The final post and link to a better world

This is the final post of this blog and this era.
The new and even better "blog" will be found from the following address:
therealencyclopedia.blogspot.com

Summary and a reveal

It feels quite stupid to try to summarize all the time in South America. It's a mission impossible and I ain't Tom Cruise. That's why I just simply write down some thoughts I have about this continent.

I spent 7 months in South America. Time was divided like this:
- half of the time, 17 weeks in Chile
- 10 weeks in Argentina
- 3 weeks in Bolivia
- 2 weeks in Brazil
- 1 week in Uruguay
- 1 week in Peru

There remains a lot to see in the whole continent, even if I would return to same areas I was travelling. I can say that I have a quite good picture of Argentina and Bolivia, cause they were the countries that I saw the best from geographical view. But of course, you could spend months in these huge countries and even after that you could propably find new, fascinating things every day.

Simply, I have to say that I really like South America. It's a cliché, but the rhythm of life is different than from example in Finland. People are not so time-oriented and they seem to enjoy the life. Even when you go to places where people are classified as poor, they don´t necesserily consider themselves as poor. They have everything they need, maybe not the newest 40-inch flat-tv or wlan-cellular, but somehow it doesn´t seem to make them unhappy. You can see a lot more smiling people than for example in Europe. So, I make the conclusion that surprisingly the amount of materia and money in your life doesn't necessarily correlate with the amount of smile on your face. I know, it can feel very surprising and maybe in the future we can try to achieve this same state of mind.

Then again, the life in big cities and in the countryside can be really different. The gap between rich and poor is really big, especially in poorer countries like Bolivia. Cities tend to attract more and more people from countryside. Was it that Santiago´s population increases 1000 people per day? That's two times the size of Turku per year... Buenos Aires is like Paris or Madrid (I've never been in Madrid but I guess that it could be something like that). Alltogether, Argentina and Chile couldn't give me any kind of cultural shock, they're so western. I think that Argentina is very european-like and Chile has taken some influence from United States (not just the amount of junk food). I can't say a lot of Uruguay after a week and 2 weeks in Brazil are neither not enough. Bolivia was more the genuine South America I was expecting. In Peru, areas near Lake Titicaca and Macchu Pichu are very touristic but on the other hand, Lima is not.

Now I´ve spent nearly two weeks in Finland and my future is a great question mark. To finalize this travel blog, I start a poll where you can suggest what I should do with rest of my life. The best suggestions will be awarded with an ownership to a South American country that I shall not reveal yet. Click the "comments" link after this text and you can give your own suggestion. Your identity will remain in shadows.

One thing I´ve already decided, is to keep on writing. There will be a huge opening party of my new encyclopedia-type of blog. The opening party will be hold in "internet" and almost everyone who has access to this fantastic all-but-information-web is invited. There will be no VIP guests and I try to keep all celebrities away with "firewall".

The address of this new blog will be announced in the opening party and also in this blog.

"Where should we put these old trains?"

The lawyer area in Potosi, Bolivia

Local drink "pure alcohol" in 4 liter cans, Potosi, Bolivia

Market in Sucre, have to start working at young age

My message to whole South America: please, use trash bins

Anaconda and us

Cowboys in Pantanal, Brazil

Art from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

A view to Cerro Rico in Potosi, Bolivia

A local girl in Uyuni, Bolivia

Latin american way to handle electricity, La Paz, Bolivia

Laguna Verde, at border of Chile and Bolivia

Art made of sand, Copacabana beach, Rio

Sunset from train in Bolivia, Santa Cruz

Football match in Rio Maracana Stadium

End of journey

Yep, I'm back in Finland and 7 months in Tibet is over.
Still to come:
-summary of the trip
-pictures
-a poll where you can suggest what should I do now

Bolivian tourism from Potosi, a miner guide with dynamite and couple of visitors

Landscape near Uyuni, Bolivia

Peru, the land of street sellers

A quick post from Cusco, the world´s official ruin city. The town and the surroundings are full of Inca or pre-Inca ruins, so we´ve seen a lot of stones.
We also met a ruin from my old apartment in Santiago, my ex-roommate Markus.
Markus has been travelling in Bolivia and Peru and finally we were able to reach him. We spent couple of nice days in Machu Picchu and Cusco changing experiences from the past two months. He continued his journey back to south and eventually to Santiago, as we are heading to Lima in couple of hours. That will be the fifth and the last capital I will see in South America.

