Chapter IX & X - Sashy equator and last bits

Quito (Ecu) - Otavalo - Quito - Ipiales (Col) - Bogota

So finally it is time. Time to return to South America and to write about the last part of our journey. We should have known that if we don't write about the trip while being on the trip, it will never be written. After over a year of pondering we took the time to tell you what happened in the last week of our trip. (One week!! Damn it we are lazy!) In this week we travelled about 1050 km and got to know two capital cities.

Our busdriver on the way to the equator told us the story of his life
 because we pretty much sat on his lap the whole trip. He was from
 Spain and had moved to Ecuador because of the unemployment in Spain.
 A cool guy who tried to get us party with him. We passed. 

This old man seemed to be doing some kind of strange rituals,
where he summoned spirits and people around him threw coins at him.

Although we had made the decision that we would not fly inside of South America, we realized that we didn't have enough time or energy to sit in a bus for days to travel from Lima to Quito. We were sure we would die in  a plane crash, but ended up flying anyway. The flight costed about the same amount as a bus would have, or even less.

The magical border of south and north (Mitad del Mundo)! Fun Fact, the actual
 border is not here. The construction workers just moved the border,
because the soil in the actual spot wasn't suitable for a big ass monument.

We arrived in Quito late and spent the night in a picturesque hostel that had a really homey feel. For some reason that we don't remember anymore we decided to change to another hostel the next day - great decision yay! because we met some very nice people. The new hostel keeper told Anneli he had even visited Finland couple of years ago (must have been a rich guy :D).

There were two things we wanted to do while in Ecuador: visit the equator and the Otavalo market. At the equator we wanted to do something memorable and asked two random guys to film us. We went to have a snack and incidentally the same guys came in to eat aswell. While eating we found out they were staying at the same hostel as we. Because of these guys and their friends we ended up staying in Quito longer than planned because we wanted to join them on a trip to a thermal spa.

OMG we are in the south and north hemisphere at the same time!!!

Wonderful breakfast just around the corner from our hostel.

Weird local figsandwiches. White bread with roasted figs.

Anneli bought a wooden warrior mask (as you should do when travelling)
that probably supported that artist a whole year. 

Otavalo is a little town about an hour away from Quito. Every Saturday there is a huge market, where local people sell their products. It's usually packed with tourists trying to find the best deals. We went there to check out the atmosphere and ended up buying some artwork. During our travels we had seen the works of the artist Nativo a couple of times, but at Otavalo he was everywhere and every salesperson said they were this person. Then we found a small tent that only sold Nativo art. The woman told us she was Nativos wife. We asked around and found out she was telling the truth, so we decided to buy his art from her. Sanni bought some paintings and Anneli a wooden mask. Our official "we were in South America, belive us" items. 

Four days before our flight back to Finland we decided it was time to continue the trip. Since wise travellers know everything, we knew that it'd be better to cross the Colombian border during day time than in the middle of the night. We hopped onto a bus and travelled the night from Quito to the border. There we hopped off, crossed a bridge in the morning sun and checked ourselves into the wild country of Colombia.

A friend of ours gave us something to disguise ourselves with, should the situation
get too heated or some kind of trouble occur. We thought the border between Ecuador
and Colombia would be the place. Thank you Tuomas, these really saved our lives.

Town of Ipiales just across the border on the Colombian side

Santuario de las Lajas, perhaps the most beautiful church we have ever seen.

After some touristing-around in Ipiales, the town at the border, we continued our journey: only 800 km to go until we reached our last destination, Bogota. It wasn't even our longest bus ride, but it still took half a day and a whole night.

Waiting for the taxi at around eight in the morning. We tried
to find somebody who would like to share a taxi with us.
Eventually a kind young man told us, that wasn't common
here and not wise to do, but ended up sharing his taxi with us.

We were wondering, what to do in a city where it isn't safe anywhere. We found out a bike shop close by our hostel did bike tours in Bogota and joined along. And what a relief it was when we mounted our bikes - they weren't broken but nice and sturdy. It was a great way to see the city; the market places, bull fighting arena, graveyards and coffee roastery.

Yummy yummy fruity fruits!

They told us Colombia is fairly safe for tourists, but the people living and
 having their own opinions are the ones in danger. The graffiti is
a tribute to a comic artist who was killed because of his views.

Delicious Colombian coffee (to be honest neither of us was a coffee
 addict back then so it didn't taste much different than Juhla Mokka).

A square near by the hostel was home to maybe one thousand pigeons and to this handsome man and his handsome llama (at least during the days). Riding the llama costed a peso or two and was sooo worth it!

