Rio de Janeiro (the city of Wonders)

The final of our 13 weeks journey was 4 days in Rio aka the city of wonders, or for others the City of God. We gave the city the neccessary respect, and were walking around carefully (not too many pictures), but after our first night going out it did not seem that scary any more. The guys from the hostel took us out to an "Erasmus" party, and we were walking around on our way back, without being harassed, the same for the night in Lapa, where people drink and dance on the streets.

The first days were quite rainy, but still we managed to get a good view from the famous Christ statue. 15min later we could not see the statue from the foot of it because of the clouds that were blown in.

We also took the vintage tram to an old part of the town. We expected a San Francisco style tourist fun, when hanging off the side of the tram, but here it was more of a survival ride: lampposts, fences and walls were close enough to rip my backpack off, and it was really hard to hold your balance on the 10cm standing board. We got off before the final station.

Could not miss the Sugarloaf either. It is really the best view you can get from the town, although the priciest.

On our last day we went to one of the favelas and learned, that the City of God movie is about the drug business, but not about everyday life there. The circumstances were ok (brick houses, electricity, water) except for the sewage water flowing on the street, because of the unplanned constructions. Most people there have normal jobs in other parts of the town. The main difference was that law is not enforced by the police, but by the gang ruling the place. The 300.000 people favela we visited had 4000 "soldiers" mostly paid by the drug business, which earns them the healthy amount of 4M $ monthly. The whole organisation is run by a 23 years old godfather, who is one of the older ones, as these guys die young. Anyways, the bikeride up the top of the hill will be unforgettable.

Between all the sightseeing we managed to fit some sand and sun, first on Copacabana then on Ipanema. The sand was amazing, the water was nice and people watching ok. We didn't see as many fake looking boobs as I expected. Traditionally Brazilian man think it is girly to lie on a towell, so they sunbath on the hot sand, or sit on a chair/ piece of newspaper. I wasn't afraid to be seen as a gringo.

Finally we liked the city quite much, having amazing beaches at your front door (and the neccessary weather with it, dear Dubliners) is quite nice. The bay with the strange rocks sticking out of it looks uniquely beautiful.

On the 20th Decembre we embarked on a journey which we thought would be annoying, because we had to say good bye to America, and because it was long. Little did we know that it would turn out worse than expected, more to that later.

Paraty

After Brasilia we flew to Rio, that first surprised us with massive heat (30 °C and 90% humidity at night) and then with rain. We had a nice time going out with people from the hostel and subsequently seeing the dawn over Copacabana beach, but when we woke up it was raining and it didn't really stop any more, so we made shapes (Lucy this is to you).

Our target was a holiday place called Paraty. The village is stuck in a charming colonial style. It has small whitewashed houses and huge rocks for cobblestones, which are a local speciality and make walking or cycling around a struggle. Additionally In true Venice style water is filling the streets when the tide is high enough, but we have not seen too much of that.

The real attraction of the place are the sandy beaces and small islands that fill it's bay. Finally after the first less nice day the sun started to shine and we could work on our tans, which is something you really want to put a lot of effort in when you are coming back from holidays soon.

In our quest for sunshine, we even took a boatride one day, which brought us to otherwise unreachable beaches and reefs carrying a few fish. During the trip Fabio Biggie was playing soft guitar songs, which made me think of Israel Kamakawiwo'Ole, and we were eating some nice fish. It was the perfect beach day.

Back in Rio we could get up to Corcovado to see the Christ Statue, but in the meantime it is raining again :( We will still try to enjoy the last days. More about that later, probably from good old Europe.

Brasilia

After the touristy Igassu falls, it was time to go to a far less visited destination: the capital of Brazil. It is a pretty crazy idea to build a capital in the 1950`s out of nowhere. The city is divided around 2 main axes which give it the shape of a plane or a bow. People leave in districts called quadras. Every quadra hosts 3000 people, a school, a supermarket..That is to say, there is not such a thing as a city center and the distances are huge. This city designed in the 50`s is made for our 4 wheels friends:car. Therefore all the main avenues are empty and lifeless.. Not what we would expect from Brazil! But we more or less knew what to expect and we found it fascinating: Traveling around the city made us feel like an old science fiction movie. Especially that the city has many very cool buildings designed by Niemeyer and his peer architects.
Shame on us (in the middle of the Copenhaguen submit) we rented a car..In such a city designed for cars, it was definetely the best option. And Google Translate has been a great friend when we rented the car as no one in the renting car company could speak English: I hope the contract in Portugese we signed didn´t include some dodgy conditions (such as give a kidney or you first new born..).



