Yes! back on the road...but just through my blog.

Yes you've guest...I am back home. It's been more than a week that the most fabulous trip of my life has come to an end and what a nice end! But first let's go back to where I had stopped writing not by laziness but more because I wanted to enjoy every single minute of the trip rather than passing them on the net...you understand of course.

Well a few weeks ago, on the 14th of November (yea it's far away more than a month ago but thanks to my little journal or diary of course updated I know exactly what we've done), we had arrived in what was a lost fishermen town and that is now transformed in one of the most touristic end of the world town. All the chilean patagonian cruises pass and stop a few days in this small and still unstructured port. The reason of this place being touristy is its location of course, settled at the southern end of the Andean mountains and northen begining of the end of the world (tierra del fuego), and its beautifull natural surrounding greatly contribute in making this place unique. It's there that the ultimate part of chilean land, crumbling, forms many small islands in between which fjords and small rivers are forming a natural infinite labyrinthe.

We were in this town, for it was going to be are base camp where we would prepare for the next 5 days. A 5 day walking/camping, trek between the most impressive and famous moutains of south Chile in the national park of "Torres del Paine".

On the 14th of November we gathered as much information as possible in order for our trek to go fine. We found out that buying food was a good idea, that taking appropriate backpack was not optional, that renting a mini stove was maybe going to help us cook and a few other detail like this. Finally we left at two in the afternoon arrived at the park entrance where, although we were well informed, payed a surprising high entrance fee of 30$ each, leaving us with very very little money for unexpected situation.

This first afternoon we walked a few hours uphill before arriving in our first camping site. We settled down our tent and led by our excitment continued toward the point of view from where we would discover the famous, emblematic moutain: "torres del paine".

That's us, we were alone for a nice sunset in front of those little rocks.

We started our second day by a good poridge breakfast, than folded our tent and walked till one time at which we had lunch. Portions where strictly being splet by Nadja who was also making sure that Alex but specially me would cook/eat only what was plan and not more. After a total of an 8 hours walk passing between light green lakes and high rocky mountains covered by low clouds we finally entered the cold and hostile "valle francès". The camping site was nestled in between the "glaciar francès" emerging out of the clouds covering the top of the sharpened moutain, and on the other one the famous "cuervos del Paine". We happily rested and cooked our favorite diner...pasta of course! =)

The next day we again walked another 8 hours to reach our second glacier, the Glacier Grey. We slept unofficialy on the shore of a lacke and the next day headed back to the entrance walking 28km!

This trek was on of the most exciting part of this trip since we were lost in nature with no other choice than walking and enjoying the wild landscape!

I'll go on talking about our Tierra del fuego experience in the next post.

Glacier Perrito Moreno.

Yes we survived the 27 hours of bus from bariloche to Rio Gallegos...and we even did better taking a connection to El Calafate combining a total of 31 hours yeah! Buses are nice and even if the landscape is monotonous for 2000km (only desert, no trees, no mountains, a few sheeps) the trip pases pretty fast.
El Calafate is on the slope of the Southern part of the Andean moutains, and is not as charming as Bariloche but has some similiraties. From there we went to visit the most famous natural attraction of Argentina, the immense glacier of Perrito Moreno.
We rented a car and headed toward the park arriving there by 5pm when all the tourist tour bus were going back. On our way to the look out point every turn of the road was releasing a little more of this magnificient landscape. We stared in front of this impressive mass of ice extending from the horizon and ending in the water of the light green lake for the next 5 hours, seeing 4 huge pieces crushing into the water and listening to the continous groawling ice. We then camped in this same park quite illegaly but it was fun and the next day we could go and appreciate this natural beauty for another few hours at sunrise.
In the afternoon we gave the car back and we started our hitchhiking adventure. yay! i´ll continue later because now i have to visit Buenos Aires, a little hungover. yay! cheers! (here I come again after almost a month). So yes we wanted to hictchhikke but being successless we renounced and took the bus to Puerto Natales...back to Chile.

Ya estamos el 10 de Noviembre!!

This message will have to sum a bit of all what happened in basically one month since last time I actualized my blog!

Let's get started....Around the 18th of October we went to discover this colorfull city of Valparaiso!

Being Chile's most important port it is a quite big city but keeps a certain charm, thanks to its varied colored houses and wall streets, and its famous lifts that takes you up the hills on which the city was built! From there we went to Viña del mar where monica has other relatives.

A few days later after relaxing in what had become our new house in Valparaiso we took off passing by santiago to Mendoza. Our first time in Argentina, consisted in rediscovering the pleasure of laid back south european life with plenty of good wines, friendly people and excellent food! We enjoyed biking in the vineyards and hanged around the nice city of Mendoza.

After this nice Argentinian parenthesis, we came back on the Chilean roads heading always more south! That's how we arrived in Puerto Montt, a quite hugly city being the stereotype of a fisherman town on an english coast (very rainy, a bit messy, with nothing special to see beside the sea and fishermen)! From this starting point the idea was to rent a car and go for a 10 days circuit first in the lake region, a bit north of Puerto Montt, than going down to the famous and remoted Island of Chiloe to finally drive on the isolated Carretera Austral. We respected this plan taking it easy and enjoying the easiness of travelling with a car! We went to Pucon, visited lot's of national parks, climbed the volcanoe de Villarica (2800m) and wild camp in the rain!

After this nice travelling in between lakes and volcanoes in the middle of cows and swiss german alike villages we went to discover this rainy Island of Chiloe. It is considered as one of the most remote place in the world with some very assimilated indegenous fishemen communities. Landscape are very different from what we had passed by and made us think of Irelands. We went of a fisherman boat to observe some endengered species of pinguins on a rainy day of course...it rains around 200 days a year...yes it is very green! =) We enjoyed beeing in a caban drying our clothes and campings tents for a few days in the northern city of the island, Ancud.

After those days a bit enclosed on this Island the plan as cited previously was to explore the carretera austral with our toyota pickup. Unfortunatly, we discovered in our disorganization that crossing from Chiloe to the carretera Austral was out of reach of our financial possibilities. Instead we passed back by Puerto Montt and headed till the very beginning of the carretera Austral until arriving to the ferries where we headed back.

After maybe too many days in this region of Chile, we finally left this long stretching country for the immensity of Argentina. Our freedom and excitement of travelling suddenly came back...Argentinian patagonia incredibly immense and beautifull! Today we are leaving Bariloche by bus that we'll take us 27 hours later to Puerto Gallegos in the last bit of earth before Tierra del Fuego and Ushuiaia!

