Around The World 2005

El Chaltén II - Argentina

2006-12-23T10:05:00.000-08:00

10/24/06
The second day in El Chalten! was shorter but not less interesting. We did another hike during the morning. This time we took the trail that leads to the base of Cerro Torre peak.

From one point in the trail you can see the two most visited mounts in the area, Fitzroy on the right and Cerro Torre on the left.

This trail is very short. From the hostel it took us around one hour to be at the base of Cerro Torre, where we arrive around 08:00 a.m.

Just like most of the snowed picks, at the base of Cerro Torre there is a lake, that forms from the melted snow. We sat across the lake to have breakfast watching the mount and hearing the icebergs cracking.

We were somewhat lucky here, because just a few minutes after we arrived a cloud covered the peak, meaning that, if we had arrived just a few minutes later we would not be able to see Cerro Torre all the way to the top.

Well, we took our time and enjoyed a bit before heading back to the hostel. This trail is very short but well worth, just make sure you go early to get to Cerro Torre before the clouds :)

Back in the hostel we prepared our bags to leave. We took a bust back to El Calafate that left El Chaltén around 4 p.m. Some 10 minutes after driving the bus stopped on the road for everybody to take pictures.

We spent the night in El Calafate

El Chaltén - Argentina

2006-09-23T16:20:00.000-07:00

NOTE:
We are sorry for the lack of update on the trip but unfortunately we are back to the RAT RACE which leaves not much free time for updating here, but we`ll keep posting as we can! Okey dokey?

10/23/05
Well, so we arrived in the tiny El Chalten! Do you know when we joke about a town saying that it is so small that it has only one street?, well, so this is the one!

Why did we come here? El Chalten is located inside the National Park Los Glaciares and it is the base for visiting the Cerro Chaltén (aka Fitzroy 3,405m) and Cerro Torre.

The access from the town to the beginning of the trail is just a matter of minutes by foot and although there are some itineraries where you can take a tent and camp for a couple of days en route it is also perfectly possible to visit the major points in a day walk and return to town to comfortably sleep in a warm nice bed.

We had beautiful day with nice weather and the hike was a delight! As I said, there are a couple of different trails and routes, we chose to do just a day hike and return to the hostel at the end of the day, so all we had to carry was some food for the day and water, really a pleasant walk.

The route started with flowers, nice and tiny indeed!

As you saw on the first picture, the town of El Chaltén lays in a valley, so guess what? any direction you walk to get out of it goes uphill, but in less then an hour of walk you are already rewarded with the astonishing view of the Mountain El Chaltén.

Actually the walk is pretty easy after the first viewpoint and on. Right there we met a guy from Catalunya that took our picture! From there we walked together all the way to the base of El Chaltén and back to the town.

The forest we have to cross to get there is beautiful, peaceful and full of woodpeckers. You can see the damage they do in almost any tree you look at, and of course you can see the birds too. We saw many couples and one interesting thing was the fact that the couples are always made of a whole black bird and a bird with red head, like the one in the picture below.

After you get across the forest start a very hard climb uphill to the base. Here is Angie (on the right) and our Catalan friend searching for new batteries for his camera!

Looking a little more to the right you can see how close we were from the pick.

The name Chaltén comes from a Tehuelche (Ahonikenk) word meaning "smoking mountain," due to a cloud that usually forms in the top of the mountain (just like on the picture below), and it was considered sacred by them.

Can you see a black dot on the bottom right of the picture?

Here is the close up. That is a person standing in the middle of the trail that leads to the rock climb base point.

And that`s me having lunch before the almighty smoking mountain.

Looking back can also provide another astonishing view.

We continued the way to loop back to the town. The problem is that the way back was swampy and we got our feet wet. It is hard to walk outside the trail because the plants here adapt to the lack of rainfall and to the strong winds, so the bushes are really tough.

Some parts of the trail had an elevated walkway.

We entered back into the forest and discovered this weird yellow thing, that we came to learn later it is called `Pan del Indio', as it was called by the early europeans when they arrived and saw that the native indians were eating this fungus.

At the end of the hike, one hour away from the town we passed by the Cerro Torre, another very popular peak among the rock climbers.

And finally were we were back in the town!

And the last pictures is my definition of for peaceful place!!!

At the hostel 'Rancho Grande' we had a nice hot dinner and rested for the following day!

Perito Moreno Glacier - Argentina

2006-07-02T17:51:00.000-07:00

10/22/05

We departed at 08:30 A.M with a small group of tourists to visit the Perito Moreno Glacier. I confess I wasn't really excited to visit that place, after all, it was a glacier, something I had already seen in the Alps and in New Zealand, but I was terribly wrong and it turned out not to be just another glacier.

Perito Moreno is today a National Park, Los Glaciares, and the trip from El Calafate to the entrance of the park takes from one to one and a half hour. On the way a guide told us lots of interesting things about the region.

Well, to begin, the road goes along the huge lake that is 20 kilometers wide and 100 kilometers long. In some days the wind speeds up to 100 km/h making the waves reach up to 3m high. If it wasn't for the wind and the icebergs you could well bring your board and surf on it.

The guide also informed us that Argentina and Chile still dispute the border of that region, they still quite don't agree on which mountains and lakes belong to what side.

The density of the population in Patagonia is of 1 person per square kilometer. The average distance between towns (and they are tiny towns) is of 500 kilometers, sometimes with no gas stations in between.

El Calafate received an airport and a new road, so they expect now more and more tourists to visit Perito Moreno due to the facilities to reach the town, and that only was enough to turn El Calafate into the most expensive town in Argentina. They expect the population to grow from 12 to 50 thousand in the next 10 years.

The town inherited the name from a bush that grows widespread in the region and that produces a little yellow berry that can be used to make jam, but in the past it was rubbed on the casque of the boat to make it more resistant to water.

Early europeans, tried to populate the area but with little success. The environment is not adequate for farming, so any kind of food had to be brought over from very long distances. Some people tried to raise sheep and the towns existing today were actually stops on the way to ship wool to Europe.

While listening all those stories we didn't see the time going by and suddenly we stopped in a viewpoint. The first place where from you can see the Perito Moreno Glacier.

The viewpoint was 6 kilometers away and there I started to see how wrong I was about that being just another glacier because this thing is simply massively huge. Looking into the valley the ice stretches for 30 kilometers (and that is not a typo). The face is 1.5 kilometer wide and the vertical drops are 60m high, something like a 15 stories building.

The view point is still outside the National Park; after that we drove into the Park area, parked the van and walked on the rocky border of the lake to get a bit closer.

From here you can have an extra by touring by boat (12 $US extra). Since we are not fans of boats we preferred to stay on land and explore.

The glacier is constantly moving, there are huge pieces of ice falling into the water every five minutes, the sound is of an explosion, the whole thing is really impressive. For that reason, to make the boat tour safe, it won't get any closer then 300 meters from the face of ice (60 m high).

boat panoramic 1

boat panoramic 2

With this picture you can have another idea of the distance that the boat keeps from the wall.

Here we are, at the end of the little hike by the shore of the lake; you can climb up a hill where from you can get very close to the wall.

This area has lots of smaller pieces that have just fallen from the wall.

We kept moving to other places, there are many different view points where you can observe the glacier. The extension we see here is of 30 km into the valley.

When we were moving to another spot we heard an immense explosion and we looked back instantly. A whole part of the face had fallen into the water.

Again, from another spot, looking into the valley.

Believe it or not, some crazy people tried to hike over this, of course they died and today it is forbidden.

There closest viewpoint.

The corner.

Here we see a very interesting formation. The glacier advances and forms a natural dam, the level of the water on the left is much higher then on the right. At some point during a period of time it breaks out, but it is very difficult to catch that moment, as it depends on the temperature, evolution of the glacier, rain level and many other factors.

A closer shot shows the blue coloration. Because it is highly compacted it has little oxygen which makes it blue. Also, the very face of ice you see here formed hundreds of years ago some 30 kilometers back there in the valley. It slowly slid to get here and finally fall into the lake. So what you see is a quite old piece of ice.

The more blue it is, the less oxygen it has.

Just below this wall is a place where tourists use to have access, but with this thing moving forward so often the result couldn't be another, some people died due to falling blocks of ice and the access to the area was closed.

Well, this thing is really huge and there are hundreds of ways to see it.

A true wonder of nature.

At the end of the day we went back to El Calafate and from there we took a bus to El Chalten.

El Calafate - Argentina

2006-06-04T13:26:00.000-07:00

21/10/05

We woke up in the bus, it was still driving. The sun was already up and I checked the time, it was 6 A.M. From the first seat on the second floor we could see the road stretching far on the horizon, but no other vehicles. On the side of the road there was only empty fields.

We spent the whole morning watching that same landscape until we got to Rio Gallegos, at 12 P.M, a city on the other side of the continent, by the Atlantic Ocean. There we had to get off and change bus. We waited for one hour before boarding again, this time to reach our final destination, El Calafate.

El Calafate was a very small, but very touristic, town. There we found a hostel close to the bus station where we met the owner. Quickly after checking in we scheduled a visit to the Perito Moreno Glacier for the following morning and rented bikes to wander around for the rest of the day.

Yep, after bus riding 1,200 kilometers we went biking!

The place is a birds watching paradise. Right by the town there is a lake ...

... and a birds sanctuary where you can see many different species.

Since there was a kitchen in the hostel, before heading back from the lake we stopped by the supermarket to get some steaks and Argentinean wine for dinner.

Entering Patagonia

2006-05-01T17:52:00.000-07:00

10/19/05

We slept until late (Coyhaique) since the bus was leaving only at 1 p.m. and it was still raining. The trip was actually a mix of bus and boat ride. The bus drove us to Puerto Ibañez, a town just by a lake that spreads into Chilean and Argentinean territory. It is called Lago Carreta on the Chilean side and Lago Buenos Aires on the Argentinean side.

From Puerto Ibañez a ferry-boat took us to Chile Chico ...

... and that was the end of our ticket, some three hours after we had left Coyhaique we were again on our on, this time right at the boarder of Chile and Argentina.

There was only one cab driver waiting in Chile Chico which happened to help us. We told him we wanted to go into Argentina; so after we negotiated a price, he drove us to the border (it is quite far and it is not a walkable distance), waited for us to get the papers done and then took us to Los Antiguos on the Argentinean side. The scary thing here is that this is the absolutely nowhere land and all the immigration paper work is done by the army.

Here was the first time we got a feeling of being in Patagonia. The driver was nice and stopped when he saw we were trying to snap a shot of the landscape.

Well, now we were in Argentinean land and had again to figure out transport. In Los Antiguos we were left by the bus station where we bought a bus ticket to Calafate, the nearest town to the National Park Los Glaciares, The only problem was that Calafate was some 1,200 kilometers away from Los Antiguos, and dude that is a long ride.

The cool thing was that it was an excellent two-floor bus with movies, coffee and water and absolutely no other passengers, just Angie and I. The bus left at 8 p.m and drove non-stop into the night.

Where? Google Earth shows!

2006-04-22T17:06:00.000-07:00

Hello guys, we are happy to know that there are still some people out there checking this blog. Sorry for it being so late, but we are now established in Brazil and recently started working, we are technically back into the system! So there hasn't been much free time to update.

The good news though is that we won't drop out the blog here; we will still publish the rest of the pictures to the end of the trip. The second good news is that we will also publish the Google Earth location files (.kmz), so even if you are bad in geography (and we know you are not) you have an easy way to picture where the hell we are heading to.

The idea to use Google Earth is because sometimes we cover a lot of a ground but we fail to pass down that meaning through the text. That is specially valid for the previous post, where we went from eight hours north of Lima in Peru to south of Chile.

Here is our departing point, Huaraz, where from we took a bus to Lima, then a flight to Santiago, then a flight to Balmaceda, we hope you have fun browsing Google Earth and that it helps you to have a better Idea of our path and to keep track of if.

Sorry to assume that you already know what Google Earth is, if you don't, please download and install it in your computer, it is free and it is great. We'll let you find out the details on your own, have fun and check back in a while for the next posts, we have some good shots of Patagonia, along with Google Earth location files :)

Back to Chile heading to Patagonia

2006-03-29T12:18:00.000-08:00

10/17/05
Although Huaraz had many more adventures to offer we could not stay any longer. We had to follow up with our master plan and head south. The itinerary was long, from Huaraz to Lima by bus, then a flight from Lima to Santiago and then another flight from Santiago to Balmaceda, the goal? to reach Patagonia.

Well, first things first. The part Huaraz-Lima was ok. We left Huaraz around 1 p.m. and arrived in Lima after eight hours of mountain traveling. There was a religious celebration going on half way to Lima; South America is very catholic and you can't help but noticing it. But that was it, no other surprises to tell.

In Lima we took a cab to the airport and arrived well in advance from our flight schedule, the plane left only at 12:20 a.m.

10/18/05
A couple of hours later we were landing in Santiago. At 8:30 a.m. we boarded again, this time to Balmaceda. The surprise here was that half of the plane was taken by Brazilians tourists. I'm not kidding, they were more than fifty and all part of a single huge group; to make it more clear, the whole airplane was a big mess.

Before we hit Balmaceda the airplane made a stop in Puerto Montt to drop the Brazilian troop. Another half hour later we landed safe and sound in Balmaceda but this little town in the south of Chile didn't offer much to explore, indeed we were told right away in the airport to head to Coyaique, another little town one hour north. The former, as opposed to the later, had some tour agencies where we could get more info on where to go and how.

The trip to Coyaique was a good way to see a little bit of the landscape which surprisingly resembled the north of New Zealand with grassy hills; it was only missing the sheep. It was raining and the sky was clouded and grey.

In Coyaique we found a place to stay and spoke to a tour agency where we found that there are actually nice things to do around here like hiking and mountaineering, but because of the weather we preferred to move south to visit the National Park Los Glaciares, in Argentina and then follow up to the National Park Torres del Paine, back into Chile.

Once all that was decided we bought a bus ticket, for the following day, to go to Chile Chico, the Chilean town at the boarder with Argentina.

Pisco - Peru

2006-02-25T15:43:00.000-08:00

10/16/05
After having experienced a little bit of ice climbing in Pastoruri we left in the morning for Pisco, a mountain rated as easy for the experienced climbers but a challenge for us.
The first thing was to get back to Huascaran National Park, where the trail starts from, and that was again done through public transport. On the way we passed by a school parade that was about to start and saw many girls dressed in typical clothes.

They grouped while the last preparations were still being made for the parade to start.

Others were running to catch up ...

... while teachers took care of the smaller ones.

Well, we kept going following our way to Huascaran. The National Park charges a 20 US dollars entrance fee for foreigners but since we had paid for the Santa Cruz Trek we didn't have to pay it again.

We started to hike around 12 p.m. ...

... and the way was quite strenuous because it is a two and a half hour of steep trail to the camp site; although it is not long, it is hard. At one point we had to make a stop.

At the camp site there was just one more guy, an Italian, with its guide, so it was quiet and cool. It was cold but surprisingly our guide didn't take a tent for himself, just a sleeping bag. He has done this so many times that he finds the tent to be unnecessary, there is a cave nearby where he and some other guides are used to sleep.

Looking to the right from the same point where the picture above was taken, it is possible to see our goal, Pisco. It is possible to see also a lodge ran by Italians where you can have a warm and nice bed for 20 US dollars, ...

... but being in a room might make you miss some of the spectacles happening outside. At sunset, the sunlight lit the white snow covered wall of the mountain which was reflected through a sparse cloud between the mountain and us. The result was a lit giant cloud curtain backlit by the sunlight.

Before the night came, we prepared dinner and all the equipment. We went to bed around 6:30 p.m. to rest a little before tackling Pisco. The plan was to leave the camp site at 1 a.m.

10/17/05
After a little bit of sleep we woke up at 12:30 a.m. in a freezing temperature and absolute clear sky lit by millions of stars and a full moon.
We prepared breakfast with hot tea and coffee to help warm up, ate bread and cookies and started walking at 1:20 a.m.

The moon light was enough to see the way, which was much harder then I thought. From the campsite we had a steep climb to the beginning of the moraine. The rocks in this area are constantly carried around by the glacier as it advance and retreat, so it is the most irregular terrain you can imagine. It took us some two hours to cross it and there was not a single step in a flat area. At least there was one thing we could not complain about, the visibility was great, even in the dark the mountain around were all at sight lit by moonlight.

When we reached the glacier we made a stop to put the crampons on. When we removed our gloves (because it is impossible to put the crampons on wearing gloves) we noticed how much the temperature had dropped. We simply couldn't manage to stay without gloves. Then it was fun when we had to put the rope through the harnesses because our hands were completely frozen and it was impossible to make a knot. With the help of our guide, Pedro, everything was set and we started moving as soon as possible to avoid being completely frozen.

The march on ice finally started. The sight at night was fantastic, we were walking into an immense smooth grayish carpet from which we couldn't see the end. Unfortunately, because of the absence of light and the absurd low temperature, I didn't even try to make pictures.

Uphill we followed our guide; Angie was in the middle of the rope and I was the last one. As we walked up the sky was getting brighter on the east and the moon was disappearing on the west and all of that was watched from the middle of a sea of snow rounded by magnificent peaks.

Some time around 5 a.m. we had to do a harder move, fortunately there was enough light for pics. The guide climbed up half way the wall to set a base while we waited ...

... since Angie was in the middle of the rope she was the second one to ascend while the guide belayed her from up there.

When I arrived he had to remove the base and move up going around the corner and passing under the huge lethal ice stalactites.

Although it wasn't completely vertical it was damn scary, because we were really high and a fall could be fatal.

But everything was fine, Pedro set up the next base and belayed our way up.

From there we stopped a bit to look around.

We were marveled with the sight and kept going. The day had come, it wasn't so cold anymore and from what we saw, the hardest move had been done already.

The summit seemed close ...

... but the last hour lasted an eternity. The sensation was of a never ending last meters.

Just a bit before we reached the top a huge explosion noise broke the silence, we looked back and saw an avalanche. The noise was scary and other smaller avalanches happened in the sequence but I just managed to shoot a small one.

The avalanche also broke our feeling of an endless walk, when we noticed the summit was just a few meters away.

We reached the top exactly at 7:40 a.m. and the first thing Angie did was to lay down.

She was dead tired, but happy!

We were now looking the mountains from the same height.

All around was white under a stunning blue sky.

The chocolate at the top was doubtless the best chocolate I've ever had.

Click here for a panoramic 1

We were lucky with the weather, it was clear in every direction.

The huge smooth white face of the mountain you see now was climbed by our guide, he told us. It has 900 meters and it was mandatory to achieve certification by the Casa de Guias, where he learned much of what he know about climbing and mountaineering. He did all the way to the top and back down alone in 12 hours, using only two ice axes, no rope, and for food he carried a bottle of coke, quite amazing.

Here is Pedro, our guide.

Click here for a panoramic 2

Many other peaks can be seen with snow ready trigger avalanches.

We couldn't stay there for too long and although we would we had to start walking back down.

The way down was easier but far from being easy.

The great thing was to see what we didn't see when we came up because it was dark. Pedro drove us through a maze of crevasses.

You really must know the way, the more we walked down more we were amazed by the locations we had passed through not really seeing it.

With the sun getting higher we had to make a stop for some sunscreen.

Here you can see our steps when we walked uphill, but the crevasse I only saw when going down.

When we got back to the little corner with stalactites the route changed a little bit.

Instead of walking down we were going to rappel. While Pedro was setting the rappel station we just waited and enjoyed the wonder.

I was the first one to rappel, then Angie came down.

I ate quite a lot of snow and ice from down there looking up trying to photograph.

To reach the base where I was waiting for them wasn't exactly easy, the last step was a bit tricky.

Then up there Pedro was left alone, he pulled up the rope and came down just relaying on his ice axes and crampons. The little black dot you see is Pedro in the beginning of his descent.

And here on the tricky last step.

From the little base we still had a little more of rappelling before reaching the ground to resume walking.

Again I was the first one followed by Angie and then Pedro.

Once we resumed walking the crevasses didn't stop showing up, it was amazing, some were quite big.

The formations were beautiful.

And remember, Pisco might be rated easy but if you don't know how to avoid a crevasse it might be your end.

The place was wonderful though and we'll definitely come back to do more.

The ice forms what we can call small canyons, this one is really big and impressive too.

Around 09:45 a.m. we reached the end of the glacier and entered again the moraine.

We reached the campsite at 11:30 a.m. and were back in Huaraz around 3 p.m.

Pastoruri - Peru

2006-02-20T12:39:00.000-08:00

10/15/05
Well, we kept on our trekking marathon. Right on the following morning after coming back from Santa Cruz we left for Pastoruri. What we really wanted to do was to summit Pisco, 5752 meters, a very popular mountain near Huaraz. Pisco is an ever snow covered mountain and it requires ice-climbing gear and ice-climbing skills which we didn't have.

To fill up that gap we rented the gear and hired a guide (from Casa de Guias) for an ice-climbing and walking on glacier class. Pastoruri was ideal because of the altitude, 5200 meters and the easy access. It is possible to drive almost all the way to the glacier where we practiced both ice-climbing and walking on glacier with crampons.

The walk from the parking to the glacier is already worth visiting Peru. We arrived there around 8 a.m. and (we left at 6 a.m. from Huaraz) and walked slowly enjoying that environment until we reached the glacier. It was a wonderful sunny day.

At the bottom of the ice, our guide quickly explained how to walk, how to keep the rope and how to use the axe. I was surprised because I thought it would be more complicated but there are no mysteries at all, it is just very tiring.

The guide, obviously, led the way up.

Within not more than half an hour it was possible to watch far away.

Click here for a panoramic

We learned the correct way to walk uphill and downhill, it is different. We also learned what to do if a friend falls, how to block and stop the slide and the most important how to identify potential crevasses.

Here we are going down.

Because the snow was little it was easy to see the crevasses, but holes like this can easily be covered with snow hiding the danger. That is when a good guide is most important.

In this class we could see something I was very curious about. How to set a rappel station on ice.
First he put the long red rope on a little peak of ice as a natural (but quite unreliable) point of safety. Then he cleaned the snow on the left until he got to the ice and screwed down the ice screw (covered on the picture). Then he repeated the same procedure with a second ice screw on the right side (still not screwed on the picture).

And that was it; using that we were belayed down back to the ground from a somewhat 12m high wall of ice.

After we were belayed down to safety our guide came down on his own, with no rope, only relaying on his crampons and ice axe. You can see on the picture the rope is not being used.

For us beginners the rope was mandatory and we did our first ascent on ice climb via top rope.

This one is Angie

It was a very cool class and we found it to be very easy to ice climb, walk with the crampons, which made us very comfortable for the next day in Pisco. Ice climbing is easier then rock climbing because it does not require much technique; as long there is ice you can move up, but it is very tiring too, because the axe has its weight and each hit on the wall demands quite a bit of energy. Anyway we loved it!

After a couple of ascents we started to walk back to the car to head back to Huaraz.

The road that crosses the park does not allow much speed, so we laid back and enjoyed the ride with magnificent sceneries.

We made a couple of short stops on the way before we got out of the park. There is this amazing plant, Puya Raimondi, which is considered to be the tallest flower spike and largest bromeliad in the world. It can grow up to 12m in height and it can live to around 80 to 100 years. Once in its lifetime, it will bloom for 3 months, after which it dies. Apparently, this plant is near extinction now, found only in Peru and Bolivia in locations above 4,000m above sea level. Such an amazing-looking plant!

The land here is loaded with minerals, there is a small pound with an absolute transparent water that allows to see through all the way to the bottom and the walls of it. The blue is amazing, it is like if a computer had put a lake with freaky colors on you screen, but this one is REAL. There are many variations of blue, the borders are redish and the green is also reflected from the bushes and as you move your stand point the colors change too, really awesome.

Another interesting stop was a water exit where gas comes out, but not like geyser, the water is not thrown in the sky but the bubbling (from gas) is constant. The color is also weird, it is red. There is even a sign saying that the water is potable and good for the health. We didn't try, but we snapped a shot.

As we moved out of the park the mountains were more and more distant.

Inside the park there are some people actually living in these huts, they take care of stock of cows.

There is so much mineral that the mountains are rainbow like.

But you don't have to be in the park to have amazing views. Arriving back in Huaraz, it is possible to see from the road part of Cordillera Blanca where Pisco is, our next climb for the following day.

Santa Cruz - Peru

2006-02-06T11:17:00.000-08:00

10/9/05
We had a very long and lazy morning, we didn't do much because after 4 days in the Inca Trail we really needed a little rest. But we didn't want to waste time, the plan was to head north to get to Huaraz, we had lunch in a nice little restaurant and then went to the bus station to figure out how to get there.
There was no direct bus and we had to split the trip in 2, the first part was 1.153 kilometers to Lima, the capital, and then from there another 400 kilometers to Huaraz.

The bus left at 4 p.m. and the trip took some 20 hours to Lima. The bus was very comfortable though.

10/10/05
We arrived around 12:30 p.m. in Lima. The city was noisy and crowded with heavy traffic from both vehicles and people. At the bus station we had to figure out another bus, this time from Lima to Huaraz. As soon as we stepped out the bus a taxi-driver-leech got stuck on us, he wanted to carry our bags straight into his cab even before knowing where we wanted to go. When we asked for a bus to Huaraz we found out that it departs from another bus station. Despite the annoyance of the leech we ended up taking him. The ride to the other bus station was obviously overcharged but absolutely worth because we caught the bus to Huaraz at 1 p.m.

So we stayed only half an hour in the Big Lima, from where it took 8 hours to Huaraz. Again the bus was very comfortable and it included food, soda and water! The road to Huaraz was very interesting because it goes through mountains to reach the city that lies in a valley known throughout Peru as El Callejón de Huaylas.

We arrived in Huaraz around 9 p.m. and went to check a hotel. The guy that brought us to the hotel also had tours to offer and since we already knew what we wanted to do it was just a matter of agreeing on the price. So before 10 p.m. we were already set to depart on the following day to do a four-day trek called Santa Cruz.

That was really an amazing thing because we left from Cuzco the day before and travelled for twenty hours to Lima where from we figured out, in less then half an hour, a connection to Huaraz. After another eight hours on the road we arrived quite late but even though we managed to schedule a trek for the following morning.

10/11/05 - 1st Day
Well, after so much traveling we started our first day in Huaraz quite early, at 07:10 a.m. we left the hotel with the guide to go to the beginning of the trail. To get there we used public transport and at the bus station we met other two people that formed our group, a French guy and a Cambodian girl.

From Huaraz we followed to Caraz and there we had to hire a cab to take us to Cashapampa where we started walking from 2,900m. The whole trip from Huaraz to the beginning of the trail was close to two hours.

The trail cuts through a magnificent valley where we saw many possibilities of rock climb.

Here is the beginning and entrance of the valley where we started walking at 2,900 meters.

We made a stop for a snack and arrived at the first campsite, Llamacorral, at 3,760 meters. From the campsite we could see the top of Taulliraju with its 5,830 meters.

Before it got dark our guide prepared dinner for the group and we chatted a bit. We learned that the guy works for a French bank and has 8 weeks of vacation, wow! And the girl was one of the lucky ones that escaped the crazy Pol Pot in Cambodia and made her life in France.

10/12/05 - 2nd day
We started around 8 in the morning and kept walking higher and into the valley, crossing streams of water ...

... lakes and stock of cows that seem to live in paradise.

