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.

B to B (funny huh?)

It´s been a while since previous post, so also position has changed quite many kilometers. Right now we are in Sucre, Bolivia.

Since we left Brazilian coast, we´ve seen a lot. We went to Pantanal area in Brazil and it was worth it. We saw a lot of animals and maybe the highlight of everything was seeing real anaconda coming from the river and our guide grabbing it. Have to post some pictures of it later, it´s a shame that I couldn´t take the snake with me. I guess we wouldn´t have any troubles if walking around with anaconda around neck.

From a drug smuggling border town in Brazil, we changed the country to Bolivia and took the death train. They said that 700 km way would take 16-20 hours and it took 24. Which makes the average speed 30 km/h, not exactly very exciting experience. Especially when it was at least 35 degrees warm and no A/C.

Then couple of days in Santa Cruz, the biggest and richest town in Bolivia. I think it´s quite from real Bolivia since there are people with money. We changed quite soon to a little town called Samaipata where we chilled couple of days. There we visited national park of Amboro which was nice experience even without seeing animals. It´s one of the only places in the world with fern forest (saniaismetsa) which was different. There the dry chaco desert, andes mountains and amazonia rain forest crush together and it forms a kind of special climate there.

After a first bus ride in Bolivia, we are now in nice town called Sucre. It´s the capital of Bolivia, even if quite many books say it´s La Paz. Sucre is also quite colonial and maybe that´s why I like it. Lots of beautiful churches and buildings among nice people. Finally I´m starting to look like an alien since people here are really short and dark.

Our trip continues tomorrow to mine town called Potosi. After seeing mines, we´ll head to salt desert Salar de Uyuni and from there to La Paz. Still a bit less three weeks to go. Now for first time I start to realize that soon it´s Finland again. Quite mixed feelings with that because I really like travelling here but I also like the idea of seeing all friends and family.

To the nature!

After I sent my regards to weather gods, they started to behave.
Yesterday was a great day sailing with a little boat on Brazilian coast, just in front of a little town called Paraty. The town had similar narrow streets like in Suomenlinna or in Colonia of Uruguay where I visited in February. A really nice place which is also UNESCO world heritage site as it shows Portuguese colonial architecture.

We just took a bus from Paraty to Sao Paulo and now we wait a while until our next bus leaves. So we saw Sao Paulo only from bus and from metro but it´s easy to tell that city is huuuge. I guess it´s third biggest metropolitan area in the whole world.
Our next destination is a city called Campo Grande in Pantanal area of Brazil.
The area should be the best in whole South America to see wild animals. Our aim is to take a 3-day tour from this company (www.pantanaltrekking.com) tomorrow and end to Bolivian border town called Corumba. There we can jump to a so called Train of Death which leads to Bolivian city of Santa Cruz. Train´s nickname is not related to Road of Death which also is in Bolivia and supposed to be the world´s most dangerous road. Train´s name just comes from the fact that it´s so slow and boring trip from the border to Santa Cruz.

I noticed few days ago that my passport is starting to show same kind of signs that my friend Kasper´s passport did in Brazil. Maybe it´s the combination of Finnish handicraft and the Brazilian humidity which makes them fall in pieces. My passport just has ripped a bit from the first page, the one which has your personal information. Cause it´s so small, I didn´t do anything yet, just to add some excitement. Let´s see next time when Bolivian border official grabs it with gently hands and I´m on my way to the embassy 2000 km away.

Going to Atlantic sea.

My girlfriend Johanna, also known as Miss Brazilia...

Street art from Rio de Janeiro.

This is Iguazu Falls, at least some water was still left.

This is Las Lenas, with a nice weather which was not the case usually...

Cursed by weather

I´m one of those idiots who thought that it´s eternal summer in Brazil.
Well it´s not. After one sunny day in bus to Rio, it´s been cloudy or rainy.
We spent three days in Rio, saw the amazing beaches while it was cloudy or rainy and decided to continue the great search of summer.

So, the next step was to take a bus and a ferry to Ilha Grande, "The Great Island".
This is a great island, beaches are like from paradise, I suppose. But we are still waiting the weather to get a bit better so I could cure my multicolor-back in sun. My most eager and trustful fans know that it was of course caused by two infernal sunburns in Uruguay and in Mendoza.

Some might thought that this is a bit pessimistic thinking and I should think that I can still enjoy traveling and seeing new places. But think of this: In June I go to skiing in Portillo: not much snow, not much sun etc. Then I continue to Las Lenas. Same story, no snow, too much snow, rain, clouds, foggy etc. Then the exception that verifies the rule, I go to Buenos Aires, and the weather is great. Continue to Iguazu Falls where we notice that it hasn´t been raining a lot in Brazil where the roots of the river lay, so we watch the lousy falls in rain. And then to here where the weather master has forgotten that it´s supposed to be always summer. Finally I hear that the summer in Finland has been great, as if that´s supposed to make me feel better. So this is an appeal to all the rainmakers, CNN World Weather and Juha Fohr and all the other weather gods: put the things back to their places, send the good weather here and let the bad weather land on Finland.
Thanks.