Santiago de Chile

Ok, bon like I had said in the previous message, we are in a different world...or back to our normal world. Yeah coz its Europe here or the States for sure close to both.
We arrived on monday 15th of October in this modern city of Santiago, after a comfortable although a bit noisy 24h bus ride. Yes a bit noisy since a group of miners were travelling back home. Miners...ha...or whaouu...again there is a world between the chilean miners and the one we had just seen working in Potosi. All of them wearing jeans, nice shirts, with cell phones were listenning to music or calling their wife. They are employed by an australian mining company which make them work 20 days and rest 10 days in their home in south chile earning about 1200USD! Bref, they talk to us about the good wines they have, about the nice girls they dream of when at work and about the very nice place to visit in south Chile! Chilean travel and visit a lot their country.When we were in San Pedro, we met a 3 kids chilean family that had come from Santiago, for a 4 days week end and were sandboarding with us. The father was a doctor and had plan to take two of their children in Switzerland where he was going the week after for a Medical congress!! But added to all those habit and cultural changes, phisycally they are also very different in the sense that there is no more indigenous or very little. Of course the few left are like in Mexico marginalised and banned from modern life.
Bref it has now been 4 days that we've been staying in Santiago and life is easy, the metro works really well and bus complete it so that it is safe and rapid to move intown. We even enjoyed a Football game at the national stadium opposing Chile vs Peru 2-0! Tomorrow the plan is to try to take off and land in valparaiso one of the nicest and most charming city in Chile. We'll see what's waiting for us...

Fin de la Bolivie(desert d'uyuni), Chili, san pedro.

I'm now in Chile!!! Bolivia was really awesome. Yes, I was telling you about those incredibles mines in Potosi, well while we were ramping in mines, bombing dinamytes outside the mines, and visiting how to separate the silver from the rock, the girls, hanged around in town and bought our bus tickets for the same evening just one hour after our tour ended. This is how Alex and I, went to Uyuni with the dust of the mines from Potosi hehe =)!

We had heared that Uyuni was an ugly city just for tourist to buy their tours to go in the desert, but we actually liked it. A long "peatonal" street with a few restaurant, shops was bringing a nice chilling ambiance, the rest of the city was mainly wide dirt streets and low buildings reminding some kind of old american far west little town. We rested all day in this city, but also bought our three tour in the desert of Uyuni which would end at the boarder with Chile. This desert includes the biggest salt lake in the world and some of the most impressive landscape found on earth called "moonlike" landscape, it is the most important tourist attraction in Bolivia. 65 agencies in Uyuni propose exactly the same tour passing by the same place, for everyday of the week. We went into a few of them and execpt the first price they give you, nothing changes at all not even one word of their tour explanation speach. This uncontrolled competion leads to incredible low prices (of course causing damage tothe environement but also to the local people). However since it's how it work and since we are cheap students and not rich americans, we choosed one of the cheapest one paying 70$ for three days, two nights, with a driver and a cook.

The next day, the four of us plus two english guys where ready to go. All agencies offer the tour on board of a Toyota Land Cruiser none of it being from 2001 or later. Yes cause according to agencies the newest one always break down and don't resist the desert,humhum. Well in order to show us the extreme exemple we were given a Land Cruiser, from...1985! So when the 6 of us were in the car, our six huge backpack on the roof, with the two 50liter fuel tanks, the kitchinette, the gaz bottle, and at the back our 6 small bags, and the food for 3 days, the girl from the agency beg us to accept an extra 7th person that had lost her car!!! Well it was a poor Israelish that was lost and was almost crying so we had to accept her so she could catch up with her car in a few kilometers. That's how the 7 of us plus the driver and the cook started our three days trip in the desert of Uyuni! After 25 min of 4x4 in the desert just outside the town, we reached a train cimetry. Old trains, mainly locomotives, from the 1800 were let to decompose in the middle of nowhere. It was quite impressive and after having seen it on postcards in La paz we were looking forward to discover this wired place. We continued on still being nine in the vehicule since the Israelish girl had not found her car. She really started to anoy us as she was putting pressure on the driver to accelerate in order for her to catch up her group. Soon we arrived in a small salt factory. Actually a village of indigenous treating the salt and putting it into small plastic bags. We were shown how they use to proceed and it looked like it had not changed for centuries! The salt was dried in wood oven, added some iode in a very old and small machine, and put in small bags closed by burning the plastic on the edge. All this made in a small house made of mod bricks. It's where the main production of salt for Bolivia comes from! After playing in small salt dunes with went ahead and soon the ground changed completly. We were arriving in the salt desert, the ground was totally white and with the blue sky and the brown mountains at the back the landscape was amazing! We stopped to take some crazy picts and continued to reach the lake island. We arrived there after driving on this 14meters thick salt layer, which on its surface forms hexagonals shapes making it even more extraordinary. The reasons of this hexagons comes from the fact that the lake underneath humidify the salt which "breaths", evaporates during the day and shrinks making those forms, but why hexagons...this we could not figure it out. Our driver was of course not the one recommanded on good comments in our agency and did not really seemed to care about giving exact information. Once we arrived at the island, our israelish girl finally found her group which had not waited for her...yes her story was long and confused and none of us could understand her very badly english told story. Anyway, she had left and we were finally only our group. While we climbed this cactus island which brown color (as you can see on the picture) was contrasting the white salt ground, our old lady cooked us some dry llama meat. We never understood why the agency was paying a lady to cook us what will be, burned llama, pastas, dry chicken and pancakes...maybe because the driver had never touched a pan but, well ok at least someone else benefits from low tourism incomes. On our way to the salt hotel, where we were suppose to sleep, we once again proved our kindness and gave our unique emergency wheel to another car (full of suisse from lausanne). Their agency had let the driver go for a three day drive in the desert without even one emergency tire, the four other ones being already more than used! The tour is soo cheap but still...bref no problem we all reached the hotel. There Sao Mai and I tried to play football, but we had forgotten that we were at 3500 meters! After a few ball touched we had to quite,feeling really unpowerfull compared to the local kids who continued running for another hour! Instead I taught some smaller kids how to play rugby with my small french worlcup rugby ball (well... hum I'm actually really pissed since le XV de France just lost against this pink rose english team for the second time in a row in a world cup semi-final holalala quelle merde!) Bref. The second day we started really early and headed to some impressive coloured lakes which colors comes from different minerals found in the volcanoes surrounding the high plateaux on which we were going. Our 4x4 was doing really well and supported the violent shocks of the moutainous way. The salt lake was far behind us and some unbeleiveable desert landscape surrounded by active volcanoes was putting us on another planet! We continued for few more hours of 4x4 sometimes going out of the car for it to be able to climb some particularly steep and rocky part. In a desert of sand and rocks we stopped to observe a nice naturally made stone three and continued uphill toward our refuge for the night. We arrived at 5:00pm at 4350 where our room for the night was waiting for us. This trip, and all its landscape has been one of the most suprising I had ever seen, and to come back to reallity, Alex and I went to kick some drops on this high plateaux. At five in the morning, our car engine was already turning, yes by -15C our 22 years old car had started without a problem unlike most of others, all more recent! Like the day before our driver put pressure on us to hurry up, we really felt like we were on an express tour, but always manage to take sufficient time to enjoy the moment. The good thing is that we had always arrived first in all the places avoiding the mass of other 4x4. We saw early in the morning some huge geyser, and boiling mud. Unlike in Costa Rica, where we had seen about the same, nothing was made for tourist to respect distance with the volcanic activities making dangerous but even more enjoyable. It was freezing and we werwe hungry, our breakfast was to be prepared next stop. While having a warm bath in hotsprings on the shore of a magnificent lake and by sunrise, our lady cook was preparing our breakfast. Once again pressured by our driver we left our mouth still full this awesome place to visit another one. We passed through the Salvador Dali desert to reach our final place the green lake. We then headed up to the chiliean boarder where the end of the trip was planned. I'm writing from the other side of this huge volcanoe separating Bolivia and its green lake from the chilean town of San Pedro de Atacama. The change in term of culture, people, and infrastrucutre is more than radical, it's two different world. One that has kept all its indigenous tradition, with people still very attached to their precolombian culture leaving in incredible conditions on the higher country in the world, and the other being really close to the level of development of european countries.

