TravelStream™ news feed for member melmax on TravelPod's free travel blogs service http://www.travelpod.com/syndication/rss/melmax en-us Copyright ©2009 TravelPod.com Tue, 26 May 2009 12:48:47 -0400 http://www.travelpod.com http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/melmax/1/1243324560/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/melmax/1/1243324560/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/melmax/1/1243324560/tpod.html Tue, 26 May 2009 12:48:47 -0400 M&M's around the world

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Vientiane, Lao Peoples Dem Rep

We started our trip in Laos from the capital, Vientiane, where we flew straight from Siam Reap in Cambodia.
We were expecting something similar to Cambodia, big traffic, no rules, thousands of motorcycles everywhere and people trying to sell you all sort of things at every corner but we've quickly realised that Laos is quite different from Cambodia, particularly in the capital. First of all, people smile less, a lot less! Second of all, the town is very well looked after, with roads in pretty good conditions and traffic quite ordered with people behaving while driving...so we could say that Vientiane looked to us like the Swizerland of south east Asia, we felt almost at home!
The only thing that was exactly the same as in Cambodia was the heat: 40 degrees and 90% humidity which made almost impossible staying out in the middle of the day. We didn't find a lot to see in Vientiane: a couple of temples, a "golden stupa" said to contain few bones from the Buddha and plenty of bars and cafes that make it more a city to live in that to visit. So we quickly left Vientiane and started heading north to our first stop, a village called Vang Vieng. Vang Vieng is a weird place: apparently a quiet village sitting on a river in the middle of the forest...in reality the very place where young backpackers come to party at night and to recover from hangovers during the day, laying down in one of the thousands bars with "the Simpsons" or "Friends" going on loop all the day. We have to admit that we've enjoyed a couple of hours of "Friends" doing nothing at a bar...not too bad in the end!
We rented a beautiful bungalow on the riverside for 12 dollars a night. Our pride for the good deal went away as the night came: we were right beside the two noisiest disco bars of the village, with  music playing ridicoulously high till late...there and then we realised we're getting old!
The key activity in Vang Vieng is called "tubing": it basically consists of flowing down the river sitting in a truck's tube. We thought it could be fun and refreshing so we got a tube and went upriver to experience it. Once at the "starting point" we realised that tubing is just an excuse to continue the party started the night before. While flowing down the river, you realised there are plenty of bars on the riverside and each of them tries to get you to drink there offering free whiskey shots. Other than that, flowing down the river was quite funny but long: we were still at the beginning of the rain season so not a lot of water and the river flowing veeeery slowly. So slowly that at a certain point we got out and go searching for a tuk tuk to go back!
After two days in Vang Vieng, we eventually headed to Louang Prabang, the key destination for us in Laos (part of the UNESCO world heritage). After ten hours of bus we got to this beautiful village sitting on the Mekong River. Louang Prabang keeps a huge European influence, mainly French, mainly in the buildings and the cafes on the riverside but it is very nicely mixed with the Asian culture, making it a great place to just walk around and hang out. We spent three days in Louang Prabang before heading towards the north of Thailand. There are four ways to go to Thailand from here: 1) the easiest, by plane...but as we are supposed to be backpackers...not an option; 2) two days boat trip on the Mekong river...apparently very very boring; 3) 6 hours on a speedboat, apparently for crazy masochist only as the so called speedboat is a micro boat, narrow and long where you sit on one line, wearing a helmet and hoping to get to destination in one piece; 4) by bus, a 14 hours trip across the mountains on a so called "VIP" bus. As you can imagine we chose the fourth option as we thought a VIP bus would be quite comfortable and we would have the opportunity to watch the Laotian nature. Well, the bus was a "V.I.C" bus (very important CARGO!), half filled with carton boxes with 5 rows of hard plastic seats without any sort of regulation for the back. We saw a lot of Laotian nature, even too much! We got to Huay Xay late at night after a trip we will remember for a while (together with the one made in Bolivia), ready to cross the Mekong river to Thailand the morning after and take another seven hours bus ride to Chiang Mai.

Soon coming, M&M's around the world, the last stop in Thailand
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Siam Reap, Cambodia

The first thing we noticed when we arrived in Cambodia was that everybody was smiling at us. We were initially suspicious but we eventually realised that they really are a smily population. The second perception we had was the contrast that reigns in this beautiful country: the magnificence of the royal palace in Phnmom Penh and the temples of Angkor compared to the horror of the genocide museum in Phnom Penh (a place that gives you the "cher de poule).