Since we had a lot of time to spend in the city, we went to see some local art. We found some magnificent works by Fernando Botero, a world-famous Colombian artist who specialises in portraying his objects, well, fat. We saw fat Mona Lisa, many fat families and a fat horse. Among other fat things. To make sure we were snobby and European enough, we also went shopping for real clothes (clothes that we can actually wear in Finland too). After 3 months of just looking at things and never getting to buy anything so we wouldn't have more stuff to carry, this was heaven.

Fat bananas

Fat cat

Some traditional local food. No idea what it is.

We will be posting once more, and let's hope it will be soon! We'll write about how it felt and feels to be back in Finland, what one might want to know before travelling to South America and what to take with you when travelling for a longer period of time.

Chapters VII & VIII - Great encounters make happy travellers & Piccu Macho

San Pedro de Atacama (Ch) - Salar de Uyuni (Bo) - La Paz - Capacabana - Random town between Copacabana and Cusco (Pe) - Cusco - Aguas Calientes - Cusco - Lima - Quito (Ec)

Sunrise at Salar de Uyuni.

The morning of our trip to the biggest salts flats in the world had arrived. This was the part of the trip I had been the most exited about in advance. Because we would be spending the next 3 days with the same four people, we were hoping for a good group. In the bus on the way to the border of Bolivia, we heard that a group of 4 friends had chosen us to be in their group. We were very happy about this because our group couldn't have been better. On the way to the flats we got to see unbelievable landscapes, swimm in a natural hot spring and see a lot of flamingos (one of my childhood dreams since I watched the Lion King). Pictures don't do justice to our experiences, but neither do words, so we'll settle for pictures.

Doing the "Flamingo". Presented in the picture are the ladies of our group.
Great people that we sure hope to meet some day again!

Lama baby: "What an idiot!"

Exhausted Sanni at some lavastone formations.

Salar de Uyuni.

At Salar, Sanni decided to do some acrobatics on the guitar and Anneli's safety ring.

Anneli was just feeling lazy and sat around.

Sanni was pretty much the only one of the whole group
affected by the altitude. Many got tingling fingers and
felt a bit light headed, but she was in pain and at some
point began to feel sick. Luckily the worst was over after
a good sleep and some extra oxygen (though she was
only able to use the bottle once before the damn thing
broke). Apparently 5000 m of height was too much.

From Uyuni we headed to La Paz with a 4WD on a road that was pawed only on a fraction of the way. This bus ride was the most horrible one we've ever been in. I was pretty sure we'll crash and die. After sleeping for maybe an hour combined, we arrived in La Paz safe and sound. We spend in La Paz a couple of days with our friends from the Uyuni trip. Most of the time was spent searching for the perfect alpaca jacket and some yarn for Sanni. I did end up finding it and for everyone who asks, it's definitely real alpaca-lama-mix. Not synthetic. After asking from about twenty different shops, Sanni ended up finding one tienda that sold alpaca yarn, also definitely real stuff. La Paz was a cool city with A LOT of hills to walk up, but it was also the most polluted city I've ever been in. Hard on our altitude-weak lungs.

Mumified lama babies at the witch market of La Paz.
We were told all of these have died of natural causes.

The biggest high altitude lake, Lake Titicaca was our next destination. We were supposed to stay at the lake for some days, seeing the islands and chilling, but sometimes life throws you an offer you can't refuse. At the hostel we heard that these two guys from New Zealand are travelling around South America by car and are going to Cusco the next day. So we ended up hitching a ride from them. Going by bus is easy, but going by car and having the chance to stop everytime you feel like seeing something is way more interesting! The way to Cusco took us twice as long, but time spent with these guys was definitely worth it.

Sanni was a bad-ass and swam in Lake Titicaca. The water was freezing!

When we were in Cusco it was time to start thinking about the different ways we could get to Machu Picchu. The easiest way was taking a tour. Because we were still hanging with the Kiwis we also considered just driving to Aguas Calientes (the nearest city to Machu Picchu). We soon realized that that could be a problem, the city not having any access to it via car. We ended up taking a budget tour by van to the nearest city with a car, Santa Teresa, and hiking the last 12 km. (Just to let somebody who considers driving themselves to Santa Teresa know, it is possible. Whatever everyone will tell you.)

The road to Santa Teresa. Worse than the
Death Road, said our friends who
had been to the Death Road already.

Ready to hike 12 km on the train tracks to get to Aguas Calientes.

We spent one night in a hostel and woke up at 4 to start the climb up to the ruins. The hike from previous day had ruined Sanni's already throbbing feet (note to anybody considering a pedicure: make sure the lady knows what she's doing so you won't end up with nails growing into your toes so badly that they hurt even in your sleep) so she unfortunately had to take a bus up. I walked the 1700 stone steps up arriving at the gate of the ruins in the brink of day. To not make things too easy after the hour hike up the stairs, we had booked a ticket to climb also the Machu Picchu mountain, a 2 hour hike up even more stairs. Even though Sanni's feet were killing her, she dug up some finnish sisu and finished the hike with me. I have never been as proud of her!