Today we went to bike in the surrounding of San pedro, which consist of the dryiest desert in the world where almost no rain has ever been detected! We too advantage of this moutain desert sandboarding on its dunes. The afternoon has been less enjoyed, at least by me since the rugby score was not the one I had dreamt of, but this is how is sport. Tomorrow we'll go for a 24 hour bus trip directly to Santiago where another part of the trip we'll start being 5 to travel!

Isla del Sol, La Paz, Potosi, Sucre and Uyuni.

Yes the title tells you about how many places we visited the past days. But it all seemed really easy going to us no rush, just pure pleasure, great landscape, great people, great markets!
So as I was saying we crossed the boarder on the 1st of October, and arrived in Copacabana. From there the next morning, we took a nice cheap boat to Isla del Sol! It is said that it's where the Inca religion and culture started. According to this same civilization, it was on this lake that was created the Sun god and the Moon godess having both of them their own island! The Isla del Sol is bigger and present more interest for its numerous ruins, nice mediteranean bays, and possible nice walks. We slepts on this island one night after a nice walk to the south that took us to the ruins of the ¨templo del Sol¨. We came back by boat from the south to our little village where we had our hostal. On our first way to the island the lake was really calm and there was absolutly no wind, the dry yellow rocky island, really gave us the impression to be on the mediteranean sea next to some greek islands or Sardinia. The color of the water was a deep blue, the sun was really shining, the temperature like a nice day of spring! However when we came back from the south, the lake turned even more like the sea, with big waves and strong winds. We had hired a small fisherman to take us on his fisher boat which was really moving a lot! When arriving at are small "seaport" where only one rocky pier was build, it was a real challenge to get off the boat. Without even attaching the boat the captain asked us to jump on the pier but of course with such big waves, the boat almost turned over, and Sao Mai and the oldman fell in the water! While helping Sao Mai to get on the pier and the boat not to crash on it, I lost my sun glasses...! Yeah it was dense! Next day just before leaving back to the mainland, being full of hope, I went to have a look at the place where I had lost my sun glasses and miraculously found them back! They had passed the whole night in the lake in between two rocks!
On the afternoon, we headed toward La Paz. The next day was dedicated to explore this messy highest capital in the world (4000m).
In the morning we passed a lot of time walking around in the old streets full of merchants and markets of all kinds where you can find absolutly everything one can need. Then we headed up to the more colonial part of the city, which has nothing impressive for a capital main square beside the gun bullets on the presidential house. Finally, on our way to the new town, we stopped in a really nice comtemporary art musuem in which there was an exposition of a "Che Guevara" painting contest which had for objective to give back this man its real identity and values, since its image was over exploited. We ended our long day in a cinema..cool! Our day was really fructous and we had no motivation to leave this city so we stood another day, hanging in cafes, posting many postcards, and taking photos of our biggest demonstration since the begining of the trip, that was for keeping some governement structure in La Paz. At nigth we finally took a bus to Potosi where we arrived at 4:30 in the morning! We still managed to find a hostal and sleep a bit. This saturday 6th of October was a lazy day, we just walked. Personnaly I actually passed my day running around Potosi trying to find a place with cable Tv to watch this fantastic rugby world cup quarter final between France and New Zeland! After a few hours I unfortunatly had to give up since from this old very powerfull colonial mining town ( in the 17th century this city was the biggest on the american continent with more than 100 000 inhabitants and was one of the richest in the world because of its mining explotation producing 80% of the silver in the world) there is almost nothing left and its actual developlement is very poor they did not even have the channel needed to watch rugby!! I passed my afternoon listenning to the game in live on "France-Inter" in a cybercafe( this however they have them every where we've been, even in the most remote places like the one I am in now, Uyuni, small town in the desert of south Bolivia). On the next day we headed to Sucre, famous since it was the colonial capital, and still keeps some governement infrastructures. We took a cab, costing only a dollar more than the bus, the two hours of taxi being 4$ per person! We hanged around sucre, eating good food, resting in the very nice main square, talking with street kids, and walking around in the very nice streets in between its white colonial buildings. We ended our day in a really cool dutch cafe, where they played a surprising interesting movie on the mines of Potosi and children working there. This movie was "poignant" and really gave me the will to visit those mines and share a moment of my life with those brave and desperate miners. The Cerro Rico is the biggest mine of all times and about 8 millions indigenous died under colonial times working in horrible conditions, which led to this sad name of "the moutain that eats man". Nowadays, miners still work there but in cooperative having absolutly no restriction for what so ever. This movie gave us a really good understanding of the mines. On the next day, we went back to Potosi, and Alex and I went on a tour to visit these impressive Cerro Rico dominating the city of Potosi. The tour allows miners to get not only a 15% of the money we pay but also to get what ever the tourist like to bring/buy for them, from soft drinks, to dinamyte! The group made of two belgium, two Irish and one hollandes, one Italian(alex) and one french(me) tried the protection clothe transforming us instantly into real miners! We passed by a little shop to buy coca leaves(requested to be able to enter the mines), some soft drinks and dinamytes for us and the miners. Our bus took us to the entrance of the mine, which is not at all a museum but a real mine still in function and we had this proved just on our arrival with some miners pulling out of the mine a huge wagon full of minerals! The rest of the visit was just incredible! Working conditions are incredibly hard and similar to those of "Miserables". In fact there is no air exit leading to horrible density of dust in the tunnels, very high temperatures, it is really hard to breath, there is no light but yours on your helmet, there is mud and the very small tunnels allow you to pass only ramping, the material is not better, old wagons, trails that are broken and not fixed on the ground, no emergency exit, and no one even put a filter on his mouth! Miners know their life will be shorter (one miner starting to work at 18 or 20 years old will have high probability of dying at the age of 45, 50 years old), but don't really have the choice. The small spartiate museum inside the mines gives some very interesting info on the story of this 15th century mine but also on its actual functionning. For example 93% of the miners work in the mines because there is no other jobs available! Inside the mine we could see them at work and offer them a moment of rest offering them what we had brought making them happy!...i'll continue later on since once again I have to leave the internet place!!

End of Peru, begining of Bolivia (Lac Titicaca, La paz)

A few days ago I had just gone down from the impressive Matchu Pitchu, now I'am already in La Paz looking foreward to an adventure in the immense Uyuni desert in south Bolivia.

