Fourth stop - Valparaiso, Chile!

"Valparaiso, how absurd you are.. you haven't combed your hair, you've never had time to get dressed, life has always surprised you". These are the words of poet and Nobel Prize winner Pablo Neruda - describing the city of Valparaiso. The image below was taken from his study, on the top floor of his Valparaiso residence, now museum, "La Sebastiana":

Back in the 1800s Valparaiso was the leading merchant port on the shipping routes along Cape Horn and Pacific Ocean. If not THE most important city, foreign merchants and capital made it Chile's financial powerhouse back in the day. Disaster struck in 1906 when earthquakes destroyed most of the city. A few years later the Panama Canal opened, leaving Valparaiso as nothing but an expensive and exotic detour. Walking around downtown you can see buildings where construction started before the canal was opened and then just stopped, leaving everything unfinished.

As with La Paz the city is built on a hill. Houses are scattered on top of eachother, climbing steep hills up to the mountain top. One thing "Valpo" has that La Paz doesn't is the "ascencores" - elevators! The first one was built as far back as 1883 and used to run on steam. Now they are all operated on electricity but still fully functional. There are 15 of them in total spread around the city and believe me, after walking the streets and stairs for a while you'll understand why they were built.

We decided to go for one of the "Free" city walks (tour-for-tips) in Valparaiso. We met up at one of the plazas near the harbor and was greeted by screaming gay guide, Austin who wore a "Find Waldo" t-shirt for the occation. The tour started at the pier where we were shown how the shoreline used to be several hundred meters further inland - just like my home town Arendal before the channels were filled! From the pier it was also possible to rent one of many small boats if you fancy a little harbor cruise. I liked how owners not only named the boats after their wives and/or girlfriends, but that they also put "I love" in front of their name, expressing their feelings to the world:

Austin took us back and forth, up and down, and really gave us the grande tour of downtown Valpo. It is amazing with the street art that's everywhere in this city. Even the different steps of long staircases have paintings drawn on them. Food is good everywhere and priced quite reasonabely. We even managaed to find a pizzeria that showed english football, so I got to see Chelsea wipe the floor with West Ham Live! ..

After completing the city walk we decided to go visit Pablo Neruda's old house, La Sebastiana. I have never read any of his poems so to me he is somewhat unknown - but his house on top of the Bellavista hills was simply an amazing spot for taking photos of the Valparaiso harbour. I'm glad I had the wide angle lens on my camera this day as I got several really beautiful shots!

Lars decided to hit the sack early, and me and Chris rounded the day off with some Sushi at a local restaurant. This will be the last time ever I eat sushi on this continent. For some reason they use cream cheese as a compliment to rice on almost anything you order from the menu - making each bite quite the mouthfull. I was completely disgusted after eating a roll of 8 but they kept on coming. If you're into sushi - make sure you order sashimi or spesifically tell the cook NO CHEESE.

In 2003 Valparaiso was declared the cultural capital of Chile. Later UNESCO also gave it a World Heritage status, prompting the tourism to soar. I will probably never return to the status it once had as a financial powerhouse, but tourism is definitely putting Valparaiso back on the map. If you ever fly to Santiago I would strongly recommend leaving the place (like we did) and take the 2 hour bus-ride to Valparaiso. Much nicer city to walk around, much prettier, lots of culture and great food.

Speaking of food; Catering for european tourists they might want to tell the owners of this chain of fast food restaurants to change their logo. It would not pass in Norway and probably run into trouble in most other european countries as well. I must admit though, it made me laugh.:-)

Rapa Nui - the Easter Island!

Finally it was time to board the plane, taking us out in the middle of the pacific to one of the most remote inhabited islands in the world - Rapa Nui. Or the Easter Island as it was named after being discovered by Dutch admiral Roddenveen on Easter Sunday in 1722.

