Home sweet home

My travel is over and I arrived back in Switzerland. I was very warmly welcomed and at some point I’m happy to be back. Altough there are bad points about it too…

In the last entry I promised you to tell you how the story of Alba and me continues. I make it short: We married on May 7^th and now she is living with me. We both never have been as happy before!

Thank you guys for following me through South America and although I never believed in Hollywood and their artificial happy ends, I am happy I can for once provide a happy end too!

The Last Days!

Looking at the frequency of my previous few posts I can see that it had taken me quite a while to update. This probably has to do with, as I explained last time, that I kind of settled here with my girlfriend in Curicó. Therefore I am living quite a “normal life”. Or at least what I, as a life-long single, possibly consider as a normal life of a non-single. But I don’t plan to go too much into details here. I only want to point out that in terms of travelling and the adventures that necessarily follows the act of travelling I got no news. As Alba meanwhile had another week of vacation we used this opportunity to run north again, more accurately to Arica, the northmost city of Chile very near to places I have been before (Atacama dessert, Sajama). The goal was not, as it is normally my intention while travelling, to seek the highest number of crazy happenings and to meet the most special kind of people that tell me the most extraordinary things. The goal was more to enjoy a relaxed time in a nice hotel with pool near the beach, where we could sleep in a lot, bath our feet in the pool, take walks to the beach and eat well out.

As we were really close to Peru, we took a day trip to Tacna, the next city on Peruvian side. I didn’t expect to return to Peru that quickly, but I enjoyed it as I could eat once more “Papas a la Huancaina”. Another trip that we planned to the salt flats in Lauca National Park had to be shortened as Alba experienced altitude sickness coming from a level of zero to 4500 meter within a few hours. For the salt lakes we would have needed to reach a level of 5000 meter. For me, as you know, always a reason to cheer up, but when your beloved one has a terrible head ache you probably skip that wish as well. But this trip led us to Lake Chungará and gave me the possibility to take another glance from the other side at volcano Parinacota, the 6350 meter high mountain I climbed from Bolivian side just before Christmas. Nice to see that again.

This is my last week in Chile. I have another bus travel to Buenos Aires ahead of me. In Buenos Aires I will leave South America and head home. Well, if you ask me what the absolute highlights on my trip were, here is a list, unranked because it is impossible to determine a score for those experiences. Every experience is unique and I will remember them all my live.

• Visit Galapagos and see the still highly untouched wildlife
• Climbing Cotopaxi
• Jungle trip to Manu NP! Wonderful people, the perfect guide and animals that made my heart melting
• Climbing Parinacota
• 4 weeks in Sucre! The place in which I met so many wonderful people and where I improved my Spanish in a way that changed my life
• Uyuni salt flats and the trip to Atacama: just because it is one of the most special places of the world and I’m missing the words for describing it
• Patagonia belongs to this list as well, but I probably missed the best part
• Many, many interesting and wonderful people I met on the way. A few will remain as friends and I am happy to look back with them to what we experienced together

And of course, beside all of these spectacular highlights, the most important to me is that I met Alba. Yes! Many of you probably wonder what happens now? Am I just leaving and go back to my life to dream about the past? No! Once the greatest luck of my life struck me, I cannot just pretend nothing happened. The story goes on! What this means I will tell you once I have reached the grounds of Switzerland.

Main Plaza in Arica

Alba and me enjoying a Mojito before dinner

A few kilometers away from Arica into the mountains

Parinacota again!

Arica from El Morro

Thank you Chile!

Sunset from El Morro

In Arica it’s never boring: there always are parades, concerts or other entertaining happenings!

From Buenos Aires back home to Curicó

First, I travelled back to Curicó and second, I am in Curicó. While the first is quite obvious as I named it clearly in my last entry that after BA I’ll travel back to Alba. The latter indicates more, that I am staying here. And this refers to the intro of the last entry in which I wrote about being 5 months on the road (meanwhile 6) and I couldn’t yet quite interpret what it means not being able to tell people about places I had visited. Not that I am fully aware of the significance now, but the effect to me was that I settled down and got myself accommodated with Alba at a house that was offered to us for free from her uncle.

Looking at my original itinerary and my actual travel I can see that I nearly followed my plan by 100%. Exceptions are Patagonia, which I had to shorten due to known reasons and the falls of Iguazu, a miraculous water spectacle at the border between Argentina and Brazil. This was just no more on the way as I hurried back to Chile. Maybe I can fit it in somehow later… I haven’t given it up.

But please keep on reading if you want to get to know some details of what I added to my adventures.

Buenos Aires

I was often told that BA is a crazy city which offers everything regarding culture: theatre, tango, architecture, art, music and a mentionable underground culture scene. In other words, its groove can easily be compared to hip places like London, Berlin, Amsterdam or Zurich. In my short time of being there I can only confirm it. So on one hand I really liked it because of all these things, on the other hand these are not the things I’m seeking while travelling, though of course I appreciate it. But if I want to dive into a hip scene I just take the train for 20 minutes and I exactly know where the hip people are and I don’t need to travel to another end of the world. Which I normally don’t do anyway. Nevertheless, I enjoyed BA with the company of people I’ve known from before. Thanks to Ana Julia, my previous guide at the GAP trip, I didn’t even have to pay for accommodation and lived in the middle of the city. Here are some Must-Sees in BA:

A short trip across the river Plate to Colonia de Sacramento, Uruguay

Evita on Avenida 9 de Julio

Congresso

The Obelisk

The cross I bear with the Argentinean post office

Since Patagonia was over for me and I would spend the rest of my stay in South America in warmer zones there was no more need for my super warm clothes I brought for climbing mountains and Patagonia. The sleeping bag was another thing I had no longer use for. This all would reduce the size of my overall luggage enormously and would give me some room for more purchases.

On the morning of my departure day to Santiago I stepped smiling into a random post office and told the lady behind the desk in my overfriendly Spanish: “A very good morning to you, señorita, I have here a couple of clothes I would love to send to Switzerland. Could you, as you please, sell me a box and…. “ The lady stopped me and told me if I want to send an international package I need to go to the post office at Retiro”. Ok, would cost me some time, but I’m early and I could take the tube. A little bit of nonsense, as I would have to go there later again to catch my bus while all my other stuff is still in the center… well, nevermind, I still got time.

On the way to the Retiro post office I got the first time a little pissed off on the last bit I had to walk, because it was raining badly and of course I didn’t have much protection. It took me a while until I found the right entry in this absolutely unnecessary complicated architectural failure of a post office only to find many more people waiting. Luckily I found out before waiting my ass off that I had to go to another place next door which was almost empty. I received my box and could put my things inside it. Then the lady sent me over to another desk for customs clearance. I was glad it was just 5 steps away. The guy talked to me in another hardly understandable BA accent. He told me something like I need to disinfect the clothes with a spray. It is required by law and he showed me the paper with the law on one of those 4 sheets that were attached to the wall beside him. Ok, I told him… no, I didn’t disinfect them, but if you do have a spray we could do it right now. I got no problem with that. He told me he hasn’t got a spray. I told him never mind, where could I get one easily? He explained to me that it is not the disinfection that is most important, I only need a certificate that says the clothes have been disinfected. Ok, where can I get that? He showed me the address that was written on the sheet attached to the wall. I asked again, maybe with a little more expression in my voice, which door or building that is. He pointed again at the direction. Where is that? He pointed in one direction and said an unremembered, but ridiculously high number of blocks. I shortly checked the map and realized that walking is out of question if I want to finish this business today, always remembering I would have to be at the bus station by 4 pm. As I was not a frequent metro user and the map didn’t show me a station nearby, I saw my cheap method of having this thing done flying away. I would need a taxi.