Here on the second day we got a bit of rain, but at the end of the day it was fine again!

This time the campsite, Taullipampa, was at 4,250 meters and we were much closer to Taulliraju.

10/13/05 - 3rd day
On the third day we were getting high, literally. The pass was at 4,750 meters and it is called Punto Union. For each step higher we did, the Taulliraju seemed bigger.

And when we looked back to the valley we had walked into, it was hard to stop staring at such wonderful sight and start walking again.

Click here for a close panoramic of the valley

Click here for a far panoramic of the valley

Taulliraju kept growing bigger and bigger as we climbed up just next to it.

The only problem is that to admire such wonders we have so little time.

The trail started to become more and more rocky.

At the very bottom of Taulliraju there is a turquoise lake formed with water from melted snow.

There we also met a big group of French retired people (aging from 65 to 78), everybody got together to enjoy the view.

The view of the lake from far:

The guides make a lot of use of horses and donkeys to transport food and tents, sometimes they don't make it.

At one point the trail disappeared, the way was completely on the rock marked by little piles os stones.

Then we reached Punto Union, the pass, and we could watch the other side.

Click here for panoramic of the valley

The way was now going down, much easier.

Although we were very close to snow the temperature was fine, but I think that the smaller amount of oxygen affected Angie...

As we walked down the valley, we crossed many pounds of shallow waters that mirrored the surroundings creating interesting and beautiful views.

Angie loves trekking and by her face anyone can tell she was happy!

The valley turned grassy ...

... and we crossed a Queñoua forest, a very rare tree with no bark that grows only above 3000.

The campsite, Huaripampa, was at 3,700 meters.

10/14/05 - 4th day
On the fourth day we approached some farmer villages ...

... where we saw how hard life is around here.

But nonetheless, with its rewards.

When we were spotted on the trail by these two boys they ran up to us and started singing, it can break your heart.

Their house.

A local spins wool, a common activity around here.

The walk on the last day finished early, by lunch time! Our guide arranged a van to take us back to Huaraz. But before the van took us to llanganuco lgunas, at 3850 meters 26 km from Yungay.

After a little wait in Ilanganuco Igunas we departed to go back to Huaraz crossing the Huascarán National Park where lies the highest peak of Peru with 6,788 meters.

We had then another amazing mountain road trip through tortuous unpaved road rounding lakes and defying life.

The pictures were hard to make because it is through a dirty window of a shaking van packed with 13 passengers made of locals and tourists.

The road was a tour apart, so many peaks can be seen, so many lakes and the thin trail is actually the road.

Sometimes I ventured the camera out the window ...

... and when I saw this I just couldn't believe it. The only way down the steep face of the mountain was by zigzagging one of the most scary things I've ever seen.

Here you can have an idea, from the top looking down.

At the very middle of the descent some one called for a pee stop.

When we got to an advantage point the valley of Huascaran National Park revealed the amazing lakes.

But the road continued to be scary.

When we finally got down there we could check from close the amazing color of the water.

It was also close to two hours to get back to Huaraz. After all that we still had time to visit the famous Casa de Guias and schedule an ice-climbing class for the following day!!! Where we found energy for all that I don't know!

Inca Trail - Peru

2006-01-20T08:50:00.000-08:00

10/5/05 - 1st Day
The first of four days of walk through the ancient Inca Trail was the easiest one. Our guide picked us up at the hotel around 8 a.m. Our transport was a small bus that had also two other groups, at first we thought we would be part of a bigger group but in fact we were only four, Angie, Danny, Doris and I, the other people had other guides. The bus drove for about one and a half hour from Cuzco to the starting point of the trek.

The place is known as Km 82, but before we got there we made a stop at a small village (which I can’t remember the name) near Km 82. Whatever you might have forgotten, can be bought at this last stop. We bought more water, snacks and ponchos . Then the bus brought us to the beginning of the trail, by then it was already almost noon. We got off the bus in an area with many other groups and our guide introduced his support team: a cook, a cook assistant and a porter. We had our first lunch right there, spaghetti with tomato sauce.

After lunch the guide started walking with us and left behind the three other guys. Within a few minutes of walk we crossed the first check point, which is quite rigorous by the way. We had to present our passports, the guide had to prove he was a guide and had a permit for the whole group. From the check point the walk was fairly easy. The trail led to a farm ...

... where we had a break.

From the farm the trail became steep and climbed up a hill where from we saw the first Inca ruins, the terraces of Patallaqa.

Since there was not much more ground to cover, we made another break here, enjoyed the view of the valley and the stories told by the guide.

We reached the first campsite, in Huayllabamba at 3,000m around 4:30 p.m. Somehow the three guys we left behind were already there, with our tents set and with tea and pop corn waiting for us. The place was also a little farm where we got to meet the locals living there.

Inside the house they raise guinea pigs, a delicacy in the region.

10/6/05 - 2nd Day
The second day was very different from the first one. We started early with an awesome breakfast prepared by our cook. First tea, coffee and hot chocolate, hot bread and then omelets. All the food was not in vain, the guide described the trail and prepared us for the hardest day of the trek, 6 hours of walking up hill, from 3,000m to 4,200m and then one more hour down to 3,600m.

Again we left the three other guys behind, they still had to unset the tents and wash all the dishes while we headed to the trail. The first surprise was the amount of people we found competing for a spot to step, the trail resembled to a procession.

The Inca Trail is the world's most popular trek in the planet. Each day 500 new trekkers gain the trail, and that is because the government limited the number of people to 500 by selling permits and installing checkpoints on the way, otherwise there would be much more.

Other sights, though, can easily make you forget the number of people.

Not to mention how much fun it is to walk with friends.

Angie and Doris were always a head, while Danny and I were always eating dust behind.

The last hour before reaching the pass was the most difficult one. Believe me, when you walk only uphill, and uphill only, each step seems heavier, the backpack seems heavier and a minute lasts an eternity.

Here is the valley ...

... and a close look on the trail just before reaching the pass.

Here is our hero, Danny, fighting to win over the last steps to reach the 4,200m.

We were walking on the beginning of the raining season, so the sky was clouded and at the top was a little bit cold. Doris didn't have enough by climbing up to the pass and decided to go a little further.

On the way down to Pacaymayu, the campsite at 3,600m, we had rain and we had to cover.

10/7/05 - 3rd Day
The third day was somewhat easier than the previous but made of up and downs. Right after we started, going uphill, we reached Runkurakay at 3,800m.

The funny thing is to see how porters handle their job, with HEAVY (I mean it) load, wearing simple sandals or sometimes even flip-flops shout from the back asking for room to pass. They go really fast uphill ...

... and literally run downhill. As if it wasn't amazing enough this particular one plays a happy melody with his flute while carrying the massive load on the improvised 'backpack'.

Then we reached the first of two passes of the day.

From that point we went down through a cloud forest, dense and humid, the ultimate test for the knees.

The scenery in which we walked through was green, cloudy, wet and above all beautiful.

On the second pass we were higher then the clouds, that made a window for us to observe the range of snow caped mountains.

Further ahead we passed by two other archeological sites, Sayacmrca at 3,580m ...

... and Puyupatamarca at 3,640m with many water channels ...

and finally finished the day in Wiñaywayna camp site at 2,650m.

10/8/05 - 4th Day
The last day was the most interesting, the day we entered Machu Picchu. We started around 5:30 a.m, even before the gates of the last checkpoint was open. People line up because everyone wants to be the first one there. Why? Because at 11:00 a.m. the train coming from Cuzco carrying a load of other 500 tourists arrives, so after 11:00 a.m Machu Picchu gets kind of crowded and the enjoyment is fairly reduced.
So we went early. The walk almost became a race. After two hours we got to the Sun Gate, the place where from is possible to have the first sight of Machu Picchu.

It is one more hour from here to the actual Machu Picchu. The mountains are quite unique.

The arrival on the city couldn't be better. The first thing you see is the most classic picture of Machu Picchu.

Then we started exploring the city.

We passed the guard houses ...

... and walked through the maze of stairs and corridors that gives access to the different areas of Machu Picchu.

Their work with the stones were really amazing, millions of stones were carved to perfection, ...

... each block was tailored to fit a specific spot, every one!

Llamas are freely walking among the tourists and don't seem to bother.

Wayna Picchu is the small mount you see in the picture bellow and can be climbed up, if you still have energy, via stairs with help of cables and handrails. We didn't do it.

What you see now is from Machu Picchu looking down. The road to the nearest city, Aguas Calientes, flows the river and goes around the mountain, it is possible to take a bus there but it costs 6 extra bucks. We (meaning Angie) decided to cover it by walking, so after so much up and down inside Machu Picchu we had an extra hour and a half to get to Aguas Calientes.

There, we went to a restaurant for lunch and to celebrate our trek with our guide.

From Aguas Calientes we took a train back to Cuzco.

Cuzco and Pisaq

2005-12-30T05:20:00.000-08:00

10/4/05

Pisaq

The second day in Cuzco was not meant to visit only Cuzco. We went in the morning to the neighboring town Pisaq, 32 Km away. Still in Cuzco we had to walk around a little bit ...

... to find the local bus to Pisaq.

The trip is short and cheap, only 2 Nuevos Soles (1US=3.8 soles).

Pisaq has a market on the central square surrounded by well preserved colonial buildings now converted into nice hotels, restaurants and cafes.

On the market, there are tons of goods ...

... varying from waving, ...

... ponchos and sweaters ...

... to all kinds of art, paintings and handcrafts.

Doris even tried out some instruments.

The market and the tourists attract traditional dressed locals that are making some Soles posing for pictures.

When the rain came we jumped into a nice cafe, not really traditional, but really really nice. A big menu of very original juices, nice jazzy music and cozy environment where we waited for the rain to stop.

From the second floor of the building we watched life going on on the square and I really would like to know what that tourist said to the seller to make her so astonished.

Then we explored the streets away from the touristic square. Narrow alleys with a slow life pace...

For lunch we experienced what a local eats for lunch. A little restaurant, packed with families and workers, that serves only one thing, almuerzo. Indeed the sign on the entrance says, Hoy Almuerzo (Today lunch), at night the sign changes to Hoy Cena (Today dinner) and in the morning you can imagine what it says.

Almuerzo means literally lunch, but in fact it is a menu set composed of a soup, a main dish, a drink and a dessert, all for 2.50 Nuevos Soles.

Back to Cuzco

After lunch we decided to go back to Cuzco. We took the same bus back with no problems, but with one little story to tell.

We caught the bus on the last minute before it departed, so it was full, there were no available seats. The guy in charge of collecting the fares shouted to the people in the bus "Give a seat for the tourists!". The fact that we were considered entitled to have a seat was not the most absurd thing, but actually who stood up to offer the seat, a poor cholita with a baby in her arms and a big bag. We, of course, did’t accept and remained standing in the full bus with the others. The poor girl still insisted in giving her place and Angie repeated "no" a couple of times. While the cholita was unnecessarily saying thank you to Angie, the guy that collect the fares was still shouting "Give a seat to the tourists!".

Well, a couple of minutes later we arrived in Cuzco and headed to visit the church of Santo Domingo, or it is maybe better to say: the ancient sacred Inca temple Coricancha, the most important of the Inca Empire.

The wonderfully carved granite walls of the temple, probably the finest of all Inca stone carvings, were covered with more than 700 sheets of pure gold, weighing around two kilograms each; the spacious courtyard ...

... was filled with life-size sculptures of animals and a field of corn, all fashioned from pure gold; the floors of the temple were themselves covered in solid gold; and facing the rising sun was a massive golden image of the sun encrusted with emeralds and other precious stones. (All of this golden artwork was quickly stolen and melted down by the fckng Spaniards, who then built a church of Santo Domingo on foundations of the temple.)

The Coricancha (sometimes spelled Qoricancha) was also the centerpiece of a vast astronomical observatory and calendrical device for precisely calculating precessional movement. Emanating from the temple were forty lines called seques, running arrow-straight for hundreds of miles to significant celestial points on the horizon. Four of these seques represented the four intercardinal roads to the four quarters of Tawantinsuyu, others pointed to the equinox and solstice points, and still others to the heliacal rise positions of different stars and constellations highly important to the Inca.

To finish the day, we walked a bit more through the cobblestone streets lined up with Inca-built stonewalls which now form the foundations of colonial buildings.

Cuzco is the oldest continuously inhabited city of the American continent. Legend says it was founded in the 1100s by the Incas but archeological record shows that the area was occupied by other cultures for several centuries before the rise of the Incas.

After all that the stomach was calling for attention. We had a dinner at the best Peruvian style, pollo a la brasa. You would be scared to see this, Doris and Angie were so hungry that they literally sucked the poor chicken to the bones :D

All that food was a preparation for the following day, when we started walking the ancient trail to the sacred city of the Incas, Macchu Pichu.

From Puno to Cuzco

2005-12-27T11:45:00.000-08:00

10/3/05
Well, Puno itself didn't have much to offer, so we left at 8 a.m. for Cuzco. We had a two-floor bus and we managed to get the four front seats on the upper level which provides an excellent panoramic view ...

... of the nice landscape we went through.

Mountains were all around and the vegetation kept changing as we got higher. It got drier and drier, the threes disappeared and at one point the vegetation was mainly composed of bushes. After the pass, at 4.300 meters, the road went always down until it reached Cuzco, at 3.400 meters.

We were stopped on the way by a police checkpoint. They looked through the luggage's of all the passengers and they found a lot of stuff to keep. We could watch and hear the cry of some passengers that lost some goods.

Then the bus made a stop in a smaller village on the way.

Sellers are not allowed in the bus station, so there is the fence to keep them out, but a strategically placed gap allows the passengers to buy snacks or refreshment anyway.

Because we had a reservation in a hotel in Cuzco, there was someone waiting for us at the bus station. We were brought to the hotel where we arrived around 4:30 p.m. At night we went to see this fabulous charming city built on the foundation of Inca walls.

We had also booked a trek to Machu Picchu with www.hikingperu.com. We found their office and confirmed our depart on the 10/5. Everything was perfectly fine. We had the rest of the night to walk around and explore the streets that were full of people; there was a festival going on and the students of the school of San Francisco de Assis were getting ready for a parade.

Meanwhile we walked through the Plaza de Armas, snapped into the church La Compañia de Jesus and got a glimpse of its interior. It contains stones from the palace of Inca and it was partially destroyed in 1986 by an earthquake. It has a baroque facade and it is one of the most ornate of Cuzco. It is the church on the right side of the following picture.

When enough was enough we went back to the hotel.

Titicaca Lake - Peru

2005-12-13T23:39:00.000-08:00

10/1/05
Our second day in Peru was also the so awaited "DD Day", the day we met two great friends from NY that decided to join us on their vacation, Danny and Doris.

Angie and I spent the morning at Ricos Pan, the excellent Peruvian bakery, having breakfast, working on the pictures for the blog and waiting for the time to go to the airport, in Juliaca, to pick-up our friends. Juliaca is the neighboring town where the airport is located, one hour away from Puno.

We left around 1 p.m. in a private taxi to Juliaca, where we passed quickly by the center of the town and then headed to the airport. The flight arrived at 4:20 p.m. and we welcomed them with balloons and a Bolivian hat.

Back in Puno, after Danny and Doris checked in, we went around to visit the main street and then looked for a nice restaurant to celebrate our meeting.

Danny brought a bottle of Pinot Gris from France and we opened it at the restaurant. We had Llama, Beef, Trout and Guini Pig. Later another bottle of Casillero del Diablo and to finish Pisco Sour. Wow, after all that alcohol everyone was speaking, perfectly, Spanish.

During the dinner, out of nothing, a parade passed outside, just by the window. There were many people playing acoustic guitars while dancers performed.

10/2/05
The day started early, we left puno at 7:30 a.m. ...

... for a tour on the Titicaca Lake, the world's highest navigable lake, at 3820 meters high with 180Km of length and 60Km of width.

There are two interesting places in the lake to be visited, The Floating Islands and Taquile Island. The first one is populated by the Uros people, that found out they could build up floating islands, made of tortora reeds which grow abundantly in the shallows of the lake, to isolate themselves from other tribes, the Collas and the Incas. It took us some 30 minutes by boat to get there.

In fact there are many tiny islands; we visited two. Locals came out to greet us on our arrival.

There, our guide gave us an overview about the lake and how the tribe lives. From the reeds they don’t make only the island, but also eat it. The greener part can be peeled of and it is known as the banana del Titicaca. During the overview a family sat aside to demonstrate.

Danny and Angie could also calm their stomach.

A curious bird landed in the middle of the group in hope of some food.

Beyond the island and food, the reed is also used to make boats, very nice boats indeed.

Boats are used between islands and move out of the lake to bring other things they need, like stones, woods and other kinds of food.

Kids do not have much space to run and play, though they take a lot of attention from the tourists.

The isolation of the Uros people from other tribes and the lifestyle they developed led them to adapt physically to the unusual environment they live in. Their legs are now shorter and their feet are softer than the people living on land. That is because by living in a such tiny island, they walk very little and the soft ground modified their feet.

Here is our boat going through the reeds.

After we visited two floating islands we started a slow boring trip to Taquile, two and a half hours away from Uros.

The lake is so big that it resembles the sea.

Due to the altitude (and probably amplified by the drinking on the previous night) Danny wasn't feeling 100%, the trip to Taquile seemed even longer to him.

Anyway, at one point we got there and we found Taquile a fascinating island, where people wear colorful traditional clothes which they make themselves and sell in the island’s cooperative store. The work is divided between men and women. The women spin the wool ...

... and the kids are not spared ...

... while the men neat the clothes.

It was a sunday, the day of the week they hold a ceremony at the main square in front of the church; and we got to see it!

On the way to the main square, with the altitude and the strong sun, Danny started to feel worse. It was when a friendly old lady, a Peruvian tourist in our group, voluntarily offered her knowledge in help of our New Yorker friend, which Danny kindly accepted. But her methods were quite alternative; she jumped on Danny’s hair and started to pull selected chucks of it, after each strong pull she blowed the root of the chunk she was holding and asked Danny if he was feeling better. She kept pulling until Danny miserably announced he was ok. If Danny didn’t get better at least one thing is sure, he forgot it for a few minutes. Here is a picture of the surgery.

We arrived at the main square just few minutes before the ceremony started, women were gathering for the weekly event.

The high rank men stood and made a speech ....

... while the others gathered around.

One, very peculiar, detail of the people living in Taquile is that the single man must wear a red and white hat ...

... while a married man do wear a completely red hat.

The lunch was in a communal restaurant where we had fish from Titicaca and soup while a young musician performed traditional music, sang in Quechua, for us.

At the end of the tour, while walking back to the boat the lake was strangely reflecting the white clouds.

The boredom of 3 hours in a boat to get back to the shore, combined with Danny’s bad condition made him collapse, and our camera was there to capture this kodak moment :D

Copacabana - Bolivia

2005-12-11T06:00:00.000-08:00

09/30/05
Our time in Bolivia had come to an end, our next move was to get to Puno, in Peru. The bus though, did a one hour stop in Copacabana (3,800 meters high), a sunny town ...

... on the southern shore of Lake Titicaca, on the border with Peru.

But in this Copacabana there is no samba, beaches or small bikinis. In the 16th century, miracles began happening after the town was presented with a statue of the Virgin Mary, and since that time, Copacabana slowly became the destination for pilgrims from all over the country. Today the Virgin is the patron saint of Bolivia and it can be seen in the huge sparkling white Cathedral built between 1668 and 1678.

Panoramic of the Cathedral

The town is a base for visiting the Titicaca, so it is used to receive not only pilgrims but also tourists from all over the world. The street is very animated with colorful food stalls and religious souvenir shops.

Around 1 pm we departed from Copacabana, crossed the border, and arrived in Puno by the end of the day, around 5 pm.

After checking in the hotel we went on the main street for a stroll.

La Paz II - Bolivia

2005-12-05T15:59:00.000-08:00

After several days of trekking, we didn’t do much besides wandering around the different neighborhoods of La Paz. The business center with its modern glass buildings and the main flowered avenue contrasts a lot with the rest of the city. We headed then towards more popular neighborhoods with markets along the road where they sell food in the dust of passing cars.

Since it was a nice day, the main square was quiet crowded with cholitas and tourists, many resting while enjoying ice-cream.

From there one is surrounded by wonderful colonial buildings in the foreground…

…and the suburban hills covered with multiple little unfinished houses in the background.

We then stop in a little cafe for some sweet local drinks and then went for a typical Bolivian dish composed of a quinoa soup followed by rice, vegetables and meat.

El Choro - Bolivia

2005-11-30T16:45:00.000-08:00

9/26/05

El Choro is a much more popular trail then the one we did the day before (Pico Austria). It is well marked, so a guide is not required. We went from La Paz to the start of the trail by cab; it took one hour and a half to get there. The area is called La Cumbre, from where we started walking. This trail starts at 4,700 meters and it finish after 3 days at 1,300. The differences in weather, temperature, and vegetation between the start and finish are extreme. The beginning was so cloudy that we couldn’t see much.

The way down is a pre-Hispanic Inca trail and there are some villages along it. The houses are very basic and made of stones.

We were walking inside the cloud, the sky pitch white.

In some parts the trail is made of Stones that become very slippery when it rains. Also we met local farmers traveling from one village to the other with their llamas.

lamas

At the end of the day we arrived at Chalapampa at 2,825 meters. It was raining but they had a shelter where you can set the tent under. There we met Claudio and Lurdes, two kids taking care of the campsite with their five brothers and sisters. Their parents are working at La Cumbre and they only see them once in a while. The closest school is two hours of walk away, in Chucura, and they only go there twice a week.

9/27/05

The second day the vegetation was already different. Whereas the first day was only stones, the second day was very green.

The trail was also more challenging since it was going up and down and the visibility better. We could finally see far in the valley.

Again on the way there were some houses, but this time not made only of stones, but of wood and straw.

From the top we saw the river ...

... and we had to walk all the way down to cross it.

Then we climbed all the way up again to camp at Bellavista from where as the name says we could enjoy a wonderful view. The snow you see on the picture is the beginning of the walk.

9/28/05
The third and last day wasn't too different from the second, beside the fact that it was shorter, only 3 hours of walk from Bella Vista to Chairo.

We first passed the the house of a Japanese guy living in the mountain for the last 30 years. Here is his house.

Then we reached Chairo from where we took a jeep to Coroico. From Coroico we caught a bus to La Paz through the so-called “world’s most dangerous road” due the high number of fatality in car accidents. The road goes along a very high cliff with no protection and lots of curves. In many parts of the road only one truck can pass.

There is no pavement so the dust is flying around and the heavy traffic makes it worse.

Pico Austria - Bolivia

2005-11-17T17:20:00.000-08:00

9/24/05
We left La Paz at 7:30 a.m. in a taxi with our guide for Cordillera Real, crossed the smoky and really spread out suburb and after nearly one hour of jammed traffic we got to a dirt path that leads to a place called Rinconada, where the trail starts.
From the dirt path there was an awesome view of the snow capped Cordillera Real and the fields with sparse countryside stone houses. In the distance we noticed cholitas spinning wool while watching for the sheeps.

During the whole trip we heard the guide and the taxi driver complaining about life and of how much they make. We were leery about our guide when he had to stop (several times) to ask locals for directions. The taxi driver got upset with the long way, bad road and uncertainty of destination and demanded more money to the guide (we paid the tour to the agency, so we were spared of hassling). When we arrived in Rinconada, in the middle of nowhere, ...

... the driver said he would not come back the following day to pick us up for the same amount. I had to give him the phone number of the agency and hope that he would have a better deal with the agency, or I don't know how we would go back to La Paz.

After that troublous start we followed with the plan and started the walk not sure if the guide knew the way.

The walk was quite short, some two hours, to the camp site where we arrived around noon. Nevertheless the way was really beautiful and we passed by two lagoons. The initial plan was to hike for 6-7 hours to the campsite, but somehow it got shorter.

Click here for a panoramic of the lake

At the campsite we had lunch and our useless guide said he was done for the day and that we could explore the area (on our own) if we wanted. Of course we wouldn't go to sleep at 1 p.m and went to walk around.

We walked to a glacier close to the campsite; on the way there were lots of lamas eating the weird grass that grows in the region.

We walked in the direction of the glacier on the right in the next picture.

Click here for a panoramic of the area

Soon we started to climb the mount in this fantastic environment.

When we were back at the campsite ...

... we found to have a nice couple from Boston as neighbors.

Click here for a panoramic of the campsite

We chatted for a while, they showed to us Condoriro, the peak they were going to ice-climb when suddenly, out of nowhere, a local girl showed up to sell souvenirs.

We had dinner, some hot tea and went to sleep. At night the temperature dropped to below zero Celsius :)

9/25/05
Around 3 a.m. we heard the Americans leaving to climb Condoriro, but we went back to sleep and got up only at 6 30 a.m. for breakfast; half an hour later we left to climb Pico Austria at 5,300 meters.

Since we had spent already more than a week at high altitude, the climb didn't seem that difficult and for each step up it was possible to see a bit more on the horizon.

It was very clear and we could see even the Lake Titicaca at the Bolivian-Peruvian border, but Titicaca is not the obvious lake in the picture, it is the one fading out on horizon.

Click for a panoramic

In every direction the view was outstanding. It was possible to see even La Paz.

From the top there was also fantastic views of the neighboring mountains and glaciers.

Click for a glacier panoramic

Click for a another panoramic

Click for a another panoramic

On the way back to the campsite, we stopped for lunch half-way down.

Then we reached the campsite and around 1 p.m we were ready and packed to go back to Rinconada and find out if our transport would show up or not.

In Rinconada we watched the locals fishing trout and waited some two and a half hours for a car to show up.
It wasn't the cab driver, no, it was the owner of TravelTracks on his own car.

Back in La Paz we had a conversation we TravelTracks about the guide and the taxi and it seemed that the guide messed up things. TravelTracks was grateful for our feedback, apologized for the trouble and, in compensation, gave us free transport from La Paz to the beginning of the trail El Choro for the following day.

La Paz - Bolivia

2005-11-13T08:57:00.000-08:00

9/23/05

La Paz is the world's highest capital with 3,636 but it spreads up to 4,000 meters. The population is over a million (8,8 millions in entire Bolivia) and mainly composed of native indians.

We spent only one day in La Paz because what we were really looking for in this region of Bolivia was trekking. The first thing we did was to find a travel agency to get information about trekking around La Paz.
We found a nice agency, TravelTracks, owned by a Dutch/Bolivian couple, where
we got all the info we needed and even more. The problem was the amount of choice and the little time we had. The Cordillera Real offers several trek possibilities, then there is the classic El Choro through an ancient Inca path, not to mention a dozen or more peaks to climb.

Not knowing what to chose, we decided to go for a walk in the city and come back after some reflection time. Our first stop was the super interesting Coca Museum, very small, but packed with info.

Here are some facts :

- Angelo Mariani, in France, invented the Vino Mariani in 1863 made with coca leaves. He achieved worldwide success for many years due to the stimulating effect of the drink. Several imitations were launched but the most successful one was from doctor John Pemberton's, pharmacists in Atlanta. He produced a drink called French Wine Coca containing coca, but also extract of a Ghanaian Cola nut which has a higher concentration of caffeine than coffee. With the prohibition in the US, alcoholic beverages were banned, so he had to change to formula to what is today the most recognized product: Coca Cola.