Studies of history claims there once lived as many as 15.000 people on the island, but the huge settlement  led to deforestation and depletion of natural resources, reducing the population to at least one third before it was discovered by the Europeans. They again managed to further reduce this down to just 111 by 1877. When the island came under Chilean administration in 1888 they decided to run it as a sheep farm, confining the 111 indigineous Rapa Nui to the area of Hanga Roa which is the main city of the island.

It wasn't until 1960 they regained access to the rest of the island and the sheep were taken away. Luckily, island life seems to be thriving and according to the 2012 census, Rapa Nui now has 5.800 inhabitants of which some 60% are decendants of the indigenous people. The people in the island are proud of their heritage and very interested in speaking to visiting foreigners and tell them about the island. We caught a show performed by a local dance group showing us some traditional dances:

We had three days to explore the Island. The first one was spent mainly around Hanga Roa, shopping for souvenirs and getting to know our way around the local area. As this village is the only somewhat dense populated area of the Island, navigating by foot became the prefered way of doing things. There are in total 2 ATMs on the Island, quite a few restaurants, and some tiny, charming "supermercados". And of course, everywhere there are souvenir shops - and dogs roaming the streets. :-)

The second day we booked a tour with our french hostess Morgana, who is a resident of the Island on her 7th year now. The number one sight on Rapa Nui is ofcourse the "moai" - the giant statues - that are spread all over the place in a number totalling almost 900. The biggest one that was never finished is as tall as 22 meters and would weigh approximately 1880 tons. Just HOW did the Rapa Nui manage to move these colossal things from the mountain where they were carved to the platforms they were erected? Noone knows for sure even to this date, though several theories are in place.

Morgana drove us west, to Rano Raraku - the volcano which was the "factory" for production of the moai. She told us about the history of the Island - about the "Long ears" and the "Short ears" - and the civil war. In the early days there were many tribes of the island, and each tribe had a system where there was a small group of nobles (long ears), and a large amount of servants (short ears). Apparently the short ears got fed up with making the statues for the long ears and started a riot, killing their masters and pushing most of the statues over, making them fall flat on their faces.

These days there are hundreds of archeological sites spread around the island, learning more and more about life in the early days. However, the very first expedition was led by none less than famous Norwegian Thor Heyerdahl back in 1955-56! Amongst other things his expedition erected one of the fallen statues which is still there today around Anakena beach on the north side of the island. We visited this moai too and it is well documented on our cameras. :-)

The second day we drove to the west side of the island, and the area of "Oronga" - home to the ritual of the cult of the bird men. The "Tangata manu" (bird-man) were chosen for one year at a time after winning a race in the annual ritual. The contestants would jump from a cliff, swim out to the small island of Motu Nui, collect an egg, and return it to shore. After winning, the Tangata manu was sacred for a period of 5 months and his tribe the first to harvest the years supply of bird eggs. The origin of the religion of tangata manu is uncertain, but it was wiped out by christian missionaries in the 1860s. Cave paintings, carvings and the islands itself still stand though and was worth a visit:

Morgana told us she fell in love with the island on her first visit, making her return for a proglonged stay of what was supposed to be 2-3 months. By now those few months have grown into 7 years and it doesn't look like she'll be leaving anytime soon.

For me I think the island life would be a little too simple. The island is to small to explore for a prolonged amount of time, and I guess I would grow restless pretty soon. That being said I absolutely recommend a visit to Rapa Nui as it was a beautiful and exotic place. You're good with 3 days to explore the sights, but add a week if you also like to do some diving which is said to be excellent here. We didn't have the time to try it out, but you'll never know. Maybe some day I too will return on my way to, let's say, Pitcairn Island!

El camino de la muerte - Death road

The North Yungas road is one of the very few routes that connects the Amazon with Bolivias northern region, and its capital La Paz. It was built in the 1930s by Paraguayan prisoners and was in 1995 named " world's most dangerous road" killing an average 2-300 people every year.

Lately the road has been modernized quite heavily with a new route that bypasses the northern most stretch which is considered to be the most dangerous part. This part, however, is still operational and has become a popular attraction for thrill-seeking mountainbikers like us.

