Jun 2007

God, we were so excited when we booked our flights to Colombia in Peru as it was finally time to say good bye to cold weather in particular cold nights. Really got feed up with it at the end and i think Simon had enough playing the human hot water bottle, but also didn´t approve of my leg warmers, gloves and alpacha hut in bed. Not really any kind of win win situation for me, other than to pay many $$$ to get to Colombia as we are starting to run out of time. I know this sounds pathetic, but it is true. We have less than a month left in SA and started to have the MUST do´s of Colombia (min 2 weeks), Galapagos, Quito and BA for a lot of shopping and steaks on our last 4 days.
Anyway, got to Cartagena and what a feeling to leave the airport. Humid and hot though not sunny on the first day. Cartagena is a colonial gem, absolutely beautiful with one of the best and most stunning old towns i have seen in my short life. That´s one side of it. Then you have the Miami like beach strip with its highrises where plenty of Americans have a nice or not so nice condo and you have the cheap area, fairly poor, packed with backpackers and cheap hostels. This is where we ended up, why not ! We stayed a couple of days here, in the need to climatize, get used to Colombia, have some nice food and meet some backpackers who could give us tips on where to go and what to do next.
First trip was to Playa Blanca, apparently one of the best beaches in the region. An early start for us to get going and catch one of the first boats to get there, we realised that it was a bank holiday meaning no boats other than tourist ships would go on the day. What started like a half an hour trip ended in a 5 hour boring trip where everybody just got burned on deck, babies were pucking downstairs and a complete waste of a time, but the boat was packed. I wonder what kind of people book these trips where you just spend a day on the boat, doing nothing. Anyway, we arrived at Playa Blanca and the beach was stunning and the water was just too good. A personal bubble bath. Unfortunately, the minute you arrive you get hassled and pestered by the locals, trying to trick you into buying and trying oysters, which spoils the experience. Obviously, they are just trying to make a living, but they are so desperate that they seem very aggressive to us lot. Anyway, once we got to the other site of the beach, life changed completely to a "Hola amigo, todo bien, si tranquillo" lifestyle. For the next 2 days we just spent our time at Hugo´s Bar. Made friends with the owner and his mate from Medellin and just got spoiled with superb drinks and food. Other backpackers we met hated Playa Blanca and couldn´t leave as soon as possible. I was also a little bit surprised that these was called the best beach in that part of the caribbean coast, but once you turned away from the beach, there was so much rubbish and so many concrete piles which were probably houses. Our Medellin guys told us the fully story. Basically, there is a big fight between the locals and the government ongoing, where the government says that most of the huts and shacks which have been build are illegal, hence bulldozed all of them, with military and security guys with weapons patrolling the site, making sure no rebuilds are happening. The governement seems to be so keen to ensure that Bill Gates (apparently) is going to build a huge hotel complex on Playa Blanca in the coming years. Well, we heard those kind of stories before, haven´t we. All the places you revisit, be it SE Asia and other parts of the world, just change drastically these days ie. Koh Samui. Anyway, we somehow love the place, stayed for 2 nights before heading to the next place.
Taganga, Santa Marta was our next stop. Approximately, 4 ours east of Cartagena. This should have been the next beach highlight. After traveling SA for the last 5 months, we weren´t really interested into going all cultural. The whole purpose of the Colombia trip was to warm up. Hence, there was a built up to come to this place and the expectations high. I nearly got depressed arriving at Taganga. I imagined this beautiful, peacefull fishervillage and all i could see was a nothing place with nobody around, other than a lot and i mean a lot of rubbish. It rained massively that day and hence the rain just created this chaos. Even the trip to an american style mall couldn´t cheer me up, but meeting old faces, the sun coming out, the rubbish slowly disappearing, another rave beach party and a homely hostal with table tennis competitions (and me beating Simon 2 in row) changed in particular my mood.
Tayrona National Park was the last place for beaches on our to do list and again another bank holiday fiasco, no boat on the day we wanted to go, hence we delayed the trip by one day to make sure we catch a boat instead of the bus. At 10am the next morning we set off with 2 boats each with a double engine and 14 passangers (well us and the rest israelis). The trip started ok, but got pretty scared once we left our bay and it felt like we were sitting in a little walnut shell on the open sea. We were kind of close´ish to the short, but the waves hitting our little boat were just too scary. I didn´t mind it too much at that stage, feeling safe with my little life jacket on and Simon smiling next to me when one of the 2 engines collapsed and the boat starting to move more due to the strong waves. This is when the nightmare trip of my life time started. It felt like torture and i will save you from to many details. This is probably how a slow death starts, i call i severe sea sickness as the guys couldn´t fix the boat and didn´t want to go on with one engine as the colombian maritime police were starting the checks and this whole thing the locals organised was just so illegal (too many people on the boat, one engine). To cut the story short, i pucked for about 3 hrs. A trip which should have taken 1 hrs 15 min, took all in all out 5 hours with more stops on another beach, waiting for the police to disappear and too many lies and me pucking after one of the biggest breakfast ever, as the food was supposed to be limited and expensive in the national park. Let´s put it this way, there was additional breakfast for the fish population. Back on mainland i recovered in no time, the national park was absolutely stunning, i loved it despite having to stay in a too small tent (i love camping though) as we were concerned that sleeping in the hammock would result in too many bites as we only had one (never used) moscito net which we then decided to put over our tent, just to be able to say we used in once in 5 month.

