudged over part of their nails and part of their fingers.

All in all, a great experience, if only for the fact that you could get a behind-the-scenes look at the scenic surface if only you could be bothered to talk to people, listen to the admittedly excruciating cadence of the guide's english and open your eyes.

Photos 3.4: Yavari

2008-08-20T07:00:00.000-07:00

In 1861, the government of Peru commissioned two ships for use on Lago Titicaca.

They were made in England to exacting specifications, such as that they must be able to be transported by mules to the Lake, each part not exceeding 3.5 cwts (about 160kg) in weight to be assembled there. The parts were shipped around Cape Horn in 1862 and brought from the formerly Peruvian port of Arica all the way up to the Lake at 3800m AMSL by 1869, where they were launched on Christmas Day of 1870.

One of these ships - the Yavari - lies before Puno, on the peruvian side of the Lake.

Having been extended by 10 feet in length and her engines fired by dried llama dung for want of coal...

... she is now awaiting her safety equipment and inspection before heading out on the Lake with passengers again.

The low salinity and high elevation preserved the ship's component parts rather well, so most of the fittings are original.

Peek into the engine room, where the original 60hp steam engine was replaced by a Bolinder (forerunner of Volvo, apparently) semi-Diesel engine with 320hp.

Fascinating doorknobs - okay, if you're into that kind of thing :-)

The ship's compass is housed in an old polished brass casing that makes a great reflective surface for a wide-angle view of the bridge.

Most of the original implements and fittings are stamped lovingly with the name of the ship.

The ship's telegraph, transmitting orders from the bridge to the engine room.

I assume these will eventually hold the emergency rafts.

Engine revolution counter...

... and more engine valves. I'm sorry, you've stumbled into an engineer's wet dream...

I did spend a bit of time on the ship and around it, because two equally impressive old ships - one a restaurant - lie berthed close by, getting a workover.

¡Selva!

2008-08-19T13:33:00.000-07:00

I will be here for a while.

Thank you for your help in deciding (you know who you are - bottle of Argentinian wine for each of you forthcoming).

Apparently, National Geographic did a story on the area, and this is the woman who runs the place I will stay at.

Decision time - your help needed

2008-08-18T16:43:00.000-07:00

Albeit somewhat disappointed by the lack of congratulatory text messages from around the world, I've resolved to try to get SOME feedback one more time. (A notable exception being Herr Helms, who's won himself a box of crackers for his correct answer to the question "Who wrote this?" in the Post "Photos 3.3: Train Journey to Lago Titicaca". It was, of course, JRR Tolkien, who put these words into Bilbo & Frodo Baggins' mouth in The Lord of the Rings!)

Enough with the nerdiness. As you might be aware, I'm currently in La Paz, having climbed my first 5000m mountain today (Chacaltaya, 5300m, just 2 hours out of La Paz, how's that for a nerd?). I made the rounds of a few of the tour operators in La Paz after that, and I'm in a bit of a bind concerning my next steps.

If you're in a hurry and reading this at work, help me with this:

should I go for the high mountain buzz & long trek (ALT 1)
or
for the more diverse (and expensive) jungle & short trek (ALT 2) version?

Long version; here are the options in Bolivia for the next three weeks:

climbing Huayna Potosi (6100m) close to La Paz, 3 days (100 EUR)
1 more trek - 4 (Laguna Glacial) to 7 (Illampu circuit) days in the Cordillera Real (150 to 250 EUR)
going to an Eco-lodge in the jungle around Rurrenabaque - 3 to 4 days of wildlife watching (350 EUR, incl flight from La Paz and back)
Salar de Uyuni - Uyuni (BOL) to San Pedro de Atacama (CHI), 3 to 4 days by 4WD (100 EUR)
Parque Nacional Sajama (BOL) & PN Lauca (CHI) - an alternative to touristy Uyuni, without the infrastructure but perhaps more of a relaxed, made-to-measure trip
Potosi, Sucre, Tupiza - various towns of major or minor import and attraction

Mutually exclusive alternative packages I've come up with:

ALT 1:

Aug 20th to 23rd - climb Huayna Potosi
Aug 24th - day's rest in La Paz
Aug 25th & 26th - to Sorata to sort out a trek
Aug 27th to Sep 2nd - trek for 7 days in the Cordillera Real
Sep 3rd - day's rest in Sorata/La Paz
Sep 4th - to Uyuni
Sep 5th to Sep 8th - Uyuni to San Pedro de Atacama (via the salt flats)
Sep 9th - Bus to Salta, Argentina (here's where the R&R bacchanalia starts)
Sep 23rd - flight out from Buenos Aires

Budget: 800 EUR (inkl. travel costs, accomodation and food)

ALT 2:

Aug 20th to 24th - fly to Rurrenabaque, spend 3 days in an Eco-Lodge in the jungle
Aug 25th & 26th - to Sorata to sort out a trek
Aug 27th to 30th - 4 day trek in the Cordillera Real
Aug 31st - day's rest in Sorata/La Paz
Sep 1st - to Oruro (great restaurant there) and on to Potosi by train
Sep 2nd - Potosi (maybe explore the mines?)
Sep 3rd & 4th - to Uyuni
Sep 4th to 7th - Uyuni to San Pedro de Atacama (via the salt flats)
Sep 8th - day's rest & visiting sights around San Pedro de Atacama
Sep 9th - as above

Budget: 900 EUR (inkl. travel costs, accomodation and food)

What would you advise? As I say, I've got to start making some decisions by tomorrow night if I am to get most of this done without rushing...

Photos 3.3: Train Journey to Lago Titicaca

2008-08-18T09:00:00.000-07:00

A last glance out over Cusco in the setting sun (?) - stormy-looking and all - and I'm off toward Lago Titicaca. This time the journey definitely is a big part of the fun, because I've booked myself a space on the "ruinously expensive" (143USD ;-) one way) Andean Explorer train to Puno.

The view from my cheap hostal's terrace - Hostal Resbalosa comes highly recommended if only for that - amazingly close to Plaza de Armas, but a bugger of a climb up long, long stairs; especially when you're at 3600m AMSL.

Breakfast is served; desayuno Americano gets the trip off to a wonderfully mellow start. I must admit I skipped on the 10am Pisco Sour, though.

Armchairs hold up the weary traveller; I really don't want to know how they slide around if ever the train brakes hard.

The surrounds aren't all that spectacular for the first hours out of Cusco ...

...but everywhere, kids are waving; fleeting glimpses of what life is like outside the rolling steel tube.

The observation deck right at the back of the train. Lots of windows, comfortable seating...just the place to strike up a conversation with other travellers.

I've resolved to capture more details of the places I visit: it seems the sweeping views just don't convey what I want them to. i.e. I just love the curvature of these luggage racks...

The quaint Perurail escudo: a stylised Llama and Condor, Inca Masonry and what I take to be Huayna Picchu (the sugarcone of a mountain that overshadows the ruins of Machu Picchu).

Looking forward from the bar/observation carriage.

Recommended reading by Lonely Planet South America on a Shoestring - The Conquest of the Incas by John Hemming. I'd definitely put it near the top of the must-reads for travellers to Peru. A pleasingly narrative style and a focus on Inca-Spanish relations during the Conquista (rather than going for a wholesale description of all of Peruvian history or Inca society) make this a terrific read!

The train stops first at a small church in the middle of nowhere, some llamas and the usual gaggle of indigenas peddling their wares await (I don't mean this to sound too dismissive, it's just a bit wearisome)...

... I preferred the snow-covered mountain vista out the back.

Makes me wonder what local people think when this train rolls gently (never more than 60km/h) past their oft basic housing every couple of days.

The bar section, at the back of which was the observation deck.

Once the greater Cusco area was left behind, the valleys opened up a bit and allowed the deep blue sky to come into its own.

Looking out longingly at the mountains - I'd never known myself as a big mountain fetishist, but there you go: they make me want to get right up there!

Relics of times past on this siding.

Observation deck observed closely.

The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,

Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.

(a box of crackers to whomsoever comes up with the author and the person who speaks this - page numbers not required)

Olympic levity

2008-08-17T15:39:00.000-07:00

Finally a bit of mordant wit about the Beijing Olympics. You'd think the German commentators had to have their tonsils tickled by the broomstick up their collective bums to crack a smile.

Here then is an excerpt from the Letter from Beijing in the New Yorker magazine:

"The victory was not without its hiccups. Phelps stepped onto the winner’s podium, flanked by his compatriot Ryan Lochte, who had taken the bronze. (It’s the old Ben Jonson problem: you’re a fine playwright, and at any other time you’d be the best, but by lousy luck you happen to overlap with Shakespeare, who takes gold in every medley in town.)

It was time for the winner’s national anthem, which began with an ominous pop, settled down for a while, gathered itself for the finale, and then stopped. We got the land of the free, but apparently the home of the brave was no longer available. Did someone foreclose? Accidents will happen, but, as a rule, if you’re going to screw up the national anthem of another country, especially a major trading partner, try not to do so when the President of that country is in the audience.

George W. Bush was indeed in the Aquatics Center, standing at attention, and, even across ten lanes of water, I could tell that I was looking at a confused man. Was this insult calculated, and how should he react? The world held its breath. Somewhere nearby was a briefcase with the nuclear launch codes, possibly held by a man wearing trunks. The crisis passed. The President sat down. The semifinals of the women’s hundred-metre butterfly got under way.

As for the Assistant Button-Pressing Technical Manager for National Anthem Digital Recording Systems (Aquatic Branch), I don’t know the poor fellow’s name, but his extended family has just been rehoused inside a hydroelectric dam."

I can't believe it's only been a week of Olympic games; it feels like forever here, since every time I go for a quick bite or to check my email, there it is on the telly.

Oh, so I'm in La Paz and off to scale Chacaltaya at 5300m in the space of but a few hours tomorrow. Messages of congratulation may be adressed to +491636000225 after midday (GMT-4), Monday 18th of August.

Sagen Sie jetzt nichts! - Mathias D. aus M.

2008-08-16T12:20:00.000-07:00

Das Konzept ist bekannt aus der Beilage der Sueddeutschen Zeitung JETZT. Es geht darum, Antworten auf Interviewfragen bloss ueber Mimik und Gestik zu bestreiten. Hier mein Amateur-Beitrag

Ein Interview, in dem der Langzeitstudent nichts sagt und doch alles verrät.