Well aware of the fact that this road claims the lives of truck drivers and mountainbikers alike (last one just 3 years ago) we read the following on wikipedia before joining up for the trip: " During the rainy season from November through March, rain and fog can severely hamper visibility, and water runoff can turn the road into a muddy track, affecting traction. In the summer, rockfalls are common and vehicle dust limits visibility as well."

Our driver took us up(!) from La Paz to around 4.700 meters above sea level. This is the point where the extremely long downhill (64 kilometers, with only one short uphill section) starts. Dropping 3.500 meters down to just 1.200moh we were looking at quite a bit of possible speed and thrills along the way. Being given my bike at the top I decided to take it for a spin to get used to it - forgetting I was almost 5000 meters higher up than I use to be. Taking some ten minutes to stop panting like a dog after this tryout I realized it was a good thing gravity would assist my riding for the remainder of the trip..

Coming down a few kilometers we realized the forecast was indeed true. Fog and rain cramped our visibility quite heavily, and the road was a slippery pile of mud, making everything and everyone quite the mess as the bikes we rode had no mudflaps on either wheel. -But no problemo! There were also showers in place along the way to help us clean up a bit! :-D

Coming down a few more hundred meters the fog lifted and we had the opportunity to catch a glimpse of the absolutely magnificent view this road has to offer its travellers. I would never have gone on this trip as a passenger on any vehicle sans parachute, but as the rider of my own bike it was nothing but a pleasure. We stopped after about two thirds of the steepest part was done and had our lunch, soaking up the views of the path ahead and washing it down with the included RedBull energy drink our guides brought us. The commercial for this product claims to give wings to whoever drinks it.. we for sure could use that had any of us taken a left where there should be a right.

No one was harmed in the shooting of this photography. That being said, 20-something cyclists have apparently died on this track since 1998.

The last part of the track was not as steep as the beginning, and made us use the pedals a bit. As a bonus for the adrenaline junkies our main guide, Julio, provided the option of finishing off the very last part with a "single track" section opposed to go down the road. This single track was basically a path zig-zaging down the mountain side and into the forest. 4 of us decided to go for it. 1 fell quite a bit (but was luckily unharmed).

Would I like to go again? For sure! Do I recommend other travelers to La Paz  to take this trip? Absolutely! Hopefully you'll have more luck than we did with the weather on the first part, but this also added something extra in its own way so I was absolutely happy with it.

As a farewell gift we were each given the "I survived death road" souvenir t-shirt. I've wanted one of these since I met Mike from Ireland in Ecuador around two years ago, wearing one. :-)

Next stop we will leave the continent and fly out in the middle of the pacific to visit Rapa nui, or "Easter Island" as it's more commonly known in the western world. So far so good - I assume this visit will be just as exciting, though in a different way, than the Yungas road.

Thanks for having us, Bolivia. This was so far the highlight of this trip for me!

Third stop - Bolivia!

Flying in to the worlds highest placed capital, La Paz, is quite spectacular. It isn't among the most frequented of places so flying there from Asuncion had us change planes once and touch the ground twice in order to get there. Bit of a bumpy ride, but everything went fine. I was even lucky enough to get a shot of the airport flying in!

The cameras came out quickly when we touched the ground, but a very excited cab driver told us to wait - he was going to stop the car for us where the really good view were and man was he right. La Paz is situated at 3.600meters above sea level, making just walking around a tough exercise for us low-landers. It's placed in a valley with houses climbing to the side of the mountain all the way down to the city center in the middle. The airport is placed on the plateau above the city, thus making the drive downtown quite impressive:

Bolivias capital bear marks that this country is not yet amongst the richest in the world. It is extremely narrow, and things are built on top of eachother, showing that nothing was really planned here. It just expanded as more people moved in. Inch by inch. This ofcourse is the root to quite a bit of trouble getting around downtown, but for a tourist it makes things even more interesting and exotic. Our hostel, The Wild Rover, was located in a nice spot in the city center:

