bonnie & clyde

this is it, as we are writing we are breathing the last ounces of latin air, because we´re off in less than 24 hours. from coro we undertook an easy 6 hour busride to Valencia, changed to another 1 hour busride to Maracay and stayed there beacuse it was getting late. We searched for a cheap hostel and the conclusion is simple: there aren´t any. So we found i think the cheapest one after long search with the cabdriver, Hotel El Conde for 65 Bs. Maracay was described in our book as a chill place, a world apart, so we had to see why. we could for the life of us not see why. Maracay is as dirty, overcrowded and noisy as any other city in venezuela and apart from the green(ish) plaza bolivar, there is shit to see in this town. S we got ou and took a 2hour busdrive through Parque Nacional Henry Pittier to Choroní, much nicer than Maracay. Choroní is the end of the line, it´s a nice colonial town, with nothing to do, so that´s why all tourists remain seated for another 10 minutes and get off in Puerto Colombia, which is like a barrio of Choroní, but this is where all the action is. If you don´t like tourist hangouts don´t come here. It´s actually quite nice, very relaxing but very overpriced. Again we could not get a room for less than 60, but that´s because it was weekend and prices skyrocket that time of week. We stayed at Hotel Colonial. The first 2 days we did nothing but lay back at Playa Grande, honestly one of the most beautiful beaches we had seen so far, and god damn hot weather! Third day we met up with our american friend Geena and Vinnie again, who take the plane from caracas like we do, and we took a lancha to Chuao, the next small fishing village. We walked through a world famous cacao plant towards the little town which is very nice, like Choroní very colonial but even less to do. We walked back and rested on the beach before we got back with our drunken boatdrivers. But we got back safely. Last day we spent another relaxing day at Playa Grande, we cooked together at our place, Poasada Nelson, where we had changed to beacuse this one is 30 and has a kitchen for use. A real moneysaver at all times. That´s it, next day, we took a bus back to maracay, got on a bus to Caracas and went to our hotel, Altamira, in the safer neighbourhood of town. We had a great deal of trouble getting money out, and in the end we jus didn´t, we changed our last dollars and hope to live to the end, but when push comes to shove, here´s VISA! so here we are, finished, and ready to go tomorrow. The last supper is gonna be a damn good one.
Nobody will ever hear from us again through this medium, we close and go home!
Enjoy your travels and I hope you enjoyed ours!

parque tayrona is one of colombia´s finest national parks, with jungle stretching all the way to the coast. the first day we took a bus that drove us to quebrada de valencia, a waterfall in different levels, wherein between each level you can swim freely in natural ponds. too much family life though but otherwise very interesting. immediately after that we headed straight to the entrance of the park, paid the 25000 Pesos fee and took a jeep to Arrecifes entrance point, after which we had the walk a very very beautiful jungletrail for 1 hour to arrive at the equally beuatiful beach of Arrecifes. It´s very quiet and has 3 `laces where you can put your tent up or just rent one for 20000 pesos. we did the latter. slep well but hot, and mosquitos abound. second day had nice weather and walked up to Cabo de San Juan, which truely is one of the finest beaches of Colombia. The water´s a bit rough so you cant go out too far, but that doesn´t matter, the settings´all that! next up a 1-hour walk up the hill towards el pueblito, tayrona´s indigineous village. a very beautiful walk barefoot took us to the one-family village that was completely deserted. It is quite nice to se it. that night we went back and slept at Arrecifes, because Cabo is much more packed with tourists and 90 pct of them are israelis, no offence! last day we went to playa cristal or playa de la muerte known to the people here. Again a very nice whitesandy beach but no more jungle. this is dry almost desert land. and than that night back to taganga for another day chilling. After taganga we were headed for Cabo de la Vela, a not so easy ride because of changing a couple of times. First we took a bus that left us at Cuatro Vias, which is a crossroad point between Riohacha and Maicao, much closer to Maicao. There you get of and search for a "carro", a jeep that carries you with 15 other people on it to Uribia, a town 30 km further andf than to Cabo, 1 ,5 hours more through rough desert road. it´s very much worthed for the experience (a very different way of travelling, like being on a safari in the serengeti, except for the animals of course). Cabo itself isn´t all that it´s cracked up to be. It´s more a colombian family favorite than anything else, but Pilon de Azucar, which is 1 hour walk further is very nice. It´s green water at a desert setting. We slept in a cabana and paid 25000 for a room, after handling the price. All they have for dinner here is fish, but gooood fresh fish of course.
That´s it for our colombia-adventure, very sad to say so, but we are to go to venezuela, we have only one week left. The ride back was faster than the ride to Cabo. We changed at cuatro vias de nuevo, took another jeep to Maicao, 40 minutes further, took a taxi to the busstation (Maicao itself is absolutely horrible, as is any smuggler´s town) and instead of taking a bus to maracaibo, we took a venezuelan cab: The old 80´s oversized decaying american cars, venezuela is full of them, i love them! Everybody takes a cab like that, you pay 20000 pesos and you´re in maracaibo in 3 hours: easy. You only do customs at Paraguachon, which is very easy and quick, pass a million police controls (so have you passport at hand all times) and down to maracaibo. The city. or at least what we´ve seen of it, is the most ugly imaginable, but that´s because apparently they´re building an overland metro so half of the town is in works. the taxi dropped us at the busstation, where we took a very quick and easy bus to Coro (4,5 hours). Coro is a lovely colonial town, feels very cosy and at home, and The Venezuelans are freindly people. We stayed in Casa Tun Tun, hosted by a belgian couple, very good service, with free DVD´s, clean showers, free water and kitchen free for use. we loved it and it´s right next to the cathedral. next day we visited the medanos de Coro, a sahara-like national park, right out of town. It´s walkable from the center! we saw the sunset, walked back and got robbed! There we have it, all the stories we´ve heard about venezuela... it seems, even in such a tranquil town, a lot of it is true. 2 guys, 1 armed, came running up to us and snatched the bag off of us, We lost our camera but luckily ot my wallet because they ran off fast enough. We searched police, anke found a really friendly one helping us, i myself, when i ran back because i thought i saw them running again, faced a not so friendly cop pointing his rifle at me and ready to shoot. since i told him i got robbed he went back to the car and drove off without saying a word. it seems he was put off by the fact there was nothing to rob from me... hehe, we need to take care when we walk alone, especially after dark!
this day we leave for Parque Morrocoy and Chichiriviche, said to have beautiful sandy beaches, islands, corals and cays. a combination we already died for and are happy to die for again.
rob you later