Wie fuehlen Sie sich gerade?

Wie war das Essen?

Was glauben Sie, wie ich mich fuehle?

Wie finden Sie Ihren neuen Haarschnitt?

Wie sehen Sie meine Haare?

Was hat Ihnen in Cusco am Besten gefallen?

Was machen Sie am liebsten auf Reisen?

Waeren Sie gerne auf die Galapagos gefahren?

Wieder zu Hause, auf wen freuen Sie sich am meisten?

Very proud of myself

2008-08-15T07:00:00.000-07:00

On the train from Cusco to Puno on Lago Titicaca.
(Thank you Yukiko for taking this picture - you can be justifiably proud of having snagged me in one of the few moments where I don't look ill at ease in front of a camera :-) )

This is me being stupid, but the pictures from my island trip on lake Titicaca turned out great - forgive me for saying so myself.

More from that as soon as my hands and feet thaw (bloody freezing typing here).

Bolivia - current affairs & travel plans

2008-08-14T09:00:00.000-07:00

Since I'm on my way to Bolivia - via Lago Titicaca - I thought you'd deserve a bit of background information on what's happening there and what I'm planning to see:

Deutschlandfunk features "Gespaltene Anden-Republik" - German text - German audio (18m27s)

The Economist titles "Divided we rule" - English text

L'Express writes "Bolivie: la région la plus riche vote son autonomie" - French text

Le Monde cringes "En Bolivie, Evo Morales joue son va-tout dans un référendum sur son mandat" - French text

El Pais warns "'Empate catastrófico' y derrota de todos" - Spanish text

Right, I'm out of languages and you're probably out of patience, so here are my plans for the next weeks:

I've headed out from Cusco to Puno on Lago Titicaca - by panoramic train for a whopping 140 USD - and am now planning on island-hopping across to Bolivia. A short 3-day trek along the shore of the lake would be great, but since temperatures drop down to -8ºC at night, neither my tent, nor longjohns, nor my sleeping bag would be much help.

Next, Im either heading to La Paz or down to the jungle close to the Peruvian border to stay in an Ecolodge for a few days and get a rest from all the mountains.

The Salar de Uyuni is definitely on my radar, as is at least one more trek through the mountains. Problem so far: I've not found anyone to come along with me. But then again I've no detailed plans for the rest of Bolivia so far and I'm ashamed to admit I've yet to look at most of the section on Bolivia in my Lonely Planet.

Trek to Valle de Lares 6 - The wet way down

2008-08-12T12:08:00.000-07:00

Right, so here we are, after 5 hours walking, starting to head downwards quite rapidly to the valley floor. Of course the weather changed only inasmuch as it was raining intermittently rather than snowing...

The Andean rabbit, cheeky little fella jumping nimbly from rock to rock, was one of the few examples of native wildlife we saw. This was due to our having to cut out a 2-day sideways trip up another valley where we would have seen more wild animals.

Low clouds, greenish-brown vegetation and a rather large lake - we're still quite high above it here, so scale is hard to judge.

At the end of the lake - which we walked past for about 20 minutes - someone spotted us and brought out the Alpaca clothes.

Thatched roof, dry wall, cancha enclosure next to it. Typical!

Gently sweeping down to the village of Qisuarani, where lunch awaited us around 2pm. 'bout bloody time after brekkie at 7am and 6 hours walking so far.

Our ambulance horse got some work for the last hour, since Shirly was tired and the path was quite muddy. No fun walking!

Since it had started raining when our pack horses, cook and arrieros arrived in Qisuarani, they decided to take refuge with a local family and cook and serve lunch for us in their dwelling. That was the rest of the sheep (head down) that must have made up quite a lot of their meals.

We elected to keep going all the way to the Lares hot springs after that late lunch. So another 3 hours walk along a dirt vehicle track, which didn't make for very inspired pictures. Looong day, and I couldn't really be bothered snapping many more pictures. We were all quite spent after arriving around 6:30pm, pausing for a hot drink before dipping into the hot pools.

It was definitely worth it, although only two long days at the end. The last three hours from Qisuarani to Lares weren't really enjoyable, but then again that did buy us a few hours in the hot springs.

Thanks so much for your great company, people!

Trek to Valle de Lares 5 - Surprise weather

2008-08-11T22:02:00.000-07:00

After having climbed up toward the sunshine for 2 hours, we got hit by unexpectedly heavy snowfalls near the high pass.

Within minutes, the ground was blanketed by white and crunched underfoot.

The horse stoically endured the snow and my bungled attempts at photography.

So the clouds had closed in quite firmly around us by the time we reached the actual pass, which prompted Fernando, our guide, to point out that the view was ordinarily quite spectacular from here. Not helpful. But a few hundred meters further on, the clouds broke and we got glimpses of clear blue skies and an amazing glacier mountain vista.

Even the snowflakes on our gear started melting in the sunshine.

Our ambulance driver after I had begged him to take down his right arm and NOT throw it up in a fascist salute - although I'm not sure that's how he meant it...

Glaciers spilling out between mountain peaks.

Contemplative viewing of the snow-podered peaks and the lower reaches of the mountain which were spared the snow but drenched in rain.

Far below us, the level valley floor stretched in a weird mix of green, yellow and browns.

Ah yes: we had to jump! 1 free drink for the person who can guess (and comment) which of us fell over backwards after the last pic on the right.

Down from the pass, descending into the next valley, an oddly-pitched tent drew our attention...

...before herds of Llamas started spilling down the mountainside next to it.

Yep, that's that characteristically startled look a Llama casts at everyone.

Alpacas, too.

The headdress identifies the beast's owner.

Alpaca in front, Shirly and Ben behind, Glacier in the very back.

Alpaca in a hurry. I may not have been particularly helpful, walking toward them brabbling "Llama, llama, llama!"

As a bit of an aside: apparently it kept snowing on the mountains and a large group had to turn back the next morning whilst attempting to cross a higher pass!

Trek to Valle de Lares 4 - To infinity and beyond

2008-08-11T11:57:00.000-07:00

After finally getting going on that bloody freezing morning, things quickly got steep and Llamas stared curiously at the huffing and puffing bipedes passing by ever so slowly.

Since I hadn't introduced our most excellent co-trekkers before: here's Benjamin from Brussels...

...and Shirly, Brusseloise, elle aussi!

"Wie die Orgelpfeifen"

Climbing toward the sun was intensely satisfying...

...especially since the view was a breathtaking mix of light and shadow.

There were heaps of Llama droppings on the ground in places - literally heaps!

Picture stop below the snow-capped mountaintops that we would be passing by.

Our ambulance horse plodded along quite calmly, although the arrieros complained among themselves that the pack horses only moved very slowly.

Looking back on the path we trekked up.

Too much time on their hands, because we moved so slowly; so our cook (left) and "ambulance driver" (right) had a sit down and a little yarn along the way.

Apparently, there's always room for a Gatorade / generic Isotonic drink commercial on your way up a mountain

Finally catching up with us, the pack horses didn't spare the scenery a single glance, but rather kept a weary eye on us.

The precise moment at which the weather changed and we still thought "how quaint, there are a few snowflakes falling!"

Things soon got a tad more challenging and a lot more spectacular!

Trek to Valle de Lares 3 - Camping at 4000m

2008-08-10T22:00:00.000-07:00

Right, so our camp was nicely pitched near the head of the valley by the time we arrived.

Horses were grazing...

... tourists were making fools of themselves...

...Llamas were galloping home...

...and the snow-capped mountains looked down with contempt at our feeble protection.

Well, how would you feel if someone decided to snap away merrily whilst you were changing into your longjohns?

Warm beverages provided in the dining tent...

... low oxygen levels made some light-headed...

...whilst others were busy cooking protecting their hands from the corrosive influence of hot peppers.

It was so cold at night, that I couldn't find the patience to look for a level piece of rock for a nighttime picture. Stars were disappointingly hidden behind a veil of clouds.

Getting up in the morning: hot mate de coca brought out to your sleeping bag and basins with warm water (not for long in these temperatures) laid out for a quick wash.

Llama herds on their way to their pastures in the morning.

Sissies! Real trekkers stink!

Trek to Valle de Lares 2 - climb to first camp

2008-08-10T11:44:00.000-07:00

Still on Day 1 of the trek, we headed into chillier climes, ever upward along the valley.

The instructions were to "make the face you just did when chewing the coca leaves"

The clouds seemed to close in as we climbed higher.

Not much in the way of crops was planted here. Maize would only grow further down and papas (potatoes) were planted closer to settlements - all the way up steep hillside as high as 4000m!

Looking back toward the lower part of the valley we had followed.

Horses everywhere you looked, their owners marking them as their property with little coloured ribbons on their ears

Our "ambulance driver" on the first day.

The first Llama of the day! They have a perpetually startled air about them and shy away from human presence... well they shied away from me, at least.

One of the houses and enclosures of the village of Cancha Cancha; the nearby mountain and stream were also called Cancha Cancha on account of those enclosures. Sometimes a soccer stadium will also be referred to as a cancha.

Our guide Fernando spoke very good English, although we mostly insisted on Spanish.

The soil became drier, the air thinner and colder.

Young Llamas along the way.

The thing that looks like a cross between a Sesame street puppet and a me on a bad hair day was equally startled at our presence.

The door of one of the dwellings along the way. They build them airily.

Rest stops became more frequent as we climbed

Small children soon found us and drew close to inspect us and ask for sweets.

They wore sandals, a T-shirt, some light woolen jumpers, the boys pants and the girls skirts, whilst we strode by dressed in oh-so-many layers of fleece and goretex.

Sarah obliged my fanciful ideas of what pictures should be taken and proceeded to climb a small rock... for no good reason.

People keep laughing at me when I lay down on the ground to take pictures from unusual angles... oh, well at least it looks good-natured!

King of the world...

...or evil sorcerer, enticing little children...

...to come into my arms?

I still cannot believe 90% of the local people wear sandals for walking... when temperatures drop down to -5 degrees!

About to arrive in the valley where we would have our night's rest.