- Coca leaves have been used in South America by indigenous groups for over 4500 years.

- Due to the magical and religious role that coca leaves played, coca was considered satanic at first and an obstacle to Catholicism by the Spanish. Once it was discovered that chewing coca provided the slaves with more energy to work, it was sanctified and its consumption was even made mandatory by mine owners. The indigenous people worked 'days' of 48 continuous hours without adequate breaks or any food other than coca leaves to chew.

- The benefits of coca are used by pharmaceutical companies that discovered its anaesthetic power, by coca cola for the drink and by multi billion-dollar illegal cocaine industry, all controlled by foreigners, but Bolivia has been blamed for the western world's drug addiction problem.

After a cocaine shot (just kidding), we went to visit the Witches' Market, a famous and singular market in La Paz. The place is called like that because you find dried fetus of lamas and other animals...

... herbs, seeds, magical ingredients...

and other strange things supposed to be remedies for any combination of illness that you may be experiencing and protection from the bad spirits which whom according to Aymara beliefs, populate the world. The dried fetus is buried with different offers to Pachamama in front of a new house to protect it from the bad spirits. There are also prepared sets of offers to Pachamama.

The witches market is really small and since locals know that it attracts a lot of tourists, there is a souvenir market right next to it where the natives sell handcrafts and handmade weaving and knitted stuffs.

Before the end of the day we still made a stop to talk to the Clube Andino de Montanhismo, and see what info they had about trekking. It wasn't actually great but somewhat useful. The two people were really nice to us and helped us to buy gas for our trek and showed us the Market Rodrigues where we bought food to take with us during the trek.

Finally we decided to do a 2-day trek in Cordillera Real with TravelTracks (since the trails are not marked there) followed by a 3-day trek by ourselves in El Choro.

Sucre - Bolivia

2005-11-12T06:45:00.000-08:00

9/21/05
We were on the streets of Sucre by 9 a.m. It is as small relaxed clean town full of beautiful old buildings from colonial time.

The church at main square has a tower with 16 bells.

In the same square is the Palace of Justice, also very nice and well kept. Bolivia doesn't seem to have only one capital, although everyone think that La Paz is the capital Sucre has the seat of the whole judiciary system and is also listed as capital of Bolivia.

In the afternoon we visited the Museo Casa De La Libertad where an excellent tour is given on the political history of Bolivia. The museum is located in a building constructed by the Jesuits on the beginning of the 16th century for the Universidad de San Francisco. Also, in the same building, the independence of Alto Peru (Peru and Bolivia at the time) was proclaimed. The leader for independence from Spain was Simon Bolivar, a Venezuelan.

After the museum we adventured in the local market where we saw head of cows with eyes popped out for sale, but we have no idea how they prepare it. Then we went back to the main square and took our time on one of the many benches.
Lots of little boys approached us asking to shine our shoes. This is a very sad thing, because they should be either in the school or playing with their friends, but not working.

At the end of the day we went back to the hotel and met very nice and interesting people, Dan from Australia, Christian, a German doing social work in Argentina to avoid serving the army, and Peter&Mette a British/Norwegian couple also in a world tour trip. While chatting we tried many different local beers :)p

9/22/05
We had a long traveling day ahead of us. We left the hotel at 6 a.m. and took a bus back to Potosi, then at 11 a.m. we took another bus to Oruro and at 4:30 p.m. we took another bus to La Paz where we arrived at 7:30 p.m.
Along the way it was again a dry landscape with no vegetation and only a few villages here and there.

We stopped in one of the villages (probably a dozen of houses)where there were sellers sitting aside the main road.

On the last bus, to La Paz, we had lots of sellers, among them one was selling several kinds of medicines and another was selling books. The book seller caught our attention because he wasn't selling ordinary novels, no, he had the constitution of Bolivia, history of the wars of Bolivia and a Spanish grammar book.

Arriving in La Paz we saw the busy city, with the center in a hole and all the suburbs around on the hills.

Potosi - Bolivia

2005-11-09T04:48:00.000-08:00

9/19/05
We left Uyuni for Potosi at 10 a.m. and surprisingly the landscape was very similar to the one in Altiplano. The road was a simple dirt path in the middle of the dry mountains. There was no plantations, no river, nothing. We just saw two small villages in which people live in very poor conditions.

Many houses were made with blocks of raw clay mixed with stones and dried by the sun. At each rain it melts a little bit. After 5 hours of trip we arrived in Potosi, a city at 4070 meters of altitude.

What they called 'the bus station' was actually just a corner on the street where we got off. The people living here really have an original and strong character.

Potosi was first a miners settlement at the bottom of Cerro Rico, a mount that proved later to have much more plata (silver) than expected; the temporary disorganized settlement became a town, still today, disorganized.

It received so many people that Potosi was on the 18th century the biggest city in South America, but of course most of the silver was sent to Spain and Potosi remained poor.

Walking around we saw lots of school kids. It seems that every school has its own outfit which consists of black pants for boys, a black skirt for girls and an apron whose color changes depending on the school.

At the end of the day we went to look for a restaurant for dinner and we found one with a great view of the city.

9/20/05
We visited La Casa de La Moneda where we had a very interesting guided tour through the big building that occupies a whole block and houses today not only the old machinery used to produce coins with the silver from Cerro Rico, but also paintings, mummies and samples of all kinds of minerals encountered in Bolivia. We also learned a lot about Bolivian and Spanish history.

One of the exhibitions had this awesome safe box used by the church to collect money from the people. It had a very sophisticated locking system with a fake key slot at the frontal face of the box to mislead any potential robber. It is not so easy to see on the picture, but note that the two openings to drop money are strategically placed at the hands of the figure of Jesus Christ. These safe box were then taken all the way to the church in Spain and they were open only there.

This painting is very important in Potosi and it describes not only local life but how the church did to christianize the local Indians. Because the main god was Pachamama (Mother Earth), the church ordered to paint Cerro Rico which represents the traditional conical figure of the Virgin Mary. On the top of it are the religious Christian authorities and the king of Spain. In smaller importance, and size, are on the left the sun, and on the right the moon, also considered gods by the local Indians, whom are depicted mining the Cerro under the protection of Virgin Mary.

We then walked around the city and admired the old remaining colonial buildings.

There are many stores like this, you can't get in, there is a fence on the door and you must order from outside.

The square was full of cholitas, the name given to the women dressed the traditional way. They sell salteñas (a salty pastry with a meat filling), juices and other little things.

We saw a parade with kids dressed with different traditional clothes. They were celebrating the 'student day', day on which they parade and party.

We walked all the way to the new part of the city...

... and went back to the bus station to buy a ticket to go to Sucre. On the way there are people selling fruits just like this.

At the end of the day we travelled to Sucre.

Uyuni Salar - Bolivia

2005-11-05T02:57:00.000-08:00

9/18/05
The woman of the hostel served us a continental breakfast. But when Angie went to the kitchen to ask for more hot water for the group, the Bolivian family was sharing their traditional breakfast: cooked lama meat with hot sauce and quinoa.

A few minutes after leaving the town, we passed an area of lama farming. The locals are still dressed in a typical way, live in very very small mud houses and cook thanks to an oven made of mud which is located outside the house. The lamas are kept in stone-fenced areas.

We then crossed a valley where lamas where wandering freely along the multiple small lagunas and frozen water streams. We left the valley driving up a small mountain that led to another part of the altiplano where a small village, Juliaca, is located.

Less than a 100 people live there and there is an abandoned train station with some old rusty trains. When the kids heard the jeeps, they came running and sang for us. They seemed really happy to chat with us and since we had spare fruits, we gave them some. Their mum was washing clothes at the well and was much shier. Angie spoke to her while the two other tourist groups were visiting the town. This woman had four kids, all under 8, and was living in a small mud house close to the well.

Click here for a facade panoramic

She was dressed like most of the native Bolivian women, which means with a hat, several layers of skirt and high wollen socks. She did not want us to take a picture of her, only of the kids. So here they are...

A bit later we crossed another small village, San Angostino and then headed towards the salar. Getting closer to it, it seemed like the mountains were flotting in the air. Indeed, from the distance, the salar looks like a big mirror in which the Andes are reflected. It is an amazing sight. We had lunch on a little hill, in front of the salar. And then the wonderful adventure accross the Uyuni Salar started!

Salar de Uyuni

The Salar de Uyuni is a huge dry salt lake at an altitude of 3653 meters that stretches over an area of 12000 square km. It was part of a prehistoric salty inland sea which covered most of south-western Bolivia. The Salar is estimated to contain 10 billion tonne reserve of fine salt. Several islands are scaterred over this immense desert.

At the edge, the layer of salt is quite thin, 15cm, but in some areas it can go up to 7m. Under it, there is water up to 3000m down.

Here is the beginning of the salar...

...and then it gets thicker.

We drove on the salt for a while and everything around was white.

We reached the isla dos pescadores, an island full of giant, and old, cactus; they grow only one centimeter year.

We climbed it up and enjoyed the impressive view all around of the salar. Far away we could see a jeep croossing the salar.

We crossed a part of the salar where the famous hexagonal shapes are forming.

The next stop was the salt hotel where everyhing is made of salt.

A bit further, there a spot where the layer of salt is broken and you can see bubbling water due to gas escaping under the layer of salt. This place is called ojos del salar and from there we watched the sunset.

Our tour was going to an end and just before the other end of the salt lake, we saw salt mines.

Soon after we arrived in Uyuni where e shared a bottle of red wine and dinner with our German friends.

Altiplano - Bolivia

2005-11-04T03:50:00.000-08:00

9/17/05
We finally left San Pedro, the pass was still closed due to snow, so we had to go back to Calama and then head north and enter Bolivia through Ollague before reaching the Altiplano, which literally means high plain, in this case above 3000 meters.

Because the pass had been closed for so many days the number of people waiting to leave San Pedro was also higher. We were twenty in a mini-bus that did part of the trip through nicely paved road and then entered a dirt path through the middle of the desert.

Our driver made a stop at 9:30 a.m. in Chiu-Chiu and served breakfast to everyone. In this tiny town, there was a church from 15th century made entirely of adobe...

... and cactus wood. Here is the door...

The walls are one meter thick. It is the oldest church of Northern Chile.

The mini-bus kept going and before we reached the Bolivian border we crossed two small salars...

Click here for a panoramic of the salar

and passed by a smaller version of Laguna Colorado (a famous red lake South of Bolivia). Some flamingos were standing in the redish water.

Ollague is the name of the town at the boarder, but it is also the name of the huge volcano (5865m) next to it In that region the are several new volcanos popping out of the desert. Here is one of them with our bus...

At the boarder, in Ollague, a real ghost town in the middle of the absolut nowhere.

Click here for a panoramic of the ghost town

After we passed the Chilean immigration, the big group splited and we ended up being only four, plus the driver, in a Toyota Landcruiser. The other two people were Alex and Nancy, a very interesting German couple.

We had lunch in the Bolivian customs house next to a strange train stop. Indeed, the train from La Paz to Calama transporting mainly minerals from the mines on the way makes a stop here in the middle of nowhere.

It is open to passengers but with a very irregular schedule.

The views through the way were awesome and one can feel how inhospital this environment is.

At each stop of the points of interest, we had to fight the strong wind and the flying sand. In some parts if you do not know where to go, you can get lost easily since the are no signs and the dirt pathes are not obvious. In some areas, there is some vegetation like dried grass or yellowish small bushes. In these areas we saw some wildlife like viscachas...

... and the vicunas, the wild version of the lamas.

We then crossed an area called Valle de Rocas with weird red rock formations.

At the end of the day we reached the town of Alota where we spend the night. Our hostel was a very basic house made of dried mud blocks.

Before dinner we wandered around the cute town with its colored houses...

and mud houses.

There is a 'mirador' next to the church

from where you can see the small group of roofs in the middle of the desert.

We entered a little side road where a military base was located.

According to our driver it is because it is close to the Chilean border and we never know.... actually they haven't forgotten the Pacific War and it still creates tensions once in a while between Peru, Bolivia and Chile. Indeed these last days Peru is discussing with Chile about the sea limits of both countries.

Back in our little guetshouse, we tried the local soup made out of quinoa, a cereal that grows only at high altitude. Bolivians eat a soup before each meal and most of the time it is a quinoa soup made it different ways.

San Pedro II - Chile

2005-11-03T03:07:00.000-08:00

9/14/05
The bad weather remained and again the trip got cancelled because of snow on the pass.
We took our time to visit the Museo Arqueologico Gustavo Le Paige de Walque in the Universidad del Norte. The museum holds the status of being one of the most remarkable and interesting museums in South America. It has an extraordinary range of Indian artifacts and remains. There are natural mummies, that actually bodies preserved due to the arid salty soil, ...

... including a child buried in a pottery urn and skulls which show malformation.

Another surprising thing was the paraphernalia for preparing, ingesting and smoking psychedelic plants and mushrooms used by the natives thousands of years ago. The tabs used to lay the drugs and the pipes to inhalate are pure art masterpiece.

The museum is small but it is dense in information; it covers the period from the early tribes of the area until the Incas raise and fall to the Spanish.

At the end of the day we wandered to the limits of San Pedro; this is the road on which we arrived a couple of days ago.

At dawn we had a fantastic view of the Licancabur (Note how it is covered in snow now). Just for a few minutes, with the last beams of sunlight, the sky became pinkish and the arid dusty desert with snow capped mountain on the background and the moon high in the sky as bright as a lamp composed a scene that we had never come close to imagine.

The following pictures should have been published on the last post. It is actually the view from the top of the mount where we visited Tulor.

9/15/05
One more morning of waking up early and of waiting. Again the guide showed up to let us know that nobody would go since the weather was still bad and the road could not be cleaned due to very heavy winds.

With so much free time we ended up finishing our books, so the mission of the day was to find a new one. This is a very common practice throughout Asia and South America; in lots of hostels and Internet cafes you can exchange your book for another one for a dollar.

[Cambodia Flash-Back
I want to recommend here the book I've just finished reading about the atrocities in Cambodia, First They Killed My Father, written by Loung Ung, and it tells her own story through these tragic years of the Khmer Rouge regime. It is really interesting because she was only five years old when the Khmer Rouge took Phnom Phen and the narration is from a kid's point of view in the middle of the mess. But if you couldn't watch Schindler's List to the end, don't go for this book, because it is much harder.]

Now back to Chile, in the newspaper we read about a group of 14 Chilean tourists that went to climb a volcano around San Pedro and ended up trapped there. The army was looking for them but had no news yet. A second group was trapped somewhere else.

Because the winds were too strong and the sand was flying around, it was not really enjoyable to walk outside on this day, so we went back, read a bit and worked on the blog. It was the first time during the trip that we stayed so long in the same place without doing much. At least we were rested by now!!

9/16/05
It was unbelievable but true, the trip was cancelled again, Angie was steaming by the ears. We cancelled the tour with the agency and looked for another, the biggest one in town. Indeed, it was the only agency offering the tour starting the following day through a different route by skipping some of the attractions usually visited.

The alternative route added around 500km of crossing the desert to reach a lower pass in the Andes, but it was the only practicable road since it was still snowing in the highest part of the mountain. We booked with them for the following day even though we would miss the classical colored lakes (Laguna Verde e Laguna Colorada) of the altiplano with the flamingos. In the other hand we could not wait forever....

The second group of tourists had been rescued but the 14 people that went to climb the volcano were still stuck somewhere up there. At least the Chilean army made contact with them via radio and everybody seemed fine. Some soldiers brought them food supply but stayed with them since it was too dangerous to go back down. Imagine you go for a one day walk on your vacation and end up stuck in a basic shelter for a week in a snowstorm!!!

For us the day was more interesting than we expected though; San Pedro was getting ready to celebrate Chile's Independence holiday and there were lots of festivities happening.

During the day students paraded through the dusty streets of San Pedro ending at the main square where many other presentations happened.

Every one was dressed typically from kids to grandmas.

Empanadas (baked dough filled with meat, onion and olives) and sodas were distributed to every one for free.

A folks group played the cueca, the national dance, ..

... and adults and kids were dancing on the square. It is a couple dance in which the girl waves a piece of white cloths in front of the guy, while they get closer and distant again.

At night we had much more; many tents were set for the party that usually goes on all night long. We saw the official opening by the local authorities, the mayor and the father.

Of course there was a speech, but then surprisingly the funny father started dancing cueca with the mayor in the middle of the crowd inviting everybody to join.

It kept going on with some patriotic songs. After a while there was not only one group playing, but many, and two 'saloons' were set up with live music (in good Portuguese: um verdadeiro bailão) plus small groups playing outside.

We enjoyed everything but missed the chicha, a fermented corn drink highly appreciated around here.

It was quite cold though and we had to start our tour to Bolivia the following morning at 7 a.m., so we went back to our room early.

San Pedro I - Chile

2005-11-01T13:47:00.000-08:00

9/11/05
After a lazy morning, we walked around the little streets of the dusty San Pedro, a town built in an oasis in the middle of the Atacama Desert. There are no more than 6000 inhabitants and they mainly live from the numerous tourist activities that the area offers.

The houses have a very characteristic shape, square and low. Some are painted in white because of the heat, but most of them aren't and you can see the dried mud blocks that they have been made of. From our room we could enjoy the view of the immense Licancabur volcano with its 5,950 meters of altitude.

The center of San Pedro is full of tourists wandering around.

We spoke with some tourist agencies about the different things to see around and scheduled a tour in Valle de La Luna for the next day, followed by a three-day tour-trip through the Altiplano, a region of the Andes north of Atacama, and through the salt desert that would bring us to Uyuni in Bolivia. After relaxing a bit at the main square, we headed back to the hostel.

9/12/05
Since the Valle de la Luna tour only happens in the afternoon, we spent the morning chatting with the friendly owner of the hostel, Mario, a guy from Ecuador living in Chile for the last 17 years. We then went to the tiny little market of the town where locals from the even smaller towns around come to sell all kinds of old and simple stuff. It was our first encounter with the native people from the area.

Mars Valley
Around 3 p.m. we went for our tour to the Valle de La Luna, but on the way we had a surprise, we took a shortcut and landed in Mars. This area is called the Mars Valley.

Salt Caves
Then we stopped to explore the salt caves carved by the water in a mountain made of salt crystals...

... the thing is impressive, at first look it seems to be just a mount but when you look closer you can see the cristals ...

... and the brown color we see is actually just a thin layer of dust, but the whole thing is salt.

Valle de la Luna
The Valle de la Luna is famous for its resemblance to the surface of the moon, owing to its different stratifications and the salt formations that are caused by natural environmental factors. Most of the time the color is the one of the sand of the area flying around due to strong winds but after the rain, the dust is washed away and the valley becomes all white due to the high concentration of salt crystals.

After walking around in that strange environment, watching the weird sand formations and salt crystallizations, we went to climb the dunes.

For thousands of years, strong winds have affected these reliefs, creating huge fields of sand dunes.

The Great Sand Dune is a very popular one among the tourists and it gives access to a view point to watch the sunset in the valley.

Because we had stronger winds than the usual, our guide decided that it wasn't worth, and actually quite risky, to walk the dune, so he took us to another spot less crowded where from we saw the whole area.

In fact the direction in which we walked took us to good spots to shoot the many groups walking The Great Sand Dune.

We were back in San Pedro around 8 p.m., went back to the hostel to rest and prepare for our three-day desert trip to Bolivia.

9/13/05

At 8 o'clock we were ready, waiting for our guide to pick us up. Looking out the window of our room, we realized that it was quite cloudy and that the Licancabur in the distance was getting white. We waited and waited. Mario, the owner, told us not to worry because our guide was Bolivian and Bolivians are known to be late according to Chileans. After more than an hour, our guide finally showed up, on a bike; he told us that all the agencies delayed the trips due to bad weather.

It was snowing in the mountains and the road (pass) to the border with Bolivia was not cleared. The agencies were waiting for more information from the local authorities. So we took our books and relaxed until noon when he showed up again. The authorities had decided to cancel the trips since it was too dangerous to take this road due to a now stronger snowstorm. He offered us to visit two archeological sites that are very close to San Pedro instead. They are less than 10 kilometers away from the town and are called Quitor and Tutor.

Quitor
The earliest settlement in the Atacammeño region goes back to 9,000 B.C.
During the Late Period, 1450 - 1550 A.D, the Inca Empire was in expansion since northern Peru and all the way through Bolivia with its political rules also holding across the Atacama Desert.
San Pedro was, at one point back in history, Inca. The Inca rule brought strong hierarchical differences, social inequality leading to a series of internal conflicts. These formed the background of the first Spanish-native encounters, which increased the already chaotic situation, giving way to a new era. When the Spanish defeated the Incas, the original Atacameños hided in a cave nearby San Pedro and constructed a Fort where they lived and fought back the Spanish for over 30 years after Spanish conquer. It is said that the Spanish never found the place that is today open for tourists.

After that we headed to Tulor.

Tulor Village
The ruins of a village made of a series of interconnected circular structures which had different uses and functions according to the activities carried out inside it day by day. This village belongs to one of the oldest archeological places in the northern Chilean region. The village disappeared when the river, its water source, shifted its course due to an earthquake.

Antofagasta - Chile

2005-11-01T05:18:00.000-08:00

9/10/05
The slow pace of Santiago came to an end and the 10th day of September was entirely spent traveling up north.
We took a flight at 08:15 a.m. from Santiago to Antofagasta, where we arrived around 10:30 a.m.

Antofagasta is the major port in the nitrate-rich north of Chile, and not long ago it belonged to Bolivia. It became Chilean territory after Bolivia's defeat on the War of the Pacific.

Because Bolivia did not populate the coast and did not have the means to exploit the mines alone, it made contracts, mainly with Chilean companies. When in 1879 Chile occupied the whole of the coast, Bolivia (supported by Peru) declared war. They fought from 1879 to 1883 and at the end Chile took 350 kilometers of coastline leaving Bolivia with no outlet to the sea.

Anyway, the airport in Antofagasta was really tiny and right after we landed a windstorm began. While we were waiting in the shuttle van to depart for the center of the town, we heard that the following flight had been detoured to land somewhere else because of the sand storm. We felt lucky because for a couple of minutes, it could have been our flight!

The van left the airport and thanks to the driver's choice of dropping everyone else before us, it allowed us to tour Antofagasta for free; it is not big anyway and we saw many corners of this little dusty town.

Here is where the desert meets the sea.

The houses are colored like in Valparaiso, ...

...but it seems poorer since the only activity around it is mining.

Finally we were left at the bus terminal to get a bus to San Pedro de Atacama.

We travelled for hours and hours throughout the driest place on earth, the Atacama Desert; some places are known for having never rained. Today the area is explored by the Chilean government for mining copper and other minerals, indeed the desert holds the world's largest copper mine.

All the way to San Pedro, it looked the same, dust, rocks and sand, nothing else, not an animal, not a tree, not any kind of bush or grass, not any kind of life, not any kind of nothing.

After nearly seven hours of desert traveling, we got to San Pedro at night, around 8:00 p.m.

Santiago - Chili

2005-10-24T18:33:00.000-07:00

9/5/05
Time Traveling
Who said it is impossible? We left Auckland at 7:00 a.m., and with the huge time difference, arrived in Santiago at 2:30 a.m. of the same day, yes, much earlier than we left!
Unfortunately the saga of Lan Chile wasn't finished with a flight 2 days late. One of our bags stayed in Auckland! After all the waiting and paperwork for the bag, it was almost 5 a.m.; so we decided to wait until 6:00 a.m. in the airport to save a night of hotel and get to the city in day light.

We were lucky to be brought to a very friendly hostel, we checked in and slept until noon. After a long nap we went for our first round in Santiago de Chile; the first stop was San Cristobal mount, crowned by a white statue of virgin Mary, from where there is a nice view of the city with the snow-capped Andes as a back drop curtain.

As we were still tired we ended the day with an excellent dinner and delicious Chilean red wine in a fine restaurant.

9/6/05
On this day we wandered around the center of the Chilean capital. It is really crowded.

There are lots of old well-kept buildings from the colonial time with different kinds of architectures. The old and the new sit side by side.

We relaxed for most of the afternoon at Plaza de Armas. It is considered the heart of the city, surrounded by the Cathedral, the Audiencia Real (Royal Court), the Central Post Office -formerly the conqueror's house- and Santiago's City Hall. After so much running in Australia and New Zealand all we did was to watch the senior citizens or mere passers-by feeding the pigeons or just hanging out under the fresh shade of leafy trees.

Other tourists are looking for the best angle for the next picture while the kids, shining shoes, are looking at everyone's feet in search of a potential client and the ambulant sellers carry their packs around. There are also many artists exposing paintings on the sidewalk; someone gathers hundreds in a circle to tell them about a miraculous 'natural' medicine that is capable of curing almost anything that can possibly bother you and so on, the square is the real reality show.

We resumed our walk by heading to San Diego, a street where you can find cheap used books. The Mercado Central is another landmark where you can buy good food. On our way back to the hostel, we passed by Cerro Santa Lucia, a hill in the city center with gardens, fountains and the remains of the fortress that was site of the original Spanish settlement. Here again you can have a good view of the city.

For the night we bought wine and steaks and stayed at our friendly cozy hostel. Talking to one of the guys from the hostel we got all the information to visit Valparaiso the next day.

9/7/05
Valparaiso
We left in the morning, took a subway to the bus station and then a bus to Valparaiso, some one hour and a half from Santiago. The trains of the subway in Santiago are French, like the ones in Paris, even the subway stations are alike; the trains have tires instead of iron wheel, so it runs smoothly and silently.

We left Santiago by bus, crossed poorer neighborhoods, hit the road and very quickly got to Valparaiso, the main portuary city in Chile and the closest to Santiago.

Valparaiso is very characteristic with still some old colonial buildings ...

... and hundreds of colorful houses on the hills facing the ocean.

There are also dozens of old ascensores (cable car), to facilitate the life of the locals living up hill.

We walked uphill, crossed a street-open museum, saw a lot of the local life around and reached the house of the most famous Chilean writer, Pablo Neruda (1904-1973). His house, now a museum, is today referenced as La Sebastiana and stands on Bellavista hill where from you can see the city and the see. We rested in the garden but did not visit the museum with its exhibition.

Around 3 p.m. we were heading back to Santiago where we wandered more around in its nice streets.

During dinner at the hostel we met an Argentinean studying architecture for social housing doing a research in Chile.

9/8/05
This was the day the damn Lan Chile promised to finally bring our bag, four days after we had arrived. We basically wasted the whole morning waiting for them to show up, which they did only around noon; at least they gave us 60 US dollars in compensation.

In the afternoon we went to a book store to buy a Portuguese/Spanish book to speed up our Spanish.
Then we sat in one of the busy streets for an ice-cream and laughed with the performance of The Mimic making fun of every one passing by.

9/9/05
Our last day in Santiago ended up being one of the most wasted days of the trip so far, due to lack of luck.
We went to Valle Nevado, a famous ski resort near the city. The guys at the hostel, again, provided all the information on where to rent the gear and how to get to the resort. It was very easy, we took the subway at 7:15 a.m. and got of at the last stop, then walking two blocks we arrived at the place where we rented gear and bought transport to go and come back from Valle Nevado; around two hours later we arrived at the resort, but there was a huge snow storm.

We mainly wanted to check the resort to see if it would be worth to come from Brazil on vacation, but visibility wasn't greater then three meters in any direction, we didn't ski and we didn't see anything, so we still don't know how Valle Nevado is.