It is hard to believe that on this weekend I will finally have the chance to do some things I´ve missed like go to sauna, eat special rullakebab in Milan, throw the toiletpaper to toiletbowl, take a shower without scaring to have an electric shock, pay fortunes to take a taxi, avoid SK-ravintolat and stop caring if my passport will or will not explode during this trip.

First hour in Peru

Time goes by fast, that´s why I haven´t been that eager to spend time in Cybercafes.
Anyway, since lsat post, we´ve seen La Paz, Cobacabana and Lake Titicaca.
One hour ago we arrived to Puno, Peru.

We´ve heard many people say that you either love or hate La Paz. Well, I don´t.
It was an interesting city, very busy and full of everything. There were things that I wouldn´t say I love (very crowded streets, trash and pee) but it was also very beautiful in some places. Also the city is built to a quite astouding place, in 3500 meters and in the middle of the mountains.

To get our lazy asses movin, we went little bit mountain biking. World´s most dangedous road, like they say, goes from La Paz to Coroico. It starts from 4700 m ending to around 1200 meters and it´s 66 km long. Mostly downhill, except couple of short but tiring parts to uphill. I started feeling a bit ill just the previous night but this was something I couldn´t cancel. So, off we went and even though I felt couple of times like I was going to faint, we continued till the end. Some might say that the illness was because of excitement. Maybe, but it got worse after the experience. Also the experience got worse after. On the way back we saw a police car parked on this 3m narrow road and some people watching down to canyon. A truck had fallen down earlier on the day, which meant that we had passed the place while the truck was down there. There´s just so much trees and bushes that it´s impossible to notice anything from up, unless you´re really searching something. Like the police were. So because it was late and only two policemen, we got to help them in rescue operation. The bad thing was that only thing to rescue was a dead body of the truck driver. There were we, pulling up a "sleigh" were this body was. It was quite silent trip back to La Paz, althought our driver didn´t seem to care and drove as fast as that far.

Lake Titicaca is beautiful. It is situed in 3800m and it´s the world´s highest navigable lake. Whatever, it´s in the middle of the mountains and the views are nice.
Unfortunately there was a bus strike just starting in Bolivia, so our trip to Peru delayed a bit. It meant that we are not going to see the Peruvian side of the lake cause we are heading to Cusco straight away tomorrow morning.

Bolivia tour continues to La Paz

Soon two weeks past in Bolivia and two weeks left until the ultimate trip, which of course is the nice 30 hour, three-time-transferring flight combination to Finland.

Bolivia is nice. Really nice. We have just arrived from 3 days jeep-tour in Salar de Uyuni and surrounding deserts. Whole tour goes between 3500 and 5000 meters which feels weird. It felt much higher while being on the mountains near Santiago. I must say that even if there has been many amazing things in South America, this has been so far the most amazing. Hopefully I have time and patience to upload pictures in La Paz so you can see my fotofotofotos. Three days in cold but sunny environment showed loads of mountains, colorful lakes, sand deserts, weird rocks, amazing amount of stars at night, geysirs, beautiful sunrises and sunsets and a very very blue sky.

Before Uyuni we stayed couple of days in old mine town called Potosi. The worlds highest city in 4000 meters used to be the New York of South America but that was back in 1600 or something. Since that the silver minings of close mountain Cerro Rico haven´t been the same and nowadays the mining is concentrated in less valuable metals. We took the trip inside the mountain to see how miners work and it was interesting. The trip was not made to my sized people so I had some troubles fitting in to every hole inside the mountain. I will never complain about working facilities after seeing the guys inside the mountain digging and hoping to find something that will make them rich. They don´t eat during the working day, so we brought them coca leaves, refreshing drinks and of course, dynamite. Finally I got out of the mountain to see how the tour guides were giving light to dynamites and playing around with a firing dynamite in hand. Nobody died, so the tour continued happily to it´s end.

Now we are just about to take the train from Uyuni to Oruro and from there a bus to La Paz. Two weeks ago the problem in the train was too hot weather, about 35 grades. Now it will be ice-cold Andian night somewhere between 3500-4000 meters. I guess you can say that also Bolivia is country of extremities, at least when it comes to temperatures.