Trek to Valle de Lares 1 - the warm part

2008-08-09T22:00:00.000-07:00

As with everything else, we'd planned well and were overtaken by events as far as this trek was concerned. Originally scheduled for 4 days, we left a day late due to Sarah's being laid low by a stomach bug.

"Glueck im Unglueck", we were able to find 2 more people to go trekking with us on account of that delay.

Ours was an expensive trek and one that was accompanied by a huge amount of logistics, compared to the 3-day affair to Ingapirca in Ecuador: 8 horses, 1 cook, 1 cooking tent, 1 latrine tent, 3 sleeping tents, 1 guide, 1 "ambulance" horse, 4 porters and arrieros... yep, we went out in style!

We'd picked this particular trek (Lares Valley) with this operator (Andina tours), since it had been recommended to us at South American Explorers. The trek was to be expensive, reliable, very well organised, free of crowds (as opposed to all the other treks to be booked from Cusco), comfortable, closer to nature and to the indigenas.

The first couple of hours toward the hamlet of Cancha Cancha were relatively warm, bathed in sunlight with a steady climb.

Horses abounded in the lower parts of the valley we were travelling along. Most people here lived off maize culture in this region.

That's what an almuerzo (lunch) stop looked like for us: we'd get to the site and the arrieros would have pitched a tent under which we ate and another one for the latrine.

We'd started questioning the usefulness of such a luxury organisation when we'd booked the trip, however we learned that Andina Tours was investing quite heavily in local communities along the trek route - as far as hiring local helpers, paying for teachers' salary at the schools etc. Cutting any one part of the organisation out of the package would cut out one local person's income whereas his neighbour would still be in our employ.

The almuerzo was light but muy rico - guacamole, bread, mate de coca, juice and fruit.

Somewhat shy but still smiling, this young girl was minding her flock of sheep in the valley.

Our "ambulance" horse: just in case someone was affected by the altitude or just plain tired. Since we did cross a high pass at 4700m AMSL, the danger of altitude sickness was quite real.

Every one of us had an Andean bonnet, but only Benjamin managed to wear it with such panache

Crossing the little stream that travelled the length of "our" valley.

That's the way real men cross a creek: barefoot and pulling a horse.

At this point, things became distinctly chilly, making it necessary to kit up and break out the coca leaves (for some).

Photos 3.2: Ollantaytambo and Machu Picchu

2008-08-09T11:30:00.000-07:00

Ollantaytambo was the starting point of our train journey to the town of Aguas Calientes - the gateway to Machu Picchu. We'd had a devil of a time getting a return passage at all, since we wanted to leave the next day after buying the ticket in the middle of the high season.

Here's a longish excerpt from the great book "The conquest of the Incas" by John Hemming about Ollantaytambo (Pan Macmillan, 2004, p. 222):

"Ollantaytambo lies at a crucial place in Peruvian geography. It is almost visibly at the junction between the Andes and the Amazon basin. Upstream lies the Yucay valley and the homeland of the mountainous Inca tribe - open country of rolling, grassy hills studded with rocky outcrops, or steep valleys rich in terraces of corn and potatoes."

This weird and gory way of sticking it to the Spanish in a not-so-roundabout way is actually based on Andean highland festivals, in which a Condor would be tied to a Bull's back to tear it to pieces bit by bit.

Ollantaytambo (get your tongue around that one!) is a charming little place overrun by tourists going to Machu Picchu but still manages to retain a certain calm and serene village air. We got there late in the afternoon and decided to climb up to the remains of the fortress.

"But downstream, everything changes. As the ground falls away, the foothills of the Andes become quite matted with a tight fur of dense, low jungle. The tranquil Yucay changes its name and character to become the turbulent Urubamba. The climate becomes tropica, with heavy rains, electric storms and clammy mists shrouding the steep green hillsides."

The sun was just setting behind the ridge of one of the mountains that form this junction between two valleys.

Thing is, we managed to pick the "wrong" mountainside, which meant we didn't go into the fortress but rather had a view upon it from the other side of the valley. This fortress was the one Manco Inca sought refuge in after the Spanish had reconquered Cusco. The site so overawed the Spanish punitive expedition sent out by Pizarro, that this was one of the few times that the Spanish were beaten by Inca forces.

I didn't manage to get any good shots of the site (come to Peru, stop complaining), so you'll have to make do with us gazing at it wistfully.

On our side of the valley stood the remains of houses from Inca times - we had the run of the place, since the sun had set by then.

"There are swarms of biting borrachudo flies and coral snakes in the forests. But, above all, there are trees, which begin to cover the ground here and do not relax their grip until the rivers reach the Atlantic."

Playing with shadows while sitting in Inca ruins.

Two bulls often preside over the roofs of houses of the region, usually flanked by a larger christian cross; they are meant to protect the house and its inhabitants (yes I know it's disingenuous, but no one was able to offer a more complete explanation)

Machu Picchu was difficult to photograph, because

a) the standard pic has been beaten to death, hung, drawn AND quartered
b) the early afternoon lighting made for harsh shadows
c) there was a huge load of people around until about 4pm

Oh, I just like to complain. We did make a few non-standard shots. Better than the "cool" poise adopted by most male latin american visitors, the cheesy american one or the very very uncool asian V.

I must admit we shied away from getting a guide, but ended up printing off 10 pages of notes from an Internet history site, which led to some tricky detective work to be able to work out where the hell we were.

Huayna Picchu - the mountain in the background - eluded us, due to its being open to only 400 visitors per day.

We were rewarded by a great sunset, which cast long shadows over the valleys surrounding Machu Picchu. The peaks around it are usually shrouded in clouds.

Dangling her feet over the abyss was enough to get my heart pumping. I really need to do something about my fear of heights.

Photos 3.1: Cusco

2008-08-08T20:24:00.000-07:00

Saqsayhuaman, an Inca fortress was our goal on day 2 in Cusco:

Llamas are everywhere - in the city they're mostly kept to be photographed by tourists against a small propina for their owners.

Saqsayhuaman is an old Inca fortress that towers over Cusco. The rebellious Manco Inca controlled his army from here, when he tried to overrun the relatively small Spanish contingent under Pizarro in Cusco.

The stonework is amazing, even though large parts of the fortress were razed by the Spanish after months of fighting in Cusco.

Here's what we thought of the site.

Cusco is full of steep, small, cobblestoned streets - perfectly charming and very touristy.

The Plaza de Armas makes for a boring picture if shot straight, but its reflection in someone's sunglasses makes the cathedral on the left and the sky above it appear a bit more lively.

Holding up the walls with their backs while panting is a favourite pastime for tourists recently arrived, since it lies at 3400m AMSL.

Weight distribution problems take on a whole different meaning here.

Sagen Sie jetzt nichts! - Sarah B. aus E.

2008-08-08T16:25:00.000-07:00

Das Konzept ist bekannt aus der Beilage der Sueddeutschen Zeitung JETZT. Es geht darum, Antworten auf Interviewfragen bloss ueber Mimik und Gestik zu bestreiten. Hier mein Amateur-Beitrag Version 1.0

Ein Interview, in dem die Reisegefaehrtin par excellence nichts sagt und doch alles verrät.

Wie finden Sie den Kaffee hier?

Welchen Gesichtsausdruck haben Sie beim Reisen meist?

Was dachten Sie, als wir uns das erste Mal kennen lernten?

Und jetzt?

Was war Ihre schoenste Reiseerfahrung bisher?

... und Ihre enttaeuschendste?

Was erwartet Sie, wenn Sie wieder zu Hause sind?

Bisher: zu- oder abgenommen?

Wie geht's dem Magen?

Was halten Sie von Ecuadorianischen Maennern?

...und von den Frauen?

Wohin geht die naechste Reise?

Nehmen Sie mich mit?

Things that go crack in the night

2008-08-08T12:32:00.000-07:00

My pants:

My daypack:

Time to get some new stuff!

Camera Obscura

2008-08-01T12:07:00.000-07:00

Das passiert, wenn man eine Camera Obscura im eigenen Hotelzimmer baut:

Shadow of the Lama

2008-07-31T20:20:00.000-07:00

Right, after a lot of time without posting, here I am playing catch-up. Photos are still a no-go after a frustrating afternoon spent in Lima trying to get something down from the cards.

Apart from that, things are great: I'm currently in Cusco, still travelling with Sarah, since we seem to have the same devastating sense of humour. We spent a few days in Lima mostly eating seafood and trying to get a bus ride to Cusco, but also dodging flea-bites from the hostal's mangy cat.

Right now, things are looking up: tomorrow should see us heading out to the Valle Sagrado (sacred valley), with its many Inca sites, then to Machu Picchu. We've decided not to bother taking any of the "tourist highway" treks to go there, but rather to do a "private" and more expensive tour of the Lares Valley over the course of 4 days - more nature, more wildlife, less people.

So tomorrow we're off for 3 days in the Valle Sagrado and MP, then 4 days of trekking, after which I should be able to rest for a couple of days (and write emails as well as FINALLY getting some pics up) before attempting another trek - perhaps 6 days around the Nevado Ausangate, although trekking companions for this seem to be in short supply. I may just end up heading down to Arequipa for a shorter trek there or straight to Lago Titicaca.

It's all a bit more rushed here than it really ought to have been, but we're covering a lot of ground before Sarah has to get back to Quito on Friday 8th. Will go more despacio afterwards :-)

The way I travel

2008-07-28T11:57:00.001-07:00

Since I'm currently suffering from "downtime" in Lima - somehow the city has been good for company, wine and seafood but not much else - and am being frustrated at every turn in my quest to download images from my CF-card, I'll turn to a subject that's been on my mind for a while: the way I travel.

To make it quite plain right from the start, I'm weird (some would add "and wonderful" but that one's hotly disputed). Thus, I'm currently travelling for 3 1/2 months through Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia and to be perfectly honest, I don't always enjoy the act of travelling.

That is to say, I'm perfectly able to enjoy myself in most places, but getting on a bus i.e. from Quito - which I quite liked - to Puerto Lopez was a bit of a drag: you've got to pack your bags, sling them over your shoulder, get to the bus station (usually at some uncomfortable hour), buy a ticket, settle into a seat and stay there for hours on end, whilst keeping in mind that your destination may not turn out the way you want. Whilst on the bloody thing, you're in a confined space, the countryside (especially between Quito and Pto Lopez) may not be much to look at, you get to your destination pretty well knackered, hungry and thirsty.