leaving medellin isn't easy, but necessary... we have beaches to visit! the bus to cartagena would normally have to take 12 hours, ours took a steady 23 hours... we were stuck once again in the mountains, this time an accident prevented us from continuing. hell but colombia! we arrived in cartagena late enough to have to take a taxi into town and search for a hostel, which is a tad bit more expensive than elsewhere, but worthed though, cartagena is one hell of a beautiful city, where romance seems to have found its foothold. it isn't hard for her to find lovers made with this heat, it is actually steaming hot at the carribean! we met up with david and antonio again. next day we took a boat to playa blanca and islas rosario. it is a highly recommended trip but you need to pass an almost obligatory struggle to get a good price for a boat to go one day and back the other, which we planned to do. the boat takes you on a tour to an aquarium on one of the islands, which isn't all that famcy, and gives you the chance to go snorkelling with a guide, which is way too expensive as you can snorkel easily at playa blanca and see almost as much. playa blanca was heaven, without further ado... pearly white beaches and turquoise coloured water. we slept in a tent at Tony's place, a good guy, without a voice though, but friendly as any colombian. the next day we slipped back onto a ferry taking us back to cartagena, and slept one more night in our hostel in getsemani. after this we took a bus to santa marta, which took longer, once again, than expected, but hey, we get used! santa marta is not really worth stopping in, better to head straight to taganga, which is literraly 10 minutes away in cab. taganga should be paradise as described by everybody, and in a way it is, but it has a kind of deserted marginal feel to it, and it's packed with rastas, selfmade necklace hangabouts and israelis, but that doesn't mean it's not fun, we stayed 5 days here. anke took the opportunity to take e PADI's open water diving course for 3 days, she enjoyed it to pieces and has her certificate now. i myself did not join because of earproblems going under. sad but true. the people guiding her were very generous and helpful. we are heading towards parque tayrona tomorrow, we were said to take the bus at mercado in anta marta, which will drop us off at the main entrance, from where we will go on foot to cabo san juan, a mighty beutiful beach, maybe the most beautiful of all, but also the most touristy. anyway, every beach in tayrona is heaven. see you later.