For a moment I fought with myself if I should do it. I went out and took the nearest taxi and caught myself being rude to the taxi driver as I had the impression (with the map in my mind) he was not using the fastest way. The whole thing already cost me too many nerves. I arrived in that “office of national disinfection of clothes that has to be sent abroad” and told that guy I would need that fucking certificate. He told me there is no problem, I could come back tomorrow to pick up my clothes and the certificate. One moment please: tomorrow? My bus leaves this afternoon, I need it now. It’s only a shitty piece of paper and all you have to do is spraying my couple of clothes for maybe half a minute. He told me, nonono, this is not possible, I would have to wait. The next moment I exploded. You guys who know me would agree with me that I’m the calmest guy in the world and even if things are really, really bad, I keep cool and try to solve the challenge in a smart way and not show my anger that is maybe inside me. But here they went too far with me, I had no more humour and told that guy something like this: “What the hell is wrong with your country? Why should it not be possible to send a lousy package with a couple of used clothes to Switzerland? It is the easiest thing in the entire fucking universe to send some shitty underwear around the world. I know many people have done it before and told me to do so too. And nobody ever mentioned difficulties. So why are you guys having so much fun in fucking somebody else’s ass and sending people from one fucking end of the city to the other without chances of results?” He sat there saying not much but sorry, there’s nothing he could do and he’d understand me. That didn’t help much. I sat down for a moment and considered my options: 1) Tell that stupid idiot to keep my stuff and give it to Caricas, 2) Pack everything together and just forget about it and carry all the stuff with me (which would have been a big problem as I now had a second computer to take with me, as you know), 3) bring everything back to Ana Julia and ask her to finish it up for me. While desperately sitting there and hating all three options, the guy stood up and told me I should leave my stuff here and come back at 2 pm. I could then pick up my stuff and receive the certificate backdated (obviously the date was the point; it needed to be previous to the date of sending the clothes). I said thank you and went for a walk to calm down my anger.

After I picked up my stuff, the open box with the “disinfected” clothes in one arm, the certificate in the other, I took another taxi to go back to the post office at Retiro where to my surprise everything was suddenly going smooth. I told the guy at the customs that this whole shit was just a fucking cheap joke. I could have replaced the clothes, piss over the clothes or do whatever nasty with them I could think of. He told me that my view is not wrong, but unfortunately this is the law. Stupid law. What highly paid idiots could think of such a nonsense rule? I’m a calm guy, but people with ideas like that just are to be sent to the moon and captured within high walls. The world is better off without them. Reminds me somehow at some accounting rules of IFRS…

I rushed back to Ana Julia’s apartment to pick up my clothes and went back to Retiro again, as the bus station is located some 100 meter away from the post office. I arrived there shortly after 4 pm, just in time to catch the 20 hour busride to Santiago, where I would directly continue to Curicó, where I longed to stay at.

Shaking with 7.2 on the Richter scale

Things in Curicó became soon really good and we had (and still having) a good life at “our” house. Michelli stayed a while there too. And Lis was a permanent visitor too. On Sunday 25^th of March at evening time Alba and me were lying around, having Spanish and German lessons while Lis and Michelli were preparing dinner. Alba suddenly told me if I feel this? What? The earthquake. I looked outside the window and saw my triathlon pant whipping on the handle bar of the bike I used as clothes line. I stood up and felt it and asked Alba, experienced with earthquakes as she is, if this is dangerous and if we are supposed to get out of here. She took me by the hand and led me outside to stand under the door at the entrance, where Lis and Michelli already were waiting. There was a big noise going on and it was a very strange feeling to stand on a shaking ground. We, Michelli and me, asked whether this is big thing. The answer was yes, it’s one of the bigger earthquakes. It went on for some 30 seconds more. When it was over we shortly stepped outside to have a look along the street. Everything seemed to be in order, only the dogs were barking harder than usually. Stepping inside we checked our things and realized the only damage we could get grip upon was that the bottle of whiskey had fallen down. Michelli brought up the theory that it might had fallen before… we didn’t know. Sounds more adventurous to say it fell by the earthquake. Obviously Alba and Lis bothered to know more about it and we listened to the radio and searched the internet for information of what had happened. The full truth we only learned next day. The epicentre was just about 30 kilometers away from Curicó and the strength here was 7.2. In some places the communication lines broke but the damages were low. It was said that a man died of a heart attack and in some cities there was no electricity for a while.

I learned meanwhile that the highest possible score for an earthquake is 9,5. More is not possible because no kind of stone could buffer more power as it would release its power before. There was a 9,5 earthquake in Valdivia (yes, Chile too) in 1960 which had a lot of destruction power, not only the earthquake itself, but the tsunami that resulted out of it and the following eruption of the volcano Cordón Caulle. But not only is the power on the Richter scale important, there are many more aspects that lead to the actual severance of damages.

For me it was an eye opening experience which I so far only read about and saw at TV. The thing is there is nothing you can do but hope the houses stand the power. The people here live with that as earthquakes in this dimension happen every couple of months, without being noticed by the world press as there are normally no severe damages. Earthquakes of magnitudes of 4 – 6 are occurring every day in Chile. Beside this big one there were so far two occasions I felt the earth shaking.

Cooking

It is not a big secret that I was not born to be a cook. At home it’s usually no problem as for lunch I am at a place near work where I get very variable dishes. For dinner at home I usually prepare something easy cold or spaghetti with pre-prepared sauce. Super-easy and quick and very good too! In addition it served my extra need of carbohydrates. And why the hell should I bother spending much time, which I don’t have, in the kitchen? There are better things to do when time is rare. In exceptional cases where I had guests over for dinner it was always an event that cost me lot of stress and adrenalin. And you cannot just say every time: “Hey, sorry guys, I really didn’t have the time. This frozen pizza must do. But hey, is it not more about being together and talk than really to eat?” I usually managed my way through somehow as well through medium difficult dishes and my guests always could enjoy a good dish. But while cooking I always was remembered why I usually don’t.

Anyway, as most of the time I’m enjoying my Macho live here with my girlfriend while she is working, she asked me a few times to prepare dinner. Once I prepared, next to a Thai-Wok from the shopping centre and some noodles, a cold plate of cut vegetables, which she immediately turned into a salad on her arrival. She changed the things I prepared within minutes into a delicious side dish.

She asked me again to cook one day when we planned to have her mother and her sister and brother over for dinner. Ok, I thought, let’s do something easy but very good. I came up wit Rösti escalloped with cheese and tomatoes. Takes quite some preparing time to peel and grate the potatoes, but once this pain is through, it is super easy. And it is something typical Swiss too, which would be good for some kind of cultural exchange. On the shopping tour I made sure I bought the instruments to peel and to grate potatoes and the biggest potatoes I had found. That would save me most of the pain. It did. In only about half an hour the Rösti was in a shape to get fried. Then I thought I can prepare things as much as possible and fry them until they are crispy golden. The cheese and the tomatoes can be added later and fried again for short time.

The cooking sites in the internet all told me the same: it is super easy to do it and there is nothing really special you have to pay attention to. One comment was it is supposed to be the easiest thing in the world. Well, I’d rather solve a whole book of SUDOKU… but still in good mood I tried to get used to the cooking gear. Damn, at home at least I know my stuff and how it works. Here I don’t really have levels of heat, or at least I haven’t found out. It’s either full power or nothing at all. Ok, I could deal with that. After a few minutes a big part of the potatoes turned green. This made me a bit sceptic. But a quick check on the internet showed nothing serious. After 15 more minutes and a couple of turns of the mass I saw the whole bulk was still very moist though it’s lower part have been united with the pan and burned to black. Nothing to worry about a bit of a loss but the thing I worried about was why do the fucking potatoes just not dry? As I read I have to fry it for 20 to 30 minutes I still had some hope it would turn out right. After half an hour I gave up frustrated as the mass was miles away from being nicely crispy and golden and the whole thing resembled more to the horror fiction of a movie that played after the dropping of an atomic bomb.

The originally 1 kg potatoes for 4 people were reduced to a diet amount of a sparrow. After freeing the pan from the lowest layer of black potatoes and 2 or 3 more layers that were inseparable attached to the lowest layer I needed to clean and rub the pan until my hand hurt.

I called Alba and told her, well, why don’t we just go out tonight? We could enjoy more, everybody could eat what she or he wants and we don’t have to deal with cleaning the plates. A lot of advantages, no?

A quick emergency dinner mostly (in fact totally) prepared by Alba served well later on.