Travelling, for me, was mostly something to be quite anxious about. I notice that I've become a lot more relaxed about it in the last weeks, but at the start it was quite disquieting. Okay, so travelling with other people, rather than solo, is nicer. But the more buses I take, the more I find I'm starting to enjoy the change of pace associated with sitting around for hours and finally being able to get around to that book/that diary entry I've been putting off for so long.

I'm usually happy to stay in places I've decided to travel to, but getting there isn't always the greatest thing since sliced bread!

Oh, and Felizes Fiestas Patrias desde Peru!

Busreisen mit Nebenwirkungen

2008-07-26T06:50:00.000-07:00

Also mittlerweile ist es fast 9 Uhr in Lima und ich bin schon wieder wach.

Peru hat mich bisher vor allem durch lange Busfahrten beeindruckt, die ich gluecklicherweise nicht alleine durchstehen musste. Im Endeffekt waren es dann natuerlich doch 36 Stunden, bis wir von Cuenca nach Chachapoyas gefahren waren. Nach 2 Tagen Ruinen besichtigen (leider ohne Zelten), ging es dann auch schon wieder weiter nach Lima / noch mal 24 stunden Bus am Stueck.

Die Nebenwirkungen halten sich bis jetzt aber in Grenzen: ausser einem recht grossen Vitamin- und Schlafdefizit habe ich nur einige Kratzspuren am Unterarm und meine Mitfahrerin Sarah meinen Gebissabdruck auf ihrem rechten Oberarm. Alles im gruenen Bereich.

Anonsten bleibt noch zu sagen, dass ich einige nette Fotos gemacht habe, die jedoch noch immer auf der Karte schlummern. Mal schauen wie schnell ich die runterbekomme.

Wenn euch diese Peruanische Reise ein wenig ueberstuerzt vorkommt, dann stimmt das wohl! Aber sobald wir in Cuzco sind (in etwa 4 Tagen), wird sich das tempo verlangsamen. Dort habe ich dann vor, 2 Wochen zu bleiben (inkl Trekking).

So, bevor ich jetzt getreten oder gebissen werde, muss ich zum Fruehstuek *gaehn*

(ooops, that was in German, I hadn't realised until just now - sorry)

Chacha-where now?

2008-07-20T19:00:00.000-07:00

Chachapoyas, Peru. That's where I'm on the way to right now (thanks to the marvel of delayed posting). By now I ought to be on the second of 3 buses which will get me across the border to Peru. 5 hours from Cuenca to Loja, 8 hours (and a border crossing) to Piura, 8-10 hours to Chachapoyas. Have a drink for me tonight, would you?

Anyway, if you're interested in knowing what I'm planning to do in Chachapoyas check out this article:

After the Falls
Last spring, Peru announced it had discovered the world's third-tallest waterfall. We went to see this remote wonder, and discovered much more.

MUCH MORE! :-)

Trek to Ingapirca: 5 - Panoramas

2008-07-20T09:00:00.000-07:00

Right, just to give you a final look at what the place looked like:

I've compiled my first panoramas using some freeware prog, that unfortunately left it's watermark in several places.

In no particular order, here's a view of the shore of the lake on Day 2, just before we reached the camp site above it at Paredones.

This is near Laguna las Tres Cruces, 2 hours after the start of Day 2, just before we reached the end of our first valley and crossed the ridge into the second one.

On top of the ridge Ioana and I walked on for two hours. Admittedly, there's a lot of crap in the foreground, so just imagine it was a whole lot better :-)

Taking a break on a big rock above the start of the lake which we camped above at the end of Day 2.

This is probably really hard to discern, unless you've got your computer monitor turned up to full brightness, but it is a 360degree view whilst standing on a part of the Ingañan on Day 3, which had a great number of boulders scattered across its width and paramo all around. The lighter, roughly triangular strip of ground you see in two parts of the picture is the Ingañan. That's what's left of Inca roads after 500 years of use without any maintenance... I'm reminded of working at that GKN site in Spain, but that's another story :-)

That's all for now, folks!

Trek to Ingapirca: 4 - One last muddy slog

2008-07-19T19:00:00.000-07:00

Day 3 dawned wet and more uncomfortable than ever, so that we got a relatively quick start to shake off the chills. Alas, not one of the days provided a sunrise worth taking a picture of and only on the very first day did we see something akin to a sunset.

Raz making a run for it - along one of the stretches where the Ingañan wasn't yet well defined.

Low clouds, wet terrain but good speed, because the ground hadn't been turned into the Somme battlefields by herds of cattle or riders.

That's where we met civilization again, unfortunately for us only in the form of muddy paths that we had to take and where you could sink in to mid-thigh if you weren't careful.

Campesinos taking the paths every day with their livestock had turned the paths into quagmires. Thing is, in this part of the world the old welly (aka rubber boot) is the greatest thing since sliced bread.

I've made my point, you say?

Ioana and Ricardo - the man wasn't the sharpes tool in the shed but full of surprises, starting to read my english-language trekking guidebook whilst slip-sliding along the muddy road. All the more suprising since he had limited his vocab so far to (in order of decreasing frequency):
* "burro" (more like a cough)
* "¿manda?" (= I beg your pardon)
* "¡Que dios les page!" (instead of saying yes... always)

Sight most often seen during the latter part of the trek - burro's bum.

I'm beating the point to death, aren't I?

Finally standing above Ingapirca after 3 hours of downhill mudslide

We did go in to see the site - after much pleading (with hungry co-trekkers) and haggling (with ticket vendors) ;-) - and it was worth the time and money spent!

Lamas grazed next to the Inca stairs. The site was originally built by the Cañari culture and then taken over by Incas around 1500, to be abandoned only 30 years later!

Conquered!

More conquerors!

Bloody posers :-)

Something more akin to natural poses on top of the temple, looking back toward the path we had taken to come down.

The typical (roughly) trapezoidal doorways. the stonework was shoddy in parts, but excellent in other places, and we had the sneaking suspicion that the better parts were originals and the not-so-good ones inept patch-ups.

I was just too tired and we were in too much of a hurry to get to our respective destinations at the end to really spend more time on an "end of the trek" picture. I'm kind of regretting that now...

Trek to Ingapirca: 3 - Over the crest

2008-07-19T03:00:00.000-07:00

After an unusually uncomfortable night - cold wet and with tents prone to collapsing - Day 2 dawned with a lot of walking on the agenda.

Ready to go, looking south along "our" valley to Las Tres Cruces.

Raz was so kind as to lend me his gaiters for walking through the dripping paramó - a real pants-saver, thanks man!

The valley stretched and strechted and never seemed to want to end.

When we found the Ingañan - old inca road - it was mostly a wide swathe of green through paramó tussock, occasionally with stones lying around.

The weather was promising as we crossed the ridge at the end of the valley, at which point we had to take a decision:

either continue upward and walk along the ridge of the mountain to our left,
then steeply back down to the next valley floor (plus: views, views, views;
drawbacks: wind, more climbing, steep descent)

take the lower route along this valley floor (right on the picture) which
would spill into the next valley without too much in the way of steep
descent (plus: probably quicker, not having to go up, then down again, avoiding steep places with the burro; drawbacks: no views, pot very wet and marshy).

Ioana and I opted for the high road, and the guys with Ricardo and his burro for the low road. Meeting point was an old bridge in the next valley, a short way beyond the point where our paths would meet again anyway.

Who's laughing now?

Ah, I did see one large bird in the distance

Not sure what Ioana saw there, but maybe it's her Yeti impression.

Looking cool - literally

As windy and cold as the top of that ridge must be most of the time (we had a sunny day), these little buggers manage to flourish there.

Jumping for joy on top of the mountain. The trek's not really set out for great views along most of the way, so we were so happy to have come up and see the panorama (more on that later).

The beginning of the climb back down to the valley floor. It did take us 2 hours to reach our meeting point...

... which is to the bottom left of the picture (probably hidden behind the foreground), and another 1.5 hours to get to our campsite above the lake in the distance.

Filipe was right, in his comment to my previous post: our donkey was the only higher lifeform we met for most of the trip (a few riders excepted). There were few birds and one mouse in some Inca ruins as well as 2 or 3 horses and 2 donkeys after our climb down the ridge. No frogs, no nothing, even though the place couldn't possibly have been any wetter. Okay, so most of it was above 3800m AMSL, but the emptiness was noticeable.

Ahem, so team "Mountain Ridge" arrived at the meeting point 3 hours after having parted ways with team "Low Road". Much to our surprise, we didn't see anyone waiting for us there. So there were only 2 options: either they had kept going because they had gotten sick of waiting for us slow folks or they hadn't yet arrived because of some unforeseen problems. Neither of which was good.

Turns out they had gotten bogged down in marshy areas and the burro refused to cross the worst parts, for fear of getting too bogged down...

...but (as we learned later) after endless detours, losing sight of driver and donkey and finding them again purely by chance, we saw them making their way down from one valley (coming from the left) into ours on the opposite flank. If you look closely, you can see the specks - that's three people and one donkey.

Knackered.

A little less knackered but with wet feet.

We finally got to the campsite along the Inca ruins of Paredones and after another chilly meal (more instant noodles and frijoles for some), I decided to take a few more pictures, knowing I wouldn't be able to get to sleep at 8pm anyway.

The night was wet again, but this time we moved the stone the burro had been tied to out of reach of our tent, so that the worst it could do was make surprisingly loud chewing and regurgitating noises.

Trek to Ingapirca: 2 - Achupallas to first camp

2008-07-18T03:00:00.000-07:00

Right, now for the trek proper: of course people in the village of Achupallas had assured us that it hadn't rained there for a while and that we'd be able to stay dry, at least until the final day.

Okay, so the dry part was true for the better part of the first 2 hours, while we climbed...

...past cultivated fields and livestock all around, watching us curiously.

That was the part I had the most trouble with: steep climb over the crest of a ridge and into our second valley, which we'd walk along for the better part of 5 hours. Must have been the lack of time at high altitudes, but I really was beat! Oh and of course a drizzle started up immediately we reached the crest.