Bogota turned out to be amazing! We stayed 9 days, but we went two days to a little colonial town, Villa Leyva, a lot sunnier and more quiet than Bogota, very nice! On our return to Bogota, Camillo`s parents had prepared a typical Colombian dinner, ajiaco, and had invited some of Camillo's friends because it was his last evening in Colombia before going to Montpellier, we will miss him and Carolina! The next day we moved to our next family in Bogota , Alejandra's mother Yolanda and her brother Sergio. The people here are so nice!
I went to the hairdressers, to curl my hair, exciting, but... the result is not very flattering, I look like a sheep, or also like Baby from Dirty Dancing! But that did not spoil our evening, we went for giant pizzas with Sergio, it's incredible how much the people eat here, they even have pizzas with nutella (with cheese and everything, disgusting!). After the pizzas we went dancing with a friend of Alejandra, Vallenato, kind of difficult for us to dance on but the Colombian women know how to shake their asses and (fake) boobs!
The next day we went sightseeing with Yolanda, to Montserrat, in order to get a great view of Bogota! In the evening we went dancing with Sergio and his friends, to a fantastic club, which is in fact an old theater. The decoration was incredible, all the staff was dressed up like freaks, and they had transvestite shows on the stage. The music was really great so we stayed dancing until late!
The next morning was more painful, we had to get up for the busride to Manizales.
The busride was beautiful, we drove through the Zona Cafetera, all greenery, with banana trees and coffee plants and all kinds of colourfull fruit trees. Manizales itself turned out to be very ugly, so the next day we did a day trip to Salaminas, a little town in the zona Cafetera, which was gorgeous. The next day we headed towards Medellin, Colombia's second biggest town, which is very very nice! We called David, a Colombian friend who used to live in Sevilla with us, and met with him and all his family and friends at night on a terrace. Then the young people went partying, and off course we joined them to a nice more alternative salsa bar, where they had a live jam session and where everybody was dancing in a very eccentric manner. We had a great time!
The next day we met with David his stephmother Camilla and his sister Natalia, to have lunch, the typical Bandeja paisa! (lots of meat, tice, banana, arepa and beans, very nice). Yesterday we went sightseeing. The metro here is above the ground, so you can see the whole of the city going from one end of the line to another. That way, you also drive through the poorer areas, so you have a better idea of the city. We took the cable cars to the top of the mountains, to have some nice views of Medellin, The center of Medellin is very hectic and poor, while the Zona Rosa is very rich and chique. At night we met with another friend here, Nicolas, whom we met at the beginning of our trip in Argentina. We went to a rock concert together with him and all of his friends, which was on a square and was for free, and he went to buy Tequila and Aguardiente, it turned out to be a cosy evening again!
Tonicht we are heading to Cartagena, the playas!

We made it to Bogota! We were looking forward to this, as we have some friends here we wanted to see. The ride was not very easy, as it has been raining here a lot, the roads are very bad, and they closed the road we had to take to get to Bogotá. We waited in the bus for 5 hours at the same spot, so the busride of 12 hours turned out to be 20 hours or more! We arrived exhausted, but we were well received by our Colombian friends! We are staying at their home at the moment, which is a beautiful house in the mountains in a little town next to Bogotá, La Calera. It is beautiful there, green mountains, lots of nature right next to the big city of Bogotá. We went to visit Bogotá with them, the old center, La Candelaria, is gorgeous! Litlle coulourful houses, small streets and cosy plazas. The main plaza of Bogota, where the president lives is also really beautiful! We visited an exposition of Botero, a famous Colombian Painter, who makes great art!
We visited the family of Alejandra, the girl with whom we lived together in Montpellier. A few days ago we saw her father in Cali, which is also a very nice city! We went to have lunch together and he showed us a bit around in Cali.
In Bogotá we visited her mother and brother, with her mother we went to have lunch in a typical Colombian restaurant (lots of food!), and then went for a drink with her brother. The people here are incredible! They do everything to help us, sooo friendly! We love it here so decided to stay a bit longer, we still have a lot of people to meet in Bogota!

So the rafting adventure was great! We were in the middle of a storm, which made it even more exciting as the river was a lot faster and higher!
We haven't been very lucky with the weather here, it has been raining every day, only in the afternoon but still...
We did the Quilotoa Loop, which is a trail you can follow between various indigenous towns in the mountains, driving through a beautiful landscape, with lagoons and volcanoes. But we couldn't see a lot of the landscape as it was always covered in clouds. As it rained every day, we decided to return earlier and go to Quito, the capital.
Quito is really beautiful, we stayed in the old town, which has a beautiful colonial architecture. The new town is a bit too touristy, only restaurants and bars. We went further north to Otavalo, which is a nice little town, with a huge indigenous market, divided into different plazas, one as an animal market, another as a Poncho market etc. We met some American friends from Bolivia there, cosy evening!
We wanted to get asap in Colombia, as we want to meet some friends in Bogota before the 5th of June. So we crossed another border!!!
You could clearly see that we were in Colombia, our bus had to pull over three times for police control, for security reasons. The people here are sooo friendly, everybody starts to talk to us and helps us in every possible way. They say we have to watch out, but that for the rest there is no problem in travelling here, so don't worry
The scenery is very nice, very green, high mountains, lots of banana trees and all kinds of colourful fruits. But... it is raining again, every afternoon... I guess we arrived in the rain season...
We are in Popayan right now, a nice colonial town, very white. We went to Silvia this morning, to another indigenous market, it is incredible to see how the indigenous people here maintain their habits and culture. Their way of dressing is beautiful, typical hats and skirts (even the men) and jewels and babies tied on their back.
You can feel the distance from Europe!