My night bus from Cusco to Puno (peruvian city on the shore of the lake titicaca), went fine. As usual you sleep half of the trip the other half you wonder if you still have all your stuff and if you have not missed your stop! I arrived in Puno right at sunrise! Alex, SM and Monica were all waiting for me in a nice hotel offering a nice view on the sun rising behind the moutains on the other side of the lake! I still manage to sleep a few hours before we went onto a journey to visit the indigenous floatting villages. At first the lake from Puno does not give a good impression. It looks very polluted and its greenish color given by envading algues does not correspond at all to the deep blue christal water the guidebook was talking about! However, the further we will go in our discovering of the lake the better impressed we will get. At first the indigenous village we could visit was impressive by the originality of their way of living. Since ages, those people, chassed by more dominating indigenous communities, have been living cut from the rest of the world on their artificial islands isolated on this lake, being the biggest lake in the world at this altitude (3800m). It is incredible how they were able to be almost completly autonomous living at first on small boats and later on their island made both of them enterely outof reeds. This natural plant found in abundance on this part of the lake forms the base of their life. Food, houses, boats and nowadays artesania for tourist are all made out of this plant. People were very friendly and we enjoyed visiting one island with all its owner family in traditional costumes (all this was obviously exagerated and prepared for tourist but it was still nice to see knowing that other communities don't accept tourism). We even went on another part of the village made of course of another island, on which there was a small hostal with reeds cabans for rooms. We managed, to see those indigenous real way of living, visiting an Evangelist church and their real new houses made of shining metal tiles and walls. This done, we quickly headed to the Bolivian boarder, in order to get there before dark since our experience of getting at boarder by night was not that great! We arrived after 3 hours of small minibus, 3o min of "bicytaxi" and a few talks with the police boarder (Alex got a long interrogation and a corrupted peruvian policeman tried to get some money out of my gringo friend which unfortunatly, as well as when we entered, did not let us a good idea of Peru's police and politcal system). Bref, we enterred, arrived safe and with everything in Copacabana, our first Bolivian city. Here again, like in Central America, people change radically just by crossing a boarder! No it is true! We were amazed to see how people were more friendly and open than in Peru! We were also happy because we realized that it was the cheapest place we had ever been to. 1.5$ for our hotel room with a great balcoony overlooking the lake! It's 1am and the internet here in La Paz is going to "finally" close, I'll continue telling about all this later on.

Cusco et Matchu Pitchu

Ok... I was talking about our arrival in Cusco hehe. It was not that easy Alex got sick, monica too and even got a new nickname...no I won't say what it was but she was often running with white paper roll. Personnaly I was not at my best either but we had good reasons. Our night bus, although comfortable, had no heat and we were crossing the Andes at night so you can imagine the cold, we had smoke coming out of our mouth in the bus! By 3:30am it broke down at 4300m of altitude (we were coming from Lima at 160m) so added to the cold we were suffering of altitude and breathing was something that needed a lot of effort. Finally at 4am the bus crew could finally fix everything and we were back on the road, arriving as i said in Cusco at around 11h30 in the morning but completly dead! Bref, we relaxed a bit this day in our Arco Iris hospedaje. Unfortunatly a peruvian girl middle-school had elected our hostal as their stop over for a school trip! Alex and Monica had hard time resting with 20 girls aged around 15 and screaming for a yes or no! However on Monday afternoon, we started our visit of the city and its surroundings. We went on a nice walk taking at first a bus driving 15 min out of town to some Inca Ruins. From there we walk all the way back to Cusco. On our way, we had a few ruins to visit which was our first introduction to inca civilization! Something that we all realized was how the landscape surrounded by high mountains, little country houses, and the fields, gave us the impression of being lost in the countryside whereas Cusco was at 2 km walking distance. Houses in this region are all made out of red mud bricks that each family is making to build their home. The red rounded tiles is adding even more charm to these nice traditional building and colonial influenced architecture. On Tuesday, our program consisted in going for a day trip to the Sacred Valley, which was one of the most populated Inca region. Unfortunatly, Monica and Alex could not come since they were still feeling sick and prefered to rest to be in better shape for the important upcoming days of the Inca Trail to matchu pitchu. Sao Mai and I therefore, went to visit a few more important ruins around Cusco region. We went to Pisaq, a very nice town in a wonderfull valley, were some important forteress and terraces were build by Incas. We passed by a small market which of course made us realize once more, how nice the market in Otovalo in Ecuador was! In the late afternoon we arrived in Ollataytambo, another toursitic town famous for its impressive ruins but also for being the last train stop before Aguas Calientes, the Matchu Pitchu train station. (By the way for the little story: This train was a public train until Fujiyama a japanese that was an important peruvian president privatized it. Since then, the services it gave became step by step horrible. Nowdays, Peru-rail offer only one line from Cusco to Matchu Pitchu, exploiting its monopoly asking for skyhigh prices to tourists and having suppressed almost all locals train not bringing enough money. It is almost the only way to get to Matchu Pitchu!). Once back at the hostal we prepared ourselves, Monica and Alex feeling better we were ready for the 4 day trek to Matchu Pitchu. The program the agency had proposed us consisted of: The 1st day going by bus uphill to pass a col at 4500m, and go down by bike to Santa Maria 1500m. We had great bikes with front suspension and good tire however they were quite old and not perfectly maintained (many flat tire, some little accident for Sao Mai whose bike had no back break and excessively reactive front disk breaks!). The night was "enjoyed" in a Gas station hotel. Down here the climate was radically different, hot a bit humid and with a lot of mosquitos and strong singing jungle cicadas. The second day, we walked on the side of the Urubamba river to reach another very small village Santa Teresa. To get there, we passed through many ruins...but not inca! In fact, in 1998 Peru was ferocely affected by the famous "el niño" phenomen which led to incredible water flod. The Urubamba river became a huge torrent erasing from the map many small village and the other train railway. None of this infrastrusture has been rebuild since and we can still see the old villages completly abandonned and some huge broken part of the railway randomly spread on either side of the river. Beside, this things that can seem quite disastrous the landscape offer great views with great varieties. We past in front of coca plantation, walked through mandarines and banana fields, had a break in a small villager house offering us all kind of fresh fruit juices, and walk on the stairs built by the Inka who were using this same "camino" to travel to Matchu Pitchu hundreds years ago!Later in the afternoon, after crossing the river in a cable car we could enjoy a very relaxing bath in a immense hotspring. The third day, was dedicated to walk to Aguas Calientes or also called the Matchu Pitchu city. However, the guide proposed us an alternative to this original program and we took a little bus to go faster, reach Aguas Calientes at noon, so that in the afternoon we could climb a mountain from which we could have observed a first time the Matchu Pitchu ruins. the way to the city was really lots of fun. We walked on this railway, used once a day (it is the remaining of the railway previoulsy talked about that was destroyed by the El niño) for workers and small local communities. We finally, arrived in Aguas Calientes after a nice enoyed walk, had a bad lunch and finally did not go to climb the mountain since the weather was bad. It was no big deal, we took this opportunity to rest and walk around this small city full of hotel, making us think of a summer 70's architecture french ski resort, enclaved in between huge cliffs and moutains. We went to bed early and well prepared to discover the famous new wonder of the world. At 4:00 the alarm rang and we walk up with great energy and motivation! At 4:30 everyone was ready and we started our walk to the mountain. Our guide had apparently this same motivation and excited energy which led to reaching the entrance 800m uphill after only an hour! We were the first one!! however we had to wait for the entrance to open its gate. When it opened, the excitement was at its maximum even though we were still out of breath from our rapid stairs climbing! We entered, with an already great croud of 5 or 6 bus that had made it just after us and run to the Waynupitchu. Indeed, this other name is the moutain which is as famous as the ruins that stands on the bottom part of the site and from the top of which the view is incredible. The only inconvinient is that it is limited to 400 people a day. Therefore, ALex Sao Mai, Monica, Dany (a friend from the group) and I ran to the waynupitchu gate. Bad surprise, it was opening only an hour later. We ran back to catch up our guided tour and enjoyed the ruins and its explanation like explorators discovering the treasure of their life research! Finally, after the tour only Sao Mai, Dany and I found the energy the climb the 400m higher waynupitchu moutain. It was well worth the extra effort and we even took an incredibly relaxing nape on a terrace on top of this hill overlooking the MatchuPitchu site (see first picture). We than came down. But we did it the local way. All those buses I was talking about our dropping thousands of tourist in front of the gate, not only did we do it climbing up the stairs but running it down faster than the buses! Indeed, many kids wearing a traditional costume, earn they pocket money on week-ends running down the hill waving in each turn to the tourist going down the hill by bus. They are running incredibly fast and it was lot of fun to try to follow him and wave at those lazy tourists! hehe! We finally took this stupid train costing 40$ for an hour to go back to Ollataytambo and from there come back to Cusco. We were all really happy of our trip and did it for soo cheap that we were even more happy (140$ everything included ,food, guide, entrance fees, and even the train!).

