bonnie & clyde

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!

It turned out that we did not take the world's most dangerous road with the bus; a new road has been constructed, but nevertheless it is a quite scary ride! When there was another bus coming in the opposite direction, our bus driver was so gentle to drive backwards on the edge of the road, with a cliff just next to us...
Coroico was paradise after La Paz! We found a hostal in the middle of the jungle, with great views over the valley, so the first day we just relaxed by the pool, only the mosquitoes could stress us out!
The next day we did a walk to some waterfalls, the walk was really beautiful, but the waterfall did not impress us that much (after Iguazu in Argentina that's quite difficult
The next day we decided to do another walk, but we crossed a giant snake on our path, so decided not to take the risk and relax some more by the pool. Afterwards we heard the snake we saw was poisonous and that you normally have to kill them... we preferred to run
The next day we took a torturing bus to Rurrenabaque, the base for exploring jungle and pampas. We waited 2,5 hours for the bus at the side of the road, when it finally came, smoke was rising up from the drivers' cabin, but they decided to take the risk anyway... so we went on a 19 hours busride through hell, but finally arrived at Rurrenabaque, where the temperature was about 40 degrees, hot! There we booked a jungle trek for 2 days, which was amazing! We went with another 2 guys in a little motor boat to the refuge in the middle of the jungle, which were basically a couple of wooden cabins with some beds covered with, luckilly, mosquito nets. We went for a four hour trekking and saw lots of different animals: monkeys, parrots, frogs, lots of pigs, snakes, and lots of scary insects. The guide explained us a lot about the forest, the trees, which plants to eat and which not, which tree served as a medicine for what, really interesting! After the walk we got a good meal at the camp and went for another walk, a night walk! Quite scary, with flashlights, we saw a tarantula and a bambi, and again, lots of insects The next day, again, hiking, we drank water out of the branch of a tree (actually out of the parasite that had killed the trees, uña de gato or cat nails is the name. On the boat trip back to Rurrenabaque we saw a strange big animal (capibara?) and a caiman!
But tomorrow we are going on a 3 days trip to the pampas, where we will see lots of other big animals and swim with dolphins!
To be continued...

Sucre turned out to be a really nice city: big but not too big, with nice colonial buildings and a very lively and cultural nightlife. We found a really nice bar where we saw a life concert the first evening, and the next evening we saw a documentary there about the mines, which was very interesting and shocking as we just visited the mines of Potosi a couple of days before. We stayed in a nice relax hostel with roof terrace, so it was a relaxing three days. On Sunday we went to a little town nearby where they had a huge market, the bus ride was beautiful, but the market was not that different from all the other markets we saw already in Bolivia... which are really nice btw: they are like a town in itself with hundreds of people selling, buying and eating. They also have a huge tent where all the Bolivians come together at noon to have almuerzo (lunch) They all sit together a big tables, even if they don't know each other. And the fruit salads and shakes are definitely worth trying!
Cochabamba turned out to be a bit of a disappointment, it's a nice town, but again, not much difference from he other towns we saw before... (we are getting spoiled
La Paz, the capital of Bolivia, is a huge city, but quite ugly and stinky! On the other hand, the scenery is very impressive: built on the mountains, with white mountain tops on the background, it is sooo big!
There is a lot of pollution, lots of noise and you have to watch out constantly that you don't get hit by a car...
As it is very high, we both have, again, the symptoms of hight sickness, stomach and belly, headache, not that nice..
They have an interesting market, quite weird though: the witches market, where they sell all kinds of herbs and stones and dead animals, that are believed to cure diseases or bring good luck.
Tomorrow we are going to lower lands, Coroico, but first we have to cross the world's most dangerous road by bus, brrr

A lot didn't happen up until now, but less for you guys to read
In Potosi, we went to visit the mines of Cerro Rico, where they extract minerals and silver, and where the people still work in very poor conditions. Equipped with helmet, boots en an outfit, we wondered through the underground tunnels of the mines, going 4 levels down on shabby ladders, quite scary!
We met the miners, gave them some presents, coca leaves, drinks, alcochol and dynamite, the youngest miner was 15 years old and quite drunk... Most accidents happen when they fall of the ladders drunk, or by inhaling the gasses of the dynamite, thus their life expectancy is very short. We felt a bit guilty, being the western tourist who disguise as miners to check out the bad conditions in which the poor people live...
Then we took a bus to Sucre, the cultural capital of Bolivia. We didn't see much of the city yet as we have been relaxing on the roof terras of the hostal the whole day long, but it seems a thrilling city, nice buildings and parks, a huge market, and very lively bars at night!

Bolivia is really impressive, especially the country's nature, you have everything here (except the sea), and we are living quite a culture shock at the moment! Up until now, everything was quite european, clean, well organized, cosy, etc, but Bolivia is quite another world! There is nothing european about Bolivia, the hostals are quite shabby, everything is sooo cheap, but the Bolivians still try to get an extra 'Boliviano? (the local currency) for every little thing you ask. A big difference with the Argentinians, who are willing to help you at any time in everything. Bolivian people are very reserved, shy or impolite, we don't know what it is really, but they aren't very helpful... But we heard that the people change a lot from area to area, so we don't want to generalize! They lack in organistaion too, as we saw when taking busses here; the busses seem as they will fall apart at any time, our backpacks are thrown on the roof, and inside it is really packed, but the landscape you see when travelling makes everything ok, it is such a beautiful country!
At the border we net some nice people, a French and Argentinian guy, with whome we have been travelling up until now. In Tupiza we did a nice walk through the mountains, again amazing mountain constructions.
Uyuni is the world's largest saltplane, 12 000 km2, which is incredible at a hight of 3600m! We did a tour of two days in jeep, driving through the salt plane, where there are white plains as far as you can see, incredible! The next day we climbed a volcano! We didn't get to the top though, but nevertheless we got to a hight of about 4500m!
Today we arrived at Potosi, the world's highest city and World Unesco Heritage site! And we can feel it... I (Anke ) got really sick, guess it is the combination of altitude sickness, the salade I ate yesterday and the lack of sleep, anyway I feel quite terrible, but I guess that's again part of travalling no? The only solution is chewing Coca leaves and drinking Coca tea! We didn't see a lot of Potosi yet but it seems a lively city, very cold though!