At 3.600meters above sea level even the simplest of tasks can be a bit of work for us sea-dwellers. Just holding your breath while taking a picture resulted in some serious panting and breathing, and walking stairs proved to be quite the challenge. Oxygen is really a luxury item up here and it took a while to get used to it. I'm not even sure we all got quite used to it the three days we spent up here. One of the days we even went all the way up to 4.700meters, but that's for another blogpost. :-)

Some claim La Paz can be a dangerous city, but as with most things in life I'd say you'll go a long way using your common sense. The three of us never lost track of each other and stuck as a group. At the hostel the first night we met two Dutch girls, 19 year old, out on their first big trip. The second day we met one of them wandering around the handicraft market downtown looking for her friend that she couldn't find. "She does this all the time". Now that is NOT a good display of common sense, girls.. I really hope they found back to eachother.

I cannot recommend the Wild Rover Hostel in La Paz. It is big, yes. The beds are excellent yes. They have their own "travel agency" inside that's very convenient when booking events for sure - but it is all so superficial. So very tourist-y. Even the employees are young people from europe and USA, earning some money to prolong their backpacking vacation. I liked our hostels a lot better in both Paraguay or Uruguay. This place was more like an american spring break and didn't give me the feeling of being far, far away.

The first thing that struck me something was odd was this door I passed INSIDE the hostel on my way around after we arrived on (apparently Sinful - they have theme nights) - saturday:

Apparently, every month when they had this "Sinful saturday" they turned the TV-room into a tatto parlor. The place come of as very strict about rules and regulations, but this was something that must've slipped under the prying eye. Here was no check for ID, no voucher to fill out, no nothing. Observing quite tipsy boys in their early twenties wander into this room just to return an hour later with some "incredible funny" thing tattooed on their bum was a bit discomforting. Perhaps I'm (finally?) starting to grow up?

What was that, growing up? - Oh come on! Not to worry:

Sorry mom - I wanted a souvenir. It is small. :-P

The second day of our stay in Bolivia turned out to be quite the thrill. I will put this in another post on the blog - hopefully within the next 24 hours. The days are quite full though, and little time is left to do things like this. Topped with Internet being as scarce a resource as Oxygen in La Paz things prove to be more difficult than first anticipated.

Right now I sit in the lobby of our hotel in Hanga Roa on Rapa Nui (Easter Island) in the middle of the pacific ocean. We have been walking around all day looking at big heads, and that put Lars and Chris in a coma for a few hours - giving me the opportunity to get this blogpost done. Now it's time to get moving though as we have tickets for a show in 30 minuts showing the traditional dance of the island. I'm told to expect something like the Maori of New Zealand and is quite excited about it.

So far so good - Chris has some stomach problems and I've lost a (cheap) hat. Other than that it's just smooth sailing so far. :-)

Second stop - Paraguay!

Our hostel now has a rooftop terrace! And a pool! Yay! But before getting over-excited, take a look at the following pictures. Some times they indeed say more than a thousand words. That being said, I tried both of the facilities and found them to be very to my satisfaction. hehe

There's a lot of history in Paraguay. The capital - Asuncion - is one of the oldest cities in South America, and the longest continually inhabited area on the continent. It is reachable from the atlantic by ships and this was how it was first founded all the way back in 1537 by Spanish conqueror Juan de Salazar.

Rapidly growing both in population and economy, Paraguay now houses in excess of 6.5M people, where the capital is around the size of Oslo but rises to 2,3M if you count the metro area.