Matthieu, who resolved to carry his own pack rather than chicken out like Ioana and I.

Resting and filling up on water as the clouds closed in all around. The sun was still coming through behind me there, so we weren't too worried

I don't know how many times we had to jump from tussock to tussock to cross marshy places or from one bank of a little stream to another.

Whilst we were moving, everything was fine - exertion kept the body temperature up and the drizzle was merely refreshing

We thought our shoes had seen a lot by the end of day one... ha!

The little stream ran to our left and luckily drained away a bit of the moisture that had accumulated in the paramó. We headed up the valley on the true left bank for about 2 hours before camping.

Our campsite, prettily illuminated by the late afternoon sun, that was soon to disappear behind the ridges...

...and left us feeling uncomfortably cool and longing for the instant soups we'd brought. Oh yep, bowls were in short supply, as was dishwashing liquid (yuck! - after two days washing in cold water)

Burro! he managed to pull our tent down, because the rope he was tethered to managed to stretch just far enough so he could stroll around our tent and use it to scythe a tentpole.

To bed at 7pm, to chilly sleep at 11pm, woken up by the bloody donkey at 1am and got up again at 7am.

Trek to Ingapirca: 1 - Preparation and Arrival

2008-07-17T10:00:00.000-07:00

We spent the first night in Alausi, a small town which the train over the "Nariz del Diablo" stops at. We all wanted to arrive in on Saturday afternoon, Raz and Matthieu from Quito, Ioana and I from Riobamba so we would be able to leave early on Sunday.

The weather was extremely foggy but not too cold. That should have been some kind of warning to us...

Raz and Matthieu managed to get there late on Saturday and even though we had to find something to replace Raz's non-existant sleeping bag on Sunday morning (!), we managed to get underway by truck around 9am.

Winding our way up the mountains: the start of the actual walking was at Achupallas, which lies at 3300m.

Great views from the truck, though we did get jolted around quite a bit.

Even the weather seemed to have cleared up somewhat for us

Matthieu, our backpacks, the tents, mattresses, cooking gear, burner and so on.

After the chilly ride in the back, the sun was out at we hat to spent 10 minutes re-packing jackets.

Raz looking a little beat, but I think I just caught him at an unfortunate time

Backpack on the back with one of the tents on top of it, daypack at the front. You could say I was weighed down.

Before-shot with the way back to Achupallas to the left.

We stopped just 30 minutes out of Achupallas to hire a donkey (burro) and driver, because Ioana was feeling a bit weak. What looks like a block of coke was in fact panela - pure glucose wrapped in leaves. The only thing that kept us going, as it turned out.

Nice man who started talking to us when we had a rest and got us the burro, driver and panela, good tips on the path and just plain friendly and helpful.

I was quite happy to give up my backpack as a counterweight for Ioana's on the burro's back. Our Donkey-man Ricardo on the right.

And that was the time we really started the trek. Everyone was rested, everything was prepared (so we thought) and the guys at least were chafing at the bit after all the waiting.

I'm back from my first trek

2008-07-16T16:42:00.001-07:00

...and since it's taken the better part of today for me to get cleaned up, kitted up and images to be loaded up to picasa, I'll do the post(s) using these pics in the next couple of days.

To summarise:

* exhausting - we went from 3300m to 4400m and back down
* wet - the clouds stayed on top of us
* muddy and marshy - the ground was soaked from days of rain
* I confess to taking a 15 minute shower last night... with my pots and pans (don't ask)

Hope you're all well!

Photos 2.5: Coastal Wildlife

2008-07-11T09:37:00.000-07:00

Right, I've finally gotten to Riobamba after a bit of an Odyssey via Guayaquil. Am feeling woozy and dizzy, I hope from the height.

Time to upload the pictures from Wednesday's Whale-watching (otra vez) and the trip to Isla de la Plata. Before getting on the boat, we basically walked along the beach and made a nuisance of ourselves by standing in the way of all the fishermen taking pictures of their catch.

+

Mr Fish looking somewhat suprised to find himself surrounded by human feet on the beach

Not so much surprised as aghast at being tied together and lifted into the air

They're watching you!

I couldn't take a single decent picture of the Isla de la Plata on that day, so this will have to do.

Blue-footed boobies were everywhere. This is apparently their nesting-time...

... which they love to spend right in the middle of the footpath on the island...

...whilst glaring and occasionally squawking at passers-by.

They're quite unafraid, letting you get as close as 1m on the footpath.

A little down the path, a huge colony of "Fregatas" was resting on the trees overlooking the drop down to the ocean and surfing the updrafts.

Those are the birds that remind me so much of prehistorical flying dinosaurs when silhouetted against the sky.

I can't remember the name of those, but they puff out their huge red bags with a lot of gusto.

And I'm saving the piece de resistance:

This whale was kind enough to swim circles around us and jump for our viewing pleasure. I've a few more of him jumping, but there's always an aerial in the way, or it's very out of focus, so that'll take considerably more time to get them to decent quality.

I'm off on Sunday for 3 days trekking to Ingapirca, so don't wait up for more posts until probably Thursday or Friday of next week.

Photos 2.4: Playa Los Frailes

2008-07-09T16:00:00.000-07:00

The Parque Nacional Machalilla is just a few km north of Puerto Lopez...

...and probably best known for the crescent of the Los Frailes beach ...

...but the smaller Tortuguita beach just over the next crest is just as pretty.

Pelicans rest on a flat rock shelf pounded by the waves

The scenic route back to the main road runs through the thickets of tropical dry forest that used to stretch along much of the Pacific coast.

Photos 2.3: Puerto Lopez

2008-07-09T03:16:00.000-07:00

for those on whom words are lost - piccie time :-)

Señor (o señora) Alcatraz skimming the waves in the wide bay that is the port of Puerto Lopez

The local pterodactyl sub-species

80 pounds worth of fish, that´s what these guys were weighing around 8am.

Small fry - literally, since people came to get what I can only assume must be their breakfast.

Fishermen tucking into their breakfast of fried fish at 8am.

I used this as the header to my last post, since that's what I felt like when I got back out of the bus after 4 hours of not getting anywhere... and I didn't have a pic of a beached whale handy.

Most of the newer & bigger boats are made from fiberglass (I think), but some of the nice small and older ones are wooden.

View from the Cafe La Ballena on to the beach.

Lounge on comfortable chairs at the beachside cocktail bars

There's a slight air of decay to the place, that makes it really charming!

My footprints in the sand... just before being swallowed up by the sea.

The best laid plans...

2008-07-08T13:00:00.000-07:00

Well, admittedly it wasn't much of a plan, but I did want to get out of Puerto Lopez and get back into the mountains.

Unfortunately, the peasants (say it with spite, the way "bloody peasants" sounds in Monty Python and The Holy Grail) have started putting blockades up on major roads throughout the country. So Jipijapa was the end of the road after a 7am start. It could have been worse, though, since I'm now back on the beach until Thursday rather than being stuck somewhat farther inland.

I think (because I'm piecing together info from two newspapers, neither of which mentions the strike or peasant unrest) the campesinos are protesting against price increases for much of their input factors on the one side, and price controls imposed by the Ecuadorian government, most notably on corn, flour and bread, which probably means they find themselves between a rock and a hard place.

Here a quote from the Guayaquil newspaper "El Universo" (article about the resignation of the head of the National Development Bank):

"Las ultimas resoluciones del gobierno de poner un precio techo para la saca de la graminea a USD28, de USD12,50 para el maiz y la advertencia de fijar un precio oficial para el pan (...) causaron divergencias.
(...) [said the former head of the bank:]
'Mi propuesta era comprar arroz mas caro (a mas de USD28 a traves de la BNF [National Development Bank]) y venderselo al consumidor mas barato, porque el es el que necesita del subsidio' indicó. A su criterio, no deberian limitarse al agricultor, cuando tiene oportunidad de recibir un valor alto por cuestiones del mercado."

The bloke who resigned is probably right, because by artificially lowering the peasants' selling price for their produce, incentives for future investment in agriculture which could increase the production of grain are being cut out of the market. I'm not sure if there is much leeway for an increase in the amount of land under cultivation, but I think it's safe to assume an increase in per-acre productivity could be achieved relatively easily if the inventives were right.

A direct subsidy to consumers would probably be healthier for the agriculture sector, even if it is associated with more visible direct cost to state coffers.

If things keep going at this rate, we'll be seeing "official bakeries" with empty shelves and a black market in all sorts of price-controlled goods spring up. Sounds like a scenario from the late Eastern Block economies. Things already seem to be headed in that direction, albeit in a very reduced corner of the market:

[Said the head of a nationwide chain of bakeries:]
" 'Desgraciadamente, la harina subsidiada no es para todos' señala Muñoz, en referencia al tiempo que tarda obtener un pedido."

Just my 2cents worth :-)

Next Steps in Ecuador

2008-07-07T16:40:00.000-07:00

Right, after two whole days of not doing ANYTHING in Puerto Lopez, save reading, I finally got my act together today and visited PN Machalilla and the Playa Los Frailes. Evidence of which shows up on my skin as reddish discoloration.

It's about time to move on, although the PN itself would probably be worth hanging around in for another day or two. However, in my infinite wisdom *cough*, I have decided that Riobamba should be my next destination. From there, I plan on going to the Devil's nose and do a few day hikes, either close by around Volcan Chimborazo (¡el volcán más alto de Ecuador, si señor!) or Cotopaxi. Baños is also on my list, to relax in hot water while taking in the mountain view.

Then roundabout the 14th of July, our little 3-day trek should get underway, so I believe a few of us will meet up a few days earlier in Cuenca to sort everything out.

Right, so tomorrow - maybe as early as 7 a.m. - I'm off to Guayaquil (4-5 hours) and from there to Riobamba (another 5-6 hours, probably).

Now I'm off to have Ceviche de Pescado and maybe a la Plancha tambien, since I'm a slob and the main courses are 3-4 USD a pop.

Bye for now.

(oh and I did go swimming in the Pacific today, btw ;-) Small waves, warm water, sun and the beach to dry my clothes - what more could you want?)

(oh, and the cocktails are 1-2 dollars! Yeah!)

¡Algo asi!