We started our Cambodian journey in the capital Phnom Penh. Scooters, motorcycles and tuk-tuks reign over this city: there is no way you're going to be able to cross the road without literally throwing yourself in the middle of the street waving and making them stop to let you through: quite an experience for us, used to Switzerland where car stop if only you raise en eyebrow close to a pedestrian crossing...in Phnom Penh they don't even have the sign for pedestrian crossing!! To better experience the town, Massimo's friend Stefano lent us his Vespa: driving around Phnom Penh in a Vespa PX 125 was absolutely amazing and, once you get into it,
the Cambodian driving style, isn't so different from the Italian one!

The stay in Phnom Penh was made even nicer by the fact that we stayed at an old friend of Massimo's, Stefano, whom he didn't see for over ten years. Stefano has a beautiful family with Jennifer and together with their kids Lisa and Jona they made us really feel at home.

Jennifer showed the shop she opened with another Italian partner where they sell their own brand (www.smateria.com) accessories (bags, wallet, etc) produced from recycled material (tetrapaks, mosquito nets): not only they reuse our rubbish in a fashionable way but also to produce their products they only hire Cambodian people and pay them more than the average (which in this country is 90 USD a month). So visit their website and buy their products...it's a good way to make something good and have a nice accessory for yourself!

With the help of Stefano (a travel agent in Phnom Penh) we organised the rest of the trip and, in particular the stay at Siam Reap, the base town to visit the temples of Angkor and discover the Khmer history. To do this, Stefano not only recommended us to get a guide, but also booked us the most unique guide you can find in Cambodia. Sebastiano, an original "venessiano" (from Venice, Italy), who ended up being a guide in Siam Reap...quite a change but with his huge knbowledge and his natural pleasant way of talking about history made us really appreciate all the stories about the various Javayarman kings (they were all named the same) and the tells about Buddha, Shiva, Brahma and Visnu. He also went a step further and invited us to join him to a traditional Cambodian wedding the night after. That was quite an experience: we were initially a bit shy about the idea of crashing somebody's wedding but he the explained to us that this is normal in Cambodia as families are so big that the bride and the groom do not know half of the people they invite! There were really like 500 people in a restaurant and after the 5th plate everybody went dancing their traditional music. Of course we were involved and started the Cambodian version of the square dance (the difference is that you go in circles...) with Sebastiano and another million strangers who were smiling and having fun seeing us trying to dance their music.

We've now moved to Laos and even though the end of this trip becomes closer and closer we are still enjoying every second of it.

Soon coming, M&M's in Laos.
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Hong Kong, China

We so loved Hong Kong!

Massimo's never been to Asia and when planning our trip we decided to stop to Hong Kong first in order to get a smooth introduction to Asia after 2 months of easy life in Australia. It was a good decision.

As said, we loved Hong Kong even if the first impact has been really negative. In fact we booked the most reasonably priced guest-house we found on the internet (290 HK dollars = 38 USD, bargain!) in a location Massimo's HK resident friend Alessandro recommended to us (Tsim Sha Tsui in the Kowloon neighbourhood).
Location was perfect, guest house a bit less. First of all, the building: on the main road of Kowloon (Nathan Road), and so far nothing wrong, busy and noisy but really close to everything. We started being suspicious when we first entered into it: it was like an open market in a dark lobby, full of people and elevators. After a bit of trouble we finally found our elevator and we had to queue to get onto it: exactly "queue", because it was an old and small elevator serving 15 floors of guesthouses!
We eventually got to the 11th floor to find that the "new international guest house" was like a flat with a million doors: our door opened on a tiny room (7 sqm max.) with a fake window opening on a air circulation conduit inside the building but the best had yet to come as the bathroom was a significant exploit of micro engineering, something like 1 sqm and the space was so efficiently used that you could shower sitting on the toilet (no kidding unfortunately)!
Clearly first thing we did, was to 1. increase the budget for the hotel; 2. find another hotel. We ended up in very cosy room (we maybe upgraded by a couple of sqms) but with a real window and a nice view on Kowloon park.

Hong Kong is made out of two principal islands (plus a couple of smaller ones) and a big peninsula: Hong Kong and Landau islands and the main neighbourhood on the peninsula is called Kowloon. We thought we were going to explore them pretty quickly but it actually took us the whole week to get a decent but still superficial idea of the three of them.

On Hong Kong island you find bit of every element of this incredible city: the super modern sky-scrapers with huge shopping malls; nice, cosy and elegant neighbourhoods where you mainly see occidental people (like Soho); the beautiful nature (on the Peak mountain); the old and decadent buildings, with each window coupled with a airconditioning system which results in quite an impressive visual effect; the temples and pagodas that sometimes come out of the blue after a very modern building; the markets where you can buy pretty much everything, every area of the island has its own one (the dry food market in the western area, the antiques on Holliwood road...). The dry food market deserves a special mention: every food that you can imagine has been dried and is sold there. The most impressive examples were in the fish: we saw dried octopus and muscles and we can assure you, they were not inviting, at all.