Not being a very touristy destination we didn't plan for more than a two night stop-over in Paraguay, and as far as the capital goes this proved to be more than enough. While other cities take several days to explore, Asuncion was done in around two hours - including museums! Reading up on things it seems there are things we should've seen and done in other parts of the country but that has to be for round two. :-)

I didn't take too many pictures here as there was not really too much to see. One thing that was kind of funny was taking a picture of the presidential palace (after permission was given by one of the many armed guards):

..for then to turn around 180 degrees from the exact same spot where I took the picture, to find this on the other side of the street (no permission needed to shoot pictures this time):

Tomorrow two planes will take us via 3 stops from Asuncion to La Paz in Bolivia - the highest placed Capital of the world at 3600 meters above sea level. The weather forecast is rain and thunderstorms so I reckon it'll be an absolutely awesome experience. :-|

But to all you fellow travellers who are curious to go to Paraguay - do it. The people are friendly and helpful, it's completely safe (at least for men around 6') to walk around, and it is very, VERY cheap. The food is excellent - and again, VERY cheap. I would for sure not lead a healthy lifestyle had I been living here for too long. hehe

Final fun-fact: Paraguay was also the first of all the countries on the continent to gain its independence back in 1811. And quite right, that makes it older than Norway. ;-)

Montevideo - Capital of Uruguay

Uruguay is a relatively small country with approximately 3.3M inhabitants, where roughtly 1,8M of these live in the metropolean area of Montevideo. Going by bus from slumbering Colonia it was quite a different city that met us upon arrival at the central bus station. We had two full days to finish mapping the city and tried making the best of it.

The first day was spent wandering around the old part of the city next to the downtown area where our hostel was placed. As in every other city most of the sights and historical monuments/buildings are found in the old part of town and Montevideo was no exception. Uruguay's oldest church lies in Colonia, but they had a pretty magnificent cathedral here as well, coupled with some nice small parks, plazas and sculptures. The highlight of the day however must've been our visit to "Mercado del Puerto" - a wrought-iron superstructure sheltering a gaggle of restaurants, all of whom are steakhouses and BBQ joints. Carnivore galore! :-D

Later in the afternoon we head out to an Irish pub that was recommended for Live music, and indeed there was a band playing. Or, "Dos Guitarres" (two guitars) was really what it was. Two guys playing guitar and singing. But they were good - and it was great. And! We met our first Norwegian on our trip here - Olav, hello!

Walking the city center and sights for 7 hours we felt well and done with this on day two so we looked up different "what to do when in Montevideo" lists and found that the number one recommendation everywhere was to go visit one or more of the wineyards surrounding the city in the more rural area. Placing a couple of phone calls put us on the direction of Bodega Bouza which turned out to be a very good recommendation!

What I liked especially well with this wineyard was that it also housed a museum of old cars and motorbikes as the owner's number one hobby was to buy old veichles and restore them to mint condition. Quite a few lookers in his worksohop! I liked this old truck as well - complete with vintage wine-barrels. :-)

First stop - Uruguay!

Getting to Urugay was quite the trip. We flew from Oslo to Amsterdam where we switched planes to cross the Atlantic to South-America. First stop was Sao Paulo in Brazil where we had to wait 8 hours for the connecting flight to Argentina. Normally I'm not too fond of long stopovers, but the time we had in Sao Paulo gave us enough time to grab a taxi to a shopping mall nearby where they had a Hooters restaurant. Great time, great meal.

Arriving in Buenos Aires we drove straight to the ferry terminal and took the ferry across the border to Uruguay and the old smugglers port of Colonia del Sacramento. Our first stop of the trip! 2 continents, 4 cities and 5 new stamps in the passport in one day took its tall on the travellers and Chris and Lars were quick to examine the sheets of the bunkbeds closely upon arrival in Colonia. -Oh, and as most spanish style houses normally have a back garden - so had our hostel. So nice! :-)

Colonia is on UNESCOs world heritage list and a typical "colonial style" old spanish village. Getting around was best done by golf-carts(!) that were available for hire all over the place. As backpackers we naturally used our feet at all times though I must admit it was tempting to rent one..

The two nights in Colonia passed quickly without too much to do really. Taking pictures is fun to a certain point and beside eating, photography is about the only other thing to do to pass time in Colonia. A great place to grow old I guess - but I'm not quite there yet. ;-)

Antarktis! The final frontier!