2008-07-06T17:17:00.000-07:00

Quiero hacer algo asi:

Timelapse: Nightscapes from Tom Lowe on Vimeo.

A ver si me dejen descansar en un lugar para bastante horas durante los treks :-)

Guess what I did on Friday?

2008-07-06T06:00:00.000-07:00

Yep, whale watching... well, actually it was a little more akin to whale hunting, the way the skipper drove his tiny little boat in their direction, shutting off the engine way too late for them not to have been disturbed by us. Next time, I think I´ll just go for a more expensive, but professional tour!

But for 2 hours at 15 USD per Person, you probably can't expect a whole lot more...

Photos 2.2: Quito, el teleferiQo

2008-07-05T10:34:00.000-07:00

When you go to Quito, big mountains are all around you. So much so, that I tend to lose sight of how big they really are. A cable car called teleferiQo goes to the Cruz Loma, on a hill beside the flank of Volcan Pichincha.

I went up with mixed expectations, after the previous day's views, but this place absolutely blew my mind.

What starts off as a great view over the city...

... the valleys adjoining it...

... and highlights the contrast between the mountains at different altitudes as well as the city...

... quickly becomes something much more physical...

... as we climbed on past the 4100m high lift terminal toward the clouds.

The weather was great once at the top of the lift - well when I say great, I mean it made for some great pictures, because of the interplay of light and shadows.

Every so often, a new valley would open up below us for a plunging view over Quito.

Past this point, the warning sign on the barbed-wire fence stated, the operators declined all responsibility for the safety of visitors, and people have been known to be robbed, kidnapped for short periods etc. But apparently most people come far enough to throw rubbish down the side

Just past the fence, horses awaited for a potential horseback ride up the mountain; well not all the way up, since the top of the mountain is a 3-hour hike from the cable car station.

At this point the weather became more interesting and the cops who kept a bit of an eye out beyond the fence decided they'd had enough and went down to the cable car station...

... though that didn´t deter us...

... from going a bit farther, until the last people above us (that we could see) were other tourists on horseback...

...and their five dogs (of which this is a representative sample :-) ).

That seemed as good a time as any to head back down...

...because some of us were dressed a little too lightly for 4300m AND clouds.

All in all, very worth it, though I doubt very much that I did the atmosphere justice with my pics.

Yo te daré, te daré LIGA hermosa...

2008-07-03T20:14:00.000-07:00

So I'm not sure if anyone not affiliated with South American football (soccer, for the rest) heard that Wednesday night was the finals of the club championship Copa Libertadores; we couldn't have missed it if we'd wanted to, since Quito was playing brasilian club Fluminense in an away game.

We'd gotten a late start, and - I'm ashamed to admit - missed the first 20 minutes of the game, but caught the rest in the main plaza Foch in the Mariscal. Since Quito had won its home game 4:2, they could afford to lose by as much as 2 goals and still go into overtime and penalties, which is exactly what happened. the air was thick with muttered prayers as each successive wave of mostly brasilian attacks kept failing.

... and then they went into penalties, and we found ourselves standing right in the middle of the crowds on Foch, watching the thing go down on a big screen. Beer and other drinks went flying all over the place, as the Quito goalkeeper held not one, not two, but three out of four Brasilian shots!

And now that song keeps going round and round in my head:

Yo te daré, te daré LIGA hermosa, te daré una cosa, una cosa que empieza con L, con I, con G, con A... LIGA campeon! (see & listen here)

Aaanyway, in December, every continent will send their club championship winner to Japan for the Club World Cup, and I know whom I'll be rooting for!

Right, in other news, I've just arrived in sweltering Puerto Lopez, where the mozzies are already having a go at me.

To summarise:

Good idea - buying a 12 USD ejecutivo ticket and staying on the airconditioned bus for 12 hours fom start to finish rather than changing buses in-between and saving... all of 4 USD!

Bad idea - watching the mine rollercoaster scene in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, while the bus rolls from side to side and hits potholes and narrowly avoids collisions; I felt as though I was in the movie!

Worst idea - importing MP3-capable mobile phones with loudspeakers into South America.

Internet here is not very fast, so you can take a few days' holiday from complimenting me about my photos ;-)))

Photos 2.1: Quito - swearing in whom now?

2008-07-01T18:00:00.000-07:00

After coming back from our little excursion up the Cima de la Libertad (perched right on the flanks of the Volcano Pichinchila), we headed into the Old Town to have a coffee and take in the sights.

We were just in time to see someone - we believe it was the president - being sworn in and the Plaza Grande full of honorary guards.

Here is a selection of pics:

Photos 2.0: Quito & options for Ecuador

2008-07-01T06:00:00.000-07:00

Yep, I've started settling in to the hostal and Quito in general. It has a much more relaxed atmosphere than BA and so I'm definitely staying until at least Thursday to get to know it a bit better.

Things are a lot cheaper here, and I'm living quite well on about 20-25 USD (which is the national currency here after dollarisation in 2000) a day, including accomodation and a few beers. Okay, so the budget will have to increase as soon as I start including transport and things like guides for treks and hiring equipment, but I think I've done a decent job of predicting that (fingers crossed).

A lot of new people showed up at the hostal - there was a french connection there for a while, but fortunately only the nice bloke in my room stayed on from that lot :-) . There's a more communicative vibe about the place now and the kitchen is really being put to good use!

I've also found a partner in crime for visiting some of the places in Quito I wouldn't want to walk about alone in with my camera out. Raz is from ... Victoria, British Columbia (of all places) and has some time on his hands, so we decided on an early start on Monday.

Cima de la Libertad.

Right at the top of av Libertadores, directly overlooking the old town (the Virgen de Quito stands on the green hill behind the gun's barrel) and with the rest of the town spread out before us! The second taxi driver finally knew where it was and it took us 30 minutes to meander up the shack-lined street to the top.

It wasn't an unsafe neighbourhood; we ended up catching a bus back down and walking for a km through a neighbourhood market where not a single other tourist was to be seen. However it was nice to know there was someone there watching your back!

The early morning view was breathtaking. Since Quito is mostly about 5 miles wide and 15miles in length, the city was basically laid out like a carpet before us, with the mountain range constraining it on the other side clearly visible.

The clouds were menacing but far away.

So we found a pasture a little higher up from the monument and just enjoyed the sun for a while, while our heartbeats slowed from the 400m we had walked and our lungs started feeling normal again.

Maybe it was the thinner air or the sun (I admit I've the beginnings of a sunburn), but we started tossing about places to visit in Ecuador and even drawing up a rough budget for the Galapagos Islands, which I had planned on giving a miss, due to tours being prohibitively expensive. Budget 1000 to 2000 USD for a week there - flights included - with a definite tendency toward the upper end, because a very good guide who knows their stuff and a decent boat just makes the whole experience much more worthwhile.

Our rock-bottom, no-frills indivudual travel budget would stretch to 5 days and come to about 600USD, including flights (about half the cost) and one or two days of guided wildlife tours. So now some re-calculation is in order, because everyone has been saying how great the place is... I'll let you know how things turn out. Oh and if you're reading this and have a boat that you could place at our disposal for the 1000km trip out from the mainland, let me know!

So much for Option a) - What to do post-Quito?

Option b) would be to head out to the coast by bus and spend a few days in Puerto Lopez (see here), just hanging out and daytripping into the National Park.

Option c) is to go for a trek straightaway: either the Inca Road to Ingapirca or going around Cotopaxi.

I'm torn (no, please don't start singing, Marie!)

Photos 1.3: Buenos Aires -> Quito

2008-06-28T11:14:00.000-07:00

A few first impressions from the flight and Quito:

Before you ask, I've no idea what part of Argentina, Chile or Peru we were flying over here. The A320 wasn't equipped with the fancy "where am I now"-widget on the TVs. I can honestly recommend LAN Ecuador: good service, nice people who didn't feel it was below them to bring you a cup of coffee and of course the fact that the plane was 2/3 empty and I could stretch out was a big bonus!

Here's where I am right now. The Galapagos islands to the left are about 1000km off the coast... but more on that soon!

The Basilica del Voto Nacional, at about 8:15 on a Sunday morning. So I stayed for mass (yes I did). It's always interesting to check out the different rites and subtle variations in procedure; I did the same in Birmingham (more like a small community gathering with religious overtones) and Santiago de Compostela (the cafes seemed to be closed, so Spaniards piled in and chatted loudly at the back until the priest felt the need to shush them... thrice in 10 minutes!).

You can go up onto the roof, one spire and a tower of the basilica, which I did with a bit of apprehension. Rightly so, because the Lonely Planet describes the view as "Deadliest view (...) Hold on to your stomach for a hair-raising climb into these gothic towers." I don't know what I was thinking...

But the view was well worth it! Looking roughly south (I think) toward the Virgen de Quito (the statue on the hill in the middle) . Clouds seem to roll in at about 10/11am, after mostly blue skies in the early morning. Temperature is an acceptable 10 degrees at night, and up to 25 during the day, but beware the strong UV rays!

Very dingy wooden planks running on roof of the vaulted ceiling of the basilica *gulp* tried very much not to think of what lay below... And after that there were stairs leading out over the void, before turning 180degrees and heading back to the top of a spire; that's where I chickened out and felt the need to take a few deep breaths. Strangely enough, I didn't have a single problem crossing Capilano suspension bridge in Vancouver, but this really freaked me out. I did end up having a coffee and tamales halfway down the tower in a nice little cafe with a great view!

Iglesia y Convento de San Francisco, with the cusp of the Volcan Pichincha peeking out behind it. There was a cop on every street corner, so I felt reasonably safe taking the camera out and snapping away... all the while being on the lookout for potential robbers/thiefs etc. The Old Town is quite safe in that respect (witness all the tourists with SLRs on their tummy walking around), but the Mariscal backpacker area (where I'm currently writing this) is quite another thing.

An Australian who was staying in the same hostel as I (outside of the Mariscal, no need to worry), had his camera stolen at some point either on the bus or at the hostal; leaving your stuff out in the common area for ages is not a done thing! But the Mariscal has quite a reputation for muggings and the like, and the pub owners were telling me things were getting worse. Private security is everywhere, but if they see you getting mugged on the other side of the street, they basically won't lift a finger to help you. Whether it be a gunpoint (very rare), at knifepoint (somewhat more common) or just by intimidating lone backpackers, things are reasonably okay during daylight (walk like you know where you're going, scowl mightily and show you muscles if you have any), but even short distances ought to be covered by taxi after nightfall.