There it is then.

The way up to the Machu Picchu mountain
consisted of steps like these.

OMG SO FLUFFY!

With the time running out on us we had decided to fly from Lima to Quito. Now we just had the stress on getting to Lima on time for the flight. This was in theory no problem because we had bought our bus tickets in advance. The only problem was the landslide that had cut the road between Santa Teresa and the rest of the way back to Cusco. After waiting for an hour for the road to get cleaned and cleaned again after three more "waves" of mud, stones, sand and water hit it, we ended up running through the sliding mud between vans trying to get over at the same time. Fortunately everybody survived and we got to Cusco only an hour late. The Kiwi's weren't unfortunately going to Lima, so we had to say goodbye to them and get a 22h bus to Lima.

That's a video showing a small part of the landslide we run across. When we crossed it, there was thankfully not so much stones coming down, more mud and water.

Our hiking boots after the landslide.

You can't go to Peru and not eat the local speciality Cuy (Guinea Pig).
Happy little rodant! We also tried alpaca - you'll find the most delicious
steaks in Nuna Raymi in Cusco. Tastiest meat ever.

We had only one night in Lima, so we didn't have time to see the city so much. The only thing worth telling is that we both swam in the Pacific Ocean for the first time in our lives. It wasn't as cold as we had expected, but because of the heavy waves, we both were lucky to get out alive. Too soon we had to say goodbye to Peru and fly to Quito.

The Pacific Ocean

On the way back to the hostel I stumbled on
a stone step and ripped the top of my toe open.
We went to a near hospital to get a bandage,
but they ended up cleaning it properly and
everything. And because we had no
money with us, they did it for free.

Our flight back to Finland leaves the day after tomorrow, so we will not have time to write about Ecuador and Colombia. That will be done from back home. Now we will enjoy our last two days and do some shopping and relaxing. See you soon home folks!

Pisspot!

Chapter VI - Considering again

Asunción (PY) - Rosario (AR) - Buenos Aires - Colonia del Sacramento (UY) - Buenos Aires (AR) - Mendoza - Valparaiso (CL) - Santiago - Caldera - San Pedro de Atacama

Pacific ocean in Valparaiso

Dear friends and family, especially our worrying mums,

we probably should apologise for not writing anything on the blog (or on Facebook) for weeks, but to be honest, we aren't sorry at all. We've been busy travelling around, seeing places, getting to know people and enjoying life. So no apologies but instead an enormously long post with loads of pictures from three countries.

The oldest building in Buenos Aires, also known as Manzana de Luz

After a week in Paraguay we began travelling southwards towards Buenos Aires. On the way we stopped in Rosario for a couple of nights to greet our friends we met on a tourist tour back in Rio. The weekend was fun - we got to know the city, had some delicious home made burgers and danced to the best hits from today (or a few months ago). A heart attack was also close, when a bat fell out of nowhere on the floor of our room when we were about to go to bed.

In Buenos Aires zoo we took pictures with all the animals.

Our stay in Buenos Aires didn't start the best way it could have - it was Anneli's turn to get really ill. We kept prolonging our stay at the hostel so that she could try and sleep her on-off-fever away. Anneli was sure it was rabies (from the bat in Rosario), I tried to convince her it was probably "only" malaria. To make everything worse, the wifi in the hostel didn't work, so she didn't have anything to do during the days. After a few days she went to see a doctor, got antibiotics for bronchitis (or pneumonia, the doctor wasn't sure) and eventually was feeling better.

Having spent a bit too many days in BA, we decided to shorten our week in Uruguay to a weekend. We took a boat on Friday evening from BA to Colonia del Sacramento but came to regret the decision about twenty minutes before hitting the coast. Even though Sanni had tried to prepare herself for the worst, seasickness never feels good. Like about 40 percent of our fellow travellers, she also enjoyed the sight of a white plastic bag full of questionable fluids. Anneli did her best to keep her cool and not to get sick herself.

Colonia was an utterly beautiful city. We celebrated Anneli's 25th birthday by signing her happy birthday at the hostel in five languages and eating well.  The antibiotics set some restrictions on the wildness of the party. Our ferry (bigger, more stable, slower and less throw-uppy) left at four in the morning and since we didn't want to spend money on a night in a hostel, we spent it on the street, in a restaurant and eventually at the port.

A quarter-century-old Anneli

Being the lazy travellers that we are, we ended up staying in Buenos Aires for a few more days. We spent our days roaming San Telmo, the bohemian hippie neighbourhood, met some interesting street rats and found delicious cherries in a market hall. For the first time on the trip we also made some plans for the first week in Finland - munkkimaanantai!