But I soon received another chance to redeem myself. And this chance I didn’t miss. I prepared some nice pasta and a self made sauce with lots of veggies and I was surprised myself how delicious it was. I’m not completely lost yet. 🙂

I comforted myself with the belief that I just got the wrong sort of potatoes to do Rösti. In Bolivia I learned there are more than 500 different sorts of potatoes available. I’m not sure, but I think at home we have the normal ones and the sweet ones, that’s all… so not much to choose from.

Welcome to Argentina and how I ended up at the police station

Introduction

Meanwhile I passed the 5th month on the road and the whole travelling is slowly transforming into some sort of routine. Although the beer tastes different in every country, the basic flavour stays the same. In other words: memories of places start to blur, later memories get confused with earlier ones, names disappear… well, you know, the long term traveller’s Alzheimer, I suppose. Recently I was asked by another traveller how Valdivia was like, a place I’ve been to some weeks ago. My answer was: “Well, I couldn’t tell you exactly why, because right now, I don’t remember the city, but I do remember that I liked it a lot and therefore I’m sure it’s kind of neat”. In the course of another beer I remembered and I was able to tell details of the old town like the submarine, the bridge over the river to the university property and the fine little coffee shop at the museum of archaeological history. That was a sign to me: not being able to tell about places I’ve been to. I haven’t found out yet the sign’s significance, but I’m working on it.

Well, one of the reasons I kick my ass to write about my travels is indeed to prevent forgetting. Though I don’t have the time, the space and the will for writing down everything, and sometimes I want and I have to respect the privacy of me and the people I meet. At some point we all just have to deal with the fact that we are not computers and tend to forget things (which sometimes is an advantage).

Chiloé and Bariloche

As indicated last time, in Puerto Montt we met Alba and Lis, her sister, for visiting the island of Chiloé. It was, as you can imagine, a great advantage to have Chileans as guides. The bad thing was that about half of the time the weather sucked. The other half was well used to explore Chiloé’s national park at Cucao and the island of Mechuque, where we spent some time walking around, boat riding and enjoying the beautiful forests and green meadows in spectacular landscapes. But see for yourself.

Back in Puerto Montt, after having a very wonderful week, we also reached a point of decision. The question was: How can we continue? How should we go on? It’s a far way to go and the road would be full of obstacles and uncertainties. A hard decision to make but finally it was resolved without doing much, because we soon discovered that the number of considerable options came down to 2. We could get a boat down from Puerto Montt to Puerto Natales and visit from there all the great Patagonian National Parks. But this option failed because the boat only run’s every Friday and we got itinerary until Sunday with our hosts. But the ship was full anyway and waiting in rainy and cold Puerto Montt for another 5 days was completely out of question. The only option left was to take the bus along road 40 in Argentina to Puerto Natales for some 40 odd hours. To lessen the pain, shorten the busriding time and to do all the work we didn’t do while we were on Chiloé we agreed to go first to Bariloche in Argentina which is some 6 hours away. Bariloche was not on my schedule and I didn’t want to go there as Marta, my Argentinian Spanish teacher back home, previously told me it’s not worth a visit because it’s exactly like Switzerland. Which is true. When you’ve been to classical ski resorts, you know more or less how it looks like. It’s neat, though. And it gave us some time to reload all our things, do some shopping and plan ahead.

View from our hostel over Bariloche

El Calafate and Perito Moreno

From Bariloche we took the 28 hours bus ride to El Calafate where we visited the spectacular glacier of Perito Moreno. The bus ride along carretera 40 was supposed to be very boring. But we both agreed it wasn’t. The landscape with hills, mountains, lakes and even the monotone Pampas was beautiful. Furthermore, with a bit of reading, music, writing and sleeping the 28 hours turned out to be too short for a stress free journey. Anyway, the visit to the glacier was a real blast. We took a tour to the glacier that included a 90 minute walk on the glacier. Though the weather was not that good and I thought it rather cold, we enjoyed being on this natural paradise. When we were there it was announced that the ice bridge (or they called it tunnel) should brake and TV stations were there to record this nature spectacle. They said it’s either today or tomorrow. Well, we didn’t see it. But it broke the next morning at 4 am. As there was no light, it wasn’t recorded and the world couldn’t witness this event. I imagined if this would have happened in Europe. There would be a big TV show with concerts, comedians and magicians along with celebrity guests from all over the world. The glacier would be illuminated all the time for the whole night. Maybe this wouldn’t even be necessary as the glacier would be prepared in a way that the bridge was to fall at best evening time for the TV channels. Here they just took it and I had the feeling, all the locals were relieved after it happened. An event like this is only expected every 5 – 10 years.

When we were there we could at least witness the fall of several big ice blocs. That was really spectacular as it made a huge thunder noise and released a small tsunami in the Lake Argentine. From further away, it was even more spectacular as you could see the ice breaking and hear the thunder a couple of seconds later. Visiting Perito Moreno, although it his extremely annoying touristy, was definitely one of the very big highlights of my travel!

El Chaltén

We took the 3 hours bus to the very isolated El Chaltén. A small town near the tourist attractions of Fitz Roy and Cerro Torre, that was built in the early 90ies only to serve tourists. The place is kind of sterile and was originally probably perfectly equipped with infrastructure. The roads with one car per a day are wider and better than anything else I saw before. But probably El Chaltén was a victim of the Argentinian bankruptcy in 2002. No ATM’s around and the Internet is as slow as it was 1995 with our 28 kb modems. Just reading mails could cost you as much nerves as an emergency landing on Hudson River.

In El Chaltén we realized as well what Patagonia really means: rain, coldness and a wind as strong that you get blown away if you are not careful. I had my first doubts of visiting Patagonia for a longer time. I admire the landscapes, but when you can’t see anything and it’s pouring down mixed with the strongest winds I’ve ever felt, and you’re freezing to the bones, it makes no sense to stay. And the prices in this misery are ridiculously high. Anyway, once there, we had to stay and we took a walk to Lake Torre to another glacier with just a little bit of rain at the beginning, we counted ourselves lucky. The way along the glacier was supposed to be dangerous in strong winds. On the way there, it was no problem. But on the way back I was frequently smashed up the hill because of the wind. It was very difficult just to stay, no talking about walking. Sometimes when I stood and leaned with full power against the wind, I just had to stretch out my arms and I got blown away. This is really the truth, my friends! It was absolutely terrifying!

Laguna Torre near El Chaltén

At the police station and a change in plan

In El Chaltén I also had my worst and most annoying experience in my whole travel. I was stupid, I was lucky, I was robbed, it took all my nerves and finally I won two computers and I was relieved! El Chaltén is a peaceful, isolated paradise in terms of crimes. In this town there are only people that earn their money with tourists and the tourists, the more wealthy ones, I suppose. Two groups of people that I would imagine of being the least dangerous kind if you lose something, leave you stuff unattended for a while or get in other some sort of trouble. The first night we ended up at a bar close to our hostel where we drank our last beer before they’d shut down for the night. Really nice place, the waitresses, the beer and all, you know. But I happened to forget my bag right at the bar when we were the last clients to leave. Realizing it at the hostel of course I returned to check, but there was nobody there anymore. So I returned in the morning, looked inside and saw my bag still under the bar stool. Perfect, I thought, it’s still there, so not much to worry about. I returned to the hostel and asked what time the bar would be opening. As it would only open up after noon and we had some plans for our hike I told the lady the story of my bag and we agreed that she would be calling the owner and make sure the bag is kept safe. Nothing to worry about. Just because it’s funny to see my bag still lying under the bar stool and our last beers not been put away from the bar, I told Michelli to look at it too. He found it funny too and decided to take picture of it in order to show the world how stupid I am to forget my bag there. We went on our hike and I didn’t lose any thought about it anymore.