It was two days after the independence holiday in Brazil, so the place was taken up by Brazilians, I was quite surprised because Chile has the best economy in South America, therefore it is the most expensive too; it might be cheaper then North America and Europe but is not exactly affordable for an average Brazilian income. The cheapest room was around a 100 US dollars.

In short, we did nothing the whole day.

Auckland - New Zealand

2005-10-21T18:14:00.000-07:00

9/2/05
Here we go; this is our last post about New Zealand. Just in case you're getting tired of it, be aware that the next will be Chile!

We drove from Northland to a little town just next to Auckland on the night before; the drive from the little town to Auckland was around one hour only. This was the only place in NZ where we saw roads with several lanes and traffic jams.

Auckland is the largest urban region in the country and home to almost 1.3 million people.

Its fiery volcanic past is evident; volcanoes are scattered throughout the region. Note the two green mounts in the picture, they are now extinct volcanoes.

The most well-known includes Rangitoto Island in the Waitemata Harbor, and some which give the best panoramic views like Mount Eden.

Auckland has 31% of New Zealand's population and it has one new settler every 29 minutes. Also it claims to be the 2nd largest geographically spread city in the world, so with only 1.3 million, you figure that it is really spread.

At night, we met a friend of Angie from her hometown, Dettwiller, in Alsace. Now he lives in NZ and last time they saw each other was 11 years ago in their village. We spent a nice time, having wine and later moved to a bar for some beers. Here is Olivier!

9/3/05
This was supposed to be our last day in NZ, but ...

We had the morning free before heading to the airport to take our flight to Santiago in Chile, so we went to visit the War Memorial Museum. There we watched an interesting Maori Show before exploring the rest of the museum.

It is really funny when they do their ... well, I don't know how to say it in English, so, someone out there that knows Portuguese please find proper translation and post it in the comments; it is really funny when they do their Grito de Guerra, punching their own chest, making faces, pulling their tongue out and shouting. If you want to see it, you can watch the movie Whale Rider. It is a good movie about the Maori culture nowadays in New Zealand, even though the story is a bit slow; anyway, don't miss their war exercises, it is funny.

After, war shouts, music and dance we went for the rest of the museum. The first floor is all about Maori, their costumes, music, believes and the arrival of the English on the island.

There are temples brought into the museum with walls all carved and decorated.

Even their boats, huge canoes made of whole Kauri trees, were well worked; this is the tip front of a war canoe that can carry up to 160 warriors.

There was really a lot of interesting things about the Pacific islands and their cultures.
Then it follows into sections of War World War I and II and also NZ civil war. There is a room with a legendary Spitfire airplane from WWII.

After the museum we walked in the Domain, through its nice gardens, heading back to our hotel to get our stuff and then went to the airport.

At the airport we had a nice surprise, after all the nine yards of waiting, checking in, more waiting and then finally boarding, the pilot gave us the wonderful news that we would have to get off the plane because one of the trucks bumped into the plane making a hole in the fuselage.

At that point we just thought that our flight would be really late, because another airplane would be needed and all the passengers had to leave and board again, plus all the bags, or in one word: hell.

We got off the plane and received vouchers to buy food, not bad. After nearly one hour of wait, we were informed that the flight had been cancelled and we would be transferred to a hotel and later would receive more info about when we would fly.

The problem was that it was the night of the final match of the rugby championship between New Zealand's All Blacks and another Australian team; all the hotels in town were full, so we were bought to a Motel at least one hour and a half away from Auckland.

At least there was a good restaurant next to it, called Two Fat Cows. We were told that all expenses would be covered by Lan Chile except alcoholic drinks, uhuuu!!!

It was a nice break from instant noodles, sandwiches and other cheap foods we were eating. We ordered nice appetizers, the most expensive steaks and why not? desserts; the owner of the restaurant had a giant radiant smile on his face with a group of around 20 people all ordering food like crazy, all at the expense of Lan Chile.

During our long dinner, we met a group of kiwi farmers from NZ going to South America and Europe to research about new kiwi markets and a weird South Korean in a world tour. During dinner we were informed that we would receive more details about our flight on the following morning.

9/4/05
We went back to Two Fat Cows for breakfast at 8 a.m. and since the place is a restaurant and bar they had no breakfast on the menu, so I had a steak sandwich while Angie ordered a French Toast. During breakfast came the info about our flight, it was scheduled to leave at 7 a.m. of the yet next day, I couldn't believe it.

The whole group was unhappy about the situation and we said that we had at least to be transferred to a real hotel, so they did. After breakfast a big bus came and took us to nothing less then the Sky Tower, the hotel in the main landmark of Auckland and one of the most expensive in town, wow.

We got a super room and were informed that the restaurant of the hotel was free of charge for us, an immense buffet with all you can imagine, tons of different salads, pasta, meats, chicken and fish, :)

After an astronomic lunch, we walked around Auckland with the South Korean guy. We invited him to come with us to visit the Art Gallery. Talking to him we discovered that he had spent the last whole year in New Zealand studying the Bible. New Zealand is not a cheap place but he was at his own expense.

After the Art Gallery we wandered in the park in the middle of town and then went back to the hotel.

The dinner was a buffet again in the restaurant of the hotel where we met an interesting Spanish/Argentinean couple that told us a bit about what to expect in Chile, Bolivia and Peru.

Northland - New Zealand

2005-10-18T09:51:00.000-07:00

8/30/05
Our journey continued going to Matakohe, where we visited the Kauri Museum. (www.kauri-museum.com).

The landscape here is very different from the 'Lord of the Rings-like' mountains from the south.

What we crossed most of the time was hilly landscape ...

... taken up by thousands of farms.

Back to the Kauri; what is it?

We spent the afternoon in the museum learning all about the forest we would visit the next day.

The Waipoua Forest contains three quarters of the remaining kauri trees in New Zealand. The largest kauri, and tallest tree in New Zealand, is Tane Mahuta (Lord of the Forest), 51m high, with a girth of over 13m.
The Kauri tree, Agathis australis, is New Zealand's largest and most famous native tree; it ranks among the most ancient in the world, pairing with the Red Woods and Sequoias in California.

The oldest tree, Te Matua Ngahere (Father of the Forest) in Waipoua Forest, is estimated to be 2000 years old.

There are logs being recovered from the ground which were buried by natural cataclysmic events long ago. Carbon dating has indicating that logs were buried up to 50,000 years ago and it is surprisingly still good quality solid wood.

There is also a lot about kauri gum in the museum. It is a resin which bleeds from the tree and since the forest is so old, there is a vast amount of this gum buried in the ground long before our existence. The museum has kauri gum dated 43 million years old. They use it to make expensive jewelry and all kinds of artcraft.

At the end of the day we drove to Baylys Beach, a hundred-kilometer of unbroken coastline. There we stayed until the sun was gone, we watched the sun slowly dive in the sea making the water look like it was boiling.

8/31/05
After so much learning about kauries we went to see them. This is Yakas, mesuring 12.29m of girth and 43.9m of height, it is really giant.

There are many other impressive trees in the Waipoua Forest, these are actually four trees that grew up almost as one. It is now called The Four Sisters.

After we had enough of giant trees, we headed more north to the coastline, crossed with a ferry a river in a little village, ...

... kept going through the grassy hills and finished in Wapapakauri Beach, the start of the Ninety Mile Beach.

This is an absolute uncrowded straight line of beach that streches beyond your sight. We got there a minute after the sun was gone, all we saw was the pink sky.

9/1/05

We spend the day exploring the Ninety Mile Beach.

The place we prefered was Henderson Bay where the sand has a pinkish color due to the fine silica in it.

The whole area is preserved, so there are lots of marine life left. There are hundreds of jelly fish laying on the beach.

We followed a little walking path at the edge of the dunes from where you could see the whole bay.

Coromandel - New Zealand

2005-10-14T15:54:00.000-07:00

8/28/05
We spent the day slowly traveling up north in the direction of the Hot Water beach in Coromandel. We stopped in different towns and other beaches. That region seems to be the heart of kiwi plantations. They were selling them all along the road for cheap prices. Later we bought wine and food and found a nice spot just by the beach to watch the sunset.

Since we didn't take pictures that day I'll give you a link to a website of another retarded New Zealand attraction.

www.zorb.com

8/29/05
The first thing we did in the morning was to check the hot spot. There is no better place for a hot spring; you can dig a swimming pool on the sand at low tide and hot water comes out the ground. You can then seat back and relax in steaming hot water.

The hot water is not the only attraction, all around is beautiful and well preserved.

Next to it there is the Hahei beach with a nice walk that takes you to the Cathedral Cove. The area is a protected marine park and the way is easy; along the trail there were lots of reeds.

The shore has lots of little bays and beautiful rocky formations.

The Cathedral Cove.

After the walk we stopped in a winery on the way to Cooks beach; they had liquors of Feijoa, Kiwi and Passion Fruit. These liquors, when served with sparkling water, are the perfect refreshment for a sunny day. They also produce wine out of kiwi, but we don't know how that goes, because it was sold out. Here is the winery house.

By then it was time for some food and we pick nick at Cooks beach.

After that we followed to the Otama Forest in Kuaotunu. Hundred years ago timber millers and gold miners burned the bush and dug into the hills. Now the residents of Kuaotunu discovered and re-opened an old gold mine road to create a gentle and very beautiful walk through a valley of re-generating native bush.

Out of the walk, we kept heading north and at one of the viewpoints where we stopped on the road we had a visit of a Possum.

Possums are considered a plague in the country; they were brought from Australia long ago and because it doesn't have a natural predator they multiplied as hell and are literally eating New Zealand's forests. There are so many possums in New Zealand that is impossible to travel 100 kilometers without seeing one smashed on the road. They are really not afraid of people, you can get as close as you want and I think that even petting would be fine, they just ignore your presence and keep eating. The lack of fear must be the reason why they are smashed on the roads so often.

The last one for the day was an awesome sunset that we watched from the top of a mount.

Rotorura - New Zealand

2005-10-04T18:20:00.000-07:00

8/27/05
In the morning we had cafe in the town of Taupo Lake. The lake was formed by a cataclysmic volcanic eruption 1800 years ago.
After breakfast we went to the Craters of the Moon walk located in a dynamic thermal area formed when drilling began nearby the Wairakei Geothermal field in the 1950s.

The walk features sizzling and bubbling craters, mud pools and steam vents. A walk board is provided for the visit and it is better to stick to it, because the most recent eruption happened in 2002 and it was the biggest in the last 10 years.

Then we went through the Geothermic Powerplant that generates 5% of New Zealand's electricity. There are hundreds and hundreds of pipes leaving the ground and driving steam to the powerplant.

The next stop was at the Thermal Wonderland. The area is associated with volcanic activity dating back about 160,000 years and is located right on the edge of the largest volcanic caldera within the active Taupo Volcanic Zone.

In basic terms, beneath the ground is a system of streams which are heated by magma left over from earlier eruptions. The water is so hot (temperatures of up to 300C have been recorded) that it absorbs minerals out of the rocks through which they are ultimately absorbed into the ground.

To visit the area costs 23 NZ dollars per person, but before crossing the gate there is a mud pool that can be visited for free. The bubbling here is not the result of high temperature though, but gases emerging from the ground.

Inside the park there are lots of different formations to see.

Devil' Home - rough sides and yellow/greenish colors where cooling volcanic vapors have colored the walls.

Devil's Ink Pots - A series of mud pools whose water levels fluctuate with the amount of rainfall. The color is due to small amounts of graphite and crude oil brought to the surface by the water forcing its way up.

Artist's Palette - Overflowing water from the Champagne Pool draws with it minerals that have originated from below the surface. As the waters cool and the minerals are exposed to our atmosphere they show themselves in a variety of locations and colors depending upon water levels and wind direction.

The Primrose Terrace (like honeycomb)- These sinter terraces are the largest in New Zealand. The water from the Champagne Pool dissolved silica which, as the water evaporates, is deposited as siliceous sinter. They are regarded as being very fragile and have been forming at a variable rate over the last 700 years currently covering an area of about 1.5 hectares (3 acres)

The Champagne Pool - It is the largest in the district, being 65 meters in diameter and 62 meters deep. Its surface temperature is 74C (skin burns happen at 50C). The pool was formed 700 years ago by a hydrothermal eruption. Minerals contained in the water are gold, silver, mercury, sulfur, arsenic, thallium, antimony etc and are presently depositing in the surrounding sinter ledge.

Devil's Bath - The color is the result of excess water from the Champagne Pool mixing with sulfur and ferrous salts. Changes color through green to yellow are associated with the amount of reflected light and cloud cover.

After the Volcanic Zone visit, we passed by a small touristic Maori village.

Tongariro - New Zealand

2005-10-03T17:37:00.000-07:00

8/26/05
We picked up the rental car in the morning and headed up north. Since there was a traffic jam on the highway due to an accident, we took smaller roads through Upper Hut, the northern part of Wellington. It is located at the top of a hill from where we enjoyed a nice view of the city.

Once out of the city we drove through a hilly landscape up to Whakapapa in the Tongariro National Park, New Zealand's first national park, in the middle of the northern island.
It is impossible to miss it; in the middle of a huge plane three impressive mountains stand out.

The Mount Ruapehu (2797m) where people ski...

Mount Ngauruhoe 2287m and Mount Tongariro 1968m...

We would have liked to hike the Tongariro crossing, which is supposedly the most wonderful day-hike in NZ. But the weather wasn't at its best, and the mount was covered with ice. The only way to cross it would have been to hire a guide an ice-climbing gear. So we just went for two simple walks, which were also very beautiful too.

The first one was along the ridge of the volcano and the second one along Silica Rapids which change colors due to the high concentration of mineral in the water left from several eruptions. That walk took us through very different landscapes in a short time. With the sunset the color were amazing.

At night we slept in the car with many other cars and campervans around of people doing the same thing.

Wellington - New Zealand

2005-10-03T17:31:00.000-07:00

8/25/05
Always on the move, we had another early morning. A taxi picked us up at 6 .a.m. to go to the airport; the sunrise was at 7:30 a.m. and our take off was scheduled to happen at 7:00 a.m. We checked-in in a little house from the mail service and waited to board. There were no stupid questions (like: who packed your stuff?) or x-ray; when it was the time, we just walked to the plane. :)

It was our first experience flying in a such tiny airplane. The whole thing is quite scary because it shakes A LOT.. The views were astonishing though, leaving the south island we could see the mountains just minutes before sunrise, the colors were so beautiful.

Right in between the two islands there was a huge cloud which we flew into, and it was a weird feeling because the tiny plane doesn't fly that fast, for a while we stayed in the plane that seemed to be stationary in the middle of the void, because outside is 'pitch-white' in any direction, there was no sensation of movement.

When we were approaching the north island we had a glimpse of Wellington, the capital of New Zealand, from the top.

From the airport, we took a bus to the center and around 8:30 we already had a place to stay; by ferry we would maybe had wasted the whole day traveling.

Then we went to the national landmark museum Te Papa. Wellington is set geographically in a critical place, at the very meeting point or two tectonic plates, so they are quite worried about earthquakes. One of the attractions of the museum won awards on the subject, it is called Forces of Nature and not only gives an excellent idea of how earthquakes happen but also explain how New Zealand islands were formed; there is even an earthquake simulator, and it is all free.

The section about Maori Culture is also good, it doesn't concentrate only on New Zealand, it covers all Pacific Islands tribes and how they interact. There are lots of material about their habits, beliefs and religion. The museum is really nice, it has an Art section on the top of the building which is an area surrounded by painted glass with some little windows where you can spy the city.

We had a nice time in the museum but it didn't take the whole day, in the afternoon we walked through the Cable Street and then the quarters of Willis, Lambton, Cuba and Courtenay.

When we came across an ad for a cheap car rental I convinced Angie we should take it. Although she wanted to hitchhike, there was a lot to see in the north island and we had only one week left for New Zealand. So we called and scheduled to take the car next morning.

Abel Tasman - New Zealand

2005-10-01T07:27:00.000-07:00

8/22/05
Abel Tasman, a National Park on the north end of the south island, houses one of the great walks of New Zealand. The trail switches between the dense forest vegetation and the gold sand beaches with well preserved wildlife. The planning of what time to start walking is tricky though, due to some estuaries that can only be crossed at low tide.

We followed the advice of our Israeli friend; we packed our stuff and left early in the morning to an iSite (tourist information) in Nelson, they are great. We had the information about the tides, booked two nights in huts on the trail and transport to the beginning of the trail.

The shuttle left Nelson around noon to Marahau where the trail begins, one hour and a half north of Nelson. The only bad thing was that the weather started to change and when we stepped outside the shuttle, it started to drizzle; since we where prepared for the rain we went on anyway.

As we started late the first day wasn't long, only 4 hours of walk to Anchorage Hut. On the way we crossed lots of bays with blue water and golden sand. Because it was low season and with the rain we were expecting to find no one or only a few people on the way, but for our lack of luck, when we arrived at the hut, it was packed with teenagers. It was so full that we had to sleep in the kitchen with another 4 people. The hut has a capacity of 24 persons in two rooms with bunkers but it wasn't enough. The kitchen wasn't bad though, because it was a bit cold and the kitchen has a fireplace that was on the whole night, the rooms are colder.

While dining we met a French couple that has been living in NZ for 6 months and chatting with them was interesting to learn how things work here.

8/23/05
The second day we started very very early. At 6:30 we were walking, in the rain. The French couple came along with us.
We skipped our first estuary crossing because it was cold and raining and there was an alternative way, so we preferred to take it.

Around noon we stopped for 1 hour for lunch in a hut where we had a surprise; the ranger told us there was another estuary to cross before getting to the hut where we wanted to stay for the night, and this time there was no alternative way. The iSite didn't mention anything about this crossing, damn iSite.

Around 1:30 p.m. we resumed our walk and before getting to our estuary we passed by seals lazily lying on the rocks warming with the little sun available.

We got to the estuary two hours before low tide, so we had to cross a freezing river with water up to our tight. This estuary is called Onetahuti Bay and according to iSite there was not supposed to be a crossing here, but...

We took some time waiting for the water to lower and entertained ourselves trying to make pictures of the many birds around.

We removed our boots and went in, seals swam by while we crossed and were as curious about us as we were about them.

Around 4 p.m. we arrived at our next destination. This time the hut was emptier. We met a German couple, a German guy that was a professor in the USA and now teaches in Teheran and also Americans teachers from Pennsylvania.

8/24/05
The third day was both the shorter and the harder, we had to wake up around 5 a.m. and get ready to cross the last estuary, Waiharakeke Bay, at the lowest tide, at 6:30 a.m.

I'm sure there is no better way to wake up in the morning, to get out of the warm sleeping bag, still in the dark and cross a river with freezing waters; even the seals were not out at that time, waiting for the sun to come and warm it up a little bit. But we had to go, otherwise it would be too deep and things would be worse.

This crossing was way much harder than the first one, because it was really really wide (picture taken after crossing looking back) ...

... we stayed from 15 to 20 min walking in the petrifying freezing water. The sensation was the same as if some one is poking needles on you leg, or cutting with a knife; it was dark and difficult to see the direction we were going.

From the experience of the last crossing, with the water higher then the knees, Angie removed her pants before getting in, and it was the right thing to do, because the more we walked in, the deeper it got, for me it was at the limit to wet the backpack while Angie had to lift hers to keep it away from the water.

I had sandals on but Angie didn't, and that was killing her feet, because the ground was covered with broken shells; she had to walk like if someone is walking on eggs trying to avoid breaking them.

After half way, it started to get more and more shallow and as we got out of the water we experienced a weird sensation of being warm. It was cold but after being in the freezing water you can't feel it anymore. The sun was just starting to get out and despite the temperature the view was great.

Then we dried a little bit, put the boots and pants back on, and resumed our walk during sunrise. The sunrise from the sea in a clear day is something that blinds you, there is so much light that is hard to look at.

The trail went back in the forest in the midst of the huge ferns ...

... and then went back to the shore.

One and a half hour later walking through the beach ...

... then back in the forest.

We climbed up a view point where we stopped to enjoy the view of the gold sand beach.

Another hour more and we got to the end of our walk, in a picnic area next to a visitor center. In fact the trail keeps going for another couple of hours but it is easier to return from here if you don't have your own car.

After picnicking, we waited for the shuttle that took us to Takaka where from we took a bus back to Nelson.

Back at the guesthouse we bought a ticket to fly to the north island the next day. There is a little air plane from the mail service that take 4 passengers and it costs the same as the ferry but it saves you a lot of time.

Fox Glacier - New Zealand

2005-09-29T15:35:00.000-07:00

8/20/05
We walked to the glacier in the morning, it is only 6 kilometers away from the hotel. For someone that likes hiking the distance wasn't a problem, but it was drizzling. Anyway, we walked there.
Fox Glacier is the longest of the west coast and it can move up to 5m in a day. From 1987 to 1989 it moved 1 kilometer.

We didn't walk up the glacier because it is forbiden to do without a guide (indeed crevasses can be really dangerous) and since we didn't want to pay 90 NZ dollars for a half day tour we just explored the boundary.

The rain and the fog made the area where we were a bit more dangerous, because of falling rocks. Note how dirty the ice became.

When we left the area we heard an avalanche of rocks.

8/21/05
This day we spent travelling to Nelson. How? Hitchhike.
Glacier fox is said to have a population of 140 people, at least it is what the manager of the hotel told us, so you can imagine how small it is. The main street is actually the road going south/north.

There aren't many people traveling on this road; in about one hour and a half only eight cars passed and the curious thing was that the one that stopped for us was a Nepalese guy that came for an interview to work as a guide on the glacier.

He couldn't take us all the way though, only 1/3, because he was heading east, to Christchurch. We were left on the road again where we waited for our next lift.
Not long after a very dirt car stopped, but we should never judge some one by how dirty its car is. He was a very nice retired man from the north island that recently moved to the south. The ride wasn't long though and we were on the road again.

Maybe 30 minutes again and someone stopped, an old Nissan SUV droven by a guy that was, 20 years ago, a backpacker. He travelled in 26 countries and hitchhicked in most of them. It was funny when we asked how Egypt was, the answer was: It was as rough as it gets. Now he lives in Nelson Creek, a town whose population is only 50 people (no, it is not a typo, the population is really 50 people).

And so, in front of Nelson Creek we stayed, waiting for another good soul to take us further.

Another fourty minutes and a young farmer stopped with a car pick-up. During the conversation he gave us some hint as if he wanted to hire us for a temp job in his farm. Although it could have been interesting and fun, we told him we didn't have enough time. Later on, he confessed that he and his dad use to hire travellers for temporary job and have fun watching them working, because most of the time they are people from cities that know nothing about life in a farm, just like us. He also told us a lot about life in the countryside of NZ; depending on where you live you might have to travel to the neighboring town to go to a pub and take your sleeping bag with you in case you end up drunk.! It seems to be a commun practice there...

We were left again on the road still 3 hour by car from Nelson. This time a Israeli guy stopped, he was once a tour guide in Southeast Asia but has been leaving for the last 14 years in New Zealand. This guy gave us lots of good information about the region, the trek in Abel Tasman and brought us right to the door of the accommodation which was recommended by him.

Hitchhiking wasn't so hard after all, not to say that it was fun and interesting to meet all these different people with so different background in one single day.

At the accomodation we met an Italian guy that lived for a while in Brazil working in wineries. He will be back there in November and we´ll probably meet him again in Recife.

Wanaka - New Zealand

2005-09-29T15:10:00.000-07:00

8/19/05
This was the last day with Flavien in New Zealand; we drove to Wanaka in the morning and did a short walk next to town called Mt Iron walk. I think that only in New Zealand you can find easy walks that rewards you with such superb views.

Mt Iron walk didn't take us more then 30 min to the top and it provided a 360° view with mountains in any direction you can possibly look.

Click here for a view of Mt Iron

Then we had lunch and Flavien left with the car to Christchurch where from he flew out of New Zealand.

Flavien, we spent three great weeks together; thanks for joining us again and we hope to see you soon in South America!

So we were left on the road and hitch-hiked to Fox Glacier. Lots of people stopped but weren't going any further than the next village located a few miles away. Eventually a nice British woman traveling in a campervan took us all the way to the glacier.

Once more, the landscape along the road was amazing. Next to Haast, on the west coast, we stopped on a view point where we could see a beach in the distance full of seals.

We got there around 7 p.m. and found a place to stay.

Queenstown - New Zealand

2005-09-23T16:35:00.000-07:00

8/17/05

We woke up early to get to the slops which are only 25 minutes from Queenstown; the resort's name is Coronet Peak. The day was surprisingly nice, blue sky and sunny.

Before taking the first lift we had already planed which trail to come down, but to our surprise, when we got up there we found our chosen trail closed, actually we came to know only later that it was closed. There was a banner saying sky boundary - area not patrolled but it was possible to go through, so we did. It was a trail on the map anyway.

The first 5 minutes were perfect pure powder snow, but as we got to lower altitude it turned into icy and finally pure ice.
At one point it was impossible to snowboard and we had gone too far down to be able to walk up the trail.
Angie decided to walk a critical, more steep, part and resume snowboarding from lower, but what happened was that she almost walked to her death.

Again, it wasn't icy it was pure ice, really bad. Angie removed the snowboard and started walking down very slowly but within two or three steps she slipped, and on ice it is impossible to stop, unless you have an ice-climbing axe, which was not the case.

As she gained speed she started screaming, because she was going strait to a cliff on the left. She first started sliding on her but, then on her back with the head up hill and finally her belly with the head down hill, always holding the snowboard with one hand. All these changes were due to her try to drive away from the cliff, which (thanks god) she did manage to and eventually came to a complete stop.

Flavien and I watched everything frozen and unable to do anything, but after she stopped everything was funny and we all laughed.
Then it was my turn, Flavien knowing what was about to happen prepared his camera and waited for my fall. Note how the slope looks like glass.

After seeing Angie I was quite worried about my own walk down. I was more cautious and using my snowboard almost as an ice axe, but half way down I fell too, luckly it wasn't that steep anymore and my fall wasn't so bad. Once there was snow again we snowboarded normally to the bottom; what a nice first run we had!

The rest of the day went normally as we did stick to the ski boundary area. The resort is not that big but the runs are good and the view is fantastic, simply awesome; to seat for a minute for a break and watch the Wakatipu Lake and the white of the range of snowcapped mountains contrasting with the blue sky is a view that I dare it can be matched anywhere else.

Although we kept skiing in the boundary it doesn't mean we stopped doing shit, here is Flavien, the crazy Frenchman, in one of his many jumps.

It was nice to snowboard again after so long. At night we went to a packed pub with nice live music and cold beer.

This is around Queenstown and we were planing to do, but we didn't. Click and check it out. I'm still not sure if we didn't do because of the price or ...

www.canyonswing.co.nz

8/18/05
The second day we explored around Queenstown. We drove to Glenorchy along the Wakatipu Lake. This area is now heavily explored because it was a set for the Lord of the Rings..

Click here for a panoramic of Wakatipu Lake

Glenorchy is at the other end of the lake and it has some unique trees on the shore. The water is calm and works as a perfect mirror. The reflection on the water is breathtaking.

We went all the way to Paradise in Mount Aspiring National Park, yes, the place next to Glenorchy is called Paradise and it justifies its name.