Next destination: Mendoza on the other side of the country. One of the most exiting experiences so far was  the Finland vs. Sweden ice hockey game (which we eventually were able to watch on our tablet, yay!). We met a fellow enthusiast, a half Finnish guy from London. After seven weeks of sniffing each others butts we finally had enough courage to start taking contact to the outside world and other people (ha ha). We got to know some awesome people, some of whom we have even met again during the last weeks. We spent one day biking around the wine yards near the town, on another afternoon Sanni finally got to go horseback riding and Anneli got to try galloping for the first time.

Anneli's (which on this trip means our) camera got stolen
along the way. We lost only a few pictures and the new
one is awesome - it has cool effects and pics turn out great.

We were supposed to continue our journey towards Chile on a Sunday evening. At the bus station they let us know that it had snowed so much that the buses wouldn't drive over the mountains. After spending one extra night in Mendoza we finally took off to Valparaiso. Actually we were delighted to travel during the day - the landscape was different than before, so beautiful with all the mountains and serpent roads. While waiting to cross the border we even got a bit of fresh snow!

Colourful Valparaiso

Our plan in Chile was to meet a friend of Sanni's in Valparaiso, spend the night there and continue northwards the next day. Meeting her didn't work out, but eventually we stayed in the prettiest city so far for a week. We made some friends at the hostel and roamed the city with them - saw amazing graffiti, bought veggies on the farmers market, visited Pablo Neruda's house and checked out the best restaurants.

Before heading north towards Bolivia, we took a bus to the capital, Santiago. We spent the night there with some friends from Valparaiso and drove the next night to some random city halfway to the Bolivian border. We ended up spending the day in a pretty dead city in the middle of nowhere, where the siesta seemed to last from early morning until late night. Luckily we had bought tickets to continue to San Pedro on the same day and we could escape the uninviting, drowsy town soon enough.

The Andes seen from Santigo

Anneli and our Australian friends went to check out the views and sunset
from the highest hill in Santiago. Sadly they were kicked out just before
sunset but the view is still pretty neat.

Bahia Inglesa, a sleepy beach town (or rather a street) next to Caldera.

The next morning we arrived in San Pedro de Atacama, booked a tour to Salar de Uyuni, the salt flats in southern Bolivia, for the next day, relaxed in the town for the night and had the best burgers ever for dinner. Seriously, delicious.

Tsunami warning signs everywhere!

 We have had surprisingly few problems with the language in the past weeks. Even though we don't understand everything, most of the time we at least get along. Sanni's portuñol is getting better and more understandable day by day and Anneli's one word questions such as ¿Baño? or ¿La quenta? get always answered. The best conversation was in a bus with the driver in Bolivia, where they had heating on:

A: ¡Muy caliente!
D: Si.
A: ¿Mas frio?
D: No puedo. (No can do.)

Thoughts of Anneli: In the start of the trip we were both homesick After we left our Finnish fear of people behind, things changed. The biggest difference between us is the fact that when Sanni doesn't want to be with me, she wants to be alone, but when I can't stand her face, I want to be with other people. So now that we have met a lot of cool people, some of them travelling since forever, I have started to fear the moment I have to go home. Travelling, seeing new places and meeting cool people feels so much easier than facing the reality and living a normal life. One friend of ours said that the more you travel, the less you know what you want. That combined with the reason why I originally wanted to go to South America (finding myself and all that crap) doesn't make the storm of feelings inside me easily solvable. Everything good I have in my life back in Finland (that being a lot) fights with the feeling of excitement you get when you go to a new city and meet people with amazing stories and can maybe be a part of those stories. Then again escaping reality and running away from myself feels like something that a 1/4 century old "woman" shouldn't do. Because of that the last couple of weeks have consisted of me being anxious and even more analytic than before, Sanni feeling exited about getting closer to home and her boyfriend and me being pissed at her for being happy. I do have to say that Sanni has also enjoyed the trip, she is just seeing home as a positive and not a scary thing. Back in Valparaiso a friend of ours told me I should make decisions based on what will take me closer to the goal I had when leaving home. I guess all of this I'm feeling comes from not having finished my goal. For the first time since naming the blog I'm thinking about escape and the sense of it.

Since we're so much behind our blogging schedule, we try to keep the texts shortish. Yeah, we know this text isn't short at all but trying to squeeze three countries into one text can't be done in a couple of sentences. Entries about Bolivia and Peru should follow soon enough. We're now in Cusco and will head off to Machu Picchu tomorrow. Two weeks left, about 4000 kilometers to go! (We did book a flight between Lima and Quito to make it possible to actually do the 4000 km on time.)

The song above was made in Caldera when Anneli was sick and tired of Sanni's face but stuck with her and no one else for two whole nights in a row. It made her smile for the first time in what felt like ages.