On our last night, we adventured ourselves in a quadra: the streets were pretty dark and didn´t look to inviting but once we were in the center of the quadra, we discovered signs of life:) A lighted shopping street and very animated bars where we had some ´choppes` and some Brazilian fingerfood.
Very suprising fact is that waiters are tend to `tip` us. If the bill is 42 Reals and we give 50, they sometimes give us back 10 (btw 2 reals equal to 0,80 euros). We are probably so nice consumers that they can´t but tip.

Stories from the Igassu Falls

.....Speechless...This is the feeling we had when discovering the Igassu Falls! They are amazing, noisy and well very wet for the tourists traveling on a boat:)
In this part of Brazil (bordering with Argentina and Paraguay), it was super warm (and of course super humid). We could say even that we don t need too much clothes to go around. Well the good news is that we now don t have too much clothes to go around as half of our clothes got "lost" with the laundry service of our hostel Bambu. (The hostel should send them to our hostel in Rio..)



Like most of the tourists in this area, we dedicated 2 days to the waterfalls. First one, we went on the Brazilian side of the falls which gives a great overview of the size of the falls. The 2nd day we did a tour organised by our hostel to see the Argentinian side. There we did a boat tour to see the falls at the water level: it was a cool and very wet experience! We as well had the chance to spot quite some wildlife: a deer, an small anteater (!!), 2 iguanes and thousand and thousand of buterflies (I don t like these flying creatures too much, sometimes these little bastards were even landing on us..).

For our final day, we tried to change our travelerchecks (this expedition ended in failure) and we went to visit Itaipu: the biggest power plant in the world! No need to mention that this was Peter´s idea;) The hydraulic plant is amazingly huge and produces yearly enough electricity to meet the needs of Paraguay for 11 years. Not bad isn´t it?

Weekend in Curitiba

After the gigantism of Sao Paolo, we headed south by bus to Curitiba (aka for the Googlers ` Pedro `s city` btw Pedro says `Hi`).

In this peaceful city of 2M inhabitants, we discovered and enjoyed:

* Some live music in pubs and restaurants (we still didn t dare to dance)

* Feijoada. This is a typical brazilian dish very well described by one of Pedro´s friends as the "Brazilian goulash".

* The Oscar Nieymer Museum which had a great exhibition of Vik Muniz . We were as well so excited about the architecture of Nieymer that we decided to book a flight to Brasilia where he has designed many public buildings!

* The family atmosphere at Pedro´s house (with his wife, parents visiting from Portugal, friends, dog..)

* That it is not always warm in Brazil. Curitiba tends to have what we would call an Irish weather

* The Football riot at the end of the Coritiba game (broadcasted on TV)..Yes Brazilian people are indeed passionate about football!

Sao Paulo

Our start in Brazil was not easy: it was really hard to book a hotel in Sao Paulo, first me and then Amélie had a nice stomach bug, the weather was not too warm and it was raining cats and dogs in the afternoons.
This an the TV in our hotel room made it the optimal place to chill out for four days. We have seen countless episodes of Law & Order spiced up with Jurassic Park III and Godzilla. But there was a bit more of course:

The first main task was to buy some smart casual clothes, because we were meeting our investment banker friend in the night and did not want to be kicked out of places because of our hiking shoes. Based purely on the price we managed to get me some leather shoes and a shirt and Amélie got a top and flip-flops with glittery plastic (aka. diamonds). Edwyn is a very busy man as you would expect from somebody, who is in the rank of partner in Brazil's biggest investment bank. Also we were pleased to hear, that the crisis helped him a lot, as they founded this bank with 15 people and took everybody else over, who was struggling to get to a 1000+ employees company. Before anybody starts to denounce wild capitalism, Edwin told us, that the first thing they do with a company they buy is to make them pay taxes and employ people in a legal way, so not the tipical cut and sell operations of american investment banks. Unfortunately Edwin is working until ten on calm evenings and much later when under pressure, so he has no time to spend his fortune, but we were assured that a penthouse flat with pool and an armoured car are on the way.
For the rest of Sao Paulo we only saw the Sé cathedral and the excellent MASP. This also marked our first encounter with Oscar Niemeyer, but more to that later. Exhibitions in the MASP were great from Rodin to the Brasilian street artists, who honoured us with being present. Otherwise we were looking at people, fighting the floods in the streets, wondering how people can be so calm in the always stuffed metro and finally taking a bus to Curitiba.