On our return in the afternoon I dropped into the bar to ask about my bag. As the lady didn’t really know about it I shortened it up and said, that I suppose, the lady from the hostel already has it. Back in the hostel, the reception lady told me, she was told there wasn’t a bag. Ok, what went wrong?  I remembered the photo from the morning and showed it to her. Things became pretty clear now. I returned to the bar to ask again about my bag. Still, I was told, the cleaning lady, who first entered the place at 9.30 didn’t see any bag. Then I mentioned the picture and showed it to her and proved that it was taken at 8.30 in the morning. So what’s the story now? The cleaning lady stuck to her version that she didn’t see anything. She cleaned the bar, wiped the floor at the bar (!) and didn’t see anything. She didn’t negate the fact that all the time she’s been alone in there, except with a short visit of the owner’s mother who actually was on the phone with the lady of the hostel. Ok, I talked to Manuela, the owner, that she should clear things out with the cleaning lady and I would return some 2 hours later to receive my bag. I wouldn’t go to the police and just forget about it and Manuela wouldn’t fire her. That was our deal. I had practically my life in the bag, everything that was important (Passport, computer with unsaved data, notice book with addresses, names and memories of people I met, a dictionary, the Spanish version of “le petit prince”, an Amazon E-Reader (how I was able to buy this is another outstanding remarkable story which I had in mind to tell you at some point, because it’s real freaky too), my IPod, my camera and some more bullshit. In the bag of the laptop was about 30 US dollars in cash, the equivalent of 200 dollars in Chilean Pesos and a second credit card. You see, stupidly much! I acted against my own rules. But never ever nothing close ever happened, and in El Chaltén, a wonderfully peaceful place, this is not possible.

So you see, I only wanted back my bag, I would also pay for it and leave it alone. I only need my stuff, that’s all.

The cleaning lady stuck to her version though it was obvious to everybody she took it. We discussed it over and over: there is no other way. She was it! Every single detail just ended up at her. Every other possibility such as another one got into a closed bar, took my dirty bag from the ground and left all the other worthy equipment that was there, just between this one hour we couldn’t track, just were really, really so much improbable that it would just be like believing in the man from the moon. As a last step I talked to the cleaning lady by myself, offering her 100 dollar, 200 dollar and a story that would take the blame all on me, so she’s fine out. But still, she refused.

I had no other possibility than to go to the police, accompanied by Manuela, who was hardly hit too because it’s her bar and she need’s a good reputation. The officer filled in the protocol and asked me to come to bar again at one at night for interviewing witnesses. The nice bar ladies served well as witnesses and confirmed everything I said.

Having lost all the things and my passport it was suddenly clear, I cannot go on in Patagonia, because the next part in Torres del Paine is back in Chile and without passport I couldn’t do it. For a new passport I needed to go to Buenos Aires. Slowly getting used to this idea, I saw some advantages. I liked Patagonia, but for me, as I’m a summer boy, the weather situation was a little too harsh for me. What does it help to be in a beautiful region, when it pisses on you all the time and you don’t see the marvellous snowy peaks! We have snowy peaks in Switzerland too. Then I didn’t like the mass tourism in Patagonia. Everything was about tourism. Furthermore if I go to Buenos Aires I could straight go to Curicó to see Alba again, a bit earlier than I thought. Mitchelli would do Torres del Paine and come to Santiago or Curicó too. A bad thing was: I needed to fly. I hate flying! Planes are always late, terrible for the environment and security check is beyond human rights. But I was willing to take the pain. After all my loss this was just another hit on my mind.

We returned next day to El Calafate for 2 nights, where we would sort out all tickets and stuff. I would organize replacements for my lost things. Finally I could not replace everything yet, but at least I bought a new computer. That’s essential to organize things, stay more or less informed, keep in touch with friends, being sure having a big music library with me (which Mitchelli could provide me) and talk to Alba. I spent a full day of stress, anger and work to set up the new Laptop, annoyed by not understandable Spanish messages, copying over music from a hard disk that was not recognized by my computer, copying the already accidentally deleted pictures from my security USB stick and setting up Skype and internet and download all the little and big programs I need. Once I was done, all my anger was gone and I felt relieved. 2 days of feeling ugly was enough.

At one a clock at night, just as we went to bed, the guy from the hostel came to our room and handed over to me the telephone. It was Manuela. They found the bag and everything was there. They would bring it to El Calafate next morning. So finally I could pick it up at the police station and realized the only losses were a pen, all the US Dollars and about 80 dollears in Chilean pesos. So the girl at least got her share… but fine with me. I’m glad she got aware of her situation and I think in this part of the process, this was the best thing to do for her. Too bad it was that late, but now I have everything. Sometimes, being nice to people, even if they’ve been ugly to you, just is a good thing!

In the following I decided to stick to the plan and go to Buenos Aires. I was done with Patagonia. And Michelli would stick to his. So meet again in a about a week in Chile.

Patagonia forerunner

I didn’t write much about Santiago last time although there is a lot to say about it. I loved Santiago from the moment I arrived. The city is clean, nice, organized, save and open, meaning, there are plenty of places to run and it doesn’t feel like a prison. It’s both close to the beach and to the mountains. People are, although their slang sometimes is hard to understand, helpful, nice and open. Of course after all this places in Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia I loved, Santiago is a place much closer to Europe and I was a little bit afraid that the wonderful indigenous moments on my travel are gone. Kind of, it’s true, but by looking at the people, Chileans look variable. Although my appearance still is a little exotic, I’m not that suspicious anymore. Beside European looking people there are still a lot of people I could imagine living as well in Bolivia. Chile has got a great mixture. In my life and all my travels abroad, I have not really been to many cities I could imagine living in. Besides Santa Barbara in California, one is Barcelona, another one is Santiago. Although it is said it gets a little chilly in winter. But hey, what do you expect? It’s always been chilly in Chile  🙂

Anyway, I just loved the city. When the GAP people disappeared one by one I relocated to Chimba hostel in Bellavista barrio where I was going to meet Michelli. The night before he arrived it happened. I got to know Alba, rather luckily. If Diego and Andrea wouldn’t have picked me up for another beer, if I would have followed my plan to go to sleep earlier, if there wasn’t a concert the same night Alba attended, if the hostal would have followed their internal rule not to let in Chileans (“but hey, these ones are nice, no?”, Diego, the guy at the reception said), if there wasn’t her sister strongly supporting us, if I didn’t hand over a beer… and a lot more coincidences, we would just have gone our individual way. But she became my girlfriend. So, that must be enough gossip for all of you who have heard rumours about it. The story belongs to us.

As Alba left towards home to Curicó, Michelli arrived and we spent two more days in Santiago before heading to Viña del Mar, which we decided the last moment instead of going to Valparaiso. I was told by many travellers before that Viña is nicer than the just 3 km away Valparaiso. It was ok, but I thought Valparaiso, though I didn’t see much of it, a lot more authentic then this rather corny and touristy Viña. Michelli relocated to Valparaiso while I decided on short notice to head forward to Curicó for Alba’s sake and wait for him there.

Valparaiso

In Curicó Alba surprised me by taking me to the countryside near Molina where we spent the weekend camping. I got to know some more of her nice friends while swimming, doing BBQ (no problem being a vegetarian) enjoying the warm sun and drinking beer. It’s been a wonderful lazy Sunday in Chilean summer.

Back in Curicó, Michelli arrived soon and after a few more days I separated again from Alba and her sister and we went further south and spent a night in Concepcion. Like Curicó, Concepcion too was badly damaged when a big earthquake (and a tsunami in Concepcion) on February 27, 2010 happened. With a magnitude of 8.8 on the Richter scale, it was the 6^th highest earthquake ever recorded by seismographs. Big parts of both cities have been destroyed. Not all of it has been rebuilt since. You can see damages on several churches. It was an indescribable terrible day, but luckily, as Chile knows its threat and is on western standard, the official number of 550 dead victims is unbelievably low for a century event like this. Luckily, luckily! Alba and her friends and relatives could easily have been part of a higher number (!!!). If you want to read more about the earthquake, you should visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Chile_earthquake

From Concepcion, we travelled to Pucón, which is some sort of St. Moritz in Chile, only much, much better and far less “schicki-micki” (English explanation: rich places try to appear even richer and the result is they become ridiculous). Situated in a beautiful region, which reminds me to the southern part of Switzerland around Lago Maggiore, there are a lot of lakes to visit and swim in, hikes to be done and mountains to climb or look at. But unlike Switzerland, there are 3 volcanos in the region, one of them, the 2847 high volcano Villarica is greatly visible from within the town. The volcano is active and at most times you can see little smoke escaping from its peak. You don’t actually feel it in the city, but there is a permanent danger that the volcano erupts and spits its ashes and lava to the city limits. For that, they test their alarm system I think on a daily basis at noon. The city must be evacuated quickly.

