Bolivia - du schönes Land

Having said that Chile gave me back my travel spirit, Bolivia doubled it! Un País tan diferente! As my photos have already been online for a while, some impressions are already comunicated. But even they cannot reflect the actual beauty and the feeling that you get traveling this country. From the High Andes, the largest salt flat in the world, the highest city, the most dangerous road, the highest capital, the largest indigenous population and the highest mayor lake to the Amazon - Bolivia has it all. It has all but beaches. But honestly, nobody will miss them, given the mentioned abundance of sights.

Of course all this beauty has its price and that comes as follows:

• Single room (including breakfast): $4
• Set lunch (soup, main, desert): $1,40
• Taxi (2h inter city): $3,90
• DVD: $0,90
• Cinema: $1,10
• Internet (per hour): $0,28
• Shoe cleaning: $0,28

Traveling the country is pretty easy and although some mugging stories can be heard every now and then, accidents are more of a danger. The poor hospital facilities receive regularly tourists from the Uyuni Salt Flat tours or the Mountain Bike tours just outside La Paz. Amongst Backpackers horror stories about drunk drivers and bus crashes are quite popular and unfortunately mostly true. So one should be quite careful but if you use common sense, Bolivia is beyond limits.

Every day dozens of tourists take the famous Camino de la Muerte - a road that has only been closed for traffic a mere 3 years ago. Until then 150 people died there every year in bus, car or truck accidents. The road winds itself along a steep mountain range with cliffs of up to 800m deep. Of course it is not paved, in some sections only 3m wide, has no guardrails, and allows traffic in both directions.

Por sopuesto, I had to take that adventure. We started with our mountainbikes at an altitude of 4766m and rode downhill for 67km. 3 hours later and 3600m closer to sea level I thought I survived the most thrilling. We stopped about every 5 to 20mins to watch car and bus wrecks in the abbys while being told when and how many people there died. 3 years ago 102 people here, 5 tourist here 2 years ago, one Israeli here just last year and one Spaniard fell down this cliff just a couple of months ago. And so on and so on...
Anyways, as I said I thought downhill was already enough, we were asked if we wanted to take the new road or the death road on the way back. I don`t know for what reason the 3 Australians immediately yelled Death Road, but it seemed to be my destiny. Another hour of adrenaline followed, while I was sitting at the window of the cliff side not being able to see the road anymore and thinking if the rain could have any serious impact to the road conditions or our minivan.

However, I survived that as well as I did the thrilling mine tour a week earlier in Potosí. Those mines are just another chapter for themselves. People working under the worst imaginable conditions, blasting themselves with self-bought dynamite through the mountain, without anybody mapping the routes they are taking (collapses only predictable). Life expectancy is still a mere 45 years and the average miner doesn`t survive his 10th year working there because of some sort of lung desease. To visit those mines you just find a former miner, buy some dynamite and coca leaves in the streets as a present and then you start crawling through the mountain. You`ll loose orientation in an instant and if you turn off your light there will be nothing but darkness. You`ll visit some devil shrines and get yourself really dirty while crawling, climbing and walking through the mines. If you are man enough you try a sip of the 96% alcohol that your guide brought and which is usually partly sacrificed to the devil and mostly drunk by the miners.

Sin embargo, now I am in Peru, got a 90 day visa although my passport is only valid another 68 days and already saw some more really impressing things but I will tell in a later post...

Liebe!

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Chile, chili and Chilenos

First of all I have to say Chile saved me. Saved me from loosing my travel spirit and thinking I have seen enough or having met enough people. It proved to me once again that a thin line on a map really makes a huge difference. Maybe it was also that things only could get better regarding the people and that my mind was fully opened for new encouters. From the first day I only had a good time in Chile.

But before I keep up the tradition and tell how to be a good Chilean, I have to say that there is really no need to try to be one. Because Chile is super safe, and you will have more fun with the Chileans as an "Extranjero"! People here are actually interested in those who visit their country and wherever you go there will be a friendly person trying to help you out.

If you still want to be a Chilean try the following:

- be as small as all other latin americans
- have darker hair than the rest and keep it mostly straightened
- be cheerful and look around yourself to notice who else is there
- try to mix with foreigners as much as possible
- party hard and drink a lot
- call your flag the prettiest in the world although it just a copy of the Texas one (just kidding, Chile`s is 21years older)
- call your official language Spanish but don`t use it
- speak Chilean instead, which means not pronouncing the end of words that are to long and adding "po" to all the words that are too short (therefore all words will have the same lengths and you can speek so fast that no foreigner will understand you)
- don`t do sports
- spent your freetime in Shopping Malls and even call one them "The most important shopping mall in south america"
-don`t tell anyone what makes a Shopping Mall "important"

So that`s about it. Chile has a very diverse countryside from Glaciers in the south to the driest place on earth in the north. It`s all just fascinating and if you wonder why I haven`t said anything about chili yet, well, I didn`t have any over there but I just thought the headline sounds better with it...