Hasta Luego Peru

After 31 days spent in Peru, it was time for us to say good bye to this wonderful country.

We had an amazing time there from discovering the Incas sites to surfing on sand dunes or doing some ice climbing. And Peruvian people are very friendly:)

Below the pics of our 2 last days where we just relaxed in Lima (and ate a lot of sweet things)

Serious Trekking

To round up our trekking experience in Peru we took almost a day of bus ride upon us to get to the trekking capital of the northern part: Huaraz. It is the main city around the Cordillera Blanca mountain range.

As a serious trekker should know, good weather is temporary. Here we experienced the rainy season to its full. Some say there is no bad weather only bad equipment, but I can assure everybody, that even in the best rainjackets you get wet after walking around 3 hours in pouring rain (the difference is maybe that you don't get cold immediately as well). By the way: hail to the cheapest raintrousers from the cheapest campingshop in Dublin - they are really good.

For the two tours we did we took all the possible kinds of transportation: A motor rickshaw (of course the one with transformers deco - batman is out!) The public bus 20 ppl. for 12 seats. And taxis (Mr guide why is that everybody has Toyota Corollas? - Because they are the best cars - ...) dodging rivers, rocks and dead cows in the middle of the road, 6 ppl. excluding the driver.

We made important trekking experiences: We were walking without a guide. We were turning back on the same walk after being lost for an hour, without reaching our goal, but surviving. (hey it is all above 4000m remember!) We also added iceclimbing to our repertoire, so now we would be ready for a really tought ascent to somewhere above 5000m, but

Even though all this was nice, we have enough of suffering, so we are done with trekking for a while. Looking forward to be in hopefully sunny Brazil in a couple of days. Until then we head back to Lima for our last two days in Peru.

Sandboarding and Pisco drinking

From Nazca, we went directly to Huacachina (represented on the 50 soles note)- Huacachina is an oasis in the middle of the desert where the main activity is sandboarding. It was pretty cool..especially going down lying on the board (head first). The craziest part was not the sandboarding but the buggy. To go up the dunes, the best way is to use a buggy. We didn t expect that it would be so crazy or that our driver would be so fearless. Let s compare the feeling with a roller coaster but a roller coaster tour which lasts much longer than 90 seconds.
Today we visited (in the morning!)2 pisco wineries. After the first visit, we felt a bit tipsy..so we arrived at the 2nd one in great mood. A little peruvian guy gave us a quick tour of the "Museum"..It was not a museum just a room full of mess: Imagine some old pisco ceramics mixed with some old phones, stuffed crocodile, stuffed seal and some cables, plastic bottles. I would call it a "Joyeux Bordel". Our good mood reached its top when the guide showed Peter how to drink the liquor shot and by doing so spilt the drink on his tshirt (without noticing).

High above the Nazca Lines

After 9h of bus with the luxury company Cruz del Sur (They deserve to be called luxury as there was some toilets paper in their waiting lounge in Arequipa) it was time for us to discover one of the main attractions of Peru: The mysterious Nazca Lines in the middle of the desert. All the lines represent many shapes: a monkey, a bird, a whale..The funkiest: an astronaut (it looks like ET). Apparently these lines have been designed by the Nazca culture 2000 years ago: I prefer to believe that they were designed by extraterrests.

The best way to see the the lines is of course by plane..the smaller, the better. Our plane had 6 seats-pilot included. Pretty cool as we never before flew in such a small machine. The views were amazing, it was a magical experience, we were very euphoric until we started to feel sick. Yes somehow such a small plane is the best place to get motionsickness. Peter got scarry white and the woman in front of me had to use the emergency sickbag..All of this making nice holidays souvenirs:)