Today I stood alone in Cusco, yeah, the other ones went to Puno. I prefered to have another day in this nice cusco colonial town...i have to admit a lot of this was to be able to watch the rugby. But i had a great relaxing day and now it is time to get prepared. A bus is waiting for me at 10pm. I'll be arriving in Puno on the Lake titicaca at 5am and meet Alex Monica and Sao mai at the Europa hostal! From there some more exciting adventure is waiting for us! See you soon for more news!!

Peru Mancora!

Finally I can start writing about peru, country in which we've been for now more than a week! I'll go over a bit quick since once again our internet place is closing soon and i 've been doing the saving of all my photos (we've lost soo many that now savings photos on Cds has become a priority!). So yes Peru... we arrived there on the 16th of Sept having our little trouble crossing the boarder as mentioned in the previous message. Once in Mancora our life suddenly became more cool...we relaxed a lot and loved the laid back ambiance of this place. Nothing to do but to lay on the beach, eat, drink, have a swim either in the sea or in our beach front hotel swimming pool (rooms with private bathroom, hotshowers, tv with cable, beachfront and swimming pool for 4$ a night)! We loved it and stood their two days, on the second night we grabbed a night bus. This last one was going to make us travel 1250km in 17hours at 1$ the hour of bus! It was long but cool since we had really good seats/beds, in a private area on the first floor of the bus and the road, following the coast was straight.

Once we arrived in Lima, Richard, a juggler, we had met in the bus, showed us a nicer part of the city a little outcentered, called Barranco. This nice suburb was originaly the place where rich people from Lima came for the week-ends decades ago, and which has been transformed now in a nice part, more relax, of the big increasing city of Lima. We liked this place, hanged around with Richard and his street friends, which led us to meet many very friendly young locals of this area. Apparently famous for its artistic side, our new friends were very cool and free people relying on their daily street show to live and buy just what is necessary (food, alcohol and weed). This night since it was Monica's birthday we went to a fancy restaurant in the new rich part of town "Miraflores". We all greatly appreciated this events allowing us to eat a lot of really good food for once! The party went on and we ended at 2am in a really cool bar where we had a really good quality concert of all Rage Against the Machine classics! Next day, on the morning I could finally watch for the first time a rugby game!! France won against Ireland but it was not an exciting game however I was happy and on the afternoon we visited the old center of Lima. As Richard had told us, it has nothing special but a few nice government colonial buildings so we went back to our prefered places, Miraflores and the seaside of Mancora. The next day, we took once again a night bus! We started our bus trip to Cusco on the 19th at 1h30pm and arrived on the 20th at 11h30am, after 22hours of bus! OUf, we looked for a hotel in Cusco ate something and slept a bit! La suite pour plutard mes cheris car le monsieur de l'internet me dit qu'il va fermer...juste pour les dernieres news, on part demain de Cusco apres y avoir visiter les ruines Incas des environs et biensur apres avoir fait un trek de 4 jours pour visiter le Matchu Pitchu! Tout ca fut exceptionnel (je raconterais plus en details un autre jour). Puno, le lac titicaca et la Bolivie sont au programme des prochains jours!

Jungle Tour and ending of Ecuador!

It has been already a week that the four of us are hanging around in Peru! I had stopped my last message on the end of the Cotopoxi so here is what has followed.

We arrived to meet back Alex and Sao-Mai in Baños a nice little town more in the south. From there we had already booked a tour for two days in the Jungle! Alex and I had already been quite a bit in some jungles but the girls never and we thought it would give us an occasion to compare.
After a great night we went early in the morning to catch our transportation driving us near our jungle lodge. On the way we stopped a few times to observe the great panoramic of this high jungle and all its rivers and cascade of clear waters. In fact this part of the jungle differs from lowland jungle since it is its beginning, where everything starts, (the rivers, the temperatures is still not too hot, we are between 1500 and 900 meters of altitude, it is not yet the same density). The river we were going along by car joins the Amazons 3500 km further Est which leads to the carribean sea! It is quite impressive to know that from this far inland you can join the carribean see on a Canoe! Bref, after a 3 hours ride we finally arrived in a quite lost place with our guide. Once there, we just had the time to put on our big boots, and follow our native indian guide to go deeper into the jungle. With him we discovered and learned a lot on how indigenous communities are still living completly autonomous in the jungle (they can be reach only by canoe or by very small aiplans)! Many ONG programs protect them as well as the governement which help developing /protecting their traditions and way of life). After a 45 min walk in the mud and humid vegetation, we reached a very nice and impressive waterfall where of course we had a revitalizing bath! Once back at our camp lunch was ready. After a small siesta, with our bags on our back,we once again followed our guide going uphill in the jungle toward our lost lodge waiting for us for the night. He taught us many things on the plants, making out from a leave a incredibly solidbracelet! And we were not at the end of our surprise when we arrived at our lodge, the view on the jungle was incredible. Not one sign of civilization, not one noise beside the jungle wildlife, just trees, waterfalls, clouds, and us!! After another great meal prepared by our guide we went on a night tour a bit difficult since we had tried a few very good local beverages!
Next day the programm was to be dense as well! We started by walking down to the base camp, from there we went on a canoe to go 35 min down a river ( it was doing rafting but with a oldwooden canoe taking water from more than 100 holes)! After this we walk again uphill in the jungle till arriving to a "mirrador" ! There again the view was incredible and our knowledge on plants was growing continiously! On the afternoon we tatooed our arm with natural colors and visited a indigenous community. In the evening we went to the thermal bath once back in Baños. Next day we wanted to visit the famous city of Cuenca. We arrived on Sunday evening and everything was closed but the city is really nice. It all made us think of a nice cultural european town. Ecuador really suprised us for its development and very nice cities and tourist attraction. Monday we went to cross the boarder in order to reach Peru! As a war to define the countries real boarder ended only in 1998 it was kind of messy to cross it! Many traffic of all kind take profit of unclear law delimitation and arriving in a place like that at night freak us up!! But beside exchanging 20USD for false peruvians bills nothing else happened!

