TAYRONA N.P. is beautiful :)

The Tayrona National Park is on the Caribbean coast in the northeastern part of Colombia and it´s beautiful!

On Sunday we spent the day in Santa Marta – on the Caribbean Sea, then took a minibus to Taganga, a small fishing village nearby, where we spent the night and did the usual travel planning.

On Monday Verena and I took a minibus to the TAYRONA N.P., then once inside another minibus to Canaveral, continued on horseback to Arrecifes and then walked along the beach – more or less – to Cabo San Juan de la Guia, a beautiful beach with a place for tents, a few hammock under a roof, a small restaurant and open-air showers and toilets that stopped working on Tuesday. But lovely. Relaxing. Not off the gringo trail, though   We saw the most backpackers in one place in quite a while. But it was still a very nice and relaxed place. I met a lot of nice people there

Unfortunately things between Verena and myself didn´t seem to be working anymore. There are still too many things that annoy or upset her about my personality, even though I have been trying –  trying to talk less, talk to fewer fellow travelers, etc. I don´t want to go into details on this blog. But I must say that I finally realized that I have been feeling more lonely for the last 2 1/2 months than most of the previous 5 1/2 months when I was traveling by myself. On Tuesday Verena left and I stayed. We are traveling separately now.

So I stayed in the national park. I loved sleeping in the hammock at night, reading a book on the beach (¨A Thousand Splendid Suns¨), and talking to other travelers. I had dinner with a guy from Colombia and afterwards played cards with two English and two Norwegian girls. Even when the showers weren´t working it was fun having a shower the old fashioned way – emptying a bucket of water over your head

Yesterday I took a boat back to Taganga – a rough and fun ride   Now I´m back in Taganga, still reflecting from time to time on what happened over the last few days, and just taking it easy, reading my book and walking along the beach of the little fishing village – although I must admit that the beach at Cabo San Juan de la Guia was nicer

Tomorrow I´ll be heading to Cartagena, probably.

PS: Finished the book “A Thousand Splendid Suns” by Khaled Hosseini. Sad, but really good!

Salar de Uyuni (3653 m) & La Paz (3660 m)

What an amazing trip and a great group: Verena, Kati (from Bavaria but living in London), Daniel (from Berlin, but living in London), Eli (from London, but moving to Sydney), and James (from London and also living there).

First day: Laguna Blanca – Laguna Verde – Decierto Rocas del Salvador Dali (Dali Rock Desert) – Chalviry Lagoon & Polque Hot Springs – Geyser sol de Mañana (4860 m – highest point of the trip) – Laguna Colorada

We spent the night at the Laguna Colorada at 4270 m at a hostel with no running water and it was cold there – but we had a lot of fun; WE = Kati, Daniel, Eli, James, and Verena, of course

Second day: Arbol de Piedra (stone tree) – Lagunas Altiplanicas: Lagoon Honda, Lagoon Chearcota, Lagoon Hedionda (lunch), and Lagoon Cañapa – Ollague volcano – Salar de Chiguana (train tracks)

The second night we spent at Villa Martin – again pretty basic, but this time there was running water. The hot shower would have cost 5 bolivianos, but it was too cold and the owners too pushy trying to sell hot showers so we chose not to shower. We´re getting used to it

Third day: leaving at 5 a.m. got us to the Isla de los Pescadores (Fisherman Island) in time to view the SUNRISE at the Salar de Uyuni – the UYUNI SALT FLAT – simply amazing!!! And like everyone who goes there we took lots of funny pictures Later that day we also saw a salt museum, salt mines, and a railway & train cemetary.

Upon our arrival in Uyuni at 1 pm, Verena and I realized that there´s really nothing to do there and instead of staying a night to figure out where to go next we decided to take the overnight (11 hour) bus straight to La Paz. The best bus company had no buses that evening, so we (Eli, James, Verena and I) chose another one (not a good choice as we found out shortly before our departure in the evening). We then met up with Kati and Daniel and some people from the other group for dinner – they are all going to Potosi tomorrow. Verena and I will skip it as we still have a long way to Colombia. Shortly before we were to baord the bus, we found out that the company had lied to us and the bus was not a direct service, but we had to change buses and wait for another bus in the middle of the night. Fortunately the tickets were so cheap ($10 for a 11 hour bus ride) that we ended up buying 4 tickets from a much better company who got us directly to La Paz – where we arrived this morning at 7 a.m. after the bumpiest, rockiest, shakiest bus ride ever – welcome to roads in Bolivia!

Eli, James, Verena and I checked into the ¨Adventure Brew Hostel¨not far from the main bus station, where we´ll spend probably two nights. Our dorm is an 8-bed dorm with 2 bathrooms and only guys – other than Verena and myself. This is becoming a fairly common experience here. It seems there are more men traveling in South America than women. In Southeast Asia it was the other way round – more women than men; and more travelers in general than in South America.

So here we are in La Paz (3660 m above sea level) – feeling clean and fresh again after a hot shower and deciding where to go and what to do next   La Paz looks really impressive so far and I can´t wait to walk around the city tomorrow – May 1st (Labor Day). We´ll make sure we´ll leave all our valueables in the hostel – as La Paz doesn´t have the safest reputation -  so we should be fine

PS: We went for a walk in the late afternoon and ended up having dinner at the RESTAURANT VIENNA, where the owner is from Styria, not far from Verena´s hometown   The food was delicious and the service excellent!

Buenos Aires & VERENA´S PICTURES

Verena and I spent two lovely days in Buenos Aires – including a bike tour.

Tonight we´ll take an overnight bus (cama suite) up to Puerto Iguazu

PS: Ad mugging: did some research on the internet and also asked fellow travelers – it seems that every other backpacker got mugged at one point while traveling in South America. So Verena and I discussed some precautions to at least minimize the risk of getting mugged as we realized that we had made some mistakes in La Boca, where we ALMOST got mugged.

PPS: As I´m now traveling (3 months in South America from Buenos Aires, Argentina, to Bogota, Colombia) with Verena, feel free to check out her pictures – she takes lots and lots of good ones and uploads them much faster than I. Her photos are on flickr:

www.flickr.com/photos/rena5

Arriving in SOUTH AMERICA!

I´M IN SOUTH AMERICA

I arrived at the airport in Buenos Aires this morning at 7:45 am, got some money out of the ATM, took the bus # 8 to the Plaza Congreso, and then met Verena in a cafe at the corner there. We then checked out a few hostels in San Telmo and ended up staying at the Buenos Aires Hostel Inn. We walked around the neighboorhood, decided to stay here until Saturday and bought tickets for the overnight bus from B.A. to Iguazu for Saturday evening. Everything went well, it was great to meet up with Verena and we are looking forward to traveling together in South America for the next 3 months

I´m excited to be here and to spend 3 more days in this city. Tomorrow we´re going to La Boca with a friend of Verena´s.