Stories from Arequipa

We have just spent 5 days around Arequipa (2nd largest city in Peru), 9 hours away by bus from Copacabana. Despite Arequipa is surronded by high volcanoes and snow caps, it s much warmer there: no need for our winter hat anymore.
From the arrival at the bus station, everything went pretty smooth: a policeman even escorted us to a taxi from which he took the drivers name and number plate. We thought he was so friendly until we learnt by other (spanish speaking) travelers that there were recently some attacks in cabs. Arequipa and its surrondings feel pretty safe, so no worries we have not been facing the human fat traffikers. We have stayed 3 nights in Misti Casa which was not only cheap with friendly staff but super located (2 mins away from the central square: la placa de armas).
We spent 2 days discovering the city and its cool sites : 2 very beautiful covents, nice churches ( I can t count anymore the number of churches we have been visiting over the last weeks) and the museo del sanctuary. This very interesting museum is dedicated to Inca human sacrifices which we were not familiar with so far. In the area of Arequipa, scientists found over the last 10 years more than 10 frozen bodies of kids at the icy top of some volcanoes: the most famous body is the one of Juanita.
As we became so sporty during our journey, we decided to go for a 3 days trekk in the Colca Canyon: the 2nd biggest canyon in the world (it doesn t look like the US Grand Canyon as we discovered). The streets of Arequipa center are full of agencies selling similar tours. After benchmarking the different offers, we took one for 40€ per person..So cheap compared to the Inka trail! The departure for the tour was at 3 am (yes 3 am, pretty hardcore). On the morning we went by mini bus (on very bad gravel roads) to el Mirador del Condor where we could see many condors flying around in the mountains. It was really impressive, so impressive that we took hundred of pictures (which are a hell to sort out). The afternoon was dedicated to a 3.5h hike down the canyon: the path was very steep but we all managed ok except one Belgian girl who seemed to suffer a lot. After the hike, we went to our sleeping place: very dusty but charming mini bingalows in a very tiny village. We all woke up in good mood except the Belgian girl who started her day with a lot of tears as she had a bad night. We all tried to cheer her up until we started our walk (an easy 3 hours) where she became hysterical shooting at the guide. You can imagine the awkawrdness in the group when this happened. Ha travelling allows us to meet all kind of people;) The group was nice otherwise, they were 2 others French so I could finally speak French after many days:) After the 2nd day hike, we arrived to an Oasis (aka the Paradise") at the bottom of the Canyon for an afternoon of sun bathing and swimming pool. The hard part of the trekk was for the final day: 3 hours uphill. Yes we made it but yes there were some swearing involved and even some blood (a stupid mule pushed me against the mountain).

In Arequipa, there are not only Canyon and museums, there are as well some food specialities that we had to try (nothing as disturbing as the Guinea Pig this time). We tried the Chicha (a corn beer) in a "piquanteria" where the smallest bottle was one litter. Surprise when it arrived on the table, it is a pink drink with a lot of sediments..We didn t manage to drink the full bottle as we are concerned for the health of our stomac. Peter ate some "Pancita Dorada con chuleta de cancho" (of course with our little spanish, we had no idea what this would be) and I tried the Aeequipa "chupe de camarones": it was wonderful and gigantic (I am a prawn fan). Of course as I am a real lady, I had to spill the first spoon on my trousers and the 3rd one on my teeshirt.

Around the Titicaca Lake

So we left Cuzco and took a bus to Puno, which was conveniently stopping at some Inca and pre-Inca sites while we were making our way across the Andean high plateau.



Puno is a nice little city, without too many things to see except for the lake, which is reedy and dirty on this side. Nevertheless it was one of the most laid back towns so far. Some other noteble things from Puno:

• There is a really big concrete skatepark
• Internet caffees are full with locals, we were struggling to find a place with finally ending up in the upmaket "Google" shop.
• There are some floating islands here, which are full with tourists (remember not too much else to do) and overweight locals, which has to come from eating reed. You can basically do everything from reed: Islands, houses, boats and you can eat it of course.
• Ate my first guiney pig here

Then we thought that we will have a look at the Titicaca lake from the Bolivian side. This included some walking at the border as we were used to it from Costa Rica and Panama. I was a bit scared because of the Hungarian terrorist threat in Bolivia, but the borderguard didn't seem to know/care about it.

We ended up in an place called Copacabana, which is even more laid back than Puno. The highlights:

• We took a room in one of the main hotels of the town, but could not check in, because they did not have a working pen.
• The beer is 620ml (not 2/3), sate brewed and has won the prestigious Monde Selection award, which everybody who knows Sopron beer will know to appreciate.
• There is a big white concrete anchor statue in the harbour. The top ring is made out of a painted car tyre.
• There is one ATM in town, which is guarded by a dedicated policeman, looks like the cockpit of a fighter jet and does not take foriegn cards (no worries we have good old cash)
• As the Titicaca lake is the highest commercially navigable lake on earth we could not resist to take a duck shaped pedal boat
• Real boats on the lake have two engines but only run with one (energy efficiency)
• The first time I saw the boat hitting the harbour wall hard was in Copacabana, it was our boat. (nobody/nothing got injured we all had a laugh)
• Isla del Sol has the nicest trekking path above 4000 m i have ever seen (and i have seen one already)
• We had the hotel with the best view in Isla del Sol for 4.8 EUR the night (cheapest yet)
• We had two unforgettable meals:
  On Isla del Sol every house is a restaurant at the same time, you go in, you order and the lady of the house will start to peel the potatoes. No fast food for sure. We had a great blackout during the meal. The whole island was without electricity until the morning. We were originally thinking that the candles were for decoration...
  In Copacabana went in for a pizza. The guy (one person restaurant) was watching TV (even flakier than usual) and told us that he had only pizza. Alright that's what we wanted - with some lemonade. When we told him this, he looked at the huge glass doored fridge next to his chair. It was empty except for a bottle of Fanta and a Coke. We understood our choices...