Ecuador Climbing Cotopaxi and Jungle tour!

Voila Mardi 11 Sept Monica et moi nous separons d'Alex et SaoMai pour repousser nos limites! Nous avions pris la folle decision de nous lancer a l'ascension du deuxieme volcan le plus haut d'Equateur le Cotopaxi culminant a 5800 metres d'altitude! Meanwhile Alex and SaoMai would go on a circuit around another volcanoe the Quilotoa.

So Monica and I arrived at the cotopaxi national park at 11h30 after two hours of bumpy bus! There, in the middle of nowhere we were suppose to meet our guide! After waiting for him for more than an hour he finally showed up, a rustic ecuatorian man obvioulsy from the countryside surrounding the his 5th decades. We tried the material he had brought not being surprised that half of it was not the right size...Well it was not his falt but the agency and we would have to deal with it, because there was no time for making problems if we wanted to climb, according to him. We could still come to a solution which consisted of the second group coming tomorrow to bring the missing material. We thereafter, continued further in the park to reach our campsite for the night. Indeed, we had thought of doing the climbing in three days which included one day of acclimatation sleeping in tents the first night at 3800m. At this altitude the landscape are fabulous, looking alike impressive scenery of a adventure movie! To enjoy it a little more we went on a warm up tour around a lake, nestled on a plateau surrounded by volcanoes one of them being the Cotopaxi! Back to the camp our guide Rafa had prepared our copious diner! We went to sleep in our Quechua tent, sleeping with as many layers of cloth as we had in our sleeping bag and one next to each other! Even like this we were cold but it was funny! Next morning we woke up at 8:00 and enjoyed a huge breakfast prepared by Rafa! Later on we prepared our bags for refuge and the climbing of the volcanoe. We started to walk till the refuge parking while Rafa went to look for the other three crazy climbers and their guide. We all arrived at 2:00pm at the refuge at 4800 after walking 1 hour on the plateau, driving one hour up to the refuge parking space and walking uphill another 40minutes. There we had a good meal and went to try our material (boots, crampons, piolets etcs) on the glacier. By 6pm we were back and ready to sleep. Already at this stage one of our colleage was completly sick because of the altitude and had unfortunatly already abandonned.

After a short sleep disturbed by our friend throwing up all what he could, a strong wind, and a freezing temperature we woke up at around midnight for starting to climb! At this point our sick friend wife was sick as well and we were now only three for two guides plus two other spanish coming with another guide from another agency. We equiped ourselves, ate something, turned on our front light and went out in the night with the strong wind to seek our limits! After a few hours walking all together, we decided to make different groups. Monica would continue with Rafa alone. A German guy and I would go on with Jorge the second guide (looking a lot more like the kind of professional mountain guide I had seen before being more sympatic as well). Unfortunatly it did not go as Jorge and I thought it would, the german young man was being affected a lot more by altitude and was completly dead whereas I, surprising myself, would feel in all my stake!

However, he bravely continued even though at a very slow rythm, which of course was reasonable and better than nothing.

We passed, the spanish who had broken their crampons and were forced to resign. after 7hours of harsh walk in the snow, affronting the wind and the-9C temperature we arrived at 5500m by sunrise! It was for sure the most precious sunrise I had ever seen in my entire life!

At 7:00Am we started to go down a lot more relaxed and taking some nice precious pictures!

Ecuador!!

He oui ca y est ca fait deja un peu plus d'une semaine que je suis en Equateur!
J'ai fais bon vol et nous sommes arrives Alex, Sao Mai et moi le jeudi 6 a 13h30 heure locale! La bas nous avons rencontre Monica (a gauche sur la photo), l'amie de Sao Mai (au centre de la Photo). Nous multiplions le groupe par deux et passons de deux gars a deux gars et deux filles! C'est cool! Nous partons donc de l'aeroport en taxi vers le centre coloniale (la vieille ville de Quito). On est agreablement surpris! C'est une ville qui a l'air beaucoup plus propore et jolie que ce qu'on s'imaginait! Haaa j'avais oublier I have to continue in English for everyone to understand!!
So yes once in Quito we looked for a hotel which we found pretty quick thks again to our new bible: Lonely Planet South America (Sao Mai, fortunatly had it, yeah coz alex and i had only the lonely planet for central america and the rough guide for south america...but the rough guide...we did not like it at all). We entered this old colonial house giving us the impression to enter our great grandmother's house. The well polished wooden floor would crack under our feet while discovering our big room with high ceiling for 6$ dollar each with private bathroom. The friendly owner was representing very well what we were going to realize every following day in Ecuador, friendliness of people! We went on a tour as soon as we had droped off our backpack in our room to discover Quito! The city is divided into two sections the old town, in which we were lodging and that holds all the interesting colonial buildings and the new town made with the buisiness center, banks, tourism agencies and apparently more comfortable for tourists to stay in (what we really did not agree with and stood all the time in the old town). Visiting one of the square of the old town, we faced a demonstration in front of what we learned was the presidential house! Indeed a few minutes later we had the opportunity to see the president of Ecuador Rafael Correa from his balcoony saluting at the people. We did not really understand if the demonstration was to support him or against him... What we heard and ask just got us confused. Some saying it was to reclame more budget for the sport ministry other presenting Rafael Correa like the one to save ecuador!?... At least he seemed really friendly smiled and waved at his people for 10min and went back inside. We were already deeply integrated in our new country! On this same square, some marginalist were doing a show for another social reclamation with the Che Gueverra song and images of him. Sitting down on a banch a little indegenous boy asked me if I wanted my shoes to be polished, just by looking at me he understood that it was not gonna be possible since my shoes are walking boots which don't need to be polished. But he did not mind and just sat down next to me and started to ask me questions. He was maybe 7 or 8 but did not seemed afraid at all by the differences that were separating him from me! I continue on talking with him and felt like I had yet never felt, felling like if I was living in the street. His family joined us and started eating their diner some chips with "salsa de tomate". Her mom was wearing the tipical Indegenous costume while the man was wearing a very used pair of jeans. Just after being a few hours in Quito the four of us had already the impression of having fully steped in South American Culture. We loved it!
Next day we went to look for a car! Yes we had the idea already since a while ago to buy a car once in South America. The girls were fine with it so we went on. The day before we had been in a Spanish school who's director had given us some information on other cheaper hotels in the old town and on some nice tours to do like climbing the Cotopaxi (second higher pick in Ecuador culminating at 5800m!). We therefore went in the other hotel and from there asking to the reception came to meet people that were car sellers! We passed our whole day looking for cars dreaming of the perfect one at the cheapest price! We went back to the hotel after having travelled a lot through the city, we needed to get prepared since one of Sao Mai friend from Vietnam were having a big party! Once we met her friend we went on a Chivas Bus! The concept concist of about 50 people going on a open air decorated bus and go on a circuit in the city making as much noise as possible with loud music and whistles! It was a lot of fun and gave us the opportunity to mix with young rich ecuatorians! The party was continuing in a club looking a lot like the european ones and in which a famous Reggaeton group was making a concert... All this night environement was completly different from the Quito we had seen so far, european looking people, rich, with big cars and going on parties like in Europe execpting the Chivas Bus tour! It was my first night in a club since a long time ago! Nice but really expensive!
Next morning we had plan on going to one of the biggest market in South America (according to the Lonely Planet) the one in Otovalo. North from Quito it took us a bit more than two hours to get there passing throug our first Andes' mountain desert! We arrived in this little village which made me think a lot of San Cristobal de Las Casas in Mexico. Indeed, you find in this town an important mixture of the colonial culture and the indigenous one, you get to see the limit of the spanish influence. The indigenous colorfull culture therefore is seen a lot more and people in traditional costumes forms the majority. As soon as we arrived there we went to the market quickly dropping our bags in hostal on our way. We spent the next 5 hours losing, mixing oursleves into this impressively diverse market! (on the photo I found Alex in between colorfull panchos and all type of covers). We had a meeting point were we would meet frequently when suddenly a mass of people met at the same place! We realised that once again we were going to see the president who on this saturday was making a visit to the market! People seemed crazy and tryed to touch him as if he was a rock star! After buying quite a lot of souvenirs we went on the internet and back to the hotel! At night an important concernt was going to be held since those first weeks of september are Otavalo's Festivals days! There was an excellent "banda" from Colombia bringing a little bit of Carribean ambiance to this quite cold andean town! It was funny to see how people were not into dancing as in South Mexico and Central America! Thanks to some happy drunk locals we started to warm up and did not stop dancing Salsa and merengue till 2 AM! Next day back to Quito our new favorite town!! On this Sunday in Quito we went to a huge car sell all the way south of town! It was amazing to see all those cars and planning of buying one! But later in the evening after thinking reading mails and checking the budget we came back to reality and decided to abandonned the project of buying a car! Monday we started quite early our planning of the week! We went to confirm with agencies we had meet before our expedition to Cotopaxi for Monica and I and a Jungle tour for the four of us!