Kowloon is where you find the main shopping and also where the majority of offices are (apart if you are a banker or a lwyer than you stay on HK island). You go from Gucci, Prada, Louis Vuitton, to a million shops of cameras where the same model can be priced in a range going from 8000 to 4000 HK dollars (personal experience) and where there's huge space for negotiation even though it's always the sales man who wins (personal experience too!). Also you are constantly approached by two kind of salesmen: the first kind is quite outgoing and asks if you want to buy a tailor made suit for a 100 dollars (tempting, but no thanks!); the second one, even if less explicit, is the funnier one. First comes close to you and asks you whispering..."copy watch?", when you politely decline, he comes even closer and he whispers even lower saying "hashish, marjuana?"...it took us quite some time to understand the second part but luckily we constantly used our default answer "no thanks", which the third day became simply "NO", evolving to zero attention on the fourth day!

Landau on the other hand, apart having the international airport and being famous for the giant Buddha that sits on top of a hill which you reach by "cablecar" (for us it was like catching up with the winter skiing days back in Switzerland), looks like a tropical island, with few houses and a bunch of fishing villages here and there where time seems to have stopped and you are 30 mins away from the lights and businesses of the centre.

Even if it is big and busy and noisy, we found it an easy town: almost everybody speaks English (probably the only good thing they got out of having been part of the Commonwealth...), transport is very efficient and clean and we felt absolutely safe, also in the middle of the night.

We also had the opportunity to catch up with Alessandro, a very old friend of Massimo's who has been living here for around ten years, and we now understand why. He took us out for a beautiful dinner in a restaurant with a stunning view and he made us eat one of the best pastas in quite some time, so thank you again Ale!

Soon coming M&M's in Cambodia.
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Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

It's been some time again from the last post but we have to admit that we've been taking life a bit easier since we arrived in Australia: life here is more similar to what we're used to (even if we've been living in a campervan for six weeks and this is not something we are used to!) and there are a lot less anecdots to tell and funny histories to fill up a blog page. This of course doesn't mean that we didn't enjoy it, actually we've enjoyed it a lot and now that we have finished our adventure in Australia we look backwards with satisfaction to the 8000Km we drove around this huge country, the infinite number of spots Massimo has been surfing, the unique nature and the incredible animals we've been seeing and living with in the wild (the wallaby that spent the night with us at Glenelg national park will laways be in our hearts!) and we realise that yes, life is quite similiar to what we're used to but the nature and the country have been a complete new discovery that we really enjoyed a lot.

Anyway, going back to where we left you, after Darwin we flew to Cairns and, as we liked so much the 5.000 Km and three weeks spent in our Cheapa Campa, we decided to do the same on the East coast.
So we rented another campervan to go from Cairns to Brisbane. This time the name wasn't as funny as the previous one, it was called "travellers Auto-Barn" (www.travellers-autobarn.com.au - it sounded more like a german motorway...) but it was exactly the same model so we knew what to expect.

We initially spent a couple of days in Cairns during which we took the typical tour on the Great Barrier Reef. Even if we thought we already had enough and the best possible snorkeling in Galapagos, we really enjoyed the Australian Reef: the big difference with Galapagos was actually the reef itself (what a surprise!), with its beautiful colours more than the fish (as we saw almost the same in Galapagos). Being a very touristic cruise (around 100 people on the boat!) we had a deal with the agency to get one "initiation to diving" for free!! So Massimo had his first time experience "breathing underwater"...it was a great experience but he's not going to do it again...men is not supposed to breathe underwater so why pushing it?

We then took the campervan and started our trip south to Brisbaine by....going north to the Daintree/Cape Tribulation rainforest: incredible desert beaches, with inviting blue sea but there is no way you're even going to put a feet in the water as it is full of deadly jelly fish and, if you're lucky enough to avoid them, still you've got the good old crocs waiting for you...in the queue just before the sharks...so no swimming in this beautiful sea, just looking!

On the way south we took the occasion to go visiting Emilia, a cousin of Massimo's grandmother, who emigrated to Australia with her husband Pierino in 1951 to become a sugar cane farmer.
She is a very active 82 years old lady who welcomed us in the typical Italian way, making us a huge lunch that lasted three hours filled with the stories from her life, a great example of the Italian emigrant working population who succesfully escaped the misery of the Italian post-war. As a good Italian, she lives in Ingham, a city where 80% of people are Italian emigrants, mayor included.

Now, to follow the typical East coast tour we were supposed to go to Airlie Beach and from there take a day cruise to the beautiful Withsundays Islands...actually we did go to Airlie beach however the bizarre wheather that was unusually cold when we were in the South, this time decided to be unusually wet, so our cruise to the Withsundays went flooded!