Because Pucón is such a popular place to go as well as for foreign tourists, Chilean families and backpackers, it is not easy to find accommodation. Especially in high season. High season? Good cue! When was the change from low to high season? Everywhere I was before, in Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia I’ve always been told it is low season and there are not many tourists around. But suddenly, from one day to next, withouth prewarning, I’ve been told ever since that now is high season with all the accompanying disadvantages like the need of booking ahead, everything being more expensive and less relaxed. I really can’t tell how and when it happened. But it’s no joke: it’s high season and we unsuccessfully stumbled around in Pucón in search for a hostel or even a hotel, well, just somewhere we could spend at least one night. Then we met Cecilia. She picked us up and showed us her probably unofficial hostel which had just two beds left. The price was just 6000 Pesos (about 12 USD) and for most of our stay, we have been the only non-Israelis at this place. She must be mentioned in an Israeli guide book or so…. They have a talent to find the cheapest places for living. But how stupid is it when they can save money on cheap accommodation and on the other hand a couple of young guys were so badly informed that they were about to buy a ridiculously expensive bus ticket to Santiago if we wouldn’t have told them other options.

Ojos del Caburgua

Landscape around Pucón

We also did a trip to Huerquehue National Parque close to Pucón and did a hike up to the lagoons. It’s a beautiful place and that is kind of touristy doesn’t have much recognisable impact. It’s been worth it.

Volcano Villarica and Tinquilco Lake

Cascada

Via Valdivia we now are going to Puerto Montt where we meet Alba and her sister again for one week of travel together.

Skyline Valdivia with Sea Lions

The Atacama Crossing

Originally, I didn’t have a very good feeling about being part of an organized tour with GAP-Adventures from La Paz to Santiago. I somehow knew after all this travelling alone and being free from whatever duty, I would find it difficult just to lay back and experience, whatever will happen to me. But I missed the last cancelling deadline 2 months before departure by a very few days. So I knew I would be travelling in a way I became to dislike the months before by looking at travelling groups I met on the way: travelling without much of contact to local people because everything is just organized. Contact to local people is one of the main joys during my travel. Especially now as my Spanish got to a point in which I can talk pretty much about everything without having too many difficulties.

The upsides of the trip I thought of were: convenient and hassle less crossing of Uyuni and Atacama Desert, of which you can hear a lot of horror stories from other travellers (a Dutch group just recently got stuck in the salt lake for a couple of horror nights, due to a driver who was not instructed well) and a fast transport to Santiago. And if there are a couple of good people on the tour, it wouldn’t be that bad after all.

The start of the tour was in La Paz but to me it made no sense to return there and I preferred to wait for them in Sucre to join them. My original plan was to join them on their first day in Sucre as I had a hotel room with them prepaid for me. But I didn’t. I just had too much going on doing farewell things.  Only next day I moved out. But again, my schedule was full of visiting places so I didn’t meet anyone of GAP that day either. I only managed to have a short talk on the phone to Ana Julia, our tour leader, who asked me where the hell I was… She asked me to join the group for dinner, but I had to decline this too, as I already had an important appointment for dinner. So I only met her and the rest of the group the next day. In the group I was already known as the phantom and some of them didn’t believe I’d exist. This was funny… the group, and especially our guide, Ana Julia, turned out be very nice and I had a couple of good talks and we had lots of fun. I couldn’t say anything bad about it. But the downsides of it were exactly as I expected. Anyway, it was on me to adapt and make the best out of it. But I could never drop the feelings of being torn apart between my farewells in Sucre, what had happened at work and the outlook of meeting my best mate in Santiago. So I probably wasn’t the best travelling mate. But they all were very cute to me and I always had someone having a beer with me. Thanks guys! It’s been lovely with you!

Enough about conditions and let’s get to the important things: the nature. And nature was at its very best!

Before the salt flats of Uyuni we went to Potosi. Potosi on 4000 meter above sea level once was one of the world’s most populated city because of its rather easy accessible silver mines. But with silver price dropping and mining conditions in the mountain becoming more difficult, people’s interest of mining silver decreased. But still, today there are about 5000 miners in the mountain every day. The mountain behind Potosi is also called “The mountain that eats men” because it is said that since people started mining it almost 500 years ago a total of 8 million people died in the mountain and of slavery or of direct consequences of working in the mine due to dusk in the lungs, asbestos and other highly poisonous material. A miner normally doesn’t get older than 45 years. One should think the motivation behind it would be a solid pay. But most of them don’t earn much, because prices are low, quality is bad and the big sources of silver are gone. Furthermore, the methods the miners are working with, have not significantly changed during the last 500 years. There is a German documentary I can recommend about the mines, which is called: “The devil’s minor”. The devil refers to the protection power inside the mountain. Outside, the minors believe in God, inside the mine, where they think, God cannot reach them, they ask “el Tio” (the uncle), but it means devil, to protect them by sacrificing coca leaves, alcohol, sometimes llamas… this is not fiction, this is reality! In Potosi you can also learn a lot about the history of money, coin welding and the fall of one of the world’s richest city to poverty.

Potosi and the mine

 

The salt flats of Uyuni are one of the big wonders of the world. I’ve seen so many pictures of it and people told me, how amazing this experience is, my expectation grew incredibly high. And I wasn’t disappointed. This huge flat land of 12’000 square km, also visible from the moon as a white spot, cannot be explained in words and pictures. Due to the rain season, there was a considerably amount of water on the salt flats which unfortunately made it impossible for us to cross it in order to sleep in the salt hotel. But the water increased the mirroring effect and the sun shone back from the endless whiteness of the salt. It was magic to stand and lie there in the middle of the salt and trying to play with the distance effects on photographing (on which my camera of course completely failed).

My game with the chess figures didn’t work out

Salt flats of Uyuni

 

We continued our travel southwards and visited the lagoons with their numerous flamingos in the middle of a stunning landscape.

 

Finally we left the 4 to 5 thousand meter altiplano with the visit at some geysers and came down to San Pedro de Atacama in Chile, where we visited the valley of the moon. A landscape so dry and rough, it could be on the moon. Maybe the pictures of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Adren were taken there?

 

Further south in La Serena, we reached the ocean and I spent two afternoons at the beach. Finally it feels like summer with temperatures of more than 30 degrees. We also paid a visit to the space observatory in Elqui valley. The nights there are always clear and there are the world’s biggest telescopes. The place is sold and maintained by scientists of USA and Europe, but Chile gets 10% of the time for their own researches.

At last, we arrived in Santiago, where I was not doing much except for enjoying the summer and wait for Mitchelli to arrive. Santiago is great, open, safe and cultural city and I spent a few great days there. Finally, my friend arrived and we now do some travelling together, which I am really much looking forward too. I think Patagonia will be THE highlight of my trip.

To my colleagues at my work

This time I’m not going to write about my travel but about the situation with my job back home. This because I received the shocking information that entire departments of my company have been laid off.

I started in this company bit more than 9 years ago as Chief Accountant. By then, it used to be a great company. I had an outstanding team and I was supported throughout the whole company. Working meant more to me than just earning money. The environment was great and we were a family helping each other, no matter what happened. I think I did more than possible to contribute myself to an excellent performance. Probably too much so one day I had to do one step backwards and I got into a position with less every day routine but where I could make even better use of my skills of knowing the many different systems we had and the company’s complexity. This had the side effect, I could work less and had time to concentrate on my favourite hobby of training for triathlons, because the years of hard work before left some tracks on me.