When we entered the park area the paved road became a little dirt path, but heading to Paradise :)

We crossed many farms with sheeps and cows roaming in long green fields with awesome range of mountains on the background.

On the way back to Queenstown when we got hungry we pulled the car out of the road in a picnic area. The place was so beautiful that we didn't feel like leaving.

This is with no doubt the highest concentration of natural beauty per square meter.

After all that astonishing views we went to, the not so exciting, Arrowtown and then to Cromwell with a stop in a winery where we had the best Pinot Noir ever, but we didn't buy anything this time.

Milford Sound - New Zealand

2005-09-16T15:05:00.000-07:00

8/15/05
Te Anau is a small town in the middle of the Sounds, in the south are the Doudtful Sounds and in the north are the Milford Sounds. Te Anau lies on a lake and at the foot of the mountain range. It is also the start of one of the New Zealand 9 Great Walks, the Kepler trail is the one we wanted to do. In winter time it is usually closed due to snowy and icy conditions.

We went to the visitor center to get more information and they told us that part of the trek is feasible even in winter, at least up to the bush limit where from we could already have a nice view. We also were informed that the Milford Sound Road was closed due to avalanches and we would not be able to drive on it, so we went for the hike.

The trail begins at one end of the lake and follows along its boarder but through the forest. It is very humid and most of the ground is covered with moss.

Click here for a panoramic of the start of the trail

After a while we left the trail and walked along the lake which has a stony shore. When we got closer to the mountain we went back to the trail and started climbing up the mount.

Stupid picture ...

While we were going up the forest the vegetation was changing and the path too. It was getting muddier and close to the bush limit, there was some snow. When we reached the bush limit it changed drastically.

The snow was really high and there was very windy bringing the temperature down. We passed in one second from a forest to no vegetation at all. We kept climbing a little with snow up to our knees and enjoyed and amazing view.

We were very close to the Luxmore hut, which is usually the first stop of the 3-day hike. The view was breathtaking with on one side the lake, the other the fjords and behind us snow-capped mounts, it only lacked a blue sky.

From there we went back to the starting point. The roundtrip took us 7 hours of a rewarding walk. It must be great to do the whole walk! Maybe one day… We went back to the visitor center for updates about the road to Milford Sound and we had good news. The woman told us that they were clearing it and that it should be reopened the next morning.

8/16/05
The road was open, so we drove to the famous Milford Sound, one of the world's most impressive alpine scenery. The Fiordland National Park is a World Heritage Area and New Zealand's largest area of natural wilderness. The park covers an area with glaciated mountains, fjord-indented coastline, lakes, rivers, and forests. The only problem was that it was really foggy and we could not see it at its best. It was also raining, which made hundreds of waterfalls appear all long the way. That was really beautiful!

At the end of the day we drove to Queenstown and rented the snowboard and ski to slide down the Coronet Peak the following day.

Southeastern coast - New Zealand

2005-09-16T14:58:00.000-07:00

8/13/05
From Timaru, where we spent the night, we kept going south to Dunedin which is also very small and slow. It is a charming town with lots of old (old regarding europeen settlement history) stony houses.The train station is an example and became a landmark.

Dunedin has a weird world record; they claim to have the world's steepest street. :o
In New Zealand it is also famous for its university which turned it into a student town.
Anyway, we didn't stay long there, we headed to Otago peninsula. to see its wildlife protected area. To get there we drove along the water in a tortuous narrow road with a nice view of the sea.

The roads in South New Zealand are all two-ways single-lane with very little traffic, a pleasure to drive.

At the reserve, there are Albatrosses, penguins, seals and lots of other birds, though the animals were too far to photograph, because we did not want to pay the high price to get closer.

At the far southeast of the southern island, we also made a stop in Kaka Point and Nugget Point at the end of the day where we hide in a shelter to observe the Yellow Eyed penguins. It was already dawn and it was, again, impossible to make a photo for you guys, but we saw 3 Yellow Eyed penguins out of a population of 8 living in Nugget Point, not bad. The seals were much easier to spot.

For the night we went to Owaka where we had a nice dinner in the, probably, only restaurant in town.

8/14/05
Next day we drove through the Southern Scenic Road and went to the Lake Wilkie.
The way goes through a hilly landscape with hundreds of farms. There are many many many sheeps, 14 for each person in New Zealand.

We were very surprised to see that New Zealand is deer-farming. We had lunch in Invercargill and then went to the Mclean Falls after a short walk through a nice forest; it started to rain so we couldn't do much. Though we crossed wonderful landscapes going from the luxuriant greeny hills to snow-capped mountains.

Click here for a panoramic of the range of mountains on the way to Te Anau

At the end of the day we arrived in Te Anau.

Christchurch - New Zealand

2005-09-15T08:11:00.000-07:00

8/12/05
We arrived around midnight in Christchurch, picked up the rental car that Flavien nicely booked for us and headed to a hostel in the center. In the morning, when we drove around the city we realized how small it was, although, it is a gateway to New Zealand.
We stopped in one of the few animated streets for a delicious brunch, sitting outside enjoying the sunny weather. While waiting for the food we had a closer look in the profile of the country. We realized that everything in New Zealand is small, there are only 4 millions of people in both islands being Auckland the biggest city with 1.3 millions.
We then walked around the charming gardens of the Homestead before visiting the center of the city.
We made a mandatory stop at the Cathedral; its foundation was laid in 1864 and it was open for the first time in 1881, but final completion was not done until 1900.

At the square where the Cathedral is located there was a big chess game going on. (literary)

Then we headed to the best part of the visit in Christchurch, the Antarctic Center. Christchurch is the aerial gateway to the Antarctica and it is the departure point of 70% of the expeditions going there.
There are tons of information on researches made on the frozen continent, penguins, how it formed and how it helps to understand the global warming.
There is a room demonstrating how people live in the New Zealand's base in Antarctica and simulator to let you grasp how the wind is like there.

Surprising things we learned:
- It is not an ice cap, but a completely frozen continent rounded by glaciers.
- It is one of the driest places on earth, comparable to Sahara.
- Because it is not much humidity there is very little snow there.
- Winds reach over 300 kilometers per hour.
- Hair grows 3 times faster if you're living there.
- It registered the lowest temperature on the planet, -83C.
- At that temperature, with normal clothes, you would die in less then 10 min.

We spent the rest of the day learning about Antarctica until they kicked us out of the center when it closed :)

Enough of Christchurch we headed south to Timaru.

Sydney II - Australia

2005-09-15T08:08:00.000-07:00

8/11/05
This was our last day in Australia. In the morning we went to the airport to see Victoria, a very good friend from New York who had a connection in Sydney and we had the opportunity to meet before her boarding. We arrived there earlier and impatiently waited for her, happy to be able to soon see her again. Unfortunately a few hours are not enough to catch up with all the things we could tell each other but it was already very nice to spend some time together on the other side of the planet.

After that short meeting and a sad goodbye, we left the airport for Bondi Beach, the closest beach to the city. It is only 8 kilometers away from the city center and a surfers favorite.

There we went for the small but very charming coastal walk with very nice views of the beach. The color of the water was very nice and we could see the reefs under it.

Soon it was time to head back to the airport, this time for our flight to Christchurch, New Zealand.

Blue Mountains - Australia

2005-09-14T12:44:00.000-07:00

8/8/05
We woke up early and drove to the visitor center of the Blue Mountains National Park. There we got some information about the hikes and rock climbing.
We then headed to the start of our chosen hike in Wentworth Falls. The trail went down into an impressive canyon reached by a narrow path on its wall, at least there was a fence to prevent falling :)

Not too far down there was the magnificent waterfall.

Click here for a wider picture of the waterfall

Continuing down it got harder, the access was made via slack ladders around 80 degrees of inclination, there was even a protection around it because if you fall it could be your last hike.

This part of the trail was almost vertical, we went through many stairs like that until reaching the bottom of the canyon. From there we crossed two types of forest, a rain forest and a gumtree forest. The gumtrees are taller then the others and dominate the forest. Note how Flavien and Angie are tiny next to the tree.

Click here for a vertical panoramic of gumtree

After walking a while in the canyon, the trail climbed and brought us back up to the edge of the canyon cliff from where we could see the whole canyon.

What is the adjective for this one?

Click here for a panoramic of canyon

We walked back to the car along the edge of the canyon enjoying the wonderful view all along. Then we took a scenic road along the cliff and made several stops, including the major attraction: the Three Sisters. Try to spot a little white dot at the middle of the leftmost tower, that is a person crossing the bridge that give access to the Three Sisters.

After all this wonderful sights we went to the town center in search of climbing gear. We found a climbing shop where we rented gear for the next day with Colin, another awesome friendly Australian (www.kacadventure.com.au). He gave us also all the information about where to climb and where to camp for free.

The dinner was in a Italian restaurant in town with wine from the Yara Valley. For the night we camped just next to the climbing site, Mount York.

8/9/05
We woke up early, unset everything and put it back into the car,
had breakfast in the middle of the forest in a picnic area and set off to rock climb.
Although the weather wasn't perfect we spent the whole day climbing. It was a bit cold and windy, but it was great anyway!

The Rock Climb
We climbed a sports route but with carrots, these is a method from the dark ages of sports climbing, according to Colin. Instead of a bolt there is a screw on the rock where you have to hang a loose bolt and clip the quickdraw on it; depending on your position it can be harder then choosing a cam to put in a crack.

Back to the town center to return the gear and had a nice chat with
Colin about rock climbing. He told us a lot about climbing in Korea, maybe in another trip. He also showed us his collection of gear from all around the world!!

For the night we camped again in another area, Megalong Valley.

8/10/05
Another early day, we woke up to walk in Blackheath but we did only a small walk due to bad weather. There was a strong wind and it started raining. With the sun still shinning we had another rainbow on the sky raising from the bottom of the canyon.

Around noon we went back to Sydney and to have a break of all the hard tourism we went to Woolloomooloo neighborhood for a nice Kangaroo steak and then to a pub in Kings Cross for some drinks.

Sydney - Australia

2005-09-14T12:34:00.000-07:00

8/7/05
This day was dedicated to the visit of the city. Sydney has more than 4 millions of people and there is quite a lot of things to do. Unfortunately some of them were out of our budget, like climbing to the top of the harbor bridge (AUS$ 180) which is the city's major icon or visiting the back stage of the Opera (AUS$ 140). We had to stick to the cheapest options like walking around the different neighborhoods. Cheap accommodation in the city is also impossible, we stayed in the suburb some 20 minutes away by train from the center.

We started with the park just next to the Darling Harbor, where some museums and exhibition centers are located. A group of Asian people were practicing tai chi on the grass, so you can imagine that right in the middle of Sydney there is a quiet relaxing place. Families were having brunch along the water in the little cafes.

From there we headed to The Rocks, the oldest neighborhood in the city, named after its rocky shoreline. It was founded when the first convict tents were erected there in 1788 and it is now one of Sydney's most famous precinct.

There are lots of cute little houses made of stones. From its harbor, there is a nice view of the city's modern buildings.

Click here for a panoramic view from the Darling Harbor

We then wandered around newer neighborhoods...

...towards the Opera House to have a closer look to it. The Opera House was constructed between 1959 and 1973 and designed by a Danish architect. It houses much more than operas, from jazz concerts to plays including some free attractions.

From the Opera we crossed the beautiful Royal Botanical Gardens with its impressive and weird trees. Our last stop was across the town hall for a drink just before heading back to the suburb to get our car and drive to the Blue Mountains.

It was already getting dark when, on the way to Blue Mt looking for a place to spend the night, we stopped in a motel but it was too expensive. Surprisingly the owner, a Polish guy, used his computer and did a research on the Internet and also showed us a list of cheaper accommodations that we could check. We were really surprise and it was actually the first time it happened to us but not the last. Anyway, we followed his advice and went to a cheap place in Penrith, a town just a few kilometers before the start of the Blue Mountains.

From Melbourne to Sydney - Australia

2005-09-13T12:49:00.000-07:00

8/4/05
We left Phillip Island early to start our long way to Sydney. We crossed Yara Valley, one of the several wine region of Australia, where we went for some wine tasting (you might have noticed we really like wine). We stopped at three different wineries and everywhere enjoyed lots of different kinds. The tasting is free, buying is not mandatory and the people are very friendly.

Surprisingly the prices were extremely high compared to what we used to pay in New York for an Australian wine bottle. In one of the winery, we enjoyed some Australian cheese and a fantastic mud cake. A rainbow came out just when we were leaving the the winery.

Then we hit the road again crossing wonderful forests of eucalyptus and then the tallest trees in Australia which I forgot the name. The road started climbing up the mountain and it was getting colder and colder. Not only it was getting narrower, but in certain spots it was also quite icy. After a long drive in the forest it was already dark and we decided to find a place to stay in the next village, Wawa. There was only one hotel that was closed and a campground. We rang at the door of the little house and a woman showed up. Oops, we woke her up. Because it was too cold we stayed in a cabin instead of camping. :)

8/5/05
We left our cosy and warm cabin at 8:30 to get into the cold. We drove down the mountains into nice fogy hilly landscape.

Cows were roaming around on the hills. In some fields there were big water puddle due to flooding. The fog was quite amazing, the trees turned into shadows.

After crossing the hilly scenery for an hour, the road climbed up an other of mountains, the Snowy Mountains this time. Snow was covering the forest and the road was very slippery.

We stopped at a viewpoint from where you can see the snowy mountains with its peak,the Kosciuszko Mount. The whole area got actually turned into the Kosciuszko National Park. Once out of the park zone, we saw a small ski resort, the Thredbo Village resort, with some skiers. Soon we were going down the mountain again. We stopped and picnicked enjoying the view of a nice lake. Then we headed to Canberra where the weather was very pleasant. We drove around the city and made some stopped here and there, like at the Parliament House...

...or along the Lake Burley in which the 6-ton Captain Cook Memorial Jet spits out some water 140m high in the air.

The city isn't very big and not too busy either.

Northeast of Canberra, is another wine region. We could not resist and again we stopped for tasting. But since it was already 4:45pm, we only had the time to go to one place, the Larks Hill winery. We didn't get disappointed, the wine was very good and again we bought a bottle. We hit the road again and drove up to the Eastern coast, to Bateman's bay. There we stayed in a motel owned by an friendly Indian couple and enjoyed their cooking, a great Indian dinner.

8/6/05
Dolphins are swimming in Bateman's Bay, so we decided to have breakfast near the water hoping to see some. But unfortunately, we did not see any. The woman from the motel advised us to check out the coast south of Bateman's Bay for around 25km before heading north towards Sydney. we did so, and it was really worth it. some of he beaches were amazing, on others surfers were out and all along we could see very nice houses. At one point, we had to turn back though. Our first stop was the Pebbly Beach where the crowd is mainly composed of kangaroos.

They seem to be used to people because we were able to get really close to them. They kept eating and didn't even bother about our presence.

Our next stop was in Nowra for lunch by the Shoalhaven river. Some impressive big birds were flying around, probably waiting for us to leave to eat the crumbles. A bit further north, in Kiama, we went to see the famous blowhole. It is a hole in a rock through which water blows out making a loud blow sound and, indeed, Kiama means where the sea makes a noise. There is also a lighthouse at the top of the cliff from where you can enjoy a great view of the surroundings.

From Kiama we went to Sydney along the coast stopping to see nice beaches very close to Sydney. We arrived in town at night, we crossed the harbor bridge to see the skyline of the city wit the so famous Opera and the bridge.

Click for a panoramic of Sydney at night

Grampians - Australia

2005-09-12T10:39:00.000-07:00

8/2/05
As planned we went whale watching at sunrise and saw four of them swimming around. After enjoying the beautiful sunrise, we headed towards our next destination, the Grampians, the biggest national park in Victoria. On the way, we stopped at Tower Hill, and a very old caldera where is possible to see hundreds of kangaroos...

... emus ...

... and koalas. The latter ones are very difficult to spot. We looked and looked at the trees, but with no luck.

The drive to the Grampians was fast and pleasant, crossing the Australian countryside. In the main town of the park we found an outdoor store where we arranged rock climbing for the afternoon. Just renting the gear was impossible, we had to hire a guide who took us to a rock named the Watch Tower where we did three different climbs.

It was fun but our guide was quite lazy and with or without him would have been the same thing. At least he gave us some restaurant addresses to try kangaroo meat and told us where we could camp for free. We finished climbing around five and rushed to the Reed's Lookout and the Balconies for sunset. From there there are breathtaking views over the Victoria Valley, Lake Wartook and the Mt Difficult Range and the colors of the sunset were unforgettable. It looked like the sky was on fire, amazing...

We could not leave Australia without trying kangaroo, so we ate at the restaurant advised by our guide. The steak was really good and tender, but quite expensive. With the stomach full, we went back outside in the cold and set up the tent a few kilometers away from the town. The spot for camping was in a pitch black forest away from everything. Flavien decided to sleep in the car while we slept in our tent at the sound of the wind blowing the top of the trees and kangaroos walking around the whole night.

8/3/05
We woke up early and were the first customers in the little supermarket where we bought food for the breakfast and the hike. While having breakfast, we were watching the numerous kangaroos jumping around in the fields just next to the car parking, they are everywhere. Then we started the Wonderland loop hike, a 9.6-kilometer trail. The loop crossed forests, rivers, waterfalls, a canyon...(find Flavien on the picture)

...interesting rock formations, like the Silent Street...

... and brought us to the Pinnacle from where we had an amazing view of the entire valley.

Click here for a Panoramic of the valley

Since the hike took us less time than expected, we decided to make a 'little' detour on our way to Yara Valley. Our plan was to get to Philip Island before dawn to get there on time to watch the Penguin Parade.

Philip Island is home to thousands of little penguins (30cm high), called fair penguins, who 'parade' each night, just after sunset, from the water to their burrows on land. They live in couple and take turns watching the cubs while the other goes to the sea for the day. It was really impressive to see them one behind the other coming out of the water and climbing up the dunes. Unfortunately we got caught by a terrible thunderstorm and really heavy rain. We were completely soaked :)

Note that this picture is actually from a movie we watched at the visitor center :)

Great Ocean Road - Australia

2005-09-09T20:35:00.000-07:00

8/1/05
The real fun was begun on this day. We picked up a rental car in the morning and left for the Great Ocean Road. It runs northwest from Melbourne to Torquay and hugs the coastline for over 300 kilometers until reaching Warrnambool.

Our first stop was at Anglesea where the Split Point lighthouse built in 1891 is located.

From that spot we had a nice view of the beginning of the ocean road.

Click here for a Panoramic of the Coast

We then kept going until we saw a dozen cars stopped on the side of the road with everybody outside staring at the ocean; of course, we stopped too to figure out what was going on. It was two massive whales swimming just by the beach. It was impressive. A bit further on the road, we enjoyed an excellent lunch while looking at the magnificent view of the sea. All along the coast, there were plenty of viewpoints where from you can see different splendid things and guess what, we stopped at almost all of them. Not to get you bored with landscape pictures, here are some stupid ones.

Port Campbell Bay was one of the most picturesque parts of the coast and, indeed, it is the most photographed part on the road. The Twelve Apostles, which are now only 11 due to the collapse of one of them, are huge rocks standing in the water close to the coast.

The area nearby is rich in unusual formations. Here is the Arch ...

...and the London Bridge.

We also stopped at the Bay of Martyrs where we watched the sunset and the Bay of Islands.

When we reached the end of this scenic road, it was already dark. We spent the night in Warrnambool which is famous for Southern Right whale watching. Almost every year between June and September, female whales return to the waters of Warrnambool's Logan's Beach to calve. The whales often swim within a hundred meters of the shore and can be viewed from a specially constructed platform in the sand dunes or from the beach
The whales can grow up to 18 meters and weight 96 tons. We set up the alarm clock for early next morning to get to the platform at sunrise and do some more whale watching.

Melbourne - Australia

2005-09-09T20:26:00.000-07:00

7/30/05
In the Melbourne airport we met Flavien who had arrived in the morning. To celebrate his arrival, we decided to go for a special dinner together, so we headed to the Crown Casino. It is in a huge complex named the Crown Entertainment with 17 bars, 35 restaurants, shops, video games, bowling and god knows what else.

The place was packed; it seems to be the Saturday night attraction of the whole city. We shared a 1Kg Australian rump steak cooked to perfection with a bottle of an excellent Australian Shiraz. It was delicious. After that, we wandered around the Entertainment center and then headed to the bar next to our hostel for a couple of drinks.

7/31/05
It was a beautiful sunny winter day, but quite chilly for us, around 8C. Our first stop was Queen Victoria Market which exists since 1869. You can buy cheap souvenirs, fruits, vegetables, cheap clothes, delicacies.
We tried some Australian wines and the sellers gave us some hints and directions about where to go to try the different Australian wines. Of course, we couldn't resist and bought a bottle with some Tasmanian cheese.

We then went for a ride on the old Free Tram that circles the city. Off the tram we did the Golden Mile Walk, passing by several interesting buildings: the Parliament Building, the theater, some churches.

Most of the old buildings are built in Victorian style and contrast with the modern glass business buildings. The museum building is quite different.

Click here for a Melbourne Center Panoramic

Around the Flinders Street is the main train station, a nice yellow building just across the visitor center.

A few hundreds meters away, we climbed the step of the Shrine of Remembrance in the Melbourne Park, a memorial for the ones that served and died in the WWI, and Eternal Flame, flag poles for WWII. It was the end of the day and we had an nice view of the city and the surroundings.

Click here for a Melbourne Skyline Panoramic

After such a day of walk, the bottle of wine from Victoria Market was just perfect.

Cairns - Australia

2005-09-08T07:47:00.000-07:00

7/27/05
After a long flight with a connection in Brisbane we arrived in Cairns at 1 p.m. When the plane approached Cairns and flew over several reefs we had fantastic views of it ...

... sometimes a huge coral reef with just a patch of sand out of the water in the middle of the sea, fantastic.

From the airport we called a couple of cheap accommodation places and found one that included dinner and free pick-up, wow. 20 minutes later, the van arrived and on our way to the hotel, the friendly driver told us about the different sights and activities.

We then headed to the center of Cairns that we imagined much bigger. The city has only 98.000 inhabitants but it has plenty of backpacker hotels (youth hostels) with all kind of activities like sky-diving, rafting, bush-walking, and diving. Cairns also offers the best access to the 7th wonder of the world, the Great Barrier Reef. (Nemo's home)
After wandering around the streets until dark, we walked back to rest from our former night spent in the plane.

7/28/05
Because of the jet-lag and that we did not set up the alarm clock, we ended up waking up too late and thought that the day was going to be a waste, but after a little chat with the woman of the hostel, we found a half-day tour to do.

Our first stop was at Trinity Beach. People laughed at us because almost every one was wearing swimming suits but we had fleeces on. We were feeling too cold because after spending a long time in the very hot and humid Southeast Asia the 24C of Cairns seemed chilli for us. :)

Our second stop was for a short walk in the rainforest through a trail that ends in a nice waterfall.

Since the trail was wet and slippery, our guide advised us to go barefoot. What a terrible mistake we did. The path was full of stones and branches, it was really painful. At the waterfall some people jumped in while we were shivering. We then went for another walk along a river. At one point there was a cliff where from several people jumped. It was quiet scary.

The day finished with a free diner at the most popular backpackers-pub of Cairns, the Woolshed.

Back at the hotel we booked a visit to Frankland islands for the next day.

7/29/05
We left very early and the tour took us the whole day.
The boat left from the Mulgrave River which is more than half an hour away from Cairns. We crossed nice landscapes to get to the mangrove where the tour started.

Once the boat reached the sea, we started to feel sick; it was terrible. We were so happy to finally touch ground in Normandy, one of the five islands of the Frankland Marine Park.

This park holds a lot of sea life like sea turtles, tropical fish and giant clams. The Australian authorities only allow a maximum of 100 people a day to preserve the reef as much as possible.

The reef is considered to be the largest living "thing" in the world with one of the most complex and diverse ecosystems on the planet. Today's living reefs are about 10,000 years old, build by coral polyps on the foundations laid by the ancestors up to 18 millions years ago. They are home to thousands of weird and beautiful marine species. The one in Australia is home to 400 types of coral, 1,500 species of fish, and 4000 types of mollusk, and believe me, to see all this is much more impressive than its numbers.

We looped the island that is so small that it took us only 45 min to do so. Most of the people fell into the water to snorkel and swim but the two cold passengers :)
The crew served us a nice buffet for lunch with loads of food that was nice too.

After lunch Angie ventured into the water too besides the chilly feeling and snorkeled. At the end of the day we did a guided tour in a semi sub-marine and floated for nearly 20 min above that weird-alien environment while the guide unloaded tons of information about it. The picture below was made through the window of the semi-submarine.

7/30/05
On the 30th we traveled to Melbourne to meet the crazy Frenchman, Flavien, who joined us once more, now for our tour in Australia and stayed with us until the first week in New Zealand.

So, in the morning we just hang around the little swimming pool of the hotel, reading and chatting, before heading at the beginning of the afternoon to the airport.

Hong Kong

2005-09-07T21:37:00.000-07:00

7/24/05

The flight to Hong Kong was free of surprises; at the air port we took a bus to Kowloon City and found a hotel in the Tsim Sha Sui, next to the so called Golden Mile area. It carries that nickname due to its ability to suck money out of the pockets of tourists. There are movie theaters, malls, massage rooms, restaurants, tons of electronic shops just like the ones around Time Square.

After we got a room we walked around the frenetic streets of Kowloon all the way to the harbor where you can get a nice view of the Hong Kong Island like one looking to Manhattan from Promenade or Jersey City, the skyline is quite nice.

Right next is the Hong Kong Space Museum where we watched an exhibition celebrating the 100th anniversary of the publication of the Theory of Special Relativity, cool!!! They've got a movie theater that is a hybrid between a planetarium and a normal movie theater.

Jack Shan seems to own the city though, he not just owns 26 restaurants but you can see his face in every corner of the town advertising all kinds of goods an services, from gyms to noodles and hair care products for man.

When we left the museum, it was already night and we joined the crowd of tourists on the Avenue of Stars, a sort of Hollywood hall of fame where Hong Kong actors have a print on the side walk, but the best part was to watch the light show.

This is a spectacular multimedia show, combining lights, music and narration, and it involves 20 key buildings on Hong Kong Island. The facade of skyscrapers are decked out in lights that, at the flick of a switch, glow in a myriad of shapes and colors that illustrate Hong Kong's exciting and bustling atmosphere.

7/25/05

On the second day we left the peninsula to visit the island and walked through the interesting neighborhoods. First stop at Stanley Street, a photographer's paradise where I was very tempted to get a brand new camera. But then the 'reason' (Angie) told me no. :)
Then we went to Wellington Street, with lots of little restaurants and food market.

Also we checked the famous escalator, 800m long, the world's longest. It is a convenient way of seeing the bustling city hill side which contains lots of upscale restaurants and shops.

Soho is the lively dining district, offering a huge range of international cuisine where we found a Nepalese restaurant but without its most famous national dish, the Dal Bhat. The name Soho actually comes from the location of the neighborhood, it is South of Hollywood Road.

Hollywood Road is also called Antiques Street. It has many curious and antique shops. All around we see the construction supports standing from the side walk 100% made of bamboo.

Another famous place in Hong Kong is the Bonham Strand West for ginseng and birdnest street.
Ko Shing Street which is also called herbal medicine street. It is renowned for its wide selection of Chinese herbal medicine.