End of Costa Rica 2...

Ok so I had stopped when we were in Cahuita...This was a real nice little lost carribean town with its very easy going attitude. It reminded us of belize. Very calm all the buildings more or less maintened and a sort of "nobody cares" attitude which is quite suprising. We looked for a hotel and ended up in an old wood carribean house called "backpackers paradise"!!? we really looked for the paradise but with all the goodwill we had to find it it never showed up! We went on a walk and discover a really nice white sand beach with palm trees and dense vegetation just behind! we liked it a lot, it was the first time we appreciated a beach like that since tulum! Next day we went to discover another little town, known to be more touristy but nicer as well! We headed to puerto viejo...however when we arrived we were suprise to see it looked exactly the same as cahuita but in bigger and more touristy but not many bars, not even one main paved street...wired or really cool! it's the "pura vida" attitude that rules here, just enjoy life as it comes! We looked for a hotel a little bit more fun than previous night to stay and relax a few days! which we greatly did spending hours and hours in hamacs, on the white sand wild beaches surrounding the little town! We even rented bikes the national transport of the city and went to discover some other beach near the city. In fact the city beach apparently famous was a huge dirty black sand beach. So we went more south and found a splendid nice beach, with in its center three magnifique "metisse" girls! As costa ricans in general they were really friendly and asked us to take them in picture! we were starving and had rented those bikes to go more south eat in a famous carribean restaurant, so we left our little paradise too nice to be real! The food was amazing but really expensive, we realised we could make a lot of savings cooking our own food with we greatly enjoyed and found back some home specialities PASTAS et à toutes les sauces pendant 3 jours!!
Bref apres ces delicieuses dernieres journees a ce doree la pillule et a faire des chateaux de sables, nous sommes repartis vers San Jose! Le lendemain un avion pour Quito nous attendait a 500$ le billet il fallait pas le rater!
Nous nous sommes choisis une ptite auberge de jeunesse et malgres les propositions incessante des chauffeurs de taxi pour nous y emmener, nous la trouverons nous meme et a pied grace au plan et a la fonction "boussole" de ma montre qui pour une fois m'a reellement servie (Merci papa).
Le lendemain nous retrouverons donc Sao Mai l'amie Suedo-vietnamienne d'Alex à l'aéroport et nous partirons pour Quito!!

End of Costa Rica!!!

So yes...I was telling you about this nice adventure we had in this rainny forest in north part of Costa Rica. We visited this nice volcanic park starting by the little circuit driving you to different volcanic sites. After walking in this jungle alone and on a trail that was barely marked, surrounded by all the wildlife noises (cricket, monkeys, birds), we discovered the first sulfurous smoke of the circuit. We than continued crossing rivers on Tree trunks, steping in the mud, and steping over huge tree roots, encountering various other stop to observe the volcanic activity. After finishing this one we went quite fast onto the second trail which was suppose to lead us to a impressive waterfall. Our Rosé, with our olives and sandwiches were starting to be greatly enjoyed and transfered from our back to our stomac, in front of this marvelous waterfall, when suddenly a strong tropical rain started. We tried our best to keep everything dry but after 10 min we were already defeated by the force of nature. We found ourselves wet but still trying to protect the little dry parts that were left on us, under Alex´s umbrella squished once again each other and trying to eat and drink our Rosé!! It was a very comic situation and the effect of our bottle of chiliean wine added a good ambiance! We did not need to have a swim as were were already more wet than enough and started to feel really cold, we therefore did all our best to go back and reach the bus to go back to Liberia. Once there we had an unfortunatly cold shower, changed ourselves and jumped in the first bus to San Jose de Costa Rica. Arriving late at night we had to wake up at 5 am to catch the first bus heading to Tortuguero the next national park we wanted to visit. After taking 2 buses, walking 15 minutes in the mud, and a 2hours boat ride we finally reached Tortuguero. This little town of 1000 permanent inhabitant is streching on a long stripe separting the carribean see with an impressive "amazone" river. It is famous for its turtles nestling watching and for its tours on the many canals in the jungle similar to the Amazone one. In fact when taking the ride on the boat, we could already have a good idea of what was waiting for us. We were surrounded by huge trees of all kind hiding many birds but the best was this huge crocodile we could see apparently very lukely since not many are found in this particular park! Still on our way to this lost place, we were quite fortunate to meet a local young guy who had a particularly extreme nature style! But he proposed all what agencies are selling to tourists for a lot lot cheaper and with him, who was born in this place, as a guide. We took this opportunity and next day went on an extraordinary excursion in the jungle on a paddling canoe! He drove us into the smallest canals were no one was and without even entering the park therefore saving 10$ each. We could see red frogs, many kinds of birds, caymans (babies and its mum), and finally after a few walk in the ultra dense jungle, we assisted to a huge monkey lunch! In the late afternoon after resting in our hammock and after having greatly appreciated the lunch our friend had prepare , we went again with him as a guide onto a Canopy tour! It was not worth the 35$ but we still had a great moment! Next day we travelled all the way to the south of the cost to Puerto viejo and slept in Cahuita...(i Again have to leave since tonight we are in Ecuador in Otavalo a northen little town and some events are happening so we have to see that!! )

Costa Rica

How did we do in Costa Rica??

well good pretty good...doing Costa Rica such a diverse country either on its cultural as on its natural side was a hard thing to realize! We did something pretty complete even though we would have like to have the time to visit the pacific side.