Then, as Massimo was pushing to start surfing again, we decided to leave Airlie beach and the Withsundays to head to the first part of the coast where you can swim with a "lower risk" for your life (it is still there!). We stopped in Agnes Water, a nice coast village where we manage to push the rain away for a couple of days and enjoy the beautiful beach and waves.

The rain caught up with us with the interests when, while driving to Noosa beach, we have been under pouring rain for 24 hrs straight, with water getting in the van through the not so new windows and our bed becoming a pool!

We concluded our trip on the East coast on the beautiful and "waveful" Gold Coast quickly stopping in Surfers Paradise, the Australian version of Miami (on a smaller scale of course) and then spending one week in Byron Bay, where Massimo has risked to convert into a fish as he was spending most of his awake time in the water while Melanie was happily enjoying some "private" time on the beach, swimming in the olimpic pool and doing yoga (to make herself capable of standing Massimo for the rest of the trip).

We then quickly visited Brisbane and Perth, where we managed to catch up with a guy we met in Bolivia (!!). We're now in Hong Kong, our next stop in Asia, looking forward for the third and last continent of our trip.

Soon following M&M's in Asia.
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Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia

Before heading into the desert, we decided to enjoy a bit more warm wheather and some waves so we headed to the Yorke Peninsula, specifically to the Innes National Park, famous for his world-class waves.
It is a beautiful park with amazing beaches that are absolutely desert during the week. Waves were also pretty impressive and a couple of times Massimo has "chickened-out" because of the dimension and the fact that nobody else other than Melanie was there to rescue him, in case (and Melanie is not known to be the best swimmer...and
Massimo wasn't sure she would have chosen him or the shark...).

We then started our 1500 Km journey into the desert.

We stopped almost immmediately in Port Pirie to gather water and food as if we were going to war at the beginning of the century: everybody told us that crossing the desert could be dangerous so the Swiss German side of Melanie pushed to make sure we were well equipped! It took us three nights to do the trip, even because we took our time, but the driving was really easy and relaxing. Cleary when you drive for more than 200 Km without seeing a living thing you wonder what would happen to you if your car broke down but then you get reassured by a 30 mt long road train with 3 trailers coming in the opposite direction...at least somebody would take care of you...or finish you!

As we have probably been complaining too much about the cold temperature in South Australia, we've been receiving the heat back...with the interests! When you get off the car in the Australian desert you always wonder who has left the oven on and if you are beside a huge pile of poo as there are millions of flies attacking you!

On the way to Ayers Rock, we've been stopping by in a village called Coober Pedy, a village living on the opal mining. It was amazing to see again (as in the Amazon) how the human being found a way to make a living in a place that is not really welcoming. They actually had a series of underground "buildings" were the temperature is constantly at 25 degrees no matter what happens outside....it is a little bit dark but better than the heat and the flies we guess!

When we started the trip in the desert, we had to take the surfboard with us as we didn't find a place to sell it in the Yorke peninsula...now Massimo gave for granted that he would have easily found a surfbag (which you need to put the board on a plane)...in the middle of the desert!! The guess was partially justified as every place we visited had a surf shop (well almost every, we didn't see any in Coober Pedy) but unfortunately none of them was selling surfboards and clearly no bag for it and they were actually quite amused when a confident Massimo was walking in the surf shop asking for one!

Anyway, as we are a good team, we found a way to wrap the board in air bubbled plastic and safely get it to Darwin together with us.

While in Darwin, other than enjoying the pool and the sun at the backpackers hotel, we went on a two days tour in the Kakadu national park, a huge rain forest east of Darwin. The tour was really a good one but after having been in the Amazon is funny to say that every other forest you visit impresses you a bit less...anyway we managed to get impressed by the huge crocodiles we spotted in the Adelaide river during a "jumping crocodile" cruise we took during the tour. The guide was really a crazy one, Crocodile Dundee style, and while all the other boats were only using a stick to hang the food to make the crocodile jump, our guy at the end decided to hand the food to a 6 metres crocodile with the hands...check the pictures because it was really something impressive!

Soon coming M&M's campervaning on the east coast.
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Adelaide, South Australia, Australia

It's been a while since we last sat down and wrote about our travel but, amazingly so, it is much more difficult to find a PC with internet connection in Australia than it is in South America!! Ok, we must admit, we've also been a bit lazy enjoying the country and the travelling so we haven't really been spending too much time looking for an internet connection around...anyway, here we are!

Let's start with a bit of a summary. After Bolivia we flew to Sydney with a very complicated and long La Paz - Lima - Sanitago de Chile - Auckland - Sydney...in total a 3 days trip with only one night spent on land!

We started our journey in Australia, enjoying the come back to a country culturally similar to ours: no more negotiation for everything, no more checking what we were about to eat and/or drink and easy communication even though the aussie accent is sometimes more complicated to get than we thought.
The week in Sydney passed smoothly and it was really a relaxing time: we went to the opera ("Die Zuberflaute" - Mozart), surfing to the beach, we've been hanging around doing some shopping and caught up with some friends of Massimo's for two very nice evenings that made our stay just perfect.