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Argentina - who`s crying?

Traveling is all about getting to know the people, learning from them, integrating in different cultures and figuring out the differences compared with oneself. Knowing about local habbits and modes of interaction does not only show respect but also prevents oneself from getting scammed and treated like a tourist. Especially in Latin America it can also mean to avoid the danger of getting robbed.

That`s why I want to give any potential traveler to Argentina a list of advices on how to be a genuine Argentinian. Btw. being Argentinian differs a lot from being Brazilian.

How to be Argentinian:

• be small
• pretend you are twice as tall as you really are
• be stylish
• use the mirrors next to every door in the subways to check your style
• don`t try to find an open restaurant before 10pm
• don`t go into a night club before 3am
• don`t talk to foreigners (unless they are blond and feminine)
  
• don`t smile to them (only smile amongst your friends - but be careful it might happen that you laugh)
  
• if you are forced to talk to a German, tell him he has a lot of money compared to you
• paint a sun with a face on your flag
• don`t expect waiters to serve you in bars or restaurants
• don`t expect to get past a register in a supermarket in less than 20 minutes - even if there is only one customer in front of you
• drink Mate (google, if you don`t know what it is!)
• call a bus seat "Bed" or "Semi-Bed" just because you can tilt it backwards in a 45 degree angle
• don`t speak spanish, speak castezhano
• say "lindo" about every place and piece of your country
• put "muy muy" before it
• say it 100 times a day

Of course Argentina is not so bad as it might have sounded in that list, but there are definetly friendlier and more open minded people on this planet. Having stayed here for almost 4 weeks and having visited half the country I think I can generalize it that way. But no generalization can exist without exceptions. So I had some really nice couchsurfer hosts again who offerd me a hotel-like bedroom and a nice Asado in Córdoba. They were very friendly and interested, so I will thank Ezekiel and Vero again at this point. Hope you`ll make it to Germany.

Regarding the landscape and the Cities of Argentina I can only speak for the north as I skipped the supposedly awesome Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego part for money and weather reasons. Apart from being pretty european and american, the cities and countryside reminded me a lot of Mexico, which made me miss the hospitality and friendlieness even more - ¿Dónde están, Carlos y Fernando?

Anyways, I got to see another natural beauty which totally made up for everything, including the more than 70hours on buses so far - A Salt Lake! The Salines Grandes north of Salta was an amazing trip over a 4200m mountain pass without any snow caps and down again to the salt flat at 3500m. Can`t wait now to go to Chile and Bolivia to see more of that...

The very good thing about Argentina is that it`s pretty cheap and reasonably safe for latin american standards. I personally haven`t felt as safe as here in quite a while but somehow I keep hearing mugging stories all the time. The crime is different though. People get tricked and bags snatched in parks, at bus terminals or internet cafes. Actually, there are never any weapons involved - so at least one thing that Brazilians could learn from Argentinians ;-)

I am off to Santiago now, crossing the Andes and not really crying for Argentina...

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Panamá, Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina

I know it`s been a very long time since I wrote the last time and things have happened in such an abundance during the last 6 weeks that it´s going to be hard to put it all here. But I`ll give it a try.

First of all, after my volunteering experience I tried to get through some other places in Panama but as soon as I hit the road I got stuck in a tiny village for 24hours because the roads were washed away by heavy rainfalls which didn´t stop for 4 days and 4 nights. Actually it`s nothing too special because Panama has 8 months of rainy season and the rest of the year it pretty much rains a lot.

Being the last country of my Central America journey, Panama was also one of the best ones from my point of view. Besides a pretty interesting and totally not typical central american capital (lots of high-rise buildings and construction sites almost make it look like Dubai), the SAN BLAS Islands were one of the prettiest spots in the world I have ever seen. These islands are ruled by the indigenous Kuna people and their law doesn´t allow any foreigner to own property there. So to get there is already a little challenge because nobody from the hostels in Panama City really knows where to go and what sort of accomodation they have and basic things like that.

So from Panama City after 2 hours of a very bumpy Jeep ride and another 1,5 hours in a tiny tiny wooden boat, Linzi and me arrived totally soaked and a bit freezing on Robinson Crusoe Paradise Island (I just made that name up). We stayed there in Bamboo Huts without electricity and running water. The ocean served as the toilet on one side of the island, meals were cooked by the kuna people and usually consisted of rice and whatever the fisherman could catch during the day.

