Iguazu and back to Cochabamba

Buenos Aires was almost the last part of my little roundtrip. From there I took the bus to the north to Iguazu at the border to Paraguay and Brazil, with its magnificent waterfalls...it's hard to find words to describe this experience, so just have a look at the pictures :-)

distant view of Foz do Iguazu

Here you could aproach the falls to 2-3 meters and get completely wet...that's fun :-)

Parque nacional de Iguazu

On top of the falls

Wow!!!

After one day in Iguazu, I headed homewards to Cochabamba. Actually I wanted to stay in Asuncion for one or two days, but I've heard that there were heavy rainfalls in Bolivia and some of the roads might be impassable. Therefore I decided to go straight back to Bolivia, which meant crossing Paraguay all at once from the south-east to the north-west, which took about 30 hours. From the Bolivian border, it was another 10 hours to Santa Cruz, where I arrived at 9 pm, just in time to buy the very last ticket for the night bus to Cochabamba. After a total of 56 hours in the bus, I finally arrived at the Bus terminal in Cochabamba...

Can you imagine how pleasant it is to drive on
such a road for more than 10 hours?

Cochabamba bus terminal...after 56 hours on the road

Crossing the border to Bolivia

Buenos Aires

The boat trip from Colonia to Buenos Aires took a bit more than an hour. It is really impressive when the skyscrapers of the puerto madero come closer and closer. Buenos Aires is the most 'European' of all cities I have seen so far. Many buildings from the 19th century are strongly influenced by french architecture. I found an inexpensive hostel in the city center which was, however, pretty noisy. At the first night I went to a Tango show of the Complejo Tango, which also included some tango classes. I learned the Cruzada, the Ocho and how to pose with a 'Tango face' :-) The subsequent show was fun with good music and excellent dancers, however a bit too touristic, not as natural as the people you see occasionally dancing tango in the streets.
In the hostel I met more chilean people, Gabriel and Carla from the La Serena region...that's great, more people to visit during my trip to Chile in April :-) We spent an afternoon together in Recoleta and the beautiful parks of Palermo.
Unfortunately, the 4 days in Buenos Aires went by way too fast, I could have stayed one or too weeks more. On my last day I did a historical walking tour through the center of Buenos Aires. Two political science students brought tourists to historically important places of the city.
The Plaza 25 Mayo, where the 'Madres de Plaza de Mayo' - mothers whose children disappeared during the military dictatorship in the 70ies - have been meeting every thursday, from 1977 up to now, to commemorate their children and claim to know what was their fate,
the Casa Rosada, the pink hous, from where Eva Peron was talking to the people in the 1940ies, or some courtyards in San Telmo, where European immigrants were the first to dance Tango, back in the 19th century. A really informative tour, I learned a lot about the last 70 years of Argentinean history...

Uruguay

Beach Resort of Punta del Este 

From Rio I took a flight to Uruguay, where I stayed for about 1 week. My first destination was Punta del Este. Normally Punta del Este is  full of partying students, but in the end of february, in the late season, it was quite calm. It was also much colder than Rio, so I got a bit too careless with sunscreen at the beach. The result was a huge sunburn on my back...ouch...
My next stop in Uruguay was Montevideo, where I got the first contact with Tango, which originated here in the estuary of the Rio de la Plata. Whether on this side in Montevideo or on the other side of the Rio in Buenos Aires is still heavily debated. There are plenty of cafes and bars in the alleys of downtown Montevideo, where bands play tango music and the guest are dancing on the streets.

Downtown Montevideo

Mercado del Puerto, Montevideo

The last stop, before i crossed the river to the argentinian side was Colonia del Sacramento, an old contrabandist town from where the British and the Portuguese were smuggling all kinds of goods to the spanish territory at the other side of the river. Going to Colonia is like traveling back in time. Beautiful ancient houses, narrow cobblestone streets with antique cars.

Streets of Colonia del Sacramento

Brasil 2

Ipanema Beach 

The 3 days in Rio were great, but way too short. I spent most of my time (both days and nights) at Ipanema beach, at 35-40ºC the only reasonable thing to do. Unlike Copacabana, the beach of Ipanema is really safe even at night, and after midnight temperatures drop to 25-30ºC which makes it really plesant to sit there and have a beer or in my case some Pisco. In the hostel I met Carlos and Macarena from Santiago de Chile, who brought a few bottles of this brandy-like Chilenean national drink. This caused some heated discussions with Martín from Lima, who claimed that the only original Pisco is the Peruvian one...obviously the import of Chilenean Pisco to Peru is forbidden (and vice versa)...
I met some more people with the same ATM problem, which made me confident that my debit card was ok.

Laguna and the top of the sugar loaf mountain seen from Rocinha 

Rocinha

On my third day I decided to do Marcelo Armstrong's Favela tour. In the early 90ies Marcelo was the first one to offer tours through some of the almost 1000 favelas, with the goal to show people that favelas are more than drugs and crime. We visited Rocinha and Vila Canoas in the south of Rio, close to Ipanema and Copacabana with magnificent views on the laguna and the sugar loaf mountain...
Rocinha is the largest of Rio's favelas and, according to the tour guides, very safe as long as you don't take pictures of the people. They might work for the drug mafia and in this case they would not be very amused to be photographed.
Vila Canoa is one of the richer favelas. Due to a government program, which started in 2005, most of the kids can go to school, all houses have electricity and TV and the unemployment rate is around 10%.

