View from the Summit

Wow, this has been an experience. One of the greatest ones ever I guess. I climbed the Chachani - a volcano that is just a little over 6km high. 6075m to be precise. In a two day approach me and 5 others of my group reached the peak. The first day we just did a little warm up and carried all the equipment from 5150m where the Jeeps dropped us off to 5400m where the base camp needed to be errected. After some sort of dinner everybody went to bed (tent) and tried to sleep at some degrees below zero. Nobody really slept. Tim, who claimed to have slept 1 hour while we had our breakfast at 1:30am was envied by the rest of the group .

At 2:30am we begann the ascend. 6 hours of crawling uphill followed. 6 hours in which everybody was constantly contemplating their own physical and mental condition and probability to reach the peak. I must say that I never walked that slow before. At an altitude of more than 5000m every step costs a lot of energy. If you do one step to fast, your lungs and your heart will immediately remind you that their power is limited. The closer we got to the top the more breaks we took. While we more or less walked the first two hours without any breaks, towards the end sometimes breaks were neccessary every 15 steps.

The weather was perfect for the ascend, almost no wind and moderate temperatures. They say Chachani is a good mountain with a good spirit and good energy. Well, he (actually in Quechua this mountain is female) more or less took all my energy but the feeling that you get standing on the top compensates for everything.

At this point I really have to thank my tour guide Yudy so much. Without her I certainly would not have made it to the top. She taught me many important things like how to breathe, when to eat, when to drink, how to walk. I doped myself with coca leaves and Nasenspray to fight my cold and any possible altitude sickness and apart from some stomach aches (because of wrong breathing) I only had to fight against my inner Schweinehund to accomplish my mission.

I am very happy I did it and actually can only recommend doing it to everyone, because words cannot describe what it feels like. And in the end it definetly is something that changes you and your perception of things - and 100% positive

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Machu (Rip Off) Picchu

I doubt that I have ever felt more like a dumb tourist. Well, some might argue now that I am, but I usually don`t feel like one I must admit.

Machu Picchu is the top tourist destination in South America and once you go there you won`t doubt it a second. Wherever you look, there are well equipped gringos with all their professional camera and outdoor gear or my so loved hippies, with all their beards and hair and odor and fancy dresses. Simply everyone goes to Machu Picchu but not everyone refuses to pay the $120 for the 4 hour train ride.

Some people like me take the cheap version. Instead of taking the direct train for 4 hours from Cuzco, I had to catch a bus to St. Maria (6hours), then transfer to St. Theresa (1hour), stay there over night, get the first taxi at 6 a.m. to Hydroeclectrica (40min) and then walk 2 hours on disused train tracks. Of course I wanted to save the $7 rip off fare for the shuttle bus to the top of Machu Picchu as well, so I had to walk or rather climb another hour to the top, where a super friendly lady (this is ironic!) took my $40 entrance fee.

Pretty exhausted from the first 10km walking that day I decided to take the bus down and was willing to pay the 7 Nuevas Soles until I was friendly reminded that the sign means Dollars, not the Peruvian currency. So I put my 10 Soles bill back in my pocket and walked the 2km track down again. Then I thought, wow man you saved so much money, just pamper yourself a bit and take the train half way back and from there the bus, so you avoid walking all the way back and save about 6hours. But when the super friendly lady at the counter of the Peru Rail (monopolies are bad, very bad!!) told me that the 1,5 hour train ride would cost me $66 (btw. for Peruvians $1) I resigned one more time, turned around and once again set foot on the disued train tracks with my super hiking boots for another 2 hours. I started calling my 20km walk that day, the longest foot massage ever, as I guess my 5mm soles are not exactly proper boots for train tracks. Anyways, I ended up paying about $60 for the 2 day trip including food and accomodation or let`s say I ended up saving $130 or so. I call that success.

Apart from all that, Machu Picchu is nice, very nice, even nicer and more spectacular set than I expected. Only tourists will eventually trample it down. Experts say, the walking paths draw back by 1cm per month...

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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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