For food we had the best Dim Sum ever, dumpling, buns and pastries served in bamboo baskets.

7/26/05
Our last day in Hong Kong was quite lazy; we checked the Harbor City mall, the largest shopping and entertaining center in HK, with more than 700 shops and restaurants. The day was devoted to coffees and relaxation, right in the middle of the hundreds of the always late and stressed city-beings :)

At night we caught a flight to Cairns, Australia.

Beijing II - China

2005-09-07T18:28:00.000-07:00

7/22/05
After another night spent in the train, we arrived in Beijing early morning. With our babbling Chinese we managed to figure out which bus we had to take to head to the embassy. We were really stressed since we were supposed to get a confirmation about the processing of the visa by e-mail but it never arrived. Although, for our great surprise the visa was granted and it was ready waiting for us.

For our second visit to Beijing we didn't have to look for a hotel, as relatives of a friend from NY, Danny, were going to be our lovely hosts during our last two days in China.

After a good lunch we headed to Danny's family place, again by bus. They were waiting for us and were very welcoming. It was a very funny situation because they speak as much English as we speak Chinese, but language is not a barrier when one wants to express happiness and joy. They served us tea and fruits and called their daughter in law in the USA to be our translator.
After they figured out what we would like to do in Beijing, they explained to us how to get to the place and went with us to the bus station where we headed to the Heaven's Palace.

The Temple of Heaven was the place where the Emperors of the Ming (1420) and Qing dynasties would worship heaven and pray for bumper crops.

When we went back to the apartment we were taken out for diner to try a specialty, the Beijing Hot Pot. Our host ordered all kinds of food. At one point we had to ask him to stop ordering, we couldn't eat anymore, at all.

7/23/05
The next morning we woke up very early to have a typical Chinese breakfast, specialty prepared for us by the wife. Again there was lots of good food and they were always worried that we didn't get enough. After such a feast we headed to the Summer Palace.

Unfortunately it started raining and got worse and worse. We crossed all Beijing by bus to get there, since the Summer Palace is at the outskirt of the city; when we finally arrived it was not only pouring, but there was a very thick fog, a pity. The Summer Palace is supposed to be a wonderful place with a huge garden and lake, but with the rain it didn't resemble much of summer :(

We walked around for a while hoping that the weather would clear up, so we concentrated in visiting the buildings of the Palace, but after two hours of walking in the rain from building to building we decided to head back. On our way, we stopped in a market and then in a restaurant for lunch in a part of Beijing where they probably never get tourists. They were very happy to serve us and were as curious about us as we were about China.

Once back at Danny's relative place, we had a nice phrasebook chat (they had their phrasebook to travel in the U.S and we had a phrase book to get around in China) while the wife was preparing another specialty from Beijing, dumplings. There were even other members of the family that came to help, wow. We had a great dinner, and again ate too much (Danny, now we understand why you like eating so much).

We then spent the night talking to the teenager in the house who was very interested in what we saw in China and how we liked it. The whole family was so nice and they were always worried about our comfort. We went to bed early since we had to head to the airport the next morning at 4 o'clock. Again the next morning, our host came with us outside to help us to get a taxi and gave the taxi driver the destination. He even gave us food for the trip, what can we say? THANK YOU VERY MUCH!

China was definitely wonderful.

Pingyao - China

2005-09-05T20:35:00.000-07:00

July/18, 19 and 20 of 2005

Even though we arrived very late in Pingyao we had no problems to find a place to stay. The station is very small and at 1 a.m. there was only one taxi driver waiting for the train; he didn't know English but had a card of a hotel and showed the price with his fingers, 80 yuan. The city was in complete darkness. It was absolutely impossible to walk and try to find a place; we were happy to have the taxi driver.

Pingyao is surrounded by a complete intact 6km Ming Dynasty city wall, the last remaining one in China; it is an exceptional well preserved traditional Hen Chinese city.

Pingyao was also the cradle of the banking system in China; between Beijing and Xian merchant town, banks were open in courtyard houses that were left untouched and today transformed in hotels. So if you want, you can stay in a 500-year old Chinese bank.

After running up and down so much we just wanted a place to stay and Pingyao was perfect, small, nice and relaxed. We spent four days walking in its streets, meeting interesting people, trying local food and making tons of pictures.

7/21/05
It was Angie's birthday and the day we left Pingyao for Beijing. It was Angie's most quiet birthday, celebrated on green tea :)

We spent the day on the courtyard of our hotel-bank watching the life going by and the funny relations of French tourists and the Chinese hosts trying to communicate in English.

We took the train back to Beijing at 8 p.m. not knowing whether my Australian visa had been granted or not, they were suposed to contact us by e-mail but did not; that situation put some stress on us and unfortunately Angie's birthday wasn't much of a thrill.

Xian - China

2005-08-17T01:21:00.000-07:00

7/17/05
We became masters of 'hard traveling'; after traveling for the whole night from Beijing, we arrived in Xian at around 6 a.m, left our backpacks in the locker room at the train station and took a bus to the Terracota Warriors, 40 kilometers away.

It wasn't that simple though; first we tried to buy a train ticket for the same evening to Pingyao with no success; the station was super crowded and with long lines at the ticket counters the attendants didn't have the usual patience to try to understand what ticket we were trying to buy; Angie asked in Chinese for hard-sleeper tickets but it was full, so she asked for soft-sleeper, but it was full too. She asked then for standing tickets and without checking the woman answered no. We asked for the following day, but no matter what were saying from that point on, the only thing we got was an instantaneous 'mei yau' (don’t have in Chinese) and they sent us out of the line :(

But one thing we were sure of, we didn't want to stay in Xian, we just wanted to see the warriors and move on, so we tried to buy bus tickets to Pingyao; the buses are just outside the train station. But again, here we could not find someone who speaks English and our Chinese wasn't good enough. Although they understood where we wanted to go they couldn't understand we wanted to go only at the end of the day.

Not being successful with the bus tickets either we left to visit the Terracota Army around 8:30 a.m.

The Terracota Warriors

Excavations at Banpo, not far from present-day Xian, show that nearly six thousand years ago a sedentary, agricultural society flourished around the future metropolitan region of the early Chinese empire, Xian, that was once the very center of the Chinese world.

The Army of Terracota Warriors is a perpetually vigilant force standing guard over an ancient imperial necropolis.

In 1974 peasants digging a well uncovered what turned out to be perhaps the major archeological discovery of the 20th century: an underground vault of earth and timber that eventually yieled thousands of life-size terracota soldiers and their horses in battle formation.

The 6000 terracota figures of warriors and horses face east in a rectangular battle array and are more than 2000 years old.

There are crossbow and longbow bearers...

... armored soldiers and every figure differs in facial features and expression.

Many of the figures held real weapons of the day.

The surface of the weapons was even treated for rust. They are kept away from public view.

The place has three major sites and other buildings working more like a usual museum with pieces exposed behind the glass.

After that mind-blowing visit we took a bus back to Xian with a mission to accomplish, find a way to get to Pingyao. Back at the train station we tried again to ask for a bus but all we got was one just going to a city close to Pingyao; we took it anyway.

In the bus there were some passengers that were more than happy to talk to us, the conversation was held on a basis of broken English-Chinese and they showed up to be amazingly nice people.

Arriving at the city the bus driver did the unbelievable; he brought us to the train station, got off the bus and came to the counter to order our ticket to Pingyao and showed us where the waiting room was. He didn't speak any English but did everything to understand our broken Chinese.

As I have already mentioned before, meeting nice people makes the visit a delightful experience. Once we had our train tickets in hands the bus driver happily said goodbye and asked absolutely nothing in exchange.

Another 2 hours in the train and we got to Pingyao, at 1 a.m.

Beijing I - China

2005-08-09T01:38:00.000-07:00

7/13/05
So we arrived in Beijing, much earlier then planned thanks to the speed of the Australian Embassy.
Beijing is a H U G E city, with a population of 14 millions. Right now the city looks like a immense construction park; several cranes are piling up buildings in a fast pace in preparation for the next Olympic games in 2008. Also, all the old neighborhoods with the little houses are being destroyed and replaced by modern skyscrapers.

Since it was Wednesday, the Australian embassy was closed. So, after checking in in the hotel, we walked around the old courtyard neighborhood just south of Qiamen, where the Front Gate is now left out of context without the walls but still impressive.

The streets of the old courtyard are a big contrast with the new tall glass buildings standing just by the wide avenues.

The houses in the old courtyard are in the super narrow and dusty streets, with plenty of family-run business, ranging from restaurants and souvenir shops for tourists to cyclos garage-factory for the locals.

Our first picture in Beijing was also our last for the day, we didn't pay attention and the battery was out of juice.

From Qiamen we walked to Wangfujing, the prestigious shopping street east of the Forbidden city. The place is an absolutely crowded pedestrian area. After some strolling inside shops and malls we went back to the hotel to finish the last preparations for the Australian visa.

7/14/05
We left early to the Embassy, that only accepts applications between 9 a.m. and 12 p.m. We took the subway (metro) to the closest station of the Embassy, but it was still quite far, by the way, everything in Beijing is quite far, few things are within a walking distance.

From there we had to stop a couple of taxis until we found one that was ok to take us to the Embassy; even showing them on the map where we wanted to go it wasn't enough. Eventually one accepted the ride, but he didn't know how to get there and had to do a couple of stops to ask around how to get to the Embassy.

Despite all that, we got there on time and applied for the visa; when we asked if there was any possibility of it being processed faster than 10 days, we weren't given any hope but they recommended to send a fax asking, and explaining why that application should be done faster, we then attached the explanation and request with the application instead of faxing it. Ten working days would mean missing my next flight and being on the last day of my Chinese visa.

We were done with the visa by 10 a.m and left to visit the Tianamen Square and the Forbidden city.

Tianamen Square, a desert of pavement, is a creation of Mao.

It is perhaps most known in the west for the demonstrations in 1989 when army tanks and soldiers cut-down pro-democracy demonstrators. In 1977 Mao's mausoleum was built in the middle of Tianamen.

There is not much to see in the square besides the Mausoleum and the sea of Chinese tourists that come to visit it.

Right across Tianamen Square is the Forbidden City, home to two dynasties of Emperors, the Ming and the Qing.

The buildings from nowadays are from post 18th century. But the basic layout was established between 1406 and 1420.

It was off limits, for mere people, for more than 500 years, today it is the most visited tourist site in Beijing.

7/15/05
The third day in Beijing was reserved for main dish of the visit in China, the most insane construction mankind has ever engaged on, The Great Wall, 5.000 Km long.

Click here for a Great Wall Panoramic

Its construction began more than 200 years B.C. When China was unified under Emperor Qing Shihuang; the separate walls constructed by independent Kingdoms to keep out marauding nomads, were linked up.

The effort required hundreds of thousands of workers, many of them political prisoners, and 10 years of hard labor.

An estimated 180 million cubic meters of rammed earth were used to form the core of the original wall, and legend has it that one of the building materials used was the bodies of deceased workers.

The wall never really performed its function as a defense line, As Genghis Khan supposedly said. 'The strength of a wall depends on the courage of those who defend it'

During the Ming Dynasty a determined effort was made to rehash the whole project, this time facing it with bricks an stone slabs. This project took over 100 years and the cost in human effort and resources was phenomenal.

It is not by chance that it is the only thing built by man that can be seen from space.

The part of the wall we walked was from Jinshaling to Simatai, a 10 km section that passed through renovated and 450 years old parts of the wall.

Jinshaling is 3 hours away from Beijing (takes one hour just to leave the city) but it is absolutely worth as there are not many people willing to go that far to see it, most of the tourist prefer to go to another area much closer to Beijing.

The reward was that we had few people on our sight and 5 hours to walk 10 Km through its ups and downs.

Some towers are completely restored while others resemble to a pile of rocks.

Mongol farmers do try to make money there, they will walk the whole way (or almost all of it) with you in a attempt to sell books of the great wall, postcards, water, T-shirts or simple carry your backpack if you don't say NO.

We were done by 3 p.m. and were back to Beijing at 6 p.m.

7/16/05

Mao Zedong died in September of 1976 and we went to visit him in his Mausoleum on a Saturday, perhaps the worst day to do so. The line, made of four people per row, was unfckngblvbly long. Tianamen Square is huge and the queue made almost a complete loop on it; the mausoleum lies at the middle of the square.

Mao was the main responsible for China's engagement in what became to be the greatest failed economic experiment in human history. The Communists tried to abolish money and all private property. China embarked on a radical program of creating massive agricultural communes and drawing large number of people both from the country and urban areas into enormous water control and irrigation projects, but despite the enthusiastic forecasts for agricultural production there was little incentive to work in the fields and the low production combined with bad weather in 1959 plus the withdrawal of Soviet and aid in 1960 made matters worse.

China plunged into a famine of staggering proportions - an estimated 30 million Chinese starved to death.

As a result of the failure of the Great Leap Forward, Mao resigned his position as head of state, but remained as Chairman of the Communist Party.

There was a considerable staff watching and catching the ‘line-cuters’ and ensuring the line moves as fast as possible; they did a good job and despite the length of the line it didn’t too long.

Mao has a strange rate of approval in China, while outside its home country it is known as a terrible communist dictator, in China it raises mixed feelings; it is rather seen as an example of character than anything else. A proof of that is the memorabilia on sale all over China, it is possible to buy almost anything with Mao's face stamped on it, from watches to hats, T-shirts, dishes and his famous 'Little Red Book', a collection of quotations from the chairman, which I bought to read out of curiosity and I want to share two of his quotations with you:

- We should support whatever the enemy opposes and oppose whatever the enemy supports

- I hold that is bad as far as we are concerned if a person, a political party , an army or a school is not attacked by the enemy, for in that case it would definitely mean that we have sunk to the level of the enemy. It is good if we are attacked by the enemy, since it proves that we have drawn a clear line of demarcation between the enemy and ourselves. It is still better if the enemy attacks us wildly and paints us as utterly black and without a single virtue; it demonstrates that we have not only drawn a clear line of demarcation between the enemy and ourselves but achieved a great deal in our work.

After seeing Mao we went for lunch and had a specialty from Beijing, the Beijing Duck. The duck is fattened with grain and soy bean paste. The carcass is lacquered with molasses, pumped with air, filled with boiling water, dried and then roasted over fruit wood fire. Boneless meat with crispy skin is served with a side dish of shouts, plum sauce and crêpes.

In one of the tea houses we were invited to watch a tea ceremony. Tea in China is a serious matter and this ceremony is not a joke, they enjoy tea as a Frenchman enjoys wine.

Around 8 p.m. we took a train to Xian.

From Katoomba - Australia

2005-08-09T01:28:00.000-07:00

Hey guys, sorry for the delay on the updates, but we are having a hell of a good time in Australia and not having much free time to publish. Also, internet here costs up to AUD 8 per hour.

Check later for the posts about Australia, we have been on Great Barrier Reef, Melbourne, Great Ocean Road, Sidney and awesome hikes and rock climbing in the Blue Mountains and Grampians.

Zhongdian - China

2005-07-31T01:44:00.000-07:00

7/10/05

We left the guesthouse in Lijiang in the morning not knowing exactly how far we would be able to move on; our desired destination was Litang, a village way north on the Tibetan Highway.
The old woman, from the guesthouse where we stayed at in Lijiang, brought us to the gate and gave us necklaces for good luck.

At the bus station we didn't have much luck though, there was no bus to Litang, the closer we could get was to Zhongdian, only half-way to Litang, and it still would take us 5 hours in the bus. Since we really wanted to go on the Tibetan Highway we went for it.

We traveled at high altitudes through tortuous roads, which makes it difficult to travel fast, but it was so beautiful. One have the impression of being traveling above the clouds.

Zhongdian is 200 km ( but it takes 5 hours) north-west of Lijiang and marks the end of the Chinese world and the start of the Tibetan world. This is the closest you can get to Tibet without having to deal with the legal hassle and expenses of entering it; even not being officially in Tibetan land it is possible to grasp what Tibet is like.

I have to mention that Zhongdian is at 3.200m of altitude, so we left the nice temperate climate behind and entered the cold; long pants and fleeces were necessary.

The architecture changed to a Tibetan style with houses made of high walls and tiny windows.

At the town, we went around in search of lunch and we found Momo, one of the Tibetan dishes we enjoyed so much in Nepal during the Annapurna Trek; it was nice to be able to order it again.

Itinerary breakdown.
Back at the guesthouse we had a big surprise. Our plans were to travel part of the Tibetan-Sichuan Highway Southern route,the highest highway in the world, above 4.000m. One of the cities we would have like to visit was Litang, at 4.600m.

So we decided to have a closer look on how long it would take to issue my visa to enter Australia, our next country. That was to be able to plan how many days we could spend on the wonderful Tibetan Highway.

It was when we found that the Australian embassy would need 10 working days to issue my visa and it would have to be done from either Beijing, Hong Kong or Shanghai, while Angie was entitled to conveniently issue her visa by herself via Internet (it takes 5 minutes) because of her French nationality. There was no fast issuing process like for the other countries.

That broke completely our itinerary in China and also put in check our plans in Australia. Not to mention that Flavien, a friend, had already bought flight tickets to meet us in Melbourne; even more, if I cannot get into Australia I won't be able to use my already paid ticket to get to New Zealand, because the flight leaves from Sydney, in short words, our trip was in great jeopardy.

To relax a bit from the stress of the new situation, Angie went to see a Tibetan dance event that takes place every night at the central square of the village. Tibetan used to train that dance at home and only dance it together for special occasions like weddings. Since more and more Chinese Han are moving to the region to invest in hotels and tourist activities, Tibetans started to meet and teach the young Tibetan the traditional dances to preserve their culture. At the beginning of the evening, the old people start and then more and more people join and at the end of the evening the whole square is filled with dancing people. It lasts around four hours. Here are two movies from the beginning of the night.

download dance movie 1

download dance movie 2

While Angie spent two hours watching the Tibetan dancing, I stayed at the guesthouse hiding from the cold and watching movies to have a break from the Asian world.

7/11/05
The second day in Zhongdian we did nothing but to prepare papers for the Australian visa and rush to Beijing. The owner of the guesthouse was really helpful, he drove us around to make copies of the papers, buy the bus tickets and got us an address in Kunming to buy our plane tickets. He was really nice. Luckily we had all the needed papers with us.

We first had to take a sleeper bus back to Kunming where we would buy a flight to the capital of China.
The bus trip to Kunming started at 1 p.m. and took us 15 hours. The road along the Yang Tse river was spectacular.

7/12/05

We arrived in Kunming at 5:30 a.m, but we didn't know it was Kunming until the day was clear, because nobody got off the bus, everyone stayed in bed at the bus station, even the driver.
In Kunming we went to travel agency recommended by the guesthouse owner in Zhongdian and with some patience and help of our phrasebook we (Angie) managed to buy for a good price two tickets to Beijing, leaving at 8 p.m.

After that, we found a nice cafe with Internet access where we selected pictures for the blog during the rest of the day.

Lijiang - China

2005-07-27T01:05:00.000-07:00

7/7/05
Dali was a laid-back and pleasant place to be, but we had to move on. A five-hour bus trip took us to Lijiang, at the height of 2400 meters.

Lijiang is set in a beautiful valley and it is home of the Naxi people. The women use blue blouses and trousers covered by a blue or black-apron. The T shaped traditional cape protects from baskets worn on the back and also symbolizes the heavens.

They created a written language, over 1000 years ago, using pictographs; it is the only hieroglyphic language still in use.

We didn't do much on the same day of arrival. From the bus station we went to a guesthouse in the old town, but out of the noisy touristy area. The place is run by a family and we were welcomed like if we were old friends. The place had a nice quiet garden and we were served tea and boiled corn.

There was an old woman, probably the mom of the family, very interested in talking to the guests, but she knows only a few words in English; Angie had a good time trying to communicate with her in Chinese.

She had a magazine with an article about the communist times in Lijiang where she appears as an active member of the party.

At the end of the day we went around the old town for a walk. It is crisscrossed by canals, bridges and amazing narrow streets.

We stopped in one of the many tea shops and, again, the attendants were unbelievably nice to us. We sat to try some different tea at the most authentic Chinese way, with the tiny tea cups. They had a lot of fun trying to understand our broken Chinese and they even took our picture (their camera) for the posterity. And of course, we took one too!

After a lot of tea we walked to the higher part of the old town where is possible to see the gray tiled roofs overlapping each other in tangled disarray and their ends turned up nicely.

7/8/05
Well, on the second day in Lijiang, the quiet place with a chili temperature was the perfect combination for us to catch up with the sleeping, something that we haven't been doing much lately; so we slept the whole morning. :)

With the batteries fully recharged, we left in the afternoon to climb the mount at the Black Dragon Pool Park.

Mao Zedong's statue in Lijiang is a mandatory picture, so here it is. Erected in 1976, the year of his death, the statue is placed in a square right in front the bus station as if greeting anyone arriving in the city.

A steady 40-minute upstairs walk to a peak where from there is a nice view of the 5500 meters high, Jade Dragon Mountain.

Around the pool, we found this, quite peculiar, sign and wondered if it was badly translated or if it really means what it means.

After the mount we walked back to the old town to explore its narrow streets and old houses. It is a real maze where you can get lost easily.

We had dinner outside in a nice street by the sound of a Chinese acoustic version of Bob Marley's Woman No Cry, it sounds quite interesting.

7/9/05
The third day in Lijiang was not so lazy. We biked to Baisha, another village 8 kilometers on the plain north of Lijiang. Baisha, a collection of dirt roads and stone houses ...

... is home of this very special medic, so famous in the region and somewhat famous abroad, Dr. Ho Shi-Xiu.

Dr. Ho has developed unique medical treatments based on the use of herbs. He was born in 1923 and graduated in 1949, as of now, more than 300 thousand patients from over 100 countries have visited him to seek medical advice. In addition, the doctors at the Mayo Clinic in the U.S.A. worked with him in researching herbal treatment of leukemia with fully documented successful cases.

His son, daughter and daughter-in-law are also following his steps.

Not too long ago, TF1 from France, produced a documentary about him and in case you want to know more, a German woman, Julia Bergen, made a movie entitled 'The Most Admired Man'.

After all this propaganda we couldn't leave without buying some of his tasty miraculous - good for everything - Healthy Tea, as himself like to call it. There are many others, there are teas for a whole load of different illness.

After that historical moment, we left on our bikes, but not too far from Dr. Ho's clinic, we came across this band playing a music just like the ones you hear when the Kung Fu fights keeps your eyes on the screen on the Chinese movies. Angie was even invited to play along with them.

Since there was no Kung Fu, just music, we didn't stay too long; a nice old lady, in her T shaped back-apron Naxi costume invited us to her place. She speaks no English but carries around a little book with the impressions left by the tourists she convinced to visit her place.

We decided we should give a try and went with her along the narrow streets that leads to her house. Here too, there was a nice garden behind the high walls and a table where we were served tea, peanuts and salty roasted sunflower seeds. She even had a spare costume and dressed up Angie as a Naxi.

Few minutes after we left Baisha to go back to Lijiang, it started raining. So, at least 7 of the 8 km going back, were done under rain.

Back at the guesthouse, we took a shower and went out for dinner, and local place asks for local food; we had Baba, a kind of vegetable pita bread and snails.

Dali - China

2005-07-20T05:02:00.000-07:00

7/4/05
Kunming was nice, slow and relaxing but it was still a big city, so we took on the road again, destination:Dali.
First we took a bus to Xiaguan, 400 Km west of Kunming and from there to the old city of Dali, only 18 kilometers away.
In Xiaguan we met a Dutch and Korean couple with whom we shared a cab to Old Dali.

Dali is at 1900 meters of altitude also, like Kunming, with mild climate. The stunning mountain back drop with imposing 4000 meter-tall Cang Shan (Jade Green Mountains) is hardly unnoticed.

West of the town adding to the scenery is the lovely 250 square-kilometer lake Erhai Hu.

The old city retains the historical atmosphere that is hard to come by in other parts of China.

The main inhabitants of the region are the Bai, who number today about 1.5 million and settled in the region some 3000 years ago.

The influx of Chinese tour groups, strong renovation lined with souvenir shops streets made it loose a bit of its authenticity, but it is still a wonderful old city surrounded by a defensive wall.

We spent the day wandering in the cute streets of the town exploring each old house and jumping from tea houses to coffee shops and book-lounges.

Like in Yangshuo and in Kunming the people were just so nice to us, especially when Angie engages on trying to communicate in Chinese, they love it.

7/5/05
It was still morning when, walking in the streets of Dali, ...

... we crossed a little restaurant, called Clandestino, where we stopped to read the Wanted sign: 'Looking for foreigner to take care of the restaurant - salary and accommodation, minimum three months', then a girl came by the door and invited us in hope of customers.

When Angie asked if she knew about Chinese teachers she promptly said 'I can teach you'.

So we spent the morning in Clandestino, a nice little bar/restaurant with a backyard where Angie had a first lesson.

Chinese is a language with a large number of words with the same pronunciation but a different meaning, what distinguishes these 'homophones' is their 'tonal' quality - the raising and lowering of pitch on certain syllables. For example ma can mean mother, numb, horse or swear, so just a little variation on the pitch can change the meaning of the world completely.

One remarkable thing was when the girl was trying to teach Angie the four different tons for saying ma and corrected Angie saying: 'No, repeat ma, like ma in that plant', pointing to a plant just next to us. We had not noticed but it was a huge bush of Marijuana. Look the picture again more carefully and you will see it.

She explained to us that Bai people have used it for ages and it is growing everywhere around Dali. That also made me understand why in every corner of Dali there is a nice old lady in her Bai costume offering some.

After the class we went back to our hotel and rented bikes to visit the three pagodas, San Ta Si, 2,5 kilometers north of the town.

San Ta Si is among the oldest structure in south-western China; the biggest one is 70 meters high.

From there we went down to Erhai Hu where we sat in the garden of a nice tea house by the lake.

The mixture of cultures is such a great thing; after the lake we went biking inside Dali and came across this catholic church.

Dali is a popular domestic tourist destination, so there are plenty of restaurants not aimed at the foreigner, the food is almost free. We had a nice freshly cooked dinner for two for about 10 yuan (1 $USD = 8.2 Yuan).

There was no English menu, but they were happy to help us choose something. In those restaurants you never order a dish for yourself, but a couple of dishes that are shared among the ones at the table. It was a nice experience. Bai people pick lots of different kinds of mushrooms in the surrounding moutains, so we ate several dishes with tasteful brown, black, yellow and white mushrooms. It was delicious!

At night the walls are illuminated.

7/6/05
Another morning with Chinese class and relaxation, then we spent the rest of the day biking. This time to Xizhou, 18 kilometers north of Dali.

On the way we passed by a beautiful pagoda by a lake.

Xizhou has even better preserved architecture than Dali, it is not renovated and not full of tourists. We biked slowly in its streets looking at the past before our eyes.

There we visited the Bai Culture House, watched folkloric dances, visited art galleries, traditional clothes shops and met more nice people.

There are lots of people on the streets using their local costums. We stole this picture when a Chinese tourist posed for his own camera with the girls.

Then 18 kilometers back to the guesthouse, it was a long biking day.

At night, we went back to Clandestino for another Chinese class.

Kunming - China

2005-07-19T19:43:00.000-07:00

7/2/05
We arrived in Nanning, coming from Guilin, quite late, around 10 p.m. The first thing we did was to try to find a bus going to Kunming from the same bus station where we arrived, but there was none.