TV and electricity supply for Rocinha 

Alltogether it was a great tour, very interesting and informative...I can only recommend this tour to everyone who is coming to Rio...and the best: two third of the 75 Reals you pay go directly to school projects for favela kids

Brasil

After 6 weeks in Bolivia, it is now time to start my first longer journey through South America...
I've been in Sao Paulo for 2 days now, and at the moment I am at the bus terminal waiting for the night bus to Rio...
It was quite a big change from the placid small town of Cochabamba to the monstrous city of Sao Paulo with its almost 20 Mio inhabitants...today i spent the afternoon on a little hill in the Vila Madalena neigbourhood, and no matter in which direction you're looking, nothing but houses and skyscrapers until the horizon...
I got a little shock when I arrived, because none of the ATMs in town accepted my debit card, so I spent half of my first day here in the financial district and tried at 10 different banks, without success...and the friendly guy at the UBS Card helpline told me that it is not possible to send a new card to South America...
Back at the hostel, a closer look into my Lonely Planet revealed that Brazilian ATMs traditionally have problems with foreign cards, so there's still hope that it is not a problem of my card but of the Brazilian ATMs...I'll find out in 5 days when I continue my travel to Uruguay. Nevertheless I decided not to eat at the restaurant tonight, but rather buy bread and cheese in the supermarket, so save my cash reserves...
I'll arrive in Rio tomorrow morning at 6 am, I haven't reserved a hostel, but I hope I'll find something inexpensive near Ipanema or Copacabana beach...some pictures will follow soon...

Weekend trip to Inkachaka

2 weekends ago Sandra and me spent 2 days at the Incachaca national park, about 100km or 2 hours from Cochabamba. Getting there turned out to be not as straight forward as we had expected. Since the park is property of the local electricity supplier, ELFEC, we needed to go there and ask for a permission. However, at ELFEC nobody seemed to know about Incachaca. Instead we were sent from one office to the other until - it must have been in the 10th office or so - someone told us that ELFEC is no longer responsible for Incachaca, since several months already. Fortunately they could provide us with the new adress where we finally got the permission.
The 2h trip, first by bus and then by taxi, was quite exciting, because obviously in Bolivia oncoming traffic  isn't a reason not to overtake...
It was about 6 pm when we arrived at the entrance of the park, where we were welcomed by two policemen They seemed to be quite interested in who we were, where we came from, how long we're going to stay etc. I'm not sure if they took their job very serious or if they were just bored and happy for some company, because at this time of the year - during the rain period - there were not so many visitors, and checking visitors for their permissions seemed to be their only duty...
They told us we could either camp here, in the garden of the police station or next to a small pine forrest about 30 minutes from here. Since it was still more than an hour until nightfall, we decided to walk to the pine forrest, where we set up our tent next to an idyllic lake amidst grazing cows and horses (and blood thirsty mosquitos as we found out a bit later...).

We were waked up quite early the next morning, by some cows nibbling on our tent. The nearby river with its crystal clear and ice cold water was ideal for a refreshing morning bath. After breakfast, we started our hiking trip through the semi-tropical forests. Our first goal was an old suspension bridge over a deep, narrow gorge, the famous Inca Bridge. I could not help whistling the Raider's March Theme when I was walking across the bridge, even though Indy might have crossed the bridge a bit faster and more elegantly, and without shaking legs ;-)

The view from the bridge, however, was amazing…30-40m down to the rapids of the Alisu Mayu River…wow!!!

We continued our way uphill to an old tumbledown power plant, which used to be the first hydroelectric power plant in the Cochabamba region. From there we descended to the "Devil's Throat" and further to the "Baño de la Ñusta", the bath of the Inca Princesses. In the past it used to be possible to jump into the Devil's throat and slide down to the Princesses' bath, but nowadays it is too dangerous, so the devil's throat is closed.

We were back at the police station at around 3 pm had some sandwiches for lunch and a little chat with the obviously totally bored policemen, before we headed back to Cochabamba. At home I realized that my arms and neck were completely sunburned, even though we spent most of the time in the forests and despite sunscreen with protection factor 50...

Lake next to the camping site

Grazing horses

Morning Bath

Cholita on the Bridge

Indy on the Bridge

Inca Bridge

Not quite Indy on the Bridge

Devil's Throat

Worshiping Pachamama

The first friday of the year is a special day in Andean culture...it's the day of celebrating Pachamama, the Mother Earth - in fact Pachamama is subject of various celebrations throughout the year, but the first friday of the year is one of the most important ones.
We started the evening at La Troje, a bar and cultural center a bit outside the city of Cochabamba. One of the rituals of these celebrations involves chicha, a traditional drink going back to the ancient Incas, made of fermented maize. With its beige-yellowish color it did not really look very moth-watering and the first sip absolutely confirmed this impression, but due to the traditional way of drinking chicha you can't avoid having more of it. Chicha is normally served in a huge mug, together with one or two smaller cups. One person fills the small cup dipping it into the mug, says 'saludo' to somebody else in the group, spills a few drops on the ground, as donation to Pachamama, and drinks up