I think these sandboarding pictures speak for themselves. Glorious ! Couldn't get enough !

There is a lot of talking and writing in superlatives going on, but Cuzco has to be one of the most stunning places in the whole of South America. OK, again it is all about expectation setting and we were told it is gringoland (which it is), you get hassled more than in any other place in South America (yes and it needed a little bit of getting used to it, but also this prepared us for Colombia which is as bad in certain aspects - well the goods were at least 3 times more expensive in Cartagena). Cuzco is set in a valley and the architecture and the buildings are just stunning. We stayed in the famous Loki hostel and just had a superb view from the bar overlooking the town. Walking downhill for 10min you were in the amazing old town or actually city centre.

With our new friends we even organised to go to a Rave which was set in the forrest and reminded us of good times we used to have at the street parade in Zurich. Sporty activities were the white water rafting which was a completely new and amazing experience for me. Got a little bit nippy after a couple of hours, hence i was glad we just booked a day and not 3 day trip. Cold waters, hey!!!

Well, what should have been the highlight - our trip to Macchu Picchu. Still not sure whether i can spell this properly. Yes, indeed an unforgettable experience. No way to get booked on the 4 day Inca Trail to get to MP, and probably too hard at the time for me, as i am extremly unfit on high altitude, but we made up for it by getting up at 5am to walk to MP from Aguas Calientes which turned into a complete nightmare trip for me as i was sick and sweating, nearly fading walking up big steps for 1 1/2 hrs to see the sunrise, but arriving too late and there being far too many clouds adding to the mystic atmosphere. NICE !

Copacabana (no, nothing in common with Rio´s famous sandy beach) is a nice little fishing village on the beautiful Lake Titicaca, not far away from the peruvian border. We are still heading north and thought to rest here for a couple of days. Celebrating our kind of 10th anniversary, we found the right spot to chill out in the hostel "La Cupula" run by german Martin (from Bochum) who left Germany some 13 years ago. What a lovely guy, so helpfull and he has done an amazing job building La Cupula ("Die Kuppel"). The hostal is a little bit higher up on the hill, hence you get amazing views on the lake and town. I need to find an update the blog with some photos of the work he has done building the honeymoon suites we stayed in. Not that we got married in a hideaway and just spend our honeymoon here (far too cold). We just thought, hey why not. Lake Titicaca is apparently the highest navigable lake, it is huge and once trekking from north to south on Isla des Sol, which is a day trip from Copacabana (very important for the locals as it is assumed that the Sun was born here..or did i get this one wrong), this place reminds me more than any other place of Croatia. The lake looks like the Adriatic Sea and the shore and islands just look like the many islands on the dalmatian coast. Once, we managed our 3 to 4 hours trek across the island, i was happy that we didn´t manage to book the Inca Trail to Macchu Picchu in Peru which was something i really wanted to do, before arriving in South America. Originally a must do, i am much more realistic now and realised that it is hard to even walk for half a day, hence not being able to book the Inca Trail until August as the per day numbers were reduced to 500 per day by the government, was appreciated.

Another funny thing in Copacabana was the car and bus blessing (in front of a huge stunning basilica) mainly on saturdays where the locals spend a fortune, pampering their cars (cleaning it, flowers...the full monty) to avoid car crashes. Not all the steets are as scary as the "Death Road", but i do see their point.

On our bus journey to Peru we bumped into old (ha, ha) israeli friends who recommend to see the floating islands on our way to Cuzco (stop over in Puno as we had 5 hours to kill). Hey, and how glad were we that we had this stop over (see the photo of the little boy). Floating islands (there are about 45 islands in Puno) are inhabited by locals, who basically can´t afford to live onshore, hence they build themselves islands on the lake, which are magic. They just look so cool, cute and amazing. So, for instance, if one family on one island has an argument, they have a couple of solutions. 1. cut the island and split it. 2. take their "straw or kind of bamboo" (sorry probably didn´t listen enough to the guide) house, put it on one of the boats and move to another island. How cool is that ? Reality is of course that the whole story about the Uros tribe is pretty sad. The living conditions are completely basic, they are poor, live partly from tourism and fishing and again, once the sun is in, it is soooo cold here.