I don't know if it is clear from this, but I love Bolivia (and let's not be nationalists) the whole Titicaca lake area.

But a not so hard trek..

Our first day of the Inca Trail, we met all at 6 for 2h of bus before reaching the official starting point: the km 82 (2600m). This point was quite buzy as most of the trekking groups start from here. To avoid walking during 4 days around many other trekkers, we walked one hour further than all this other groups. This last hour was of course the steepest: our 2 guides used this hour to analyze our walking style and determine the level of the group(did they notice our amazing walking pole handling?). What came as a surprise is that Peter and I did quite well in going on the steep path and we even reached the camp before 70% of the group (including the Navy guy and his athletic wife). At the camp, everything was ready for us: the dinner and the tents were already installed by the 22 local porters who were incredibly fast.

The second day was supposed to be the toughest: 12km and 2 passes to reach : the first one had the promising name of "Dead woman path" and is at 4300m. We kept our magical technique combining focusing on breathing and on chewing cola leafes and we made it:) This was quite a relief as this pass is the hardest moment of the all 45kms. We rejoyed for a few minutes after realising that stairs down were waiting for us. Surprinsly going down is much harder for the legs especially on irregular inca stairs. God or Pachamama bless our walking poles which have been so useful.
On the 2nd night at the camp, it was time for a bit of celebration with some peruvian rhum as the hardest was behing us.

The 3rd day was mainly 8km going down on these damned stairs. Fortunately the landscape was really super amazing and we knew that a warm shower would be waiting for us in the campside at Winay Wayna. This campside was pretty gigantic as all the trekking groups sleep here. It was quite a shock after 2 days in the peaceful mountains: We even had dinner in a room with music and beers:)

The 4th day was the final day: 7km down to the famous Machu Picchu. In order to reach it first, we woke up at 3:45 am. Unfortunately when we reached the gate to the National Parc (it opens around 5 am), there was already a group. Once the gate opened, people got a bit mental and started walking super fast. I swear I saw some people running. The pace was so exhausting, I almost suffered the most during this last hour of trekk. We finally reached the sun gate from where we could see for the first time MachuPicchu. Picture time!!
Our main guide Fredd (a 25 year old quechuan)gave us a 2hours tour of the ruin. He studied archeology in Cusco with a professor specialised in the Inca civilisation. This PH doctor died before publishing his controversial findings about the Inca, so we heard very interesting facts about the Incas..We are quite perplex about some of them but they sounded quite cool: Incas were very tall (2m30) and had one more bones than any other human races. Despite they neither used the wheel or the writting, they were very advanced in building, agriculture, astronomy and medicine.

After the tour, we had a final lunch with all the group: everyone was almost falling asleep on their chairs. As we had a bit of time before our train, we went with 3 of the Aussies to the hot springs of Agua Calientes. The pools looked quite dirty but after 4 days of trekking who cares? The hot water and the 2-3 mojitoes we drank in the pool cured our sore muscles! Peru is defintely a magical world:)

Now it is time to show the pictures (I have to repeat one more time that the scenery was amazing and very diversified):

Difficult beginning

We are back from the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu and I think it was one of the best things we have done so far, but it did not start easily:

We were supposed to have our first meeting with the group on the 5th, but on the same day we decided to finish visiting the sights in the Sacred Valley, so we went to Ollantaytambo first, which is very nice, but most people appearently don't leave the place around 1, when we planned to. The only way to get back to Cuzco was to take a common taxi with an Argentinian and a Peruvian guy, who wanted to visit three more things on the way. First we were not too happy, but finally we saw an amazing array of salt pools, and inca agriculutral lab, that looked like an alien landing pad and even a church. The only problem was that we almost missed our meeting, but our great driver got us to the location on time. Needless to say that the meeting started 15 minutes late.