Then we took a cab to the train station and, gosh, it was much more far then we expected, Nanning is a huge city.

At the train station we found tickets for the train going to Kunming, but only in the standing car, all the soft-sleeper, hard-sleeper and seats were taken, but because we really didn't want to wait we went for it. The train was scheduled to leave at 1 a.m.

7/3/05

The train from Nanning to Kunming.

I don't know why they do that, but they do. The passengers are not allowed to wait on the platform, there is a waiting hall instead. Upon the announcement of the train arrival, some 10 minutes before the train reaches the station everybody lines up on the door that gives access to the platform.

The staff only lets people in the platform when the train arrives, and when it arrived it looked like they were opening the gates of Woodstock (in Portuguese: o estouro da boiada). The line was completely forgotten; everyone rushed to the door like if they were running for their lives.

Perhaps that is only the type of ticket we bought? The cheapest kind … I don't know.

We just let them rush and waited until we could walk without being pulled-pushed by the crowd. We were the last ones in the car and were standing by the door; it was literally impossible to move any inch further. There were thousands of passengers. People were being squeezed out through the windows. In such conditions it is impossible to keep it clean, the thing was filthy with food, papers and all kinds of stuff on the floor. It was impossible to move, there were people everywhere, kids sleeping on the floor, families sitting on their luggage…it is just indescribable! We could even not move to sit down with our backpacks.

There was one hope though, we knew it before we boarded. In China, it is possible to upgrade your ticket. Within 20 minutes of ride, the conductor brought us to the dining car where we could seat, although we had to buy a tea but it was more then ok in the given circumstances.

He didn't even ask anything, he knew we would go for an upgrade and came back 10 minutes later with a paper with the price written on it. We paid him and moved to the hard sleeper car. From that point on it was fine. We had a bed and just woke up in Kunming.

Kunming has 4 million people and it is a neat city. They are trees and flowers along the sidewalk. One thing that caught our attention right away was the silence. Somehow the city's traffic is very quiet. There are hundreds and hundreds of absolute silent and clean electric bikes being used by the commuters.

But its charm is under threat from relentless modernization.

The fascinating wooden buildings have almost completely disappeared.

But as a modern city, Kunming is a great city. The city lies at 1890 meters and it has a mild pleasant climate.

After checking in the hotel we walked to the Flower and Bird market, in little streets just behind the major department stores street. Within one block of distance there is a big difference from the modern large avenues with high pre-made buildings and the narrow streets with tortuous houses. Kunming is also famous for it bakery and pastry shops, so we stopped at a pastry shop and tried some delicious Chinese treats!!

Yangshuo - China

2005-07-19T05:12:00.000-07:00

6/29/05
We left Lang Son, a city 18 kilometers away from the Chinese border, at 7:30 a.m. in a taxi and we were probably the first ones to cross the border on that day.
That means, the officers were rested, full of energy and really wanting to work. To leave Vietnam was quite funny because the officer studied my passport picture and myself very very carefully as if there was a I chance that I wasn't myself.

To enter China the officer was all confused because Angie's visa was issued as if she was Brazilian, but he was nice and made no big deal out of it.

After passing the immigration, our mission was to get to Pinxiang, the closest city on the Chinese side, 10 kilometers away. There were lots of cab drivers hassling us with pricy rides to the town. The fact that they do not speak English and that Angie does not speak Chinese did not, at all, restrain them from bargaining.

One shouted something in Chinese showing his hand (five fingers) open; another one came speaking louder and at the same time showing five bills of ten yuan; another one shows four bills of ten; there many others jumping on us and the competition was hard. We know from the Lonely Planet that the ride costs no more than 20 Yuan, so Angie offered ten and they, surprised, laughed hard among them.

As we walked away the price went down to 30, but not lower, we kept walking and a girl drove her taxi next to us, lowered her window showing 20; we jumped in the taxi right away.

With a phrasebook we managed to explain that we wanted to go to the bus station. The plan was to get to Nanning, then to Guilin and finally our desired destination, Yangshuo.

We were lucky because the station was very small and It wasn't difficult to find a bus, which by the way, was about to leave, to Nanning; we only had the time to put the backpacks in the trunk before it left.

After four hours we arrived in Nanning, in a much bigger bus station; to find a bus going to Guilin wasn't that simple because all the destinations (and there were many) were written only in Chinese. But after a while we figured out. Not only the buses were new and comfortable with free water and food served by a 'stewardess', but also the landscape was amazing the whole way. So far, it was our nicest bus trip.

Another four hours of us and we got to Guilin. It was already after 10 p.m. and we weren't sure wether we would be able to get to Yangshuo on the same day or not.

The bus station where we arrived had no buses leaving to Yangshuo, it was from another place, but where?
We asked around and people always pointed to the same direction, so we started walking. Eventually one guy stepped by our side and walking along with us started to talk to me.

Guy:Hollo, where you fom?
Me: Hello, I'm from Brazil.
Guy: Where?
Me: Brazil.
Guy: Bill? Is it in Olope?
Me: Europe? no, it is in South America.
Guy: Ahhh, south of 'America'? I know, in Flolida?

He was a really nice guy and because it was already late night I thought it was ok to let him believe I was an orange boy from Florida. The conversation went on and he helped us to find a bus going to Yangshuo.

One more hour and we got to Yangshuo, it was already close to midnight and we still had to find a hotel.
Because it was so late there was only one hotel-guy waiting at the bus stop in Yangshuo, he was not just annoying but also drunk. We followed him to his hotel anyway, just to see. The prices he proposed were ridiculously high. After long negotiation the price dropped to 1/3 of his starting rate but it was still more then we were up to pay.

When we decided to check another hotel before taking a decision he got upset and gave us a nice big loud 'fuck you'.

We left and he followed us on the streets still insisting for us to take his room. Then we entered in another hotel where the reception didn't speak English, but they were so nice, showed us the room, we agreed on the price and that was where we stayed on the first night in China.

6/30/05
Yangshuo is set amid gorgeous limestone pinnacles and is a very laid back little village. It is also a good place from which to explore other small villages in the nearby countryside.

In the morning we went around to visit the city; the surrounding karst mountains
are really beautiful.

We found another place to stay at a much better rate and moved there on that morning. In the new hotel we arranged a boat tour on the river Li Jiang for the afternoon. We first went by minibus to Xingping, 40km north of Yangshuo, crossing an amazing scenario like in Halong Bay but with no water.

Then we walked in Xinping; it is almost like traveling back in time; this little village is a living museum. The old houses are charming and the people were just so nice to us. Everyone smiled and everyone waved to us.

The boat tour lasted for about 1 hour ...

amid the fishermen ...

... and the rock formations.

Click here for a panoramic of river Li Jiang.

[Thanks Kurtz for the Photostich, without your help we would not have a panoramic on the blog.]

After the boat we spent more time exploring the little streets of Xinping.

Then we went back to Yangshuo by minibus. There, we enjoyed the busy touristy west street. There are many many little restaurants side by side, all of them are trying to play music louder than their neighbor while a guy plays Chinese flute on the corner, you hear them all at the same time.

Nearby we found a couple of climbing shops and we booked climbing for the following day in the morning.

7/1/05
Someone literally put 'cold water' in our plans to rock climb, it was 'raining' in the morning, so we came up with a B plan, biking.
We rented bikes and hired a guide; she took us on dirt roads ...

... through the countryside and tiny villages. we loved it!

These villages are centenary in construction ...

... and the open-door houses are like a window looking 50 years back in time.

After seeing Halong Bay, then driving among the karst peaks to get to Xinping, and now biking even closer to it, we can't get enough. The rain had stopped and the air was cool and fresh, nice for biking.
We biked along the river where you can do bamboo rafting.

Then, we biked to Moon Hill, a pinnacle with a moon-shaped hole; we parked our bikes and climbed it up.

Around 3 p.m. we were back to Yangshuo and just relaxed the rest of the day wandering in the town.

7/2/05
Yeahh, no rain; we went rock climbing in the morning. We met our guide at 9 a.m. and within a 5 minute-drive from Yangshuo we arrived at the climbing site. The access is very easy and there are many routes with bolts.

There were two other guides with other clients but it was like one big group climbing; we shared the ropes so we had plenty of choices to climb.

After climbing we went back to West Street for lunch and then traveled to Guilin->Nanning->Kunming in the afternoon.

In Guilin, at the bus station, a girl helped us to buy tickets. Jenny (her English name), asked for tickets to Kunming but there was no buses going there. She then offered to go with us to the train station, 'I have spare time', she said.
We took a cab and she came along just to help us with the tickets, how nice.
But we had no luck, there were no tickets left for the train going to Kunming. Then Jenny came back with us to the bus station where she helped us to by a bus ticket to Nanning, halfway to Kunming,

It is so nice to meet good-heart people, the only thing she wanted in exchange was to know our names, where we are from and how much we like China.

Halong Bay - Vietnam

2005-07-11T21:47:00.000-07:00

6/26/05
We left to Halong Bay in the morning and, ironically, the bus was late; if it had been late on the previous day we would not have missed it :(

Anyway, around 9 a.m. we were on the way to Halong City where we had lunch and then took a boat to Cat Ba town.

Halong Bay

Halong Bay is a 1,500sq km bay featuring 3,000 mainly limestone islands; fascinating caves have been carved into the limestone by the elements.

Halong means "descending dragon" and a legend tells of how a dragon rushing into the sea, broke up the rocks with its flailing tail gouging out valleys and crevasses; as it plunged into the sea, the areas dug up by the tail became filled with water, leaving only the high land visible, thus creating the islands. What a wonderful story. It is one of the marvels of Vietnam.

The boat trip from Halong City to Cat Ba island was a long 4-hour journey through this wonderful scenery.

The boat didn't go straight to Cat Ba, it made a stop to visit two Caves. The first one we saw was Hang Dau Go (Grotto of Wooden Stakes), known to the French as the Grotte des Merveilles (Cave of Marvels). It is a huge cave consisting of three chambers reached via 90 steps.

This is a very popular cave and it is illuminated with colorful lights, the only downside is the crowd.

Part of the same system, near by, is Hang Thien Cung which we also visited before getting back to the boat and resume the trip. Note the people in the picture to have an idea of its size.

We arrived in Cat Ba town only at the end of the day and we had few minutes to walk around before it got dark.

The town is pretty small but the 'ocean avenue' is quite busy. There are many restaurants and bars and most of the tourists here are Vietnamese.

The Vietnamese Service
We chose one of the many food stalls by the busy street to seat, have a cold drink and watch the local night life. The funny thing was that the girl working at the food stall didn't speak English at all, but her willings to serve us was beyond expected.

Angie asked for a iced tea but she couldn't understand; then Angie tried to say tea in Vietnamese, but that didn't work either. What made this a memorable time was the fact that the attendant really wanted to serve us and she did her best to please us. She called a young girl to try to speak English with us, but the young girl couldn't understand the order either.
When she thought she understood what we wanted, she ran across the street, entered a mini-market and came back with a can of carrot juice, smiling at us and waiting for a confirmation before opening the can.
That was when I suggested Agie to try to use the word Lipton, and that finally worked out. Although she never sells tea, she did all she could to serve us, she ran again across the street, returned the carrot juice and came back with a box of Lipton tea to exclusively serve us, how nice, and if you think she just wanted to make money I'll tell you that the bill was 3,000 Dong (US$ 1 = VD$ 15,000)

6/27/05

The second day in Halong Bay was spent hiking at the Cat Ba National Park.

Cat Ba National Park is made up of the Cat Ba group of 366 islands some 133km from Hanoi and 30km east of Hai Phong.

It was unbearably hot and we walked in the worst window of the day, from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. The first part, from the pier to the village, was a convenient walk over a paved path in the middle of the forest.

At the village we made a stop before continuing through the trail to the top of one of the hills, 300 meters high.

The second part of the walk was, with no doubt, the day we sweated the most in our lives.

But the climb up the hill was totally worth, the view is 'fabulastic'.

On the way back, we stopped to swim and kayak. We were back to Cat Ba town around 4 p.m.

We went back to the hotel, took a shower and rested from the strenuous walk under a cooking sun.

Crazy Guide - Episode: Cell Phone

When we went downstairs to have dinner, a girl was arguing with her guide because when she had bought her tour to Halong Bay she had paid extra for a room with A/C, but her guide would only give her a room with A/C upon extra-extra payment.

After a long bla bla bla, the guide started to raise his voice at her. He became quite aggressive when he was talking. He kept repeating that it was a problem between her and whatever travel agency she had bought the tour - wow, great service.

The arguing heated up and he escalated the issue to his boss by phone. He passed the phone to the girl to talk to his boss, but his boss only speaks Vietnamese, so it didn't help her.
Then two things happened.
1 - She threw the cell phone across the restaurant that hit the floor and broke in pieces.

2 - Inconceivable in any circumstance, but it happened here, the crazy guide smashed her face.

Within a few seconds of all that action, a Scottish guy arrived and found the crazy agitated guide walking around in the restaurant.

Without understanding exactly what had happened the Scottish guy found the girl left on the floor behind the counter.

I thought that the Scottish guy would jump on the guide's throat, but, luckily, he just gave him a hard time and helped the girl who was hurt.

That was the contrast of the Vietnamese kindness of the food stall attendant from the previous night.

6/28/05
The third day was all about travelling, we left Cat Ba town in the morning and did the same sailing back to Halong City, where we took a bus to Hanoi and then another bus heading to China.

Crazy Guide - Episode: Bus

But we didn't leave Cat Ba without watching another fight of the crazy guide.

He confused the English girl from the night before with a Danish girl that had nothing to do with the cell phone episode (both girls had red hair). He yelled at her asking for money. When he realized it was the wrong girl, he even didn't apologize. When he then saw the English girl, he simply decided that she wouldn't get on the bus; apparently he was claiming that she was on a 3-day tour and could not leave before.

She ignored him, of course, and walked in the direction of the bus along with everybody else, that was when things started to get physical again. He blocked her way, grabbing her bag while she tried to strive and move forward. In the middle of this push and grab, shouting and arguing she managed to get to the door of the bus, but then the bus driver closed the door on her face, unbelievable.

Then the same Scottish guy started to get involved again, he ordered the bus driver to open the door of the bus while his friend had to, by means of force, move the crazy guide away.

The bus driver opened the door and she finally got on the bus that took us to the pier in Cat Ba town.

We arrived in Hanoi around 5 p.m. and then took another bus to Lang Son, next to the Chinese border, where we spent the night.

I have to say that we had a wonderful time in Vietnam, specially in Hoi An and in Sapa. We were very well catered, specially considering that we are budget travellers; only Halong Bay produced a bad story, and even though it didn't happen to us it could have been.

I'm just reporting it here so you know that those things happen.

In general Vietnam is a wonderful place with friendly and welcoming people.

Hanoi II - Vietnam

2005-07-09T04:33:00.000-07:00

6/25/05
Well, we arrived late in Hanoi. There was a problem with the train and we were supposed to arrive at 5:30 a.m., but we arrived at 8:30 a.m. We didn't notice anything, of course, as we were comfortably sleeping; as a result, we missed our bus going to Halong Bay and the hurricane schedule fell apart.

That wasn't so bad, because we could just start the tour on the following day with no problem nor extra costs; and we had one whole day to do nothing and rest.

Hanoi is a big city with 3.5 million people and like most of the big cities it offers lots of activities but we were too tired to go anywhere. The only thing we did, was to walk around in the Old Quarter, where our hotel was located, in search of food.

The Old Quarter has more than 1000 years of history and it really deserved much more attention than what we gave to it, but we really wanted to rest and to walk in its streets was not a relaxing thing. It seems that each single person of the 3.5 millions inhabitants of Hanoi has a motorbike, which makes the streets absurdly busy.

It would be really hard to describe it and pass the real feeling of how busy it is, so not to rely on my words I made a short movie of this crazy intersection with no traffic light where they, somehow, just keep going, no one stops and they don't crash, the same thing as in Cambodia.

Download the Crazy Crossing movie.

Sapa - Vietnam

2005-07-07T21:52:00.000-07:00

6/23/05
Sticking to the hurricane schedule, we took the train in Hanoi at 9:30 p.m. of the 22nd of June and arrived in Sapa at 8:30 a.m. of the following day. The train in Vietnam is pretty good; we had a hard sleeper class and I slept like a baby during the whole trip.

Sapa
Sapa is a hill station built in 1922. It lies at 1,650 meters of altitude in a beautiful valley close to the Chinese border, 300km northwest of Hanoi. The whole area has spectacular scenery frequently shrouded in mist, and is home to diverse hill-tribe communities.

The two largest ethnic groups in the region are the H'mong and Dzao and although most of the montagnards have had no formal education and are illiterate many of the youngsters have a good command of English and French due to the recent tourist boom. This is now the most popular destination in the northwest of Vietnam.

H'mong migrated from China in the 19th century and it is one of the largest minority in Vietnam. They wear indigo-dyed linen clothing with women typically wearing skirts aprons, wrap-on leggings and a cylindrical hat.
There are several groups within the H'mong, including black white red green and flower.

We were brought to a hotel where we had breakfast and met our guide for the 2-day 'trek', a 16 year-old cute girl in her tribe's costume.

Our group was made of 8 people. Angie and I, two British girls, two American girls and a couple , a French-Vietnamese girl and a French guy.

Only around 10 a.m. we started walking down the hill from Sapa and in 30 minutes we were entering the trails amidst the rice terraces.

It had been raining so it was very muddy and slippery, but we didn't really have to walk too much, around noon we stopped at Cat Cat village for lunch.

We kept walking during the afternoon to the next village, Lao Chai, where we spent the night in a homestay. The walking was very easy with another break to rest; this time we stopped by the river where these lovely kids try to sell bracelets.

The rice terraces are endless.

We arrived fairly early at the village ...

... and had the time to explore around. The people have such a strong character that it tells you right away that they endured a very hard life.

The dinner was freshly cooked exclusively for us on their own style...

... it was excellent and after eating everybody got together to play stupid card games and the penalty, for the looser, was to drink a shot of the strong local homemade rice vodka. We had a lot of fun!

6/24/05
The 2nd day of our 'trek' didn't start early. We were up only at 8:30 a.m. Then we had a nice long and slow breakfast with crepes, fruits, coffee and tea; we were again on the trail only around 10 a.m.

We hiked to another village where we visited a nice house, this time a different tribe, the red Dzao.

We stopped by a waterfall to rest, had lunch and then after another easy hour of walk we took a jeep back to Sapa.
We passed by this bridge that reminded us of the Golden Gate.

When we arrived in Sapa and the first thing was to take a shower and then leave to visit the town. Sapa's market is full of other tribes, all weaving traditional clothes.

Before going to the train station to get the train back to Hanoi we went for a Vietnamese coffee with the French-Vietnamese couple, Thomas and Phuong. In Vietnam they always use little chairs and little tables, we experienced this through out the whole country, and the coffee is always freshly brewed and excellent.

Around 8 p.m. we were back in the sleeper train heading to Hanoi.

Hanoi - Vietnam

2005-07-06T10:15:00.000-07:00

6/22/05
We arrived in Hanoi at 6 am after a long night of bus traveling. According to our original plan we were suppose to enter China on this date, but we didn't want to skip things in North-Vietnam; Sapa and Halong Bay were on the must-see list, so right after checking in the hotel we established a hurricane schedule.

First thing was to leave our passports with the tour agency (actually the hotel staff) to make our Chinese visa.

Then, we went over the tours they were offering and we bought the following:

- A city tour in Hanoi that would start at 8:30 am of the same day.
- Also a 2-day tour to Sapa (13 hours away from Hanoi) that would leave at 8 pm of the same day and would return to Hanoi at 5:30 am on the 25th of June.
- Then a 3-day tour to Halong Bay that we would start at 8:30 am of the same day returning from Sapa. From Halong Bay we would be back at 5 pm and then on the same day, at 8:30 pm, we would take a bus heading north to the Chinese border; all that was not bought before studying all the possible combinations of tours and prices.

All of that was not just done in two hours, from 6:30 to 8:30 am but after a 12-hour night bus trip.

Well, our city tour started and the first stop was at the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum. The place was super secured; just in the room where his body is, there were eight guards, not to mention the uncountable number of guards outside.

With all the respect for Ho Chi Minh, I have to say that to conserve his body in a room for visitors, is, at least for me, an awkward idea, but it seems to be a communist thing; the same was done to Stalin and Mao Zedong, which indeed, we plan to visit in Beijing.

Next to the mausoleum is the Ho Chi Minh Museum that we visited very quickly. It was built to express the Vietnamese people's deep gratitude to the President's great merits. The exhibition focuses on his life and revolutionary cause.

The Ho Chi Minh's house on stilts is on the same site, next to the museum, and it is also open for visitors. The former French Palace of the General Governor for Indochina became his office; but Ho Chi Minh insisted in living in the simple two-rooms house on stilts.

From the museum we went to visit the temple of literature, which is said to be as old as Hanoi, at least 1,000 years.

The following is from the souvenirs shop on the place.

From there we were brought to a nice restaurant for lunch and after lunch we walked to the lake.

The tour finished at 3 pm and we were again in a hurry; we had to find the British Airways office in order to make some changes on our tickets. The problem was that the office closes at 4 pm, but we made it on time.

We had two hours to recharge the batteries before taking the train to Sapa.

Hue - Vietnam

2005-07-05T08:05:00.000-07:00

6/20/05
Although we really wanted to stay longer in Hoi An we had to move on. We traveled to Hue in the morning and it was a somewhat short trip compared to what we have been doing lately; we arrived in Hue around 1 pm.

Hue has been one of Vietnam's main cultural, religious and educational centers.

When we were looking for information about tours in the city and we ended talking to an Easy Rider that convinced us to hire him to take us around in his motorbike.

We always avoid motorbikes due to the risk of accident and specially in our case, traveling abroad, it can be a real issue, but I have to admit, we see much more by bike than by tours.

We went first through little roads where cars can't even go. The first stop was the Tiger Arena, a Vietnamese version of the Coliseum. For mere fact of entertainment the emperor would put tigers to fight elephants. The last fight happened in 1904.

Then we drove to a incense making place where Angie was put to work.

Then we went to see one of the major highlights of Hue, the Tomb of the Emperor Tu Duc. This is a whole complex with his tomb and many other tombs for his concubines, wives, and other important people. The area also houses temples and palaces. All of It was built between 1864 and 1867.

The place is very peaceful and relaxing and was also used by the emperor while he was still alive.

Statues of soldiers guard his tomb.

This is the gate for his tomb. Tu Duc was also a poem writer and some of his poems can still be read from the gate walls.

The Emperor had 104 wives but no son (similar story to one of the Maharajas in India) and his tomb is the most famous one in Hue. There are other two tombs, meaning whole complexes like this, but for us, visiting one was enough.

After one and half hour wandering in the mausoleum we moved on to Vung Hill, a place with French and American Bunkers, left over from the wars, and also a place with a nice view of the Perfumed River. Unfortunately, we arrived there at the brink of a storm. The sky suddenly darkened and the wind was so strong that walking turn into a strength game against the wind. The water started to fall and we couldn't make a picture.

We ran to the bike and moved to The Buddhist Temple where we could hide from the strong rain.

After the rain stopped, we returned to the town.

6/21/05
The second day in Hue was slow; we walked to the Citadel where we spent most of the day.

On the way to the citadel we stopped over one of the bridges to observe the fishermen.

Hue was the Capital of South Vietnam in the 19th century and the Citadel was built in 1804. The style is from the French military architect Vauban, with a layer of bricks that is 2m thick and has 10 km of perimeter. The details though, are Chinese.

The imperial enclosure is in fact a citadel-within-a-citadel. In the imperial enclosure there are several palaces and the Forbidden Purple City, reserved solely for the personal use of the Emperor; the only servants allowed into this compound were eunuchs, who would pose no threat to the royal concubines.

At the Citadel, Angie bought a drink that she did not know yet. She sipped a little bit and for once she could not finish it because of the weird taste. We then realized it was made of a fungus and bird's nests!!!

We left at the end of the day to Hanoi.

Hoi An - Vietnam

2005-07-03T06:58:00.000-07:00

6/17/05
After a whole night traveling by bus from Nha Trang, we arrived in Hoi An at 6:30 a.m.

Hoi An is a picturesque riverside town, it is definitely the most enchanting place along the coast in Vietnam.

The tour bus brought us to an excellent hotel; the room was quite luxurious and the hotel also featured a nice swimming pool with hydro-massage, all for US$ 8.
Right after we checked in, we jumped in a tour bus to visit an ancient site called My Son, one hour away from Hoi An.

My Son (pronounced 'mee son') is Vietnam's most important site of the ancient kingdom of Champa, and, as of 2000, Unesco declared it a World Heritage site.

It is also considered to be Champa's smaller counterpart to the grand cities of Southeast Asia, another Indian-Influenced civilization like Angkor Wat (Cambodia), Ayuthaya (Thailand) and Borubudur (Java/Indonesia). It was a religious and political center from the 4th to the 13th century.

During the American War, the region was completely devastated and depopulated in extended bitter fighting. Finding it to be a convenient staging ground, the Vietcong used My Son as a base; in response the Americans bombed the monuments.

Traces of 68 structures have been found, of which 25 survived repeated pillaging in previous centuries by the Chinese, Khmer and Vietnamese. The American bombings spared about 20 of these, some of which sustained extensive damage; the rest was reduced to rubble.

There is a little museum at the site were some carvings are kept. Also, like if it was one of the art works in exposition, a B52's bombshell is in the room.

From the site we returned to Hoi An by boat. It was a nice trip; we were served lunch and stopped in a woodcarving village for a visit.

In Hoi An, we got off the boat right in the middle of the market of the old town.

Hoi An, known as Faifo to early Western traders was one of Southeast Asia's major international ports during the 17th and 18th century. Hoi An was to Vietnam what Macau was to China or Melaka was to Malaysia. It was at one point busy with Dutch, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese and other trading vessels.

What is left today is a charming little town with hundreds of old houses.

6/18/05
We took it easy on this day; we spent the morning resting by the swimming pool.

In the afternoon we biked to the An Bang beach (the hotel also provide bikes free of charge), crossing rice fields and then back to the town. The beach wasn't touristy at all.

For dinner we tried White Rose (steamed shrimp wrapped in rice paper), Cai Lau (doughy flat noodles with crouton, bean sprout and pork slices) and Hoi An spring rolls.

After dinner we spent the evening in one of many nice bars.

6/19/05
We started earlier with the swimming pool and then left with the bikes to visit the old houses and monuments of the old town.

First stop was Phac Hat pagoda.

Then we went to a 3 centuries old house in the center. Cars are not allowed in the old town so it is really nice to bike around here.

The houses are a mixture of Vietnamese, Chinese and French architecture. There are hundreds of old houses, chapels and pagodas.

Since a lot of Chinese people migrated to Hoi An more than 300 years ago, they built several big halls to meet and celebrate according to their province of origin. Here is the Cantonese Community Hall.

They also built an assembly community hall for special occasions when all the Chinese people would meet. It was founded in 1773.

Some scenes of daily life around here hasn't changed in years.

Another pleasant thing for the wanderer are the numerous art galleries spread out in the town.

Some Japanese people also migrated to Hoi An. The Japanese bridge was first placed here in 1593 in order to join the Japanese neighborhood to the Chinese one.