The Mariscal is THE place to get some nightlife, both for tourists and locals, so it's all about walking about with stuff you don't particularly care for if it gets nicked and trying to always go as a group. Knowing about what might happen is half the trick.

Right, and to end this on a somewhat unhappy note, I did go and see the finals Germany v Spain in an Irish Pub here and was very disappointed with the result. Not that the Spaniards didn't deserve it, but my total score for the betting pool is a miserable 18 out of 111 points... I think I stopped placing bets around the end of the first round, though.

All the best to everyone from mi Quito hermoso (as the slogan runs)!

Photos 1.2: Buenos Aires

2008-06-28T10:14:00.000-07:00

Since I'm a sneaky bastard and now have access to an equivalent of 450mm focal length, I thought I needed to catch ordinary people doing perfectly ordinary things in Buenos Aires.

Some of the dangers of biking in Buenos Aires include the incredible amounts of soot blown out of the exhausts everywhere. I'll not get into a comparative study of blackened Q-Tips emerging from ears, but they tell me summer is even worse.

Flagging down the bus on Córdoba con Florida.

Crossing the road - I think it's the Diagonal Sur here. I wasn't too shocked at the traffic and at pedestrian behaviour. The rules are clear: if you're stronger, you go. Which is why you just have to keep your eyes peeled as a pedestrian.

Street vendors everywhere, from Mate cups to shoe shining! Even in front of Graffiti that reads "No te vendes" (Don't sell yourself)

There are a lot of homeless people about, even if you just stroll about the touristy areas and don't go out any further than that. Parks always have a few people lying about with their belongings strewn around them. The sun was out in force that day and these two were enjoying their Mate tea.

I loved these two blokes, but was too chicken to take a frontal shot or put some time into composing it. One was holding up a piano by leaning against it and the other seemed to be holding up the tree. Strange thing is they were just lounging about in front of a tire shop (don't buy your tires there, please!)

Dogwalkers are quite common, even in San Telmo. I liked the neighbourhood, because you could just as well have a great steak at the Desnivel as go into a Parrillada and eat the same chorizos as the workmen from the tire shop.

The very highbrow shopping mall Galeria Pacifico (I think that's what it's called), just off the Peatonal Florida had some intriguing artwork in its basement level. I wondered what those wretches on the walls were thinking of all the D&G stores, Tommy Hilfiger outlets etc that they looked down upon.

Here again, I love the light! For some reason, it appeals to me :-)

Walking across av 9 julio (the BIG avenue with a dozen lanes), I followed on toward Recoleta and came by a lonely little wretch sitting with her back to the sunlight. Unfortunately I had a date at the MALBA museum and couldn't hang around.

After screwing with the few settings that irfanview allows me to tweak, I think this facade in San Telmo came out rather nicely.

Looking up into the sky in built-up areas of Buenos Aires, this is what you see: cables stretched everywhere for no apparent purpose.

The shutters in my room in the Hostal in San Telmo. I don't know why ;-)

I ended up buying a disposable camera for the game Boca Jrs vs Tigre, but the fotos came out so crap (well 90% did), that I can't even begin to think how to rescue something recognisable from them. So I went for mucking with the negatives and trying to at least get something artistic from them. Hmm...

Oh, and please remember to bring along your own music and headphones if ever you go into one of these Internet cafes, or fly LAN or just go shopping in Latin America; incredibly cheesy music blasting out at you from all angles, everyone outdoing each other in volume... I don't think it's good for me ;-) Need to find me some lonely mountaintop!

Inflation?

2008-06-25T07:00:00.000-07:00

I was talking to a spanish bloke who'd been staying at the hostal on and off for a while and who has been in Argentina for almost a year now. Next to some general comments on price increases in the country, he commented on the fact that banana prices had skyrocketed over the past weeks:

4 weeks ago - 3 pesos for 1 kilo of bananas
2 weeks ago - 4 pesos
1 week ago - 5 pesos
now - 6 pesos

While this is not staple food by any stretch of the imagination, I had heard from a few sources that price rises had been considerable over the past months. Considerable, that is, for tourists, especially as far as food was concerned. Very serious for the vast majority of people whose earnings aren't keeping up with the price hikes.

The Economist has an interesting point on why these real price rises in Argentina don't always translate into CPI (consumer price index) rate rises and muddy the waters for any outside observers wishing to gauge the health of the country's economy.

I had noticed that the prices seemed steeper than I had expected, but had put it down to my inability to do anything on the cheap ;-) But now the many small groups of protesters and leaflet-wavers, especially in the calle peatonal Florida and on 25 de mayo make more sense.

Photos 1.1: Departure -> Buenos Aires

2008-06-24T12:17:00.001-07:00

Not the best of weather to be taking off in, but at least it made for a decent pic: my 747-400, with NO personal entertainment system but very nice flight attendants!

view upwards into the dome of the shrine to General San Martin at the catedral metropolitana in Buenos Aires;

my very own private guide on a 4-hour bike tour round the city; this is in front of Recoleta cemetery

Clouds closing in above Recoleta cemetery during the bike tour

View down one of the alleys at Recoleta cemetery. I love the soft, warm light here and the dark clouds above. Give it a good workover in Photoshop, and this may become pretty good.

Unorthodox view of my en-suite luxury washroom/toilet. notice the not-so-Health-and-Safety-conscious lightswitch next to to the doorframe and exactly opposite the shower head!

Trying to get away from my usual rather static way of taking pictures, I've decided to add dynamics and unsharpen my view of the world. So no, it isn't your glasses!

Looking up into the roof of an indoor market, where they sold everything from antiques from Germany ("Bier macht den Durst erst richtig schoen" from 1936) to meat and chorizo!

Sunday afternoon in San Telmo. Tourists idling, locals rushing

The sky above the hostel terrace at night. The place is getting a facelift, which means masons going at the old tiles with hammers and chisels from 8 am onward.

Recoleta cemetery again. Walked there from San Telmo with people from the hostel to sample it more fully than during the bike tour.

The usual suspects live in the cemetery.

Making sure no one famous can get away from their crypt

I can't find the crop option on this editor, so you'll have to make do with that odd bit of masonry up at the top left of the pic.

The hostal common area where breakfast is and people hang out. Reception is all of 3 meters away, my door 2m. Still, the place really isn't noisy, the people are great and relaxed! The Garden House in Piedras is highly recommended if you want to steer clear of the hardcore party scene

FINALLY... Flight to Quito

2008-06-23T16:25:00.000-07:00

After a few trials and tribulations due to credit cards, inept travel agents etc, it seems (!) I'll finally be able to get out to Ecuador on the (relatively) cheap on Friday. Thing is, there are lots of flights, if you're willing to travel 15 to 20 hours... but I´m sure as hell not going to spend 10 hours of my life pent up in an airport in Santiago or Bogota watching the world go by! I'm arrogant like that...

So Friday it is, much cheaper than the 2000 USD suggested by one travel agency AND leaving & arriving at a decent time!

In case you're wondering: I've plans to visit Colonia (possibly AND/OR Montevideo) in Uruguay for a day trip in the meantime.

Other than that, the Recoleta cemetery was very impressive, the meat at "El Desnivel" restaurant was very good (thank you for that suggestion, Marie), the wine was (and is), an incredible deal and the weather and people out-compete each other in friendliness. One of the big things I've yet to try is the chocolate volcano!

Again, one of the biggest problems I have is getting pictures downloaded from the camera, so please be patient while I buy a USB card reader that should be easier to handle for internet cafes.

Strategic Projects

2008-06-23T06:22:00.000-07:00

Someone used his well-paid work time to come up with a so-much-more artistic rendering of the route for my trip.

Koeszi, Rigo Jancsi!

Oh, and Boca Jrs won against Tigre 6:2 in a match that seemed so much more interesting than what I saw of the Italy v Spain quarter-finals!

Right, I'm off to finally book that flight to Quito.

Llegada en BA

2008-06-20T18:41:00.000-07:00

'bout time zou people learnt some Spanish!

So I've arrived safe and sound, had great conversations with drivers, hostel receptionist and store owners and am dead tired right now. Flight was uneventful, just loooong and the rain is pissing down here.

So far, I have a ticket for the final game of the football season on Sunday (Boca Jrs vs Tigre) and a possible bike tour of BA lined up on Saturday. So, I guess you could say it's been a productive day.

Oh and thank you all for the great time we had on Thursday night, watching the Germans waltz all over the Portuguese in the EURO2008 quarter finals. I did get some great pictures from that. Hell of a hangover for half the flight, but apart from that, it was very much worth it!

Here we go!

2008-06-20T01:00:00.000-07:00

Tying up lose ends

2008-06-18T04:28:00.001-07:00

I've set up the built-in iSight camera of my MacBook to take a picture every time the login password is mis-typed. These pictures are tucked away somewhere in the depths of the file system and it's only recently that I've gotten around to digging them up and placing them in no particular order in a sort of mosaic that shouts "FAIL" :-)

I'm looking forward to ... - #3

2008-06-17T06:00:00.000-07:00

I discovered a German TV series "Schätze der Welt", which has all its episodes on-line for our viewing pleasure:

Quito (link to German-language-only tv show, sorry; look for the "film" link on the left hand side of the page) - I had no idea it was one of the oldest cities in the region, with mudejar architecture and everything!

Sucre (German-language link) - Bolivias nominal capital of state and a charmingly old-style and well-preserved

Potosi (German-language link) - a huge silver mine in Bolivia (any comments, Filipe?)

Machu Picchu (German-language link) - even though I'm somewhat going off the idea of doing the Inca trail because it's so overrun, an alternative may be going to Choquequirau

Things you do when you're weak

2008-06-16T14:06:00.000-07:00

Next to a potentially very useful headlamp - which incidentally makes me look like a cross between a doctor with an ill-chosen specialisation and the guru of a UFO sect - I also bought a set of two self-injection syringes with a blood-clot inhibitor (heparin-type) for that long 14 hour flight.