At the meeting we had a first chance the meet the others:

• A girl and two guys from Miami, who were sponsored (?) by a fitness regime. (They said that if you don't throw up you don't train hard enough)
• Two mountain guides from Colorado, who live above 2000 m all year round
  
• A navy guy and his wife, who got 7. at the Athens Olympics (sailing but still!), their common hobby was triatlon
  
  - At this point we started to think that we made a serious mistake when signing up -
  
  
• 4 Australian guys, but only two were present at the meeting, becasue one of them broke his hand in a barfight the day before. (all four were participating in the walk)
• Finally a normal couple with the husband working on a research project in Irak

It was a great team i have to say.

At the meeting we were introduced to our guides Fredd and Dalmiro, got some details about the trail and were given matrasses and sleeping bags + the porter bag. The company is providing porters for the really heavy stuff like tents, food and cooking equipment, but if you want to have a light bag you can rent your own porter, for 60 USD / 9kg (not that the porters would carry only 9 kg - far from it). We rented one for two, which was a good decision, because only the sleeping bags were 3kg each.

The next day we were ready to take the bus at 6. To be continued...

Cusco es magnifico!

The beauty of Cusco and its surrondings (aka the Sacred Valley) have allowed Peter to move on from the Leatherman incident. In the last 3 days, we have been buzy visiting many inca ruins. It seems we did the best from our boleto touristico : In Cusco, you must buy an expensive entrance ticket which includes 16 sites, even some you don want to see. Surprisingly we managed to see 11 out of 16! We experienced Cusco public buses and as well the taxis collectivos. This afternoon we struggled to find a taxi collectivo back to Cusco..as we were in a remote village at the wrong time. After 30 mins, a cool quechuan taxi driver offered us to take us for 10€ with 2 other guys to 3 inca sites and then back to Cusco. It was a pretty funny team, the 5 of us cramped in the taxi (the driver, 2 crazy young tourists from Argentina and Peru and the 2 of us) driving super fast on dusty roads where we met at every corner some pigs, chickens, donkeys, cows, sheep and even more donkeys and dogs.
We as well used the last 3 days to train for the 4 days Inca Trail: 45km above 2500m with the highest point at 4230 meters. We had the introduction meeting tonight, it seems pretty scary..especially the guide was adressing an audience in which i didn t recognize myself "Don t go too fast, please don t skip the breaks, it s not a race etc.." Me I needed to hear "You can do it, many people do it every day, we are here to help you. believe in yourself"..
If everything turns out fine, we will see the Machu Pichu on the 9th of November (which should be the birthday of Ilana and Lasse).

Anyway, here are some pics:

From Lima to Cuzco (aka the Leatherman Incident)

We spent our last night in Lima eating out and wondering why people prefer to open all possible doors of the restaurants, if it is cold. Back in the hostel Amélie (head of the organizing committee) went to sleep early, while Peter (simple member of that committee) was trying once again to upload pictures. We were to leave at 7:30 the next day, but I was assuming, that Amélie set an alarm already, and i just used our 50 cent alarm clock to set up a security alarm for 7.
Next morning we woke up at 7:15 because the small alarm clock, which i broke into pieces afterwards, was 15 minutes late in 7 hours. To show the strenght of our team even under pressure we managed to get ready on time, but a fatal mistake happened...
We got to the airport ok and were enjoying a coffee after check in, when i realized, that my precious Leatherman was still in the hand luggage. There was no time to check that in as well, so we decided to give it a try. I carefully placed the leathal weapon in the camera bag (big piece of metal) and remembered what our guide told us about Peruvian prisons: most people spend a couple of years there before their actual trial, as the juridical system is too slow.
As expected my backpack caught the attention of the security person. Lets also not forget that terrorist activities were just as common in Peru as in Northern Ireland in the recent past. I was taken aside and he told me that there is a scissor in the bag. This came as somewhat of a surprise, because i was thiking he will point out, that the 8cm blade was not allowed on the plane, but i started to empty the bag and saw that our medical pack was in there too. We checked that, but there was no scissor in there, then i had to show the leatherman, which they confiscated, but the security person said, that this is nice and well, but we are still looking for a small scissor. Then after the second search we really found the scissor in the medipack, but as it was small they didnt even take it away. After clearing up the issue i was let to enter the plane.
The key learning is, that i could have gotten the Leatherman through security, if only i would have found the medical scissor in the first place. Well i am sure he is happy with all his brothers and sisters in the big plexi box these things end up in.