As South America, Australia has its part of special events worth mentioning. The first one is that, according to the major australian newspapers, 2009 is considered "the year of the shark"! No kidding, the first time Massimo puts his feet on the land down under to enjoy its famous waves, the number of shark attacks triplicates after they don't know how many years. The weird thing is that it happened also in Galapagos, so the question is, is the same shark following us or they just passed the news over the Pacific Ocean?

The second news worth mentioning is that the whole South of Australia (and in particular the Victoria state where Melbourne and the Great Ocean Road are) has recently been devastated by bushfires, helped also by the hottest summer since many years. So we were expecting to suffer the heat during the second step of our Australian trip, but when the door of the plane opened...surprise...rain and 18 degrees! This was very good news for the bushfires, less so for our forecoming 21 days on a campervan along the coast!

We've been freezing for two days in Melbourne (ok not as much as we would have in Europe but still, it's a matter of expectations!) and then picked up our "Cheapa Campa" (we swear it is the name of the company where we rented our campervan!) to start our first time ever camping adventure along the Southern coast.

Massimo is the driver and Melanie the navigator...so far no accident and we didn't get lost so the team is working well. Sometimes Massimo gets on the wrong side of the road but no worries Melanie's always ready to scream in his ears "...l'autre cote'...l'autre cote'...l'autre coteeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!" and luckily it has always happened when nobody else was on the road.

We drove along the Great Ocean Road, a coastal road with beautiful sceneries, among which the famous 12 apostles (which are actually now only 6 as the others have lost faith...), we've been stopping by to observe Koalas and to surf the waves of a very cold ocean while Melanie, as she mentions, was waiting in the camper like a dog! (But no worries, Massimo left the windows open and some water in a bowl)

We normally spent our nights in equipped campings (our van doesn't have toilets nor shower...) but a couple of times we've been camping in National Parks in the middle of the forest or on the side of the beach with absolutely nobody around us...it's been a unique experience. One night we've also shared the place where we were parked with a "Wallaby" (a small kangaroo) which spent the whole night with us and honoured us with his presence during breakfast (see pictures).

We've been actually speeding a bit more than expected along the Victoria state because of the cold, looking for some warm wheather to be found the closer we were getting to Adelaide...we're in Adelaide today but still no sign of warm wheather...

A quick mention of the surf spots visited for Massimo's surf fan friends:
- first of all, the surprise is that you find shitty waves also in Australia!
- so far the best spot has been a place called Stony Rise, close to Robe in South Australia, even because it's been the only day with off-shore wind!
- Bondi beach has also been a very nice surf, unfortunately shared with a million other surfers (apparently Australians are not that scared of sharks and tourists are as unconscious as Massimo is!)
- the other spot surfed in the Sydney area has been Manly but on a small day...longboard session!
- then we have in order: Lorne and Skeenes Creek in Victoria - Middleton in South Australia. All beach breaks and a lot of "schiumone"!!
Anyway, Massimo's having a lot of fun and we still have three days waiting for us in the Yorke peninsula...let's hope for the wheather so Melanie can spend some time outside the van!!

Soon coming, M&M's in the Australian desert.
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Uyuni, Bolivia