Maybe at the beginning a bit unnoticed the formerly excellent working environment changed because our top management was unable to realize market tendencies and made the workers in their daily jobs pay for it, while they continued to make one false decision after another. Instead of taking the consequences and tell the managers to go, the workers at the front had to suffer again and again. That means more work for fewer employees. The management talked about improvements of quality. The improvement was only their salary. Investments should have been done to lower the so obvious organizational weaknesses. They did investments, large unnecessary investments, just to cover the previous mistakes…

Anyway, I found myself in a position where I was able to see the mismanagement and the longer it went on, the sicker I got about it. Why didn’t I just leave? Still there were some people left (fewer and fewer) from the good old times and I felt I still can do them some good. For them, and only for them, I stayed. But then I realized it took too much from me and if I don’t want to end up being endlessly frustrated, I had to step out. That’s a big part why I am on my travel now: to calm down and regain energy for future challenges which will lie in a different field. And I hoped after a break I will be more relaxed about my work again so I could do one or two years more before I am able to switch profession and do what I really want to.

Now I got to know that most of my last remaining colleagues from the good old times, my beloved ones, were laid off. So for me, there is absolutely no reason to return to my job. What for? For the people that put the company where it is now? I would suggest my direct superiors to do the same. I know you’ve been fighting with me. But if everything is useless, at one point you have to give up. It’s just a company, not the world. If they don’t listen to you, they don’t need you, they don’t even want you. And I know you’ve done remarkable things in the past and these skills are appreciated well anywhere else. So why suffering? You lost, I lost, we lost, the employees lost that are now being laid off after many, many years of being loyal to the company and taking the directors hysterical moods.

Dear colleagues: I’m really with you these days and I’m feeling the same anger as you probably do. It’s just not right! I am sad I am not with you to share this misery! I hope you can all make the best out of it. You deserve something better as it was always great working with you!

Myself,  I have not been laid off, but I tell my boss to let me go. It’s a step I would have done anyway sooner or later. Now it’s only a bit earlier than expected. I will extend my stay in South America a bit and maybe this is a life improving opportunity for me as it offers me the chance to finish a business here I gave up for lack of time. Don’t worry about me. I count on my reputation that will get me better jobs until I am able to fully earn my living on social and environmental improving projects.

Sucre 2: 4 great weeks!

Plans vs. Reality

Before I arrived in Sucre my head was full of ideas of things I wanted to do for I knew I would be there for almost a month. I wanted to do private Spanish classes, a rock climbing course, biking excursions to explore the indigenous villages around Sucre, do sports and last but not least: relax.

Reality soon showed me a different picture. At the very first day I was busy with visiting and choosing language schools and I think I made the luckiest choice with the small non-profit oriented FENIX. The main reasons I went for them were the lovely teachers welcoming me and, maybe even more, their charity work. The school offers free English classes for local people without money in order to give those better opportunities for their future. They also do a lot of other things for poor people. Soon I found myself in the middle of charity work. But that, later.

With running or swimming in the 50m Olympic pool in the morning and lessons normally from 12 to 3 my days were already full and I could not think of doing a climbing course. Furthermore I found myself in a nice social network between people from school, including teachers and people from my great hostal (Pachamama). So that was my daily routine in Sucre.

Climbing

Arriving at Hostal Pachamama the first day I made acquaintance to Niklas, a likable German guy who resembled a lot John Lennon in his later days. And indeed he turned out to be a big fan of him and a couple of times he quoted lines of his songs. He also is a climber and got his climbing harness with him. Earlier he got to know Jon, a Canadian guy, who was in Sucre too and had a rope and harness too. It wasn’t long and we made up for climbing at Sica Sica, a prepared rock at the nearest mountain. First we didn’t find the prepared wall and we lost quite some time until we finally found the spot and did a couple of climbs.

Maybe after that day my longing for climbing was already satisfied and I didn’t bother anymore for doing a course.

Charity work

Already at my first day after school I could contribute myself to charity. There were 600 presents to be prepared for the poor children of the city. We filled the Christmas bags with toys, sweets and clothes and categorized them into male and female and ages (a 14 year old girl has other needs than a 3 year old boy). In the streets we handed out flyers to poor children inviting them to our school where they would receive a present. At the next day I became a witness of how many children lined up in front of the house. After some work in the background I switched my job to the front line and handed over to every child a banana and a yoghurt drink. Some children and mothers with their babies thanked us gratefully and they seemed to receive a moment of happiness, others where weeping and almost anxiously grabbing their presents, others were not satisfied with what they received and cried for more. And then there were those that tried to receive presents a couple of times by lining up again and again. But they could be identified because we marked every child receiving a present with a black marker. Of course, there were the smart ones that washed it away, but Jimena, a teacher, had a really good eye and also unbelievably recognised returning people. All in all it was a very special experience to be in the front line of charity work, not only spending money, but actually doing the work. It was great and very sad at the same time. Glorious moments were exchanged with moments of disbelief of how such poverty can exist in the middle of us. Some babies and small children did not have clothes on, and on some you could see they were sick and needed medical help too. I felt completely helpless looking into the beautiful dark, innocent eyes of those poor children who had the bad luck being born into poverty. At some point we ran out of presents and we had to close the door and send all the rest away that was still lining up. There were so many more out there. For how long they had waited only to be disappointed I don’t know.

The school also supports an asylum for old people that have mostly been abandoned from their family and have no one to take care of them and scarcely enough for surviving. This asylum is run by nuns and volunteers trough donations. I was told stories like these: once they’ve visited them and brought presents and bananas, the old people asked: “Is it Sunday? “ A banana is such a rare thing for them that it would only be received on special occasions such as Sundays. Normally they have to live on a very cheap diet, which I didn’t dare to ask what it was. An old lady was taken from the street as she almost died of hunger. The school pays a visit there about every month or two, whenever they have some money. All the students made a donation and so we went to the market to buy cakes and yoghurt drinks, we went to buy some kind of health body cream and carried it all to the asylum. We were welcomed by some lively elderly people, but also a lot of them seemed to be unconscious of what was happening. They applauded us when we entered the courtyard where we placed a lot of chairs and helped many of the people to get there by taking them arm in arm or rolling their wheelchairs. A Scottish guy gave a little guitar concert and we provided the olds with our presents. There was a second and a third floor too, full of people that could not come down because their progress of dementia was too far. I’ve been sent to a hospital-like room and we provided them with medical cream. I stopped by the bed of an old woman and she started to talk to me. But I couldn’t understand her. Was my Spanish so bad? I asked Claudia, the daughter of Jimena, who came with us, if she could understand her. She told me, the lady was speaking Quecha, the antique language of the indigenous and she could not understand her either. At least, it was not the fault of my Spanish. What she wanted to tell me I didn’t find out. As she was pressing my hand all the time I assume she only wanted to be close to someone. I got the feeling that this room was for people in their last stage before death. Many of them were injured and unable to move and talk. I saw many sad things in there which I couldn’t name all, but it left a big impression on me. When we were about to leave, some of them grabbed and embraced us and kissed our hands. They didn’t want to let us go. On one hand I didn’t like to be hold back like this, on the other hand how could you possibly refuse a moment of love to these neglected poor people!

By the way, maybe you’ve noticed but in general I don’t make any pictures of people because for me it’s a question of respect. You can find pictures on travel blogs of others or in the internet.

Bolivian life

By taking 3 hours of private lessons a day, there was also some time to talk a lot about other things but grammar during classes with Lourdes, my lovely teacher. Actually, we sometimes almost forgot to include some technical language skills into the lessons. We talked for hours about everything we felt like. And still it was too less time. There was so much fun we had together as well as there were many very sad topics. I told her a lot about the life in Europe and especially Switzerland and found it very sad that she will hardly ever get the chance to visit other countries, not even talking about Europe. Even travelling within the own country is difficult to arrange because money is always a very rare resource, even that she has a university degree, is fluent in English and really is a good teacher. But as a single mother with great responsibility, life is difficult in Bolivia. It felt strange me, a foreigner, telling her how Lake Titicaca was like, a place in her own country.