Otherwise we safely arrived in Cusco and after carefully reading about all the symptoms of altitude sickness we had all of them: thirst for air, insomnia, tiredness, bad stomach. Otherwise Cusco is very pretty.

Discovering Lima

Hola de Lima!

After 3h30 of flight with Copa Airlines, we are now in Peru´s capital for a few days before flying tomorrow to Cusco. All the people we know who have been to Lima told us it was better to spend as little time as possible there..so we arrived with quite low expectations and we actually think that the city has a lot to offer:) We are staying in the Miraflores district in one of the Flying Dog Hostels. Miraflores is a newer and safer district of this 9 Millions inhabitants city.

Something pretty cool about Lima is this location: In the middle of the desert (according to the Lonely Planet it is the 2nd biggest desert city in the world) and on the border of the Pacific Ocean (many surfers down the cliffs of Miraflores). On the backside, Lima is suffering from earthquakes which have every so often partially destroyed the city since its creation in the 16th century.

We have so far visited some churches and museums in the Central Lima and tried one of the Peruvians specialities: Ceviche (not so far from the Japanese sushis as it consists of marinated raw fish).

We as well did an excursion to Pachacamac (what a cool name!!) which is an archeologic site where there are some ruins of temples dedicated to the god Pachacamac ¨the earth creator¨. There we saw our first Peruvian Lama and as well some Peruvian dogs: they look so weird as they have no hair expect on their head. These dogs were used in the past as healers as their body temperatures is higher than normal dogs..

We´ll soon share pictures but unfortunately we could not find a cybercafe which allow us to upload the pics on Picasa...

Mugging, bathing and sightseeing in Panama City

As we want to truly discover the heart of Panama City, we thought today it was time to try to be mugged...Yes we believe it is important to evaluate the safety of a city to have a clear idea of it : we are serious investigators!
So as we were trying to find the bus station for the Miraflores Locks of the Panama Canal which are located 13km away from the Capital, we got into a dodgy looking district (which is actually in front of the Justice court..how ironic is that?). After walking 30 meters in this street, a woman made us sign and told us something in spanish that we later interpreted as "Go away stupid foreigners, it s a dangerous place here". We then turned back to go to the main street (still looking for this secret bus station) when a guy jumped on me (=Amelie) and tried to rip off my bag! What a disgrace! My handbag is a cute little hand made bag with a colourful chicken on it that I bought in Bocas del Toro just a few days ago. I managed to hold on to it and it seems this surprised the robber as I finally managed to save my bag. Weirdly, my first feeling was not fear but anger. I screamed a majestic "F..k you!" to the guy, at this moment I realised that this guy could actually be more dangerous than me and we ran off. We don t quite know what Peter was doing during this time:placing bets in his head on the outcome of the bag fight? Well after this 30 seconds rush of adrenaline, I was actually quite shocked...I have now recovered from this unfortunate incident so it is now time to talk about bit more about this cool city.

Next to Panama City, there are a few islands and we went to visit one of them: Isla Taboga. This island is the sunday get-away of the Panamian city inhabitants. The boat was full of local families: we don t see that many tourists here. The island is really pretty and after being in the past the home sweet home of some English pirates, it became at the beginning of the 20th century the quarantinee zone for canal workers. By the way, Paul Gauguin, the painter was there in the sanatorium so I was not the 1st French on this island.

In case you are wondering, we finally managed to get a bus (actually 2) to the Miraflores Lock.
The Canal of Panama has 3 sets of locks and those one are the one on the Pacific ocean's side. Next to them there is as well a visitor centers where we could learn more about the history and the technology of the Canal. A few interesting facts:
-this gigantic project was first started by a French company (same than the one of the Suez Canal) which failed mainly because of the Malaria and Yellow fever that killed more than 22000 workers.
- It was inaugurated in 19174 and was operated until 1999 by the USA
- In 2006, there was a referundum in Panama on the future of the Canal: the population agreeded masively in enlarging the Canal which allow more traffic and bigger ships to cross the 2 oceans.
- The smallest toll was paid in the 1920's by a swimmer for 0.36$ (80km)
- The largest toll was paid 3 weeks ago: 375 000$

