Tadpat on the way

Us, dressed up for the parade. Patrick in typical bavarian colours!



Us on the Parade with our friend Jorge and Patrick in the foreground, Taddy on the car in the background!

So because we didn't had enough Bolivianos with us the bus dropped us on the first civilisation. It was only a few houses and a police checkpoint (not immigration for Paraguay!!!) The policemen were super friendly, offering their bathroom and a place to rest. But when they told us there is only a connection every two days to the immigration town, we already saw ourselfs sleeping in the wilderness again!
This time we were lucky. After 6 hours waiting the collectivo/bus drove by and we had one of the most horrible rides on the so called Trans-Chaco road. Why horrible? Because the road is more existing of potholes than of a road! Can you imagine for 100 km it took us 5 and a half hours!!!!
But afterwards everything was good! :-) we got a Hotel in Filadelfia, a german colonie in the middle of nowhere! :-) the people there spoke german with us, weird!!!!
Next stop was Conception. Nice small city with beautiful sunsets and very authentic.
In Asunction we were stuck. We loved the hotel, because we had a kitchen and nice people around us.
Then we went for two nights to San Bernadino. With its lake we had again two incredible sunsets.
But because of our Tickets for Rio we needed to go further. We met a guy who told us that in Villarrica is Carneval as well so we went there (instead of Encarnation, simply because of the distance) we were part of the Parade and I think everybody in town knows us now!!! :-)
Next stop is ciduad del este and Iguacu falls. And then with a 24 hours bus to Rio, where we going to meet our Couchsurfer Daniel.

I'm really looking foreward to Rio. Worldfamous for the city and the carneval!!!! This time with us!!!

Big kisses

On bolivias death road

Bolivia has incredible landscape.
We started on Bolivian site of Lake Titicaca in Copacabana. Beautiful sunsets on the lakeside. Also every morning there are a few people who come to Copacabana to let bless their car. Sound weird and it is. It's not super spectacular when the priest does his circle around the cars which are decorated with flowers and stuff, anyway its fun to see!
Afterwards we hoped on a bus to La Paz. Not the real capital but the government is there. Officially Bolivia has two capitals... again weird!
La Paz is super big and special because its splitted up in 'el Alto' and the 'centre'.
El Alto is the higher part. Up there everything is plane. Its the newer part of the city, so there are no old buildings or sights. Thats why its the untouristy part. Very interesting, with a witches market and the two uphill cable car stations.
The cable cars are awesome. You can see the city from above and especially in La Paz it offers stunning views.
The centre is like a normal city, but with super steep roads sometimes!
One day we went to the death road. World famous but nowerdays not so dangerous anymore. What it made so dangerous 10 years ago: first, yap it is deep and steep. We had bad weather so we only could imagine the views. Second: the steep parts often are only one way. The smallest width is 2,5 meter. Third: 10 years ago this road was the only connection to the jungle and the Brazil border. Therefor a lot of traffic. If you combine these 3 points its becoming dangerous. There were busses, cars and trucks falling down, when they needed to back their vehicle. Horrible imagination!
Today there is a new, paved road. So almost no traffic on the death road anymore.
From La Paz our next stop was Oruro. But we couldn't find a proper hostel... famous for its carnival, which is now they putted their prices super high. We saw a parade where they practiced for carnival. So we got a glimpse how cool that is. But we will see carnival in Rio, this time. :-)
Bolivias other international popular sight is 'Salar de Uyuni'. A salt dessert. Normally in december it rains a little and there is a small waterfilm in the dessert, which reflects the sky and surrounding landscape. Check google for pics, because we didn't had luck with the water... but we got a stunning sunset ;-)
Potosí, famous for its mining, we didn't went inside. When we heard the conditions, small and narrow tunnels, I could not stand that. I'm sorry for the miners who need to work there day by day.
Christmas we celebrated in Bolivias 'real' capital: Sucre. Nice city but with a lot of begging kids. Because it was Christmas we gave a book to two kids (each one got one). They wanted to sell us chewing gums and we declined and talked to them. When they told us that they can read, we decided to buy each of them a book. Next day after handing over the book one of the two kids proudly told us that he already read 4 pages! We saw that he enjoyed reading the book! That was awesome. Good luck to you two, Mariella and Christian.
From Sucre we started our way to the Border with Paraguay. I didn't imagine that it's going to be that hard.
The border to Paraguay is almost unused. In the town Villamontes they told us that Imigration is open 24h. So we went there arriving at 7p.m. and the office was closed. Because its in the middle of nowhere and this border is not frequently used by travellers on their own, there are no Hotels to sleep. So we sleept on a bench (out of 3 seats) and on a table (school style...). Because we knew there will be a bus crossing the border at 3 or 4 a.m.
This night was awful. Rain, Moskitos and all the noices of the wild around us didn't let us sleep very well. But we got our exit stamp when the bus arrived and with this bus we drove over to Paraguay. Here the story isn't finished....
But to be continued in next article, because it belongs to Paraguay...

Cheers guys!

So I didn't write for quite a long time...
I'll start with Peru.
The Border we took to get to Peru is very small. There is only one public bus a day and no ATM which accepts foreign visa cards. Lucky us, we still had some Euros which they changed us and we made it to Peru. There we needed to wait for 4 hours because there was no electricity!
San Ignacio was our first stop. Very untouristic and nice town. Nothing special about it but we liked it so we stayed few nights.
Our next stop was Chachapoyas. There we went to see south americas third highest waterfall. 700 meter high!!! Quite impressive.
Then we went to the coast and into the dessert. We arrived a little late, so we didn't see the change of nature outside. Next day was a big surprise! Haha :-)
In Chiclayo we only stayed one night. To see this wiches marked which is completly underwhelming! Next stop Trujillo for famous Chan Chan ruins. Beautiful!
And then we went into the Cordillera! We love that place called Huaraz. We went to the glacier Pastoruri and hiked a little around the landscape. First time in life we went over 5000 meter!!! Check!
After Huaraz we went to Lima to visit our friend, Simon, and his family living there. We were spending some afternoons together, but because they were quite busy with their newborn Frederick we decided to go on to Paracas.
There we visited the Islas Ballestas. Famous for their wildlife, we saw Pinguins, sealions, thousands of birds and dolphins. Also we could observate some pinguins jumping into the water. Lovely little animals!!! <3
To see the worldfamous Nazca Lines you need to fly over. But we heard that its bit underwhelming so we decided to only do a stop over to see 2 lines from a observation plattform. Interesting. Also for the Oasis Huacachina we only stopped to see.
Next big stop was Cusco. With all the sights around, we picked out three things we wanted to see. First: Salineras de Mara. Salt fields in a valley. We like this place. Interesting and super beautiful. Also we bought some salt as souvenir :-)
Second: Moray. Its a small ruin close to Mara. There the Incas did acriculture in circled fields. Gorgeous!
And third: Machu Picchu. Of course. Incredible awesome. We went to Aguas Calientes on our own with public transport and two hours walking. Train is super expensive....
Next morning we got up super early to walk up an hour. We spend the whole day inside Machu Picchu. Around 2 or 3 p.m. the crowds of people left and we had the place almost alone for ourselfes. The magic thing about Machu Picchu is the landscape! To think about how they managed to build a place like this up there.
After Cusco the last stop in Peru was Puno, on lake Titicaca. One hour boatride from Puno there are the Uros. Famous for their floating Islands. Interesting to see how they life there and how they created a new possibility of living!

Of course we ate Ceviche. As much as possible. Super delicious. Yammi :-)