Trujillo is a nice little town, but not much to do, only to visit the nearby ruins, Chan Chan. We already saw quite a lot of ruins in Peru, but this one was different, as it was situated by the sea. It was a big palace built from sand, with nice images of fish and sea birds sculpted on the sandy walls. We went from there to Huanchaco, a little beach town nearby, but the weather was not that nice, so we went to eat some 'ceviche', the local fish dish, mmm
As you can see on the pictures in facebook the food here is not always that nice... but ceviche is great!
We drove further north by the coast, but the coastline is not as nice as we had expected. It is more a desert than beaches, and a kind of dirty, muddy desert. We arrived at Chiclayo, where we hoped to find a nice beach, but we only found an ugly fishermen's beach, so we went to eat ceviche again. We weren't very lucky with the beaches in Peru!
So we left Peru behind us and crossed the border with Ecuador!!!
You could immediately see the change in the landscape, a lot greaner, a lot more nature and banana treas, a really beautiful scenery! Ecuador is great, we are happy to see some green again and the people are very nice!
We first went to Loja, a nice city but quite dead at night. We nevertheless found a very good Mexican restaurant, it feels good to eat something else than rice, chicken and bananas! The next day we went to a natural park, but it turned out to be a little of a disappointment. We did not see any animals, and we were covered in mud up until our knees, and I had been so smart to wear sandals that day... So the hike was quite difficult, especially the descent. As we had just arrived in Ecuador, we did not realize that the weather has been really bad here for the last few weeks, it has been raining a lot, which is not normal for this time of year here. (they told us that afterwards)
We headed to Cuenca then, which is a beautiful city! Very nice buildings, cathedrals, churches and plazas, a lot of nice shops and a lively nightlife! The city is a bit more western, and so are the people. We visited a beautiful museum there, about the culture and history of Ecuador, it was really worth visiting!
At the moment we are in Baños, a litlle touristy Gringo town, but the scenery is great here! There is a huge volcano right next to this town, you can walk up to a certain hight, but not very far, as it is still active! 2006 saw the last big outburst, when all the towns nearby had to be evacuated, so fingers crossed...
They also have a lot of thermal baths here, with hot water from the volcano. We already went to two of these therms, the water is great, really hot, and it is in open air. It is really cheap but you have to accept the fact that you are stuffed in between tons of Ecuadorian people, which sometimes leads to funny discussions but is not very relaxing We will try again tomorrow, on a Monday it will be a lot more quiet, but only after our rafting adventure!

Together with our 2 French friends we met in beautiful Cuzco, we decided not to follow all the travel agencies who organise overpriced tours to Machu Picchu, but to make our own adventure...
The first day we already went halfway to the great ruins of Ollantaytambo, and on the way we stopped in some other impressive ruins in Chinchero. There we met some local students on the bus, who were studying tourism and wanted to practice being a guide, good for us, we got a free guided visit of the ruins! We were lucky that the local population was celebrating a religious event at the time, so we could observe their dances and local clothing.
We slept at Ollantaytambo, here we got a good tip from the woman at the hostal about how to pass the control in order to be able to walk to Machu Picchu ourselves. We got up at 4 in the morning, took a minibus up to km 82, where the driver dropped us after passing the checkpoint, where we could start our walk!
The woman at the hostal told us it was only 4 hours walking, so full of energy we took off! It was only after asking several other locals on our way, that we realised the walk would be a lot longer... we arrived at about 6 in the evening, making it an 11 hours walk! That explains why we did not meet a single tourist on our way... I don't have to tell you that we were exhausted when we arrived! Nevertheless, it was a really beautiful walk and we passed some impressive ruins. Actually, at some moments we could see the Inca Trail at the other side of the rails, so we felt as if we were doing our own (free) Inca Trail!
But we got up again at 4 the next day in order to be the first at Machu Picchu (which was a bit too optimistic, we weren't the only ones with that idea...) We hiked again for 1,5 hours, but this time climbing stairs, so we arrived, again, exhausted, but very excited at Machu Picchu!!! But the hiking was still not finished, because we had to climb another mountain in order to get the greatest view of Machu Picchu, which was actually the hardest climbing of all, it was sooo steep, some people did not make it to the top, but we did! It was gorgeous!!! See pictures at my facebook! The ruins are so big that we stayed there all day, the weather was great, we could see the snowed mountain tops at the back, and there weren't that many tourists as we had expected, so it was perfect!
We took the train back to Cuzco that same evening, and stayed there the following day, visiting some interesting museums about the Inca culture, we can't get enough of it!
In the evening, we took a night bus, 21 hours driving, and arrived broken at Lima. If you don't want to buy shoes, there is no reason to stop in Lima...
So tomorrow we are heading to Trujillo, the beach, mmm