From Bocas to Panama City

We left the island world of Bocas behind us, but before we met up with two guys from our turtle time to go out. We followed the recommendations for a local place, which turned out to be a jackpot. We arrived in a big harbour hall with almost no lights, maybe ten people scattered around the walls, a small bar and one customer sleeping at it. Unmistakeable signs of a good place. We ordered cuba libres (they produce rum in Panama too after all) and paid 0.75 USD each (0.50 EUR) now we were convinced that it was a good spot, but as we didn't want to start kissing each other violently, like the other ten people we thought we move on to a more busy place.
Next day we were going on a bike tour, which seemed like a really good idea until we realized, that the road is not shady at all and noon is a hot time, but we recovered on the water facing veranda of our hostel. The airport had a suprise as well. Local newspaper Bocas Breeze had a nice article on the mayor of Bocas, mentioning as one of the controversies, that he let a "Survivor type" reality show being shot in a natural reserve (he says that the contract was made with the previous mayor). So the next time you see stuff like that on TV don't forget that the next McDonalds is only a 10 min boatride away, and they could get to the next restaurant on foot.




We took the plane to Panama city, which was promising wonderful views of the country, but unfortunately it rained all the time and i didn't get my free nachos because of the shaky ride (Amelie, one row in front of me did but she only gave me 6 Nachos out of her bag which was not a fair sharing). When we arrived we decided that we are not going to fall into the hand of piratery and won't pay more than 4 USD for our taxi ride to the hostel. It was not a big success. We were firm and skillfully negotiated the price from 5 to 6 USD.
Taxi drivers in Panama are just better than us. Nobody has a meter and nobody is scared to let a ride pass (a ride where we would pay double). At the airport after turning the first guy's offer for 5 down, we were waiting for the next taxi, which arrived 30 min later (in the meantime there were only very few people left) and took us for 6.
During the day were were trying to get a ride to the local Phoenix park. We were assured by locals that the fare should be 1.25 USD. We were thinking, that as we are tourists and don't speak Spanish, we take 3 USD. We had 3 taxi drivers turning down this price. I am not sure why this happens. Obviously there are more trips being asked for than taxis, then as well the drivers don't seem to operate for maximizing their own profits, but rather for maximizing the taxi driver communities' profits - a well working cartel? - I don't know.
Anyways busses are way cooler. Drivers decorate them to perfection, i guess like in India. My favourites are massive looking and sounding sport mufflers and countless spirits of ecstasy on the hood. Any trip costs 25c, but sady they dont go everywhere. So we will have to fight with taxi drivers in the next days.
Otherwise Panama city looks really amazing. The skyline can compete with Shanghai and the old town looks quite fascinating with ghost houses. (The city has been relocated twice. Once because of the pirate, who after destroying the city gave his name to a spicy rum, and once because the people didn't like the old spot any more.) So far we are still soaking up the amosphere, so we will have more details on everything later.

-some more pictures coming here-

Sun bathing stories from Bocas del Toro-Panama

After 3 weeks in Costa Rica, we headed south to the Panamean border to our first stop in Panama: The archipelago of Bocas del Toro. Crossing the border between Costa Rica and Panama in the dusty little town of Sixaola (50km from Puerto Viejo, 90min by public bus) was quite an adventure. The border is located on a rusty bridge where it seems easy to fall down from, if you check the pics below you´ll see what we are talking about. On the other side of the border, a pretty agressive bloke was waiting for tourists to charge them a higher taxi rate and of course as we were not too awake at 8 am, we could not say no and went with his taxi to the city of Changinola where we had to take a boat to the main Island of Bocas: Isla Coloñ. All in all, it took us 4h to reach Bocas and cost us 20$ each (which is 8$ less than the touristy shuttle mowhahaha).
The city of Coloñ is quite touristic (many american tourists) and most of the businesses and shops are tourists oriented. It´s of course a beautiful place with many green islands (full of jungle or mangroves) floating on an emerald water (emerald if sunny). There are not too many beaches and to reach them it´s necessary to take water taxi: pretty cool but not that cheap. We took a boat tour yesterday (with 2 Americans) with which we could discover more the area: we spotted a dolphin and enjoyed snorkeling around the Zapatillas Island. It was really amazing and we felt closer to Nemo and SpongeBob´s world.
Today we took a boat to go to an other island to go to the beach:the Red Frog Beach. It´s a beautiful beach (fine golden sand, emerald water, funky waves and surronded by the jungle) but this all area is subject of controversies as it got bought by an investment company which will transform it in the classic gigantic tourist complex. Despite Bocas del Toro is the main touristic destination of Panama, there are not yet any big hotels or big complex..so well it´s definetly time to visit it before it looses its charms but we would like this place a bit better if there would be less mosquitoes..I feel that my nights and legs don t belong to me anymore:(