The traditional Bolivia is still a very macho-like country. It is considered as normal if a man beats up his wife. And even women tell each other that they have to endure the pain the husband distributes over the family. In traditional families the children learn their role already as a child. A boy is not expected in the kitchen and the daughters have to wash the clothes for their brothers too as the boys are told that they won’t need to wash, that’s the women’s role. And think: the washing is normally done by hand. Furthermore men won’t allow their wives to use contraceptives, because they fear their wife could sleep with other men. This logic and how the men would recognize their kids as their own ones and not anybody else’s remains a riddle for me. Fact is the men don’t allow their wives to have any kind of interests in other men while they take ever possibility to fuck around. The men beating up their wives and children are hardly ever punished by law as the police are corrupt and men will help men. (I want to point out that I also met a few great men that would never ever commit abuses.)

I heard examples of sexual abuse of children by fathers, uncles and other male family members and the delinquents would rarely ever have to pay for their life destroying deeds. It’s a vicious circle: How can a child, hardly educated and exposed to an environment in which they learn to suffer of violence and horror, ever grow up without having social behaviour problems themselves? There are many examples of fathers being a drinker or gone for other reasons so the family’s son of barely a teenage age need’s to organize the money for the family’s survival.

The list of social misbehaviour could be continued much longer, but when I looked at the young population in the cities I can recognize certain good signals. Young men and boys are staying in the kitchen and help in the household, carry their children through the streets without being ashamed and flattering their chosen girl. Looking at the young girls they don’t look like they’d accept any kind of suppression by their men. My observations have been confirmed by locals. It is still a painful long way to go but at least there is hope in the youth to change this old fashioned cruel role play.

Spanish school

One reason because I couldn’t spend much time on blog writing was that most of my homework consisted of writing a text, which I took seriously. A few masterpieces (with many mistakes though, later corrected together with my lector, Lourdes) were written during this time, including a Spanish translation of the Mani Matter song “Alpeflug”.

As I wrote before I really had a tremendous relationship not only with my teacher, whom I will be missing a lot, but with other teachers and students too. I really didn’t want to leave, assuming that I possibly will never come back (but I will, if I can arrange it). This is another very sad part of my travel to leave them behind. The risk of being stuck in Sucre was huge so luckily I had a fix departure date with GAP adventures and my deep wish to see the wonders of Patagonia too. And therefore after 4 weeks I needed to go. I’m also very much looking forward to meeting up with my best mate from home in early February in Santiago. Michelli, we’re going to rock it!

But I was about to write about the school. Beside various charity work, the school offered activities like cooking class (yes, I attended! Unbelievable, right?), a Christmas dinner on which they explained local traditions for the New Year (I know now why the girls all wear red underwear on New Year’s Eve, why there is so much false money around to be bought, why people are talking to the moon and counting their false money, why they pure wine on a model house of their dreams and why they put a cigarette into the mouth of a copper frog) and playing Wallyball. This is a volleyball like game in which some rules are adapted. You can use all body parts for playing and the walls can be used as well. It’s a very much fun game to play and you need to get away from the nice volleyball plays. By using the feet and smashing the ball to the wall the game offers many more playing alternatives. Because I liked it so much I successfully arranged some extra days for playing.

This is going to be a bit technical, but the effect of the classes to my Spanish knowledge is as follows: I can use the different paste senses in a more correct way and I realized the importance and the difference between them. I repeated the future and conditional senses, got into present and past Subjuntivo and the similar imperative (positive and negative). Just think that for the Subjuntivo past there are two different forms with equal signification. One is more spoken language, the other more written, but not only… Theoretically I now know or can build with my knowledge all the following tenses: 7 different past tenses (Preterito, Preterito imperfecto, Preterito perfecto, present perfect, past ferfect, subjuntivo imperfect in two ways and subjuntivo past perfect in two ways), 3 present tenses (present, subjuntivo present, subjuntivo present perfect), 3 future tenses (ir a + infinitive, future, future perfect) while the 2 future subjuntivo tenses I have not learned yet, 2 condicional forms (condicional, condicional perfect), 2 imperative forms (affirmative and netative) and of course the gerundio. This are just about 20 different tenses, and of course with irregular and partly irregular verbs and regular verbs with regular changes in certain persons and tenses (just a few examples for the first person singular of the verb preferir: prefiero (present), preferí (preterito), preferiré (future), prefiera (subjuntivo present)… you see the game with the e / i changes? There is lot more going on with o and u that sometimes changes and sometimes not… You can imagine that I sometimes (well, actually a lot) get totally confused. There are some verbs I can never get right!

See here the example of the regular verb amar:

Unfortunately, the conjugation of the verbs is not the only difficult thing in Spanish language, but I spare you now the details of this…

Swiss connections

Thanks to Kathrin, a Swiss girl living in Denver, who was in the same hostal, I finally came to the wonderful experience of eating Swiss Cheese and the highlight was when we made a fantastic Raclette for dinner! Well, besides my friends and the nature there is not really much that connects me unbreakable to Switzerland. But one thing I do long for: good cheese! I had so much cheese the last few days that I hope it gets me through the next 3 months… Oh, I messed up the potatoes for the Raclette: I kept boiling them for 1,5 hours because I just forgot them while I was drinking wine with others. With the ones we couldn’t use I made Walliser Röschti 2 days later.

Resume

The city of Sucre is nice but the amount of poverty and the lack of good restaurants with fair alternatives are the downsides of the city. But as so often, it’s the people, not the place that makes the difference. And for that I left a piece of my heart in sweet Sucre. Really!

Eiffel Tower at Parque Bolivar, where I used to run my laps

The road to school might be dirty and dangerous, but it was worth every day!

The complete team of teachers and me

PS: Special thanks to Lourdes, Yashira, Pippo, Vera, Kathrin, Melanie (whom I remet after the Jungle trip in Manu), Axel and Niklas and of course all the rest at FENIX and their friends! Miss you all!

Sucre 1: A fatal Juice (caution: this part contains nasty scenes)

In order to shorten the time until my final report about Sucre, here is a little story in between.

 

On a sunny afternoon after class I walked up the way to the Museo de la Recoleta because they have a view point over the city and, this is special, there is a restaurant too from which you can enjoy the view.  Once there, I decided to eat, even if it was a bit early, but they had a good reputation and it would safe me from the drag of finding an agreeable restaurant later or cooking. I argued a long time with myself whether I should order a beer or a fruit juice. You know, I love beer, but juices like here I won’t be able to get anymore once I’m out of here. So at last second I changed my decision to go for a beer into a pineapple juice with milk. The spaghetti with a cream sauce with nuts I didn’t find spectacular and the juice indeed tasted a little funny. But nevertheless, I drank it all and immediately ordered a big beer to get rid of the funny taste. But while I was with the last bits of the juice I started having cramps in my stomach. One reason more for staying and enjoying a beer. It would go away soon, I thought. I scarcely finished the first glass of beer when I realized the cramps hurt too much and I urgently needed the toilet. Hastily I collected my few things and ran to the toilet, apologizing for stealing precedence from another guy waiting before me.

 

After that business I dragged myself up to the cashier where I laid down at a sofa because the cramps were still very bad. The nice waitresses served me an anis tea which is supposed to be good for the stomach. I’d rather had a whiskey instead. But anyway, I had to run for the toilet a second time where I completely emptied my inside. After I was sure, there is nothing in me anymore, I dragged myself, a little bit relieved, up to the street again and I took the nearest taxi to bring me to my hostal. After lying down for about 5 minutes the spook was over and I felt very good again. It was the first time in South America I got stomach problems. Maybe I was lucky that it was so short, but it was very intense…

 

The moral of this story for me: never ever doubt your wish for a beer!

View from Recoleta

Climbing Parinacota (6342 meter)

After the great experience of climbing Cotopaxi in Equador, my eye fell on the volcano Sajama, with 6542 meter the highest peak in Bolivia. This would be a real climb. Technically not really difficult, but as it is so remote and not easy accessible, the climb would make a need for a base and a high altitude camp, total taking 3 or 4 days of hiking and climbing. No cheating like driving up just below the peak and only climb the last 4 or 5 hours up to the top.