Da var vi i gang igjen! Denne gangen er det verdens (for min del) aller siste kontinent som gjenstår å utforske - Antarktis. Det blir som vanlig en relativt heseblesende tur hvor en forflytter seg over 3 kontinenter og 7 land i løpet av en måneds tid, men jeg tror det skal bli vel verdt det.

Turen går via et par-tre mellomstasjoner til Colonia Del Sacramento på kysten av Uruguay, en by hvor den eldre delen av bebyggelsen faktisk er på UNESCO's liste over ting man skal ta litt ekstra vare på. Vi blir der i utgangspunktet én natt før vi drar videre til hovedstaden Montevideo og så er vi i gang. Først flyr vi til Paraguay og hovedstaden Asuncion (kjent blant flere som Sør-Amerikas minst turistvennlige land..). Derfra flyr vi til Bolivia og hovedstaden La Paz som er verdens høyest beliggende by! Planen er å sykle ned El Camino de la Muerte (dødens vei) og ellers se hva som finnes av moro før vi drar til Chile og Santiago.

Fra Santiago er det noen timers flytur ut på Påskeøya hvor vi vil tilbringe et par netter, før vi returnerer til Chile og senere til Argentina og Buenos Aires. Til sist flyr vi sørover til verdens sørligste by, Ushuaia, hvor en båt står klar til å ta oss over kapp-stredet ned til Antarktis hvor vi skal seile langs kysten et par dager og gå i land på kontinentet for noen døgn i telt (og hakk i kniv/pistol/fyll-inn-selv skjeftet) før vi returnerer til Norge om alt går som det skal.

Vi drar tidlig i morgen tidlig, og går alt etter planen er vi vel hjemme i Norge på ettermiddagen mandag 9. desember. Det kan være det blir skrevet på engelsk underveis ettersom jeg siden sist har fått noen internasjonale følgere av bloggen, men det at det blir innlegg i det hele tatt fordrer naturligvis at det finnes dekning underveis. Uansett er det noen kilo fotoutstyr med på turen så bilder skal det være nok av når vi er vel hjemme. Carpe Diem! :-)

Her er en mer detaljert oversikt over turen:

Og den Antarktiske delen:

Afrika.. what can I say. :-|

Her er vi, dagen før dagen i det vi er i ferd med å sette avgårde på neste runde og jeg har enda ikke lagt inn et ord fra mine opplevelser på det sorte kontinentet.

Vel, saken er den at Afrika er ikke helt DER enda hva digital infrastruktur angår (ikke fysisk infrastruktur i stor grad heller så det er sagt), så det var simpelthen umulig å få utrettet stort på verdensveven der nede fra. Og, så fort jeg kom hjem, så gikk verden videre.

Når det er sagt er Afrika et kontinent uten sammenlikning. Nå har jeg riktignok enda ikke vært på samtlige kontinenter i verden enda - men jeg har så langt vært på samtlige kontinenter hvor det finnes fastboende mennesker. Og av disse er Afrika helt annerledes. Jeg rakk kun innom Kenya og Tanzania på min første tur dit, men det gav absolutt mersmak. Sjelden har jeg følt meg som en oppdager på samme måte som jeg gjorde i Afrika. Naturen var storslått, menneskene varme og imøtekommende, og opplevelsene utallige.

Jeg skriver denne posten fordi jeg ikke vil la turen fly forbi uten en kommentar, og om noen vil ha utdypende historier er det bare å spør. En ting som er spesielt med turen til Afrika i forhold til andre jeg har vært på er at jeg har vært utenlands 2 ganger og besøkt mennesker jeg traff underveis samtidig som jeg også har hatt besøk i Norge 2 ganger av andre. Deler man Afrika så deler man noe eget. Ta turen og se for deg selv - jeg garanterer du ikke blir skuffet. :-)