There were hundreds of islands everywhere, some as tiny as a couple of square meters so there would only fit a single palm tree on the sandy ground and many islands just gave shelter to a couple of kuna families in their palm tree huts. Ours was a bit bigger, though. About 15 backpackers stayed there and to walk around the whole island once we needed almost 5 min utes. So if you are looking for an almost untouched piece of paradise go to SAN BLAS in Panamá!!! Better than Fiji!

As there is only a 60% chance of survival if you want to cross the border from Panamá into Colombia overland, I decided to take a flight out of the country and do a little bigger jump straight to Rio de Janeiro and spare Colombia for later.

There I met this Fuenftourist Ritter also known as Hannes Ambelang, who once again took 4,5 weeks of from work to join me for a little trip from Rio de Janeiro to Buenos Aires. Starting with the Carnaval in Rio was pretty nice, a little different than expected but a must see for sure. Since everybody says that Rio is so dangerous our main focus during the first days was how to dissimulate that we are tourists. Here are some basic rules on how to be Brazilian:

• be tanned
• walk around the city without a t-shirt, even better if you only wear your swimsuit
  
• you need a least one ugly tattoo. more are better of course
  
• don`t take a towel to the beach. nobody has one, it`s to heavy to carry and drying in the sun is much cooler. In addition to that a wet body looks much hotter...
• don´t go swimming, most of the brazilians cannot swim, they just stand around the non swimmers area in the water and play with the waves, only tourists swim
• don`t ride a bicycle
• for car drivers: as soon as it gets dark never stop at red traffic lights (danger of being robbed and economy of time)
• be a good football player

Following all these rules we pretty much had a blast of a time in Brazil. After Rio we went to Sao Paulo, stayed with locals, got invited to dinners and pool parties, got presents and learned a lot about the brazilian way of life in Sao Paulo. Thank you André and Nina and also all your family and friends! It´s impressive how hard working you people in Sao Paulo are and how much you are enjoying life.

Going to Curitiba got us our first couchsurfing experience. We stayed with Fabio and had a short but intense and funny stay with him. Even shorter but not less fun was our night at the Iguassu Falls with Wellington, another couchsurfer! The waterfalls (most famous in South America) were very impressive, too.

Only some 16hours on the Bus and we found ourselves in Florianópolis, supposedly the party place in Brazil with the prettiest women in the world they say. Well, the latter could be true but the parties were giving us a bit of hard time. Unfortunately we stayed there from Sunday to Thursday - not really the party days. But as the main season was over, it was not to easy to find a good spot. The beaches were really pretty, though, and got us both a bad sunburn. We tried the surfboards and even became more brazilian when we started playing this one beach game with the two rackets and a rubber ball. Posing and being cool is the most important part of that game.

Another short bus ride (only 7 hours) brought us for 1 night to uninteresting Porto Alegre before we crossed into Uruguay. Montevideo on a Sunday is a ghost city, very strange and not more than a bit interesting. We walked about 20km that day and felt happy to leave the next day and take the ferry to Buenos Aires.

And that´s where I am right now. The Ritter left and I am on my own again. Looking forward to what is coming, improving my spanish (after 4 weeks of portuguese messed it up again) and making plans on how to compensate the constant negative cashflow of my bank account...

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Volunteering en un Asilo

Panamá!
Been here for more that one week and was more public spirited than ever before. I worked in an old people´s home and definetly had some good experience. So, what I got in return was neither money nor food or accomodation. Instead, I once more got a deep insight in central american culture, people´s beliefs and panamanian politics.

My work mainly consisted of talking to the people(which often meant just nodding and smiling :-), read the Bible, play games and help out in the kitchen. 31 people live in that home, aged 72 to 101, and all so different that it´s almost unimaginable that they can live together under the same roof. After a couple of days I already would have been able to write a book about their characteristics, their stories, their daily routine, their rivalries, their harmony...

There was this 83 year old folk studying the Bible every day, fed up with the "Yankee Man" who opressed the Blacks for more that 200 years, and mad about having ended up in this poor people´s home. Still totally capable of constructing new furniture for the home (see pictures) and secretly probably still very happy when there is someone to play cards with (needs to be a stranger though as he avoides everyone in the house).

Then the 72 year old Alejandra with only one eye left, always smiling and telling me everyday about how excited she was to get her new dress on Sunday so she looks good and can model for me.

Also the 79 year old Nicolas who just lost his legs four years ago when he was still digging for gold in the jungles of Panama, getting hit by falling rocks. He loves to play domino, teach me Spanish and categorizes his roommates into "Almas de Dios y Almas del Diablo" (Soul of God and Soul of the Devil)

Mrs. 101 still likes to put up her fancy hat every now and then with which she looks cool and still remembers the Lord´s Prayer.

These people and some more, including the ladies that run the place with so much love and care and little money, gave me another lifetime experience. What more can you ask for?

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