Copacabana is a nice little town, but not that special. There are a lot of Gringo (tourist) bars and agency's to visit Isla del Sol. Which we went to visit for one day; it is really beautiful but we had expected a bit more maybe... nevertheless, it was a nice daytrip, we visited some ruins and did a walk through the whole Island. The next day we went to Puno, where there is not much to do or see, except for the Floating Islands, which is quite special! Everything is built of a kind of reed, the houses, the boats, upto the Island itself, which is attached with strings to some higher Islands surrounding it, so that it doesn't float away! There is a little school on one of the Islands, the people move by boats from Island to Island, the men go fishing during the day, we were just wondering how they wash...
At the moment we are at Cuzco, which is a gorgeous town, lots of things to do, but a bit too touristy! We visited some Inca ruins today, very interesting! We met our French friends from the jungle again, with whom we will go to Machu Picchu this week!

The jungle was a blast, but the pampas are a treat! we have been touring the backwaters of river Yacuma for the past 3 days looking for animals, and as in the jungle, or even more so, animals abound! We were spotting alligators, who seemingly are very tranquil, and to a lesser extent caymans, who are substantially more aggressive. we have spotted capibaras, jabirus (very imposing slender white birds with a red and black beak), an occasional ringsnake that fell down the trees, a condor, fisheagles, howlermonkeys, chichilo monkeys and capucin monkeys. The guide we had was absolutely amazing. his name is Sabino and works for Fluvial Tours - to our humble meaning probably one of the best in town. Sabino has been at the job for 14 years now and he still goes about it with an innocent childlike enthousiasm when he goes looking for animals. The guy´s so determined in getting you to the best spots he is prepared to cut his boat through the lushest bushes. He took us to a nice spot to go piranha fishing, and as he proposed a contest, we later learned that there is a contest between all the guides to catch the most fish. We took some pretty big ones and ate them afterwards, but quite honestly, even as they taste very fresh, there´s not all that much to eat on a piranha, and the taste isn´t very rich either, but it´s ok. Sabino took us on an anacondahunt as well, as all tours do (every agency does exactly the same, it´s just a question of price difference - the camp you sleep at, if the boat has seats or just wooden benches, how much and how good you get to eat). The anacondahunt was a bit of a let-down, as ever it could be any. That´s to say, it´s extremely hard - especially in higher waterseason - to get to spot an anaconda. The snakes are very phobic of humans and stay well away of them whenever they can. But since Sabino is such a reknown snakehunter that shouldn´t be a problem you´d think. Unfortunately even he was unlucky. That was about 2 hours of heavily sweating in the swamps of the pampas, but we cooled off nicely in the river when we went swimming with the dolphins. They are pink dolphins and they enjoy playing with you just by touching your feet and nibbling them.
After all that we headed to the sunset-bar (it is a regular bar in the middle of the pampas - yip, it´s a tourist experience) to enjoy the sunset. And they serve cool beer there as it says on their billboard, only the beer isn´t that cool. When night falls mosquitos reign! we had the (mis)fortune to actually be in a mosquitostorm. We were attacked by - and we kid you not! - litterally millions of mosquitos (or whatever kind of insects the little buggers were). We had to run as fast as we could to the boat and get the hell out of there, but even the floor of the boat was swarming with them. It´s part of the experience, i guess.
The last meal was one of great excitement... Sabino gave us a 3-hour explanation of the pampas, it´s creatures and inhabitants and even had us hooked to his mouth with a true cannibal tribe story further up the pampas. The guy is fantastic and we all love him!
The last day we got back with a shabby jeep that took a horrible bumpy 3 hours to Rurrenabaque, and went out with the group later on. The next morning we took our Amaszonas flight in a small Cessna plane fit for 19 passengers back to La Paz, the stinkhole of Bolivia. We immediately planned for a bus to go to Copacabana on lake Titicaca. The place´s very relaxed but again very touristy. It´s filled with cosy gringobars that promise live music. Tomorrow we plan a one day tour to Isla Del Sol and then we´re off to Peru... I feel Macchu Picchu!