Sajama

When I arrived in La Paz I was immediately starting my researches for the climb. I talked to a nice lady at the office of the certified mountain guides. Soon it was clear, the wet season would make the climbing of high mountains very difficult. It is possible, but the weather conditions are hardly predictable. I would need a time window of 4 good days to climb it, which seemed not realistic. She strongly recommended not doing it. Even to climb volcano Parinacota, also situated in the Sajama National Park, she did not recommend. Only Huayna Potosi, the 6088 meter peak just north of La Paz, which is climbed by tourists so often, she was keen to offer, not without mentioning, that the season now would not be perfect either. But as it is so easy accessable and you can drive up with the car almost to the top, it reduces its risk and its need for effort tremendously. Ok, not really what I wanted, but I could at least reach the 6000 meters mark, although the effort for reaching it would not praise its record. In the course of the conversation she told me about Christian, a Swiss guy that owned his own climbing shop in La Paz, the Andean Base Camp. Of course this was a huge opportunity for me to gather information in a more private way in my very own language.

I spent most of the next morning in Christian’s shop talking about mountains, La Paz, Bolivia and other useful things. He gave me many useful tips such as reliable weather forecast web pages for the mountains (and they predicted a great weather window for about 4 days, starting day after tomorrow), names of people who could help me on the spot, he borrowed me books of the Andes, explained the climbs I was considering and the conditions he expects at the moment and where to get my hiking shoes mended. Basically I came to him to rent equipment for climbing Huayna Potosi and he made me search my luck directly in the village of Sajama, often the base for all climbs in that remote national park. At least I finally bought a second hand exemplary of the Bolivian Lonely Planet from him, as I often thought it would come in handy not only to rely on the internet. It has happened in the past, the little information I wrote down from the internet as a preparation before I got into a new situation, turned out to be different and since I had no other notes, I was often kind of fucked. These were the moments I wished I had a Lonely Planet. Now I own my first Lonely Planet and it already served its purpose before I will sell it somewhere else again.

The next day, after a two hours regular bus and a 3 hours minivan ride through the terrific Bolivian Altiplano, but mostly in terrible weather, I arrived at Sajama village in the heart of Sajama National Park right at the Chilean border. The lady at the park registration told me it is impossible now to climb mountains. In the rain season conditions are bad and the guides are gone. I was consternated with the outlook of no climbing possibility, bad weather and with only one mini van ride per day to the 3 hours away junction in Patacamaya, where I could go back to the main routes.

I checked into the Sajama hostal and realized the whole village must normally be full of tourists as they are many hostals. But now there were only a handful of other visitors in this about 400 people village. 9 year old Larissa, fully capable of her duty, showed me my shed: basically equipped and no heating. On a level of 4000 meter above sea level this would mean very cold nights. But I was prepared for this. What do I expect in the mountains?

At dinner I talked to Larissa’s father, who turned out to be the village’s boss. He told me intimately he can organize me a climb. Sajama would not be feasible but my second choice, the 6342 meter Parinacota would be well possible. He confirmed the expected conditions which Christian already told me. All in all I got the feeling a climb now is more agreeable than in high season, during winter. In high season there is much more snow, the penitents are a drag and it’s bloody cold. We agreed to meet next day at 4 pm and by then he would have advised a friend, who would be my guide.

The night was frozenly clear and I was highly amazed to see how in the deep black sky there were millions of bright tiny spots. So far out there is absolutely no light pollution and the moon appeared only early in the morning. The result of this was an unbelievably fantastic screen of stars. This was one of the moments I wished I had a better camera in order to capture this. Nobody would believe this sight! The Milky Way (or “el camino de leche”, as it became a joke later, but possibly the expression is correct) smeared its interstellar cloud through an out of imagination high number of planets surrounding the stars.

And as the stars were predicting, the next day became a picture book like day. The full sight around at all 6000+ mountains with their crystal white caps could be taken from a postcard that was adjusted with photo shop. My look wandered over the Altiplano towards the volcano of which I was going to be an emperor and its neighbour, 6223 meter high Pomarape until my eye fell on a smaller mountain much closer. I decided to cross the Altiplano in the most direct way and climb this mountain and in two hours I should be nearly at the top. Of course I underestimated the distance of the flat part and I reached the bottom of the climb after two hours only. In order to be back by 4 pm, I couldn’t make it to the top. But see some pictures of this walk here:

Living and dead lama, both to be found in high quantities

Today’s goal

Sajama in the background

Left: Parinacota, right: Pomarape

After my return we fixed everything for the climb that night and I met my guide Mario. But later on I started to feel bad. I don’t know what it was; I didn’t have any headache or so. My body just kept shaking like I was freezing and I almost didn’t touch my dinner. These were not really good signs for a climb. At 8pm I decided to contact Mario to tell him, I couldn’t climb that night, so we agreed to see how it will be next day and postponed the climb for one day.

Next day I just kept on sleeping almost till noon and only after Lunch I started to feel better. I spent most of the afternoon sitting outside the village, looking over the llama populated altiplano and Parinacota, listening to music and reading. I felt much better then and confirmed to Mario we could go that night.

Mario picked me up at 2 am and we drove about one hour to the base camp at 4800 meter where we immediately started walking at 3.15h. It was an easy start and I felt very good. With the experience of Cotopaxi in mind, I was very confident about the climb. But at some point, I cannot exactly tell when, I started to get difficulties. First it was only a short break I needed to insist on, nothing I worried about. Then the brakes became more frequent till I found me breaking like every 20^th step. Little time later I caught me breaking after every 10^th step. I found this most remarkable. From doing a lot of sports I know how it feels like to be exhausted. Nevertheless, there is always a way to keep going, but here it was suddenly not possible anymore.  Even grabbing things out of the backpack were exhausting. There was no way I could keep myself going. Then I had to stop like after every 5 steps, leaning my head on my axe. The top has already been visible for a while. A small hill I would normally run up in very few minutes. But I had already seen it like this for an hour; it just didn’t get any closer. Meanwhile I took a break every 3 steps. I learned from books before that above a level of approximately 5500 meter the human body is not able to recover. When you’re exhausted you can only fix it by climbing down. Now I experienced this. The breaks I took were pure desire of air, but the breaks didn’t really help. Before I even did one step I was at the same state as before the break. I liked to get closer to observe the penitents that were just about 10 meters on the right of me. But I had to avoid any detour step because it took all my strength to go up. The top was so close but yet so impossible to reach. I seriously began to doubt I would make it. I started to understand why climbers need extra oxygen on high mountains and carry so much more weight with them. I longed for extra oxygen too and I felt so bloody slow. Mario was on the top waiting for me long before I got there, though he was only short distance ahead, just a mini sprint away under normal conditions.

Eventually after many more breaks and 6,5 hours of climbing I reached the top at 9.45am and lied down. But I still couldn’t recover. My lungs needed air, more air! That day, we were the only people on this mountain.

Mario close to the peak, but still soooo far away!

Sajama and crater in the back

The climbing time of 6,5 hours is hard to rate as climbers reported ascending times from 6 to 9 hours, always depending on the snow conditions. The descending took with the sliding technique I learned from Jaime in Ecuador only 2 hours.

A short word about Electricity: the electricity line was cut during two days during my 4 nights in Sajama. No electricity also meant no warm water for shower. After my return from the climb I took the coldest shower of my life! I guess you’ve heard me shouting even in Switzerland. But again: if no electricity is around, there’s nothing you can do and you have to deal with it. It works.

Next day I missed the only van a day at 5.30 in the morning to bring me out because I only woke up at 5.15. Fortunately I had an offer from a French girl and her private guide to join them in their car on the way out, starting at 8 o clock. So I took this possibility and the detour we made through the park to see some small lakes was really worth it. I suggest to you, if you ever go to Bolivia, don’t miss this National Park, even if you’re not interested in climbing. It’s one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been!

Flying flamencos

They dropped me off in Patacamaya where I caught a 2 hours bus to Oruro where I spent all afternoon before I caught the night bus to Sucre.

I will stay now some time in Sucre and tell you soon what I am doing here. Only so much: it’s a lot!

I thank you all for reading about my adventures! I wish you all Merry Christmas and a happy New Year!