I admit it's stupit and I was pathetically weak when the doc looked me in the eye and said I should seriously consider taking this.

So if you see a fuzzy-haired bloke with a huge fridge strapped to his back at arrivals in Buenos Aires Airport in a few days' time ... it's because someone said I might be able to use it :-(

(This may become a highly entertaining, yet very real problem in future months; I'm not sure I want to keep you posted)

PS: Another very kind person - M.-A. you're duly noted on the postcard list :-) - passed her musical suggestions on to me, so my list of songs grows ever more complete
Queen - Bohemian Rapsody
Susheela Raman - L'âme volatile as well as - Stand by me
Gotan Project - Diferente
Quilapayun - La Vida and - Total

Thank you, thank you, thank you! I'll definitely be thinking of you when I listen to these!

Amazing Pictures

2008-06-13T14:00:00.000-07:00

I just discovered some photos by Don Hong-Oai.

Wow, amazing examples of how to transpose classical compositional techniques into photography. There's so much movement and stillness at the same time in his work!

If you're interested in more, check out this podcast.

So there's something to aspire to!

Explaining South America to grandma

2008-06-13T05:00:00.000-07:00

Well I'm proud of myself!

I bought a wall map of South America for my gran and proceded to colour in the main places I intend to visit. Next thing I know the little old lady almost bowls me over when she asks for the "number" of my blog ... I hope I'll be keeping it together as well as her when I'm in my 80s!

* Late Breaking News *

2008-06-12T13:53:00.000-07:00

... and thank you to K., who went to the trouble of taking a big bite out of a busy schedule to recommend THE SONG (according to her), which I should definitely take along:

Jamiroquai - Corner of the Earth

This corner of the earth is like me in many ways
I can sit for hours here and watch the emerald feathers play
On the face of it Im blessed
When the sunlight comes for free
I know this corner of the earth it smiles at me

And some songs off Duffy's Album Rockferry - Warrick Avenue apparently came to mind.

Sounds good! Thank you for that.
You know how people say: "your check is in the mail"? Really, your postcard is almost already underway!
:-)

Thanks to V.

2008-06-12T13:00:00.000-07:00

V's suggestion for a playlist:

U2 - Beautiful Day
Lou Reed - Walk on the wild side
Faith no more: I'm easy
Cake: The Distance
Madonna: like a prayer
3Doors Down: Kryptonite
Lenny Kravitz: Believe

Have listened to it and it does go down rather well.

Dear V, you've just won a non-trivial postcard to be posted at some time in the next 3 months from somewhere far away by yours truly ;-)

(I'm so proud of myself for using this bit of subterfuge to drastically reduce the number of postcards I'll be writing!)

Oh and I thought of a few tracks I need to take along by "Die Ärzte":

Langweilig
Junge
Himmelblau
Living Hell
Unrockbar
Mädchen
Die Allerschürfste

Stuffing the stocking

2008-06-08T22:17:00.000-07:00

So I'm thinking that taking along my 80Gb iPod is one of the worst things I could do, since I'd have another thing to worry about getting stolen and recharging it regularly.

So, with teeth gritted and muscle spasms, I'll be downgrading to my 1Gb piss-poor MP3-Player which uses regular AAA batteries.

But how do you go BACK to 1GB? It's like bloody "Flowers for Algernon"...

The selection process is going to take me soooo long, so I thought I'd start my shortlist straightaway. By the way, this is something I need suggestions for, so please feel free to add comments with music I should definitely take along.

1st and foremost: The Killers - Sam's Town (the entire album)
2nd: Something from Regina Spektor - Begin to Hope
3rd: A few Tocotronic tracks
4th: Editors - An End has a Start (some)
5th: a bit of Coldplay
6th: ...

I'm out... bugger!

To-Dos

2008-06-07T03:37:00.000-07:00

book hostel for 2-3 days in Buenos Aires
copy passport, health insurance certificate, vaccination booklet
get Hepatitis A & B refresher shots
buy a crate of wine for Marie in Buenos Aires and ship it back home (yeah, right!)
get overseas health insurance
buy backup camera battery
... check weather at destination

Chilly at night in La Paz!

I'm looking forward to ... - #2

2008-06-03T15:13:00.001-07:00

Bolivia - Parque Nacional Madidi

"...features the greatest biodiversity of the earth's protected regions." Perversely enough, that puts me in a mind to strap on my hiking boots and tread on some rare creepy-crawlies... okay, I'm kidding. But apparently 10% of all the world's known avian species were sighted here - wow that's something.

There's an eco-lodge there that's prohibitively expensive by South American standards (3 days, $280 per Person all inclusive - are you kidding me?) but it's billed as a model of sustainable tourism, the profits going directly to the indigenous community; plus it apparently has "an extensive trail system, excellent meals and night hikes".

So I'm thinking I might just splurge on this, provided I have enough money left by the time I cross the border to Bolivia from Peru,

Ecuador - Parque Nacional Machalilla

This may actually be the first "big" thing I'll do upon arrival: just chill on the beach in Ecuador for a few days.

"isolated beaches, coral formations, two offshore islands, tropical dry forest, coastal cloud forest, archaeological sites"

May end up camping in the park or staying 5kms away in Puerto Lopez "chipped blue fishing boats bob on a beautiful fishhook bay and cheerful hotels ... slow smiles, happy cafés, and a dirt-road pace of life make it tough to leave." Sounds like a good way to ease into the country and get a final fill of the seaside before it's mountains, mountains and nothing but mountains for weeks thereafter.

Oh, and I forgot to mention I probably need Malaria prevention meds for both of those destinations. Take Malarone for a day before entering the area all the way up to 7 days after leaving it. Side-effects ought to be bearable...

First Canada Pics

2008-06-02T16:44:00.000-07:00

I need to test a few gadgets in the run-up to my trip, so I thought I'd share some pics from Canada with you as a slide show:

I'm looking forward to ... - #1

2008-06-02T14:06:00.000-07:00

Rereading the posts below, I seem to be in a perpetual bad mood, so I've decided to add something about what I'm looking forward to on my trip, to counter-balance (even though I can think of half a dozen things off the top of my head that I could whinge about for a post or two... vaccinations that make you feel like a semi-trailer ran over you etc ... but don't get me started).

*** short interlude while I check whether our cellar has flooded yet due to the buckets of water coming down from above - wow, Zeus is REALLY pissed today ***

Peru - Ausangate Circuit

6 days, only 70km
BUT "Most of the route, and all of the camp sites, lie above 4400m and four high passes are crossed, two above 5000m"

What do you get for all your toil, sweat and tears?

"varied and spectacular mountain scenery, lots of wildlife and traditionally dressed indigenous inhabitants going on about their lives as they have for centuries." It's a complete circle around the Nevado Ausangate, the highest mountain in the region at 6372m. "In no other part of the peruvian mountains has the indigenous culture survived as unadulterated as here."

Okay, I'm a dreamer, but doesn't this just conjure up incredible scenery: The trek "features varied scenery, including fluted icy peaks, tumbling glaciers and turquoise lakes, rolling brown puna (one of the 8 geophysical regions of Peru - roughly speaking between 3500 and 4100m elevation) and green marshy valleys."

And being a full circle trek, there are hot springs at the beginning and - more importantly - the end of the hike to relax and chill in.

It's only rated as a trek of moderate difficulty on a scale from easy to difficult in my Lonely Planet Trekking guide, so I should be able to convince a few other people to tag along, then find a guide and possibly some burros in the little town at the start of the hike.

Perfect, wouldn't you say?

Oh, and just to give you an insight into my state of mind at the moment: favourite song right now is (on repeat, because I'm obsessive) Les Wampas - Rimini.
Admittedly, it's about the death of the italian cyclist Marco Pantani in a hotel at the seaside resort of Rimini... but it's a great tune!

Tu allais plus haut plus vite que les autres,
J'espère que tu n'a pas raté le paradis

Joy to the world

2008-05-31T05:54:00.000-07:00

Finally some action on the Flickr front: something called Schmap wrote to inform me one of my CC-Licensed photos had been included in their online guide of Frankfurt.

Either way, that doesn't do much for me, especially after I checked their free travel guides and found that they exclusively focus on Europe, Australia and North America. But you should see some of the creepy, sycophantic comments people posted after having their pictures selected. It's that flickr-sickness again, which also makes 99.9% of people post such informative and constructive comments to photos as "great", "good shot", "excellent", "you're one of my favourites".

God forbid anyone come up with a critical albeit constructive comment. That'd mean having to turn on their brains while looking at all the pretty colours.

Who are you calling grumpy?

Sick?

2008-05-28T10:32:00.000-07:00

Well, here we go. My sister thinks she might have gotten mono recently, and she would have passed that on to me over the course of last week's holiday in Vancouver. She's getting tested and I can start telling myself my sleeping patterns are disease-induced rather than plain old laziness.

Good times.

By popular request - a plan

2008-05-26T05:59:00.000-07:00

I'd almost forgotten I made this for the textually-impaired who can't conjure up a map of South America before their mind's eye:

This itinerary is so rough and based upon conjecture it's almost not worth the effort of uploading. But at least now those folks who've been pressing me for "plans", "maps", and "where are you going to be on XYZ" are happy.

T-4 weeks

2008-05-25T07:31:00.000-07:00

Here I go! Well, almost. Another 4 weeks till I get to South America.

The actual itinerary is a closely kept secret; so closely kept in fact, that I suspect there never was one or that I've simply killed off the braincells associated with it over the course of the last week in Vancouver.

As far as I can tell, I'm off to
* Buenos Aires - long enough to find me a flight to Ecuador, preferrably Quito
* Ecuador
* Peru
* Bolivia
* northern Argentina back down to Buenos Aires for my return flight.

I'm planning on trekking some of the Andes, spending lotsa time on buses, getting to know the locals, spending hours on the loo with grumbling guts, seeing archaeological digs, swimming in hot springs, drinking my body weight (not every night), brushing up on my spanish, riding horses (maybe), losing weight in Bolivia, only to gain it again in Argentina, meeting more crazy Canadians, telling everyone why I have such a weird-ass accent for the thousandth time, taking lots of pictures and not getting my camera gear stolen (the rest they can have).

Keep reading for details.