--Written by our French guest star (sorry for the spelling mistakes)--


We left lake Titicaca to LaPaz with a nice 3 hours bus journey. The trip included the crossing of the lake Titicaca with a barge. 2 barges indeed, one for the bus and one for the passengers. It was the 3rd boat trip on the lake for us but this time happily much faster. The stop-over in LaPaz was very short as we decided to embarque directly for a night bus trip to south of Bolivia to Uyuni. Our knowledge of the LaPaz city got limited at this stage to the Bus terminal (full of 1/3 tourists + 1/3 thiefs + 1/3 policemen) and the highway running above the valley of LaPaz... all slopes of the moutnains are built.. not a single piece of land is left over regardless of the difficulties to build or the risk of natural catastrophes.
Leaving at 9pm the night bus consisted in an 11h trip half on concrete road and half on stones and sand... The challenge of those trip is to try to remain asleep while keeping your belongings safe, ignoring bus technical breakdown and adapting to wild temperature changes and other bumps on the roads...
In a very good shape at destination, as you can imagine, we discover a small city lost in the middle of the desert. We enjoy a nice breakfast with pasta and pizza to rebuilt forces and then join a 3 car days tour with 1 Australian and 2 Japaneses (quite brave to be here by the way)... We will discover later that our driver is very young and unexperienced... His 21 years will cause couple of problems on the way.
We start the trip by the most impressive landscape we have seen in our life... The Uyuni Salar, the largest (12´000 km2) and highest (3´650m) salt reserve in the world. The salar landscape is unforgatteable... a flat white surface made of salt running to the horizon... Melanie packed her pockets of salts for the rest of the trip "as salt was for free"
On the way we discovered houses built of salt whithout knowing that our roof for the night will have the same construction material.
First surprise of the trip, our car engine stops in the middle of the desert. Our driver diagnostic an oil leak. Hopefully there is one network bar left on the mobile phone of the driver. We have to wait for a replacement car. Not sure how they could find us in the middle of this white desert but we will see. In the meantime we have to lunch/picnic sitted on the salt. Difficult to find intimacy to go the toilettes in such a place... After a while we had a second look to the motor... We came quickly to the conclusion that the car breakdown was not an oil issue but a water issue... We have an hard time to convince the driver of his wrong diagnostic but we finally manage to restart the car and reach our next destination- the Pescado island-
This island of couple of km2 covered on a sinlge variety of cactus emerging above the salt immensity.. We decided to walk around the island when other tourists decided to make funny pictures taking advantages of the white background and shadows.
We take the road again to reach our housing for the night... a lovely house made of salt with shared toilette and bathroom (available for 5 Bolivianos). The bed are made of salt with a mattless dropped on top.. The place finally occured to be confortable and warm
The next day starts with an other surprise of our driver. Only few minutes after departure, our driver stops in front of an Bolivian army barracks to check the engines...
Jean Guilhem our camera japanese taking pictures conitnuously tries to take a picture of the barracks but the soldier in fraction opposed. The soldiers start calling our guide for asking him to watch out his tourist group. Our guide ignores soldiers orders and try to get us back in the car and escape. For one second, we are all in the car, the engine on and 5 soldiers around the car blocking the departure.. One soldier jumped on our guide/driver/cook and took him out of the car. He is arrested and brought into the barraks for interrogation. On our side we start talking to the soldiers. They don't make any troubles and don´t even check our passports... They almost appologize and inform us that our driver should be realease after an hour and encourage us to visit the village next by in the meantime.
After an hour, our driver comes back with a big smile and a proud face "Vamos" exactly if nothing happened without any apologize... Our driver just had such an hard head that he didn´t play it low profile with the army which could have saved us an hour. We restart and pass by an active smoking volcano and several beatufiul lagunas. Small no deep water areas full of pink flamenco. All those lagunas are above 4000 m and reveal beautiful colors from white to red. The last Laguna called colarada is where we sleep. Despite the strong wind making the place very cold doesn´t prevent us enjoying the unique beatuy of the place. Our habitation for the night is spartiate with 5 people in the room, no shower and toilett that encourage you to go outside in the nature... The place is very cold and our attempts to burn local furnitures into the stove didn´t help... We freeze all night with a room temperature around 10 degrees.
Our awful night fighting against the cold is interrrupted by the departure signal at 4am. We all get ready in 30 min without breakfast and get in the car... At our surprise our driver goes at 10 km/h only... Other cars keep overtaking us... Our driver tries to take the fog on the wind shlied from the outside before we explain him that it works better from the inside with hot air... Another great skill of our driver...
We passed by a Geiser by night but we cannot see anything, the dark is too deep... we continue and discover a beautiful hot spring source surrounded by pink flamenco. We jumped him and get warm finally.. we enjoy a beautiful sunrise and breakfast...
We keep progressing towards the Chilean border. We see the Salvatore Dali desert (named as one of his paintings) and keep stoppingf to fix the car... We reach a beautiful blue lagon below a volcano and drive to the Chilean border lost in middle of nowhere where we drop our Australian travel mate. We see snow and start our way back to Uyuni... 8 hours car trip. We stopped on the way to see incredible natural gaz sources, stones deserts, etc... we even do an emergency stop from Massimo to release back side pressure and feed him with couple of bananas...
On the long way back our driver falls asleep and keep eating coca leafs.. We have to keep an eye on him... We arrive late at Uyuni after several car fixing and jump almost right away in a night bus to Lapaz.. Charming to line up 8 hours desert car drive with 12h night bus. The bus is driving fast on the non-asphalt roads and got 2 flat tires as a consequence... Inside the bus, we are schaked like in Orangina drink advertising...
We arrive safe but tired.
In the last 2 days we discovered the charming city of Lapaz... The city is like a large market organized by themes (vegetable, fish, meat, dvds, textile, shoes, electronics...). They all sale the same and we cannot understand how they differentiate one street seelling shop to another. Women wear those typical Borsalino hat in which they invest a lot as it reprensent their social status. Melanie refuses caetgorically to wear one of those and remain without social status... Shoe polisher in the street wear masks to avoid being reconginzed as they are ashamed of their work...We visit the luna valley and the rich and poor part of the city. Average salary in Bolivia is around 100 CHF-month about 50 times less than in Switzerland. This doesn´t prevent all locals to spend a lot in preparing the carnaval this week end...
....More next time