So as I was saying in my previous message we arrived on the 28th of August in Liberia. From there we planned to go for a less touristy park than many others called "El parque Rincon de la Vieja". This natural site is mostly famous for its volcanic activities and its dense wildlife! Indeed we started the tour early in the morning one of the person with us being attacked by little kind of possum (a mix between a racoon, and a fox)willing to eat this guy sandwich! We than went to observe in the deep cloud forest...I'll tell you the rest later on...my mate needs to eat hehe as you see it on the photo!

Wahoouu ok...Well I am now in Costa Rica in San Jose! Yeah I know it's far from the Volcanoes in the Lake of Attitlan it's a long story!!

Here it goes... After the magnifique landscape of Guatelema we decided to cross Honduras passing by the famous ruins of Copan. It took us a day of travelling sleeping in little towns on our way to the boarder. Once in Honduras one first thing we realized is how people are more metizos than in Guatemala where the indigenous are still making most of the country's population which for sure is a reason why it is still so culturally unique! Bref, we visited copans'ruins which are nice for their impressive carving still very well maintained. Even though it was under the rain the visit and discovering of the ruins was nice beside this we saw impressive colored parrots. On the same day we continued crossing the country going in its center in Gracias, a supposed nice little colonial town, which should bring us closer to the Capital Tegucigialpa. We arrived at night in this lost and dead little town in which the roads where so unpaved that it seemed like it had just been going through war! The next day we woke up early enough to catch the first bus at 6:00 but...There were none! We found out that our lonely travel was a little bit outdated and that there were no transport to the capital from this town...=( we had to go three hours back on the winding roads to come back to a bigger city where we were the day before! Last but not least we had to go all the way to the north of Honduras to San Pedro Sula using the only "highway" to reach finally in the afternoon after 12hours of old american "bluebird" school bus the capital! We took our energy to actually go forward a little bit more and go closer to the Nicaraguan boarder to pass the night and go on next day. In fact we reached our final destination for at least a few days, Granada, Nicaragua, on the 24th of August. There we stood one first day and the next it happened to be the big Cultural festival of Granada! The owners of our Hotel told us there were to be a sort of Bullrun mixed with Rodeo at the "Malicon" which is the shore of the lake. There we had a nice surprise of a very local type of fiesta, with only locals gathered in a oldish wooden arena...Once in it we had a real impression of being in the center of a movie! People drunk all around screeming at then even more drunk runner in the arena...The later having a few red rags to excite the bull. Actually the bull was entering the arena with a volunter to suffer on his back acting like a rodeo, and once trown away it was suddenly turning into more a running after the bull doing everything to excite him! We came back to the town center for the night envents which were all done by midnight! On the next day we took a boat to the island of Ometepe, a huge Island formed by two volcanoes, on this biggest lake in central america, the Nicaraguan Lake. After quite a lot of bus and boat and bus again we arrived in a lost little hostel which was during the Somosa dictatorship his week-end Hacienda. There we stood two nights enjoying the wildlife and impressive natural sites with natural pools, waterfalls, monkey islands, and imposive perfectly conic volcanoes.
We left on the 28th of August for Liberia in Costa Rica.
(this photo is us on the boat going to the Ometepe Island in Nicaragua)

OK so Here we are...It has been more than a month that I have been traveling! One week alone, two weeks with the family, one week with my sister and Alex, and since the 12th of August ALex and I have really started our trip through central America.

(first photo top right was in Tulum with my sister and the second one is Tulum still wild beach in Mexico just before Belize)

We 've been through Belize in which we stoped in Belize City, Dangriga and a small carribean Island (smaller than a soccer field) called Tobacco Island, located on the second biggest coral reef in the world. After that, we've crossed the country heading toward Tikal the biggest Mayan site situated in Northern Guatemala. We slept over in Flores a nice little town located on a beautifull lake. After visiting the ruins early in the morning at sunrise listening to the jungle waking up, we hanged around in Flores before taking the night bus to Guatemala city our objective being Antigua a nice little colonial town in southern Guatemala.
We passed a pretty horrible night but Antigua is worth the trip. We found a nice little guest house facing an impressive volcanoe in the city center. This colonial town is awesome and we've passed our afternoon visiting it.

On the 18th of August, we took the bus and traveled through the nice volcanic mountains to El Lago de Attitlan at 1400m of altitude. The climate since Antigua had drastically changed we were not anymore in our tropical rain forest like in TIkal or Belize but in the moutains with an average of 23 degrees, which is useless to say that was much more comfortable!! We arrived in Panajachel a touristic little town on this marvelous lake surrounded by volcanoes all covered by an impressively dense vegetation. On the afternoon we rented some bikes to visit the closest little towns which had been much more sportive than what we thought it would be! We resigned in renting those bike more than one day! ( yeah coz at the beggining we wanted to rent them for a week and to go around the lake with it!!!! but for realistic reasons we did not do it)

After a relaxing evening and a good night in a small hostel we took the boat and headed toward Santiago de Attitla an nice other little town on the other side of the lake in between the two highest volcanoes. We found an old guide on site who proposed us a tour for a few dollars. We followed him, dropped of our big bags at his place (really a small house, but thanks to that we could see in where what and how the locals leave). We than went on a 1 hour walk through the corn fields and the trash areas before reaching a road to the Mirador were we should have according to him an impressive view! We actually met a pickup on our way which made it easier as he was speeding ahead like crazy and Alex and I had somewhat little trouble to follow him =)) He was maybe 65 but had some incredible energy! We arrived just before the valley and the lake got covered with an very dense fog! Later in the afternoon we jumped on a ferry to rest for the night in the most famous lake town called San Pedro de Attitlan. There many Europeans hippies have established. In fact this town is perfect! Our night in a spacious room with a magnifique view on the lake, shower, kitchen and balcony was for 2€!! And everything is like that! Moreover the weather is all year long between 15 and 25 degree and there are plenty of activity all around! Indeed, next day we went on an excursion to climb the highest volcano of the lake culminating at 3020m high! The photo on the left is the view once at the top of the Volcanoe de San Pedro!