We stopped for lunch in a cute restaurant by the river and moved on to another bar for a treat before continuing the tour.

One of the old houses presented a traditional music performance that we didn't miss.

After the performance we visited more art galleries.

Nha Trang - Vietnam

2005-07-03T06:55:00.000-07:00

6/15/05
We traveled from Dalat to Nha Trang during the whole morning; we arrived in Nha Trang only around 2pm.

Nha Trang is a resort town where the Vietnamese come to party. Also, there are many services like massages, manicure and beauty treatments.

We walked around to see the town. It is quite developed and it has a big city taste, like Camboriu in Brazil (for the ones who know it).

The beach is beautiful though, and there are plenty of luxurious resorts.

6/16/05
Nha Trang had plenty of activities that we had already done in other places, things like touring islands on the coast and snorkeling.

Thus we decided to move on to Hoi An. There was bus leaving at 6 pm and the trip was 12 hours.

We spent the day by the beach relaxing before jumping on the bus.

Dalat - Vietnam.

2005-07-01T05:49:00.000-07:00

6/13/05

We travelled from Mui Ne to Dalat by bus, as usual. Dalat is a small city located on a plateau 1,500m above sea level and it is a good town to have a break from the unbearable heat of the lowlands.

We arrived around 1 pm and went to walk around to visit the city that has the best coffee in Vietnam and probably in the world.

We were expecting to do some rock climbing but after getting the details about it with the tour agencies, we changed our mind. What they had to offer was really climbing classes on very low rocks. We booked a mountain bike tour instead.

6/14/05

We started biking out of the town at 9 am with 4 other British guys in the group.

Out of the city, we entered a very muddy and bumpy trail. The description of the tour was: We are still to have a client that can bike the whole trail without getting off the bike. They were not kidding. In some parts it was just impossible to bike, unless you are really really good.

Here is an easy part of the trail.

We had lunch on the hills and on the way back to Dalat we passed by the Valley of Love.

The biking was over at 3 pm and after returning the bikes we walked to the central market where they where selling all kinds of dried fruits.

Mui Ne - Vietnam

2005-07-01T05:39:00.000-07:00

6/11/05
We left Saigon in the morning, 7:30 am, for Mui Ne, where we arrived around 1 pm. Mui Ne is famous for its sand dunes and its peaceful white sand beach. We had lunch and relaxed walking by the beach the rest of the day. Our hotel was made of little bamboo bungalows by the beach. It was really nice.

We bought a tour to see the dunes the following day.

6/12/05

The bus from the tour picked us up from the hotel quite early, 6:30 am. We had breakfast with the group and departed to visit a fishing village. In our group there was a British guy that also quit his IT work in New York to travel. (For our coworkers: Not just he was an IT guy from NYC , but he was working for ADP that is connected to NYSE)

The fishing village is very very busy ...

... and crowded too.

Their boats are made of straw in shape of bowl.

From there we went to see the dunes. There were a couple of kids already waiting for us, the tourists. They get along, become friends and provide you the board to slide down the dune.
Of course a gratification is expected and they will insist for you to slide down on their board, but they are really nice and smart kids.

To get to the top of the biggest dune we had a good 30-minutes walk in this amazingly beautiful place.

Angie made a friend very quickly and ...

... went down for a run. The sliding is fun but the climb back up is quite an exercise, specially with the sun cooking your brain.

After sliding we moved on to see the red sand canyon ...

... that had also a very nice garden surrounding the trail leading there.

We made 20-minutes break in a restaurant before heading to another site with more dunes.

We were back in time for lunch and we relaxed for the rest of the day.

Saigon - Vietnam

2005-06-25T10:18:00.000-07:00

6/8/05
We left Phnom Phen (Cambodia) in the morning for Ho Chi Minh City (Vietnam). The trip took 3 hours to the border. The road and the bus were good so there were no surprises. The only remarkable thing was the fact that the driver kept snacking crickets the whole trip.

We crossed the border (cities: Bavet on the Cambodian side and Moc Bai on the Vietnamese) on foot and one thing worth mentioning is that when the immigration officers saw our passports they put a big smile on their faces and said 'Ahhh, Ronaldo and Zidane!', that was funny.

After the immigration we gathered in a small cafe in Moc Bai just by the official building to wait for everyone to pass, because it is not a fast process, there are only two counters. From there we took a bus to Ho Chi Minh City.

The second leg of the trip, from the Moc Bai to Ho Chi Minh took 2 hours and it was 'really managed' by a tour agency (Happy Tour). They take it very professionally. There was a girl that gave us some information about Ho Chi Minh City and she even sang in Vietnamese and in English for the entertainment of the passengers, wow!

Ho Chi Minh is a huge city with 5.5 millions of people, but despite all the all bad things we read about it in Lonely Planet regarding robbing, hassling and other annoyances, the city was very easy and pleasant to visit.

We were brought to Pham Ngu Lao, an area that concentrates cheap mini hotels with hundreds of restaurants and bars with excellent food. We found a nice and cheap hotel very easily and went for dinner. Since we didn't want to walk too much we went to Far Far Away, a restaurant that was just across the street from our hotel. This cozy little place, with a Shrek 2 theme, served an unbelievable meal for 1$. Also, we checked for tours for the following day and ended up scheduling a visit to Cu Chi tunnels. The great thing also is that by booking a tour you get free Internet.

6/9/05
The Cu Chi Tunnels, in the town with the same name, is 30 kilometers away from the city. We left at 8 am with a tour group and again we had a very entertaining and informative guide.

He explained that although everybody in Vietnam likes Ho Chi Minh, in the south, nobody likes the name Ho Chi Minh City. Saigon is, in fact, the name around here, so I won't talk about Ho Chi Minh City anymore.

The guide showed to us hi necklace. It was the tooth of his father that got killed in the war before he was born. Also we learned that what the whole world knows as The Vietnam War is referenced here as The American War.

Although he didn't fight the war, he grew up during the post-war time and suffered the consequences, so when he speaks about it, it has a bitter taste that sends a chill down the spine.

He explained how people fled to Saigon because many of the fields and farmlands were transformed in a Swiss cheese by B52s.

To find a job today, he explained, the resume must contain information up to three generations back. They want to know on which side your parents/grandparents were on the war and that will have a considerable influence on your chances.

At the tunnels site, we watched a brief documentary that explained its complexity and importance during the battles.

Visitors can also try some of the tunnels. We went through two of them. The first one was only 13 meters long but the second was really a claustrophobic nightmare.

It was 120 meters of absolute darkness that takes a good fifteen-minutes to cross; there is enough room only for a Vietnamese-size person, luckily Angie and I are small.

Half way in the tunnel, a girl in front of Angie started to panic and stopped. We couldn't go forward neither backwards, because there was a row of tourists behind me. There wasn't enough room, there wasn't light at all, there wasn't enough air; we were stuck there and things were getting scary. The temperature must have been around 30+C.

Now imagine all that, plus carrying a rifle or a machine gun, plus a rain of bombs on the surface... And if someone was coming in the other direction? I have no idea how they did.

Angie started to talk to the girl to make her feel better and I managed to get my flash light out of my backpack. She finally moved again and we reached the exit.

Outside, looking at peoples faces, we could see who had fun and who regretted deeply the experience.

We moved on to a shooting range where it is possible to fire a famous Russian AK-47 or a M-1, M-3, M-4, M-14, M-16, M-30, M-60. The cost is 1$ per bullet. We didn't shoot.

There is also a good collection of replicas of many of the bamboo traps used in the forest in the battlefields.

After this experience and all the information we went back to Saigon for lunch, which was included in the tour, and then the guide left us at the War Remnants Museum and we had the rest of the day free to visit it.

War Remnants Museum

Lately, our tours have been a hard thing to digest. In Phnom Phen we visited the Akira Mine Action gallery and the S-21. Then we visited the Cu Chi tunnels and to complete the tourism on the disgrace of war, we spent a whole afternoon in the War Remnants which was, for us, the hardest one to visit.

The museum pinch on Americans, but it is not difficult to understand why, once you see the material exposed. The former name of the museum was Museum of Chinese and American War Crimes, but it changed recently in order not to offend Chinese and American visitors; nonetheless, the exhibition focus on the former name.

The collection is not for inciting hatred, but just for learning lessons from history. (Although we have a war in Iraq going on as I am writing and 'maybe' 20 years from now we'll know what is going on there)

In North Vietnam bombs destroyed or heavily damaged 2,923 school buildings -from primary schools to colleges- 1,850 hospitals, wards, nurseries, 484 churches and 465 temples and pagodas.

Nearly 3 million Vietnamese were killed, and 4 million others injured. 58,000 American armymen lost their lives, states the flyer given at the entrance.

Outside the museum there are many artifacts captured in combat such as a CBU-55B, a bomb that, when exploding, can destroy oxygen in the radius of 500m and was used in 1975. There is also a fighter, a tank and other military vehicles. There is also a guillotine - used by the French on Viet Minh 'troublemakers'.

Despite the relative one-sideness of the exhibits, there are few museums in the world that drive home so well the point that war is horribly brutal and that many of its victims are civilians.

There are pictures of children mangled by US bombing and napalming; deformed babies - you need a strong stomach to see this section of the museum - result of chemical weapons. There are also many scenes of torture, including a guy being thrown out of a flying helicopter after refusing to collaborate with the interrogators. American soldiers smiling posing for pictures holding the heads of beheaded Vietnamese combatants.

We will never understand how some body could smile for a picture holding a bloody head of somebody else.

In terms of weaponry, Vietnam was turned into a lab for testing new experimental and chemical weapons, such as the Agent Orange, the most lethal toxic ever produced by mankind. Agent Orange is counted in milligrams to kill one kilo. That means that just a few milligrams are enough to kill one person, yet, whole forests and cropfields were pulverized with this toxic.

Within a few days nothing is left, everything dies; trees, all kinds of vegetation and also the fish in the rivers. Not being enough damage it will affect and deform babies of future generations.

There is material revealing that the attacks to farming villages were well planned in advance. On March 16, 1968 a mass massacre took place in Son My (My Lai) village where 504 people were killed. Nobody was spared, elder, women, kids and even babies lost their lives.

Ironically, one of the walls has a big frame holding the following words:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights., that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

The declaration of Independence in congress, July 4 1776. The unanimous declaration of the thirteen United States of America.

We left the museum quite down.

6/10/05
We started the day by visiting the much less popular Ho Chi Min City Museum. They had a good account of the Vietnamese revolution against the French rulers, a subject that we missed in the War Remnants Museum.

They take it much easier on the French and its content does not make you feel like puking, even though the French displaced a lot of people and exploited the labor force of Vietnam.
Ho Chi Min City Museum doesn't take much time to visit and we left still in morning to walk around in the district number 3, considered the most French part of the city.

There are so many motorbikes on the street that is almost impossible to cross, but surprisingly we found a corner where they actually stop at the traffic light.

Also we walked in front of the historical museum where we stopped for a coffee in a local place.

The coffee shops in Vietnam have a strange concept of using tiny chairs, like the ones for kids, but in the other hand the coffee is delicious. They use what they call a dripping system. Coffee powder is placed in a filter on the top of the cup and hot water is poured in front of you. The result makes an Italian Espresso looks like a watery tea. After the coffee, they serve you tea for free to wash away the strong taste of coffee.

Well awake after the bang of the Vietnamese coffee, we kept walking up to the Jade Emperor Pagoda, built in 1909.

Then we took a tuk-tuk back to Far Far Away for some good food.

Phnom Pehn - Cambodia

2005-06-18T08:20:00.000-07:00

6/6/05
Battambang has not much to offer and the only thing we were really interested was the boat trip to get there, so we left at 7:30 A.M. in a bus for Phnom Pehn.
The trip took four hours and the road was much better than the one from Poipet to Siem Reap.
We were the only tourists in the bus and oddly all the other passengers were teenagers.

We stopped on the way in a place where women were selling again grilled bugs, but also lotus seeds. Angie tried them (of course) and they tasted like raw green peas. Here are two of the numerous sellers.

Phnom Pehn is not an easy place for the tourist. When we got of the bus the hotel hawkers were almost fighting among them to get us as clients. They grab you by the arm in all directions, it is quite annoying.

Angie and I knew already where we wanted to go and just ignored all the hawkers walking away on our own. We left on foot and a guy followed us for at least two blocks insisting hard to carry our backpack.

After we finally checked in the hotel and had some rest, we left to visit the capital of Cambodia.
The city is big and crowded with French-like houses and large boulevards.
The traffic is crazy and some of the crossing boulevards don't have traffic lights, thus crossing it becomes a real challenge.

They cross it though by osmosis process. Hundreds and hundreds of small motorbikes (honda dream and alike) cross each other but nobody ever stops, it is miracle that we did not see any car crash.

While wandering around in this pleasant city, we found a very modern Mall that sells Ipods and big screen TVs at 10,000 US dollars. I don't know who is buying all this, since the average income of a Cambodian is 20 US dollars a month.

In the mall we also found out that there is no ATM in the whole country where you can withdraw money from a foreigner account. The first ATM of the whole country got installed in this mall a few months earlier, but it only works with the debit card of the local bank. An explanation was hanging next to the ATM to tell people the purpose of an ATM.

Luckily, it is possible to get a cash advance in dollars from a credit card at Canadian bank, otherwise we would have been in trouble.
For dinner we went to a restaurant that had only a continental menu, but Angie wanted to have Cambodian food. When Angie asked about that to the waitress she offered to Angie the food her family was eating, but not available in the menu.

Angie entered their kitchen and chose a couple of different things and came back to the table. That was a really authentic Cambodian dinner. I was happy with spaghetti. Angie also wanted to try Amok which is a typical Cambodian dish, fish cooked with herbs in coconut meal. The girl said she doesn't serve that dish but would cook it specially for Angie if desired, but for the next evening and we agreed to come back to try some more authentic food.

6/7/05
Angie started the day with some local food again. Even though Cambodian would only eat for dessert. She had an odd yogurt with corn and red beans. She enjoyed it! :D

Our first stop of the day was the Royal Palace with the silver pagoda. Both are located within the same walled grounds just off the river front. The Royal palace was built in 1866, and many of other buildings and shrines were added in the following decades. The name of Silver Pagoda comes from its silver tiles. They cover the all floor surface and weight one kilogram each.

There are also many golden and silver buddhas with precious stones inside the pagoda.
After that we walked along one of the four rivers of Phnom Penh where we met many monks walking around with umbrellas.

Our next destination was Phnom Wat. On the way we stooped in a French bookstore to exchange a book. Across the street there was a magnificent building which actually was the post office. There were many Internet cafes with Wi-Fi and the latest flat screens. It is quite strange to see these new technologies in the cities of Cambodia while the countryside still lives so basically with even no water supply or garbage collection.

The temple was crowded with pilgrims. We then headed to the mall to get some money. From the top floor of the mall there is a great view of the city.

We then stopped at the Central Market in an art-deco type building, which by the way is one of the landmarks of Phnom Penh. Its dome ranks among the largest in the world.

There again they were selling bugs and in front of a grasshopper seller, we met a Cambodian guy, that was one of the people that was in the boat that got rescued by the French Red Cross and stayed then in France. It was his first time back in Cambodia and confessed us, that even though he used to eat lots of bugs during the war, he can't do it anymore.

We then hired a tuk-tuk who took us to the Toul Sleng Genocide Museum, also known as S-21.

Prior to 1975, the building used to be a high school. When the Khmer Rouge came to power it was converted into the S-21 prison and interrogation facility. The building now serves as a museum, a memorial and a testament to the madness of the Khmer Rouge regime.

The prisoners were kept in very small cells and shackled with chains. Thousands of people were tortured there and then driven to a field outside of Phnom Penh where they were executed. The Khmer took pictures of all the victims and the photos are exposed in the Museum. Lots of people were really young and some were even kids. Around 12,000 were killed while only 7 survived.

After such a depressing museum we walked back to the hotel. We crossed some poor neighborhood. Red dust was flying around since the streets were not paved. The people were really friendly. Here is a typical Cambodian woman with the Krama, the traditional piece of cloth that woman use to cover their head.

Guys were pulling wooden cart and selling ice that they were cutting of a bigger ice bars. This is a legacy from the French which, during the colonization time, opened several "ice factories" with a water treatment systems. Cambodian people still use them.

In the evening we went back to the restaurant where Angie ate Amok. The family of the girl had already eaten but the girl kept for Angie a nice portion. It was really good and it could not be more authentic. It is really amazing how friendly and devoted the South-East Asian people are.

Battambang - Cambodia

2005-06-18T08:10:00.000-07:00

6/5/05
A minibus picked us up at the hotel at 5:40 A.M. drove to the pier through a dirt road crossing some interesting villages. The houses were made of bamboo, all on stilts on the side of the dirt path. There were made of only one small room (2x2) with no door where entire families where living with no belongings besides the cooking ware. The kids under five years old were running around naked.

Because we were only at the beginning of the raining season the level of the water was still low and thus the pier was a bit far; so the drive took around one hour.

At the pier we moved to a tiny boat that took us to Battambang in an eight hours trip. There were at least 10 other passengers including tourists and locals squeezed in the small compartment, two Spanish guys even travelled on the roof of the boat as there was not enough space. The trip lacked in comfort, but undeniably it compensated in sights.

First we went slowly through the harbor of the village, where trading was going on, then we crossed a floating village that seemed out a National Geographic documentary. The houses are all within the margin of the river and the water was turned into an avenue.

Here the people not just look different ...

... they live differently.

Fishing is, obviously, the main activity of these families. They have developed a technic to fish that uses a bamboo crane system.

The river has hundreds of these all long. There is a big fhishing net under the water that can be lifted by the bamboo crane at any moment catching the fish.

When we reached the Tonle Sap Lake the boat speeded up and the trip turned into a splash festival. Our backpacks got quite wet too. It was quite surprising to see floating houses in the middle of the lake far from any coast. The lake is 160 kilometers long and 36 kilometers wide.

On the other side of the lake we entered again another river, the Sangker River, with similar villages.

The boat stopped in these villages picking up more passengers and also their goods. We could not believe that there were still able to fit people on the boat.

In some points the river was completely covered with Water Lilies and we had to go very very slow.

We crossed many villages along the trip and the houses on the river bank were also very basic. There were also many kids playing around naked and they always waved to us from the river bank.

We made a stop for lunch in a stilt house on the water, but we didn't have the courage to eat after seeing that the dishes were being washed just next to the basic toilet that flushes all the waste into the river. Not only do they use that very same water from the river for washing dishes, but also to bath, to wash their clothes, in summary it is their only source of water.

We arrived in Battambang around 3 P.M and were received by a group of hotel hawkers, so it wasn't really difficult to get to the hotel as they all offer a free transfer from the pier to the accommodation.

We had lunch at the hotel and walked around in the city. The place is completely different to Siem Reap, as it is not so touristy and much easiear regarding hassling and beggars.

This is the second biggest city in the country.

Siem Reap - Cambodia

2005-06-16T03:27:00.000-07:00

6/3/05
On our first day in Siem Reap we just visited the city and spent a quiet day since we were still a bit tired from the trip of the day before.
The first thing we noticed is that the French baguette is a very common bread in Cambodia, they were available in every food stall along the streets.

The center of the city is full of bars aimed at western tourists. They sell burgers, pasta, pizzas, and steaks and only list the Cambodian and Khmer food at the end of the menu.

Many bars play the Buddha Lounge music and Project Gottham and the restaurants reminded me very much of the ones in NYC. They even had a Zanzibar.

In the center is the Old Market were we had lunch, but it is not really big, neither interesting.
Walking around, just few meters from the market, we found Akira Mine Action Gallery.

Aki Ra is a former Khmer Rouge conscripted child soldier who has now devoted his life to making Cambodia safe again in addition to providing assistance to his country's numerous landmine survivors through a number of humanitarian programs.

Indeed I have to say that we saw many of these poor innocent landmine victims begging on the streets. It really breaks your heart to see KIDS that lost their hands, or arms, feet and/or legs because they were playing on the fields and triggered a landmine. These mines make no distinction between a tank, a soldier, a peasant worker or a kid. Another terrible thing we learned about landmines is that they are not designed to kill, but to maim, because a wounded soldier costs MONEY to the enemy.

To add more to this depressing experience, we learned about the Mine Ban Treaty created in 1997 (www.icbl.org), which was signed by 122 countries. The treaty deals with everything from mine use, production and trade of mines, to victim assistance and mine clearance, and also destruction of stockpile. But 42 countries still refuse to join it; among them are the United States, China, India, Pakistan and Russia. Some of these countries still produce landmines and have huge stocks in warehouses ready to be placed in new location!!!

Cambodia still had conflicts until 1997; the country is freshly out of serious trouble and it is now trying to get back on track.

When we left the Akira's Gallery we met Udi on the street, another year-traveller that was on the same bus from Bangkok to Siem Reap. There were also two other girls with him and we went for a beer in one of the bars.

From the bar they went somewhere else to have dinner and Angie and I walked all the way back to the hotel.

At the hotel, at night, we met Udi again and we scheduled to visit Angor Wat the next day by bicycle.

6/4/05
Udi, Angie and I, left early at 7:15 A.M. on rented bikes. Angkor Archeological Park is just 8 kilometers north of Siem Reap; the road is good and the terrain is plain, perfect for a pleasant bike ride.

The site is designated a World Heritage by UNESCO and its artistic, archeological significance and visual impact is paired with the Pyramids of Giza in Egypt, Machu Picchu and the Taj Mahal.
This place was the capital city of the Khmer Empire that existed between the 9th and 12th centuries of the Christian Era.

We tackled our way to the temples and made a first stop on the south gate of the most famous construction, the apex of the Angorian existence, Angkor Wat, a massive three tiered pyramid crowned by five beehive-like towers rising 65 meters from ground level. Nearly 2000 distinctively carvings adorn the walls describing stories and characters of from Hindu mythology.

The temple is the world's largest religious building with its external walls extending 1300x1200 meters. The temple itself is 1 km square. One can easily spend a whole day walking in its corridors.

We looked around, met a monk and witnessed a group of Korean tourists in a religious ceremony worshiping Buddha in the center most tower of the temple where from there is also a nice view of the surrounding forest.

But we had to move, so we took our bikes and pedaled to the next place, Ta Prohm Kel, a tiny temple, actually a chapel, but the most interesting thing was the little village behind it and a furious little monkey fighting a dog and attacking people; we had to keep one eye on it while visiting this place.

Then we moved on to Baksei Chamrong, a 12 meter-tall pyramid that we obviously climbed up. :D

Another 5 minutes of biking and we arrived at the south gate of Angkor Thom.

Even after looking at the map of this site I couldn't realize how big this place is. This one has a 3 km square wall surrounding a moated royal city. Inside there is a temple called Bayon with over 13.000 carvings.

From there we went to Preah Khan and then a long bike ride, 10 kilometers to Ta Prohm, the temple with one of the most famous postcard pictures of Angkor, where there are huge banyon trees growing over the walls.

On the way there was what seemed to be a school and the kids came for a greeting when we stopped to take a picture of the boy on the car pulled by oxes and offered us flowers.

By then it was close to the end of the day and we biked to Phnom Bakheng, a temple on the top of a hill where it is possible to have a nice view of the Tonle Sap Lake and the distant Angkor Wat in the middle of the jungle.

We saw so much but there was still a lot left unseen ... this place is amazing!

Some other unexpected things can also be quite amusing. Imagine a traffic sign like this in Manhattan.

The sun was gone and we had to bike back to the hotel in the dark. Before going to the hotel we stopped in a tour agency to by a boat trip to Battambang for the next morning.

Bangkok II - Thailand

2005-06-14T06:00:00.000-07:00

6/1/05

This was our last day in Bangkok. We went to the National Museum and on the way we got to try something weird. They call it ice cream sandwich but I would call it cold dog, since it is a hot dog bread sliced and filled with lots of ice cream.
The National Museum was very interesting; we watched a short very well-done movie about Thailand's history.

From the Museum we went to check the city's recreation place, the Lumphini Park. Although it was so hot that you could fry an egg on the sidewalk, we were very very surprised to see so many bodybuilders exercising hard under the killing sun. While we could barely walk, they were lifting weights.

Next to the park is the Night Bazar which was obviously closed.
From there we went to Patpong, the Place Pigalle of Bangkok. I was really curious to see the ping pong show but at end we did not go.

From there to Chinatown was a long walk but also a good way to see the non touristy neighborhoods. When we were approaching Chinatown we crossed a neighborhood that is probably the destination of all stolen cars in Bangkok. There were hundreds and hundreds of shops disassembling engines of all kinds on the sidewalk, there were piles and piles of car parts and alike.

From Chinatown we took a bus back to Khao San Rd.

6/2/05

Our time in Thailand was over. Nepal and Thailand are two favorite countries so far. Actually we loved the South of Thailand where people were so friendly and welcoming whereas Bangkok is full of hasslers. We left at 7 A.M. on a bus heading to Siem Reap, Cambodia.

We knew from other travellers and from some blog on the Internet that the trip from Bangkok to Siem Reap wasn't going to be easy because on the Cambodian side the road was quite bad. Also, we bought the trip from one of the tour agencies in Khao San Rd and it is well known that they play many tricks on tourists to make money, selling the bus ticket initially very cheap. But the ticket was so cheap (200 Baht - 1 US$=40 Baht) that we decided to take it anyway.

The first half of the journey was easy with no surprises. We were first brought to a restaurant close to the border but far from everything else. There the food is overpriced and also a 'helpful' guy came to help with the Cambodian visa, also an overpriced service.
Prepared, we had food with us and we had made our visas back in Malaysia, so we were not that profitable for them.

From the restaurant, where we had to wait for more then 1:30 hour, we were all put on the back of a truck that took us to the border. At the border we had no surprises, we walked across, into Cambodia, where a couple of motorbikes were waiting for us. We were brought to a kind of cafe and waited a bit more until everyone was done. Then they offered us to change money on an unfair rate, which we did not do either. From here we were split into two other mini-bus, much worse then the aircon bus used in Thailand.
Once we got to the road we understood why a nice bus can't travel here. There is no pavement, just a dirt path full of pot holes.

After 2 hours of shaking, we stopped for dinner, also overpriced, but we still had some fruits and we didn't have to touch cash again. Instead of going to the restaurant we walked around.

Cambodia is much poorer than its neighbors. From the two first hours of ride we could see from the window the basic houses in which they live. Most of the houses have a small open tank of water next to it; since there is no water supply they have to manage themselves.

What you see below is a gas station. There are no pumps; they keep the petrol in disposable soda bottles. There are many station like this in Cambodia.

When it got dark we noticed that many houses had blue and green lamps around the house, like the long fluorescent ones, and we found out later that it is used to attract and catch crickets and other bugs for eating. The green light is used to attract snakes, another delicacy.

Arriving in Siem Reap, we had another shock. It was such a contrast with the countryside we just crossed. Everything looked nice, luxury hotels were all over, the streets were paved and well illuminated. Unfortunately those places aren't for Cambodians, there are all waiting for the tourists.

The driver stopped lots of time on the way and made us wait on the way to make sure we arrive late in Town exactly as told by other travellers. Then, they tell you that the streets are very dangerous to walk around at night and bring you to a hotel where they get a good commission for each guest that stays there.

Well, we checked the room, why not? And it was cheap and clean, so we stayed right there. It was around 10 PM by then.