]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/melmax/1/1234821180/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/melmax/1/1234821180/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/melmax/1/1234821180/tpod.html Sat, 21 Feb 2009 13:55:37 -0500 M&M's around the world

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Lake Titicaca, Peru

Lake Titicaca is is the highest navigable lake in the world (3600 mts. above sea level) and it is shared by Peru and Bolivia: as a Peruvian kid told us, "Titi" for Peru, "Caca" for Bolivia :-)...not sure english speaking people will understand the joke!
We first remained on the Peruvian side of the lake and got to Puno with an easy 6 hrs. bus ride along a beautiful road across the Andes.
Once in Puno we got a very nice surprise: they were celebrating the local carnival so we had the possibility to enjoy the bautiful parade with dances and music. The surprise became less nice once we realised that the parade was going on till lat at night and passing just beneath the window of the room!
The following day unfortunately Melanie was still suffering from the Macchu Picchu "adventure" so she decided to stay in bed and send JG and Massimo on a trip to visit Taquile and Uros islands.
The boat trip was quite an experience: 3 and half hrs on a so-defined "speedboat"...we guessed the "speed" part wasn't included in the ticket (probably JG negotiated it too hard!) as the boat was cruising at 3knots and zig-zaging because apparently the direction stick wasn't working very well! In addition to that it was pouring rain so we couldn't see anything other than the mist on the windows.

Taquile island is a place where time has stopped: people live a very easy life, dress in traditional clothes and use them to define their status (single, married, etc...) and have as main activity agriculture and sheep breeding. The latter is particularly important for weddings: they last a week and apparently require at least 30 sheeps...that sounds like a big party!

After a "tete-a-tete" lunch in a very nice restaurant, called "la jolie fleur" (JG felt his French roots calling him but still managed to get the lunch for 3 USD each) we had to face reality and jump again on the renamed "slowboat" to go to Uros islands and then back to Puno.
Luckily the trip back was sunny and the lake calm so we could at least enjoy the view from the roof of the boat and take a nap inside the boat!

Uros islands are a unique place: they float and have villages on them!
The villages are built upon the islands which are in effect huge rafts of bundled totora reeds. The Uros originally created their islands to prevent attacks by their more aggressive neighbours, the Incas and Collas, and their heirs still live there. Walking on them and visiting the houses is an amazing exeperience but watch out and do not get too close to the edge otherwise you'll get your feet wet!

It was actually during this trip that JG and Massimo, while discussing with an English couple, got inspired and decided to propose to Melanie to change the program (!!!) and continue the trip in Bolivia to visit the salt desert rather than staying in Peru and continuing to Arequipa. It was great to discover that during the day Melanie had the same idea: another example of how great the team was working. The decision was taken and the day after we were crossing the border to go to Bolivia, precisely to Copacabana (only the name is similar to the better known Brazilian beach, in particular the temperature is some 20 degrees lower!).

Before leaving Peru, Massimo and Melanie encountered a small "technical" issue: the 24h laundry service of the hotel returned the laundry in perfect time (so where's the issue) but completely wet! When we asked for explanation they said "it was raining"...so we left Peru with a big bag of "clean wet" clothes and 10 soles more in our wallet as we managed to get a discount on the room for the inconvenience! Once in Copacabana we managed to use the rope that we took with us (yes we did, Melanie bought it before leaving!) and use the roof terrace of the hostel to put our clothes to dry in the chilly Bolivian air...it workd so and so and actually we finished drying the clothes a week latr in La Paz.

Anyway, from Copacabana we decided to take another boat and visit "la Isla del Sol". This time before buying the ticket we checked the distance to the island and the boat engines to avoid another trip as the one to Taquile:
1. the island was visible from the village - ok
2. the boat had two big off board engines - ok again
We thought this time it was going to be fine and bought the ticket...you never learn enough from experience: two big engines are not enough if you don't use them! Actually only one engine was used and just at minumum power (probably to save fuel or maybe for an ecological reason....) so it took us very long (again!!) to get on the island. In addition to this, once there the driver told us that the boat was going back in 45 mins (next time we'll have to remember to check how long we stay on the island!) which allowed us to only get on top of the island, see three lamas, four donkeys and go back to the boat.
Apparently to enjoy the island you are supposed to spend at least one night...well this time the team got into a bit of a failure but it didn't affect the morale and soon after we were very excited organising our next step to the Bolivian deserts!

Next coming M&M's and JG in the Bolivian desert!
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Cusco, Peru

After chilling out in Punta Hermosa for few days, we finally started our race through the Andes with our guest star, Monsieur Jean-Guilhem Chiariny.

It's been a great race: in less than two weeks we went from Cusco to the very south border of Bolivia, always staying 3000mts. above sea level and just using ground transportation. It's been a lot of fun but also a bit challenging from a physical standpoint! But let's start from the beginning.

We got to Cusco early in the morning and by mid afternoon we had the next four days pertfectly planned to explore the Sacred Valley and visit the Macchu Picchu ruins...the team was already working very efficiently, we didn't even need some trial period!

The choice of the hotel was the first successful one: 5 dollars per person/night, clean, in the very nice San Blas neighbourhood, with hot water always available (a luxury around here)...upon request! In fact to get the hot water we had to go down two floors to the reception and ask for it. The receptionist would then climb up the two floors, work for 10 mins on the heating system and then after 20 mins the hot water was there...a bit complicated but at least it worked. The first time unfortunately we realised this after entring the shower!
Actually JG realised it. He was the first one performing the show and to make sure the procedure was successful he stayed with the receptionist the whole time: nothing strange so far if it wasn't for the fact that he only had a towel around his waist during the whole time!

For what regards the visiting part, "normal" tourists buy a bus tour to visit the Sacred Valley but the team realised that other than efficient, we were also very creative. Passing by a bank, we saw a row of motorbikes, all of the same colours: even if weird we thought they were for renting (a bank renting motorbikes??), so we rushed insight asking for informations. The bank clerk laughed at us but at the same time told us where we could rent them!
Said and done, we rode for 200km. across the Sacred Valley discovering amazing places like Pisaq and Mooray among all and enjoying a breathtaking view on the Andes from the scenic roads while at the same time being free to decide when and where to stop and for how long to hike around the ruins. One of the stop was a completely casual one and not related to Inca ruins but still very nice. During the ride we noticed some cages (big big cages) beside the road: actually it was a recuperation center for wild animals kept in un-legal captivity for too long. One of the guides gave us a full tour of the center, letting us entering the cages where the animals were. In particular it was quite an amazing experienc to get inside the cage of a condor which was as big as a man, but fortunately quite easy going!
The Inca gods also spared us with the rain (very common in this season) so it was an incredibly successful day.

The second creative choice the team made, revealed itself a bit less perfect but still very exciting (and scary at the same time!).
Before leaving Lima, we were all very excited (Melanie a bit less maybe...) by the idea of walking the Inca Trail to get from Cusco to Macchu Picchu but the excitement left us pretty quickly once we found that: 1. the Inca Trail is closed in February for maintenance (we actually read it but we couldn't believe it!); 2. the alternative trails available were not as exciting or too expensive.
We didn't think that train cost was fair (actually JG used a McKinsey tool to analyse the cost/price efficiency of the the solution!) so we bought a car tour to get to Macchu Picchu: they told us that it was an easy 4 to 5 hours drive and then half an hour on a train to get to Aguas Calientes, where we would have spent the night to then climb to Macchu Picchu early in the morning the following day. Second McKinsey analysis and GO decision, tour bought.
Actually the easy drive was a 6 hours painful trip on a micro van, through an infinite series of corners on a very narrow road climbing a 4000 metres mountain.
This was also "seasoned" with a "killer look" driver who thought to be Michael Schumacher, a guy on the van who suffered this driving style (we've been stopping 10 times to make the guy feel better), a flat tyre and a salsa cd looping for the whole length of the trip...the creative choice was starting to reveal its loopholes...once we finally got to Aguas Calientes we immediately bougth a train ticket back to Cusco...actually for the first time the McKisey tool didn't work perfectly! One thing to be said is that the scenery has been beautiful throughout the trip but we couldn't even think of doing it again!

The day after we took a 5 o' clock bus to go to the Macchu Picchu ruins (yes a bus, we didn't feel like walking at 5 in the morning...call us lazy!): the place is spectacular, a really unique place with a stunning view on the Andes and a great atmosphere.
To enjoy a view of the whole village and to finally get some exercise, we decided to climb the Wayna Picchu, a mountain 200m higher than Macchu Picchu. Actually those 200m are vertical and to get there you climb steps built in the rock so it's not what you would call an easy walk To make things more challenging, it poured rain from the very beginning of the hike making the steps really slippery!
We've been motivating ourselves on the way up with idea of the priceless view we would have enjoyed and once there...the whole Macchu Picchu area was covered by clouds and still pouring rain! In the end we managed to see the Macchu Picchu from the top but what a pain!
For the way back we let our "hiking spirit" win on reason and decided to walk down to Aguas Calientes straight from Macchu Picchu without stops...our legs have been soar for the following three days but we made it!

Next following, M&M's and JG on Titicaca lake.

PS1: we've added some photos on Lima to make Massimo's mom happy...so check them out!
PS2: photos order is not exactly following the narration...of course it's been done on purpose to check our readers' attention :-)
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Lima, Peru

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