Wouter's travelblog

From Buenos Aires we flew directly to Sao Paulo and therefore we missed the Iguazu Waterfalls. These waterfalls were highly recommended by so many people but unfortunately we already booked our flights back in London so we will have to save them for a next visit to South America.

Sao Paulo isn't big, its massive! There are 20 million people living in the metropolitan area and its the economic powerhouse of Brazil. We were visiting a colleague from GE and he lived a neighbourhood called "Jardin" which is one of the safer areas in the city. There is nothing to see really but the area has hundreds of cafes, bars and restaurants which are full with locals and it was way more pleasant to stay here then expected. Unfortunately it rained non stop while we were there and in the weekend we tried to escape the rain by driving to Ilhabella which is according to the guidebooks one of the most beautiful islands between Sao Paulo and Rio. We did get a glimpse of all this beauty in the couple of hours it was dry but most of the time is was cloudy and we had to swim in the rain...

Next stop was Rio de Janeiro and were lucky to spend a few hours on Ipanema beach in the sun looking at the locals and the fantastic landmarks surrounding us. We could have stayed here easily for a week or more but again the rain spoiled things and we left the city after just 2 days. The bad weather also meant that taking pictures was pointless and I didn't take a single picture in the first 10 days.

This time we wanted to make sure we would have dry and sunny weather so we flew to Recife which is a large city in the North East. When we got up the next day the sun was shining so the first thing we did was to head for the beach. It looks like the perfect urban beach. And it is - but for one detail. SHARKS. There have been over 60 shark attacks on this beach of which 18 were fatal. Needless to say we had to move on to another place.

A couple of hours south by bus from Recife we arrived in small village and we started walking to find a nice place to stay. After two hours we finally found what we were looking for. A small guesthouse, built from wood and palm leaves, straight on the beach, no sharks, great weather and a very friendly and funny owner called Freddie. We wanted to stay here for 2 days but it was just impossible to leave this paradise and with we left after 8 days.

Andrew liked the place so much that he donated the Australian flag to the owner of the place. The flag got a very prominent place on the beach and attracted a lot of attention from the locals.

The last days of my trip I spent in Salvador which is about 10 hours south by bus from Japaratinga. We were staying right on the beach which had great waves for surfing and the weather was around 35 degrees every day. Perfect place for the last days of the trip.

Unfortunatley Salavador was the end of my trip. Andrew has another month to travel and will most likely make his way to Colombia. I covered about 13.000 kilometers in 3 months and feel like I have seen only a tiny bit of South America. It is such a big place with a huge variety of things to do and see. Based on what I have seen my top 5 is:

Hiking Cordillera Blanca Peru - Turquoise coloured lakes and sparkling mountains... and you don't have to share it with anyone.
Doze Cabanas in Japaratinga Brazil - Chilling out in paradise on the beach
Buenos Aires Argentina - The city of tango, steak, nostalgia and wine.
Salar de Uyuni Bolivia - Fantastic landscape where bright blue skies contrast with a blinding white salt crust.
Mountain biking in Bolivia - This was so much fun and we should have done much more of it.

Next week I will start my new job in Paris and if you happen to be in the area please drop me a line and we can catch up.

Hasta Luego !

Wouter

From Chile we took a bus over the Andes Mountains to Salta, which is a city in northwest Argentina with a population of about half a million. This city has a large shopping street with western stores, good restaurants, up market hotels, nice looking town squares.... It all came a bit as a shock to us after Peru and Bolivia. So after eating the biggest steak I´ve ever had (700 grams for £4) we rented a car to escape the city and drove to Cachi.

The road from Salta to Cachi is beautiful. It goes very high up in the mountains and you are driving above the clouds. Makes you feel you are on top of the world. I really loved Cachi. It´s tiny, has one little square, perfect blue skies and is surrounded by snow peaked mountains. There is absolutely nothing to do except to relax and taste all the good wines that are produced in the region.

The next day were heading to Cafayate, which is famous for the quality and originality of the wines that it produces. Our plan was to visit a couple of Bodega´s and taste a lot of wine. However, the day before we already had one flat tire (which we stupidly did not fix in Cachi) and on the road to Cafayate we got another one… So we had a small problem. We were completely in the middle of nowhere and there was hardly any traffic on this road.

Luckily we didn´t have to wait too long before a car came by and they were so nice to borrow us a wheel so that we could make it to the next town. In this town the whole population was gone for a 2 day religious celebration so we had no chance of fixing our wheel.

We were not happy at all with the thought of being stuck here. Then Andrew had a great idea of filling one of the wheels with dirt and use that as a replacement of air to get us to Cafayate (which was still 120km away). This solution worked well although we had to stop every 15km to refill the wheel… We refilled about three times until we reached another ghost town where everybody was gone except one mechanic! He fixed us up and we were back on the road but too late unfortunately to get to any bodega’s that day. The next day we had to get back to Salta to return the car and the rental company wasn’t too happy with what we had been doing…

After Salta we took an 18 hour bus to Mendoza, which is the wine capital of Argentina and famous for the Malbec that it produces. Besides the steaks and the wines (good wine starting at 50cents a bottle!) we didn´t find this a very interesting place and the bodega´s we visited were far away from the vineyards and had an industrial feel to it. We took a flight to Buenos Aires and spend a few days exploring the city. The coolest thing we did was to see the Boca Junior Football game on the Sunday. We were standing in the area with all the local fans which bring huge drums and are signing, jumping, screaming, crying throughout the game. It is such an intense experience. Most fans are so busy doing their thing that they often don´t even notice that the other team scores a goal. From BA we took another 18 hour bus south to Puerto Madryn to watch whales. We were lucky to see them really close to the boat although making pictures wasn´t that easy. The other days we saw lots of other wildlife like penguins and sea lions.

After another 18 hours in the bus back to Buenos Aires it was time for my birthday party. We had a big group together from people we had met in different places in Argentina and we partied for 4 days in a row… It was one of my best birthdays ever!

We are now in Brazil and unfortunately have some bad weather (is that possible in Brazil??) so we are heading north to find more sunshine.

Ciao, Wouter

After the trip in the jungle we headed back to La Paz to take a bus South to Uyuni. This 11 hour night bus was the most bumpy and uncomforable ride of my life. We arrived early in the morning and from Uyuni we took a 3 day tour into the dazzling white Salar de Uyuni which is the world´s biggest salt flat (see if you can spot the car on the photo below).

It was formed some 40.000 years ago when a massive lake dried out and created this major salt desert which contains about 10 billion tons of salt...This is one of the great Bolivian trips and we had been looking forward to this. Driving through it was a fantastic experience.

The blue skies contrasts with the blinding white salt crust and allows for great pictures playing with the perspective.

There were multicoloured lakes, massive volcanos, flamingos, rock formations with 7 different colours and much more...

We slept in a hotel made out of salt. During the day the weather was perfect but at night it gets bitterly cold with temperature dropping to -20C. We brought a bottle of whisky and Jim Beam became a very good friend. A lot of photos this time but this time it is easier to show it on a picture then to talk about it.

We were not planning on going to Chile but it turned out to be the easiest way to get to Argentina from Boliva. What they didn´t tell us was that there would be no bus going from Chile to Bolivia for the next 3 days... First we were a bit dissappointed but we soon found out that this border town, called San Pedro, was great fun. Beautifull weather, a relaxed atmosphere and a spectacular landscape of desolate plains and volcanoes. The next day we rented mountainbikes and sandboards and headed for a gaint sand dune.

Sandboarding wasn´t easy and I spend most of my time eating sand. Andrew got the hang of it much faster and raced down the sanddunes but he crashed a few times and still had sand coming out of his ears four days later.... It is a lot of fun to do but very tiring as you have to walk back up the hill... There is no such luxury as a sandboarding lift....

Well, as you can read we are still enjoying every day of travelling and will send you soon our stories from Argentina.

Ciao

We were very happy arriving in La Paz after a long long bus journey. The city has a spectular setting as it is situated in a narrow canyon 3500 meters above sea level and you can see a huge snowpeaked mountain. At first the city seemed to be buzzing and the whole place felt like one massive, sprawling market. The street markets were selling all manner of ritual paraphernalia to appease the spirits. The most interesting (and disgusting) are the dried lama foetuses... They organize the market in a weird way. One street would only sell alcohol, another only paint and we were staying in Barber street. Great for consumers as it is easy to bargain down the price. We expected the nightlife to be pretty good here (it has a population of just over million) but we couldn´t find any place that had more then handfull of people.

The next day we signed up for biking the world most dangerous road. This road links La Paz with Coroico and is basically a narrow track with near-vertical mountainsides that descends more then 3500m over a distance of just 64km. Before a new road was built dozens of vehicles would go off the road every year, and with vertical drops of up to 1000m over the edge, annual fatalities have reached into the hundreds. What the statistics don´t tell you is that it is also among the most beautifull roads in the world. The road starts amidst the icebound peaks of the Cordillera Real and ends in a green & humid valleys. Biking the road is not entirely without risk and there are still several tourists that drive of the edge (you can see plenty of crosses along the road). However, we rented bikes with some good hydraulic brakes and it was great fun to race down (I think it was not going fast enough for Andrew). There was only one tricky moment when Andrew and the guide had to brake hard and could just avoid a head-on collission with a taxi that came driving up the mountain. But luckily we all finished the day in one piece at the pool with some beers.

From La Paz we took a short flight to Rurrenabaque which is the entry point for the Parque Nacional Madidi. This "protected" area claims to be the most bio-diverse of all protected areas on the planet. We were heading to the steaming tropical jungle and pampas area of the park. Our bags got delayed from the flight so we had to spend a full day with hiking boots, long trousers and long sleeves in this jungle town where it was 38 degrees and extremely humid... The next day I left for a 3 day pampas tour. Andrew was joining a day later as he was still sick. The first day is spent mostly in a Jeep and then a boat that brings you to the lodge were we slept the next days. Underway you could see hundreds of aligators, birds and giant rats. On day 2 we got up very early to go snake hunting. It took ages to find one but after 2 hours of walking we found an anaconda. These snakes are actually very relaxed and not aggressive at all. Minutes later our guide shouted "Cobra" and he started running towards the high grass, grabbed the cobra by the tail and then swung a huge cobra out of the grass which was trying to bite him during the flight. What followed was long fight between Cobra and guide and it looked a lot like some of Steve Irwin´s shows on television. After that it was time to go piranha fishing and that was great fun. You have a small line with some beef and the moment you throw it in the water the fish is already biting. Once you catch a piranha you have to brake its jaws with a knife otherwise he might bite you in your toes when it is lying in the boat. You could swim in the river during the day because apparantly alligators will only bite you in the night...

Although the area is a "protected" national park there were fires everywhere set by local farmers. Huge areas were completely burned down and we would walk for miles on just ashes... They do this so that new grass can grow and cattle can graze (but cows and horses are not supposed to live there). And although the guides are not supposed to touch the animals they pull snakes out of holes and harrass many other animals. Our guide estimated that there is only 20% of the wildlife left from what it was 10 years ago. Besides this it was a great trip and for me it was the first time that I saw these type of animals. Andrew was less impressed as he thought the alligators were small boys compared to the ones back in Australia.

We are back in La Paz at the moment and leaving tonight for the world´s highest and largest salt flats in the south of Bolivia and after that we will then make our way into Argentina. Can´t wait for the big steaks and wines.

The last 2 weeks were great. I spent quite some time in Cusco which is such a different world from where I have been before in Peru. Beautifull city, lots of character & history, very touristic, English widely spoken. It the type of place where you can take your girlfriend art shopping, stay in a boutique hotel, have a posh meal and finish the evening with your favourite lager in the Irish Pub.... But if you look a little further then around the main plaza you can see peruvian life at local markets and very nice neighbourhouds built on the hills of the city.

After a couple of days I had seen enough city and tourists and it was time to go back into the mountains. A couple of hours from Cusco is the Sacret Mount Ausangate (6372m) and the circuit around this mountain is one of the most beautifull treks worldwide. The circuit is about 80 km and has five high passes of which three are above 5.000m. This time I wanted to experience how it was to rough it a bit and carry all my equipment and food for 6 days myself. I was debating for a long time whether to hire an arriero (i.e. local guide). The trek is very high up and altitude sickness is a big risk. On top of that the area is very remote and it is very hard to get help if you get into trouble. So at the end of the day I decided to hire an arriero. I arranged for everything in Cusco but when I got out of the bus in a small mountain village there was no arriero to be found... So I waited there for a couple of hours, talking to Peruvians who are building a road from Cusco to Sao Paulo... They were putting up a sign for Sao Paulo 4660km... Good luck to them! After a few hours waiting I decided to go on my own. I had a reasonably detailed map and a small compass so I figured that I should be OK with finding the way. But as some of you know route finding is not my strongest point

It all started pretty good. Although I was carrying about 25kg in my rugsack the first part of the day went very smooth and the first pass was easy. But then I got lost for a while... And this took quite a lot of energy. It was already late in the day and I had one more pass of 4.800m to take before camping. I did make it to the campsite but barely. I was so dead that I couldnt even blow up my airmatress. I cooked and fell straight asleep.

The next day started straight with the highest pass of the trek at 5.300m. By now I realized how naive I had been with thinking that I could do this trek in 3/4 days (normally 6 days) carrying all equipment and food (I wanted to be back in Cusco to meet up with Andrew on Monday). This pass really took forever. I had to squeeze the last bit of energy out of my toes to get to the top. After this pass things luckily became easier and I think my knees and feet got more used to the heavy package. In the end I did all the 5 passes and most of the trek in 3 days and took it easy on the 4th day with a short walk and some relaxation in the local hot springs.

It was certainly one of the toughest and irresponsible things I have done but the scenery and wildlife was absolutely spectacular! In the evenings I could often see the glacier from my tent when I was cooking and at night I could hear avalanches and big chuncks of ice falling into the lake. Next time I take more time or get a donkey to carry my pack Sad thing was that in my guidebook (from the year 2003) there often was a description like "20 minutes to the East you will see snowpeaked mountains..." but very often there was no snow to be seen or the glacier was completely gone. So it looks like the Central Andes are changing very rapidly...

When I got back to Cusco I met up with Andrew, an Australian friend from London, and we will be travelling together for the next 2 months. The first thing we did was to catch a train to Machu Picchu (the inca trail needs to be booked month in advance nowadays). It was fantastic to see the city. It is an almost complete Inca city set on a high mountain with green jungle peaks all around it. I had seen the place many times before on a picture but was still amazed on witnessing it for the first time. Unfornately this time I was quite sick (last year it was Andrew when we were visiting Petra in Jordan) but still had a great day at the site.

The next day we left early for the bus to Puno which is a city on the northwest shore of Lake Titicaca. In the end we decided not to spend much time on the islands of the lake itself and instead go to La Paz in Bolivia. But we didnt leave Peru before partying a night with the locals in a disco in Puno. Things did go a bit out of control and we ended up going straight from the disco into the international bus to La Paz... It was a long long ride...

We will most likely stay in La Paz for a few days and then will head North to the jungle for a few days and we will mountainbike the "worlds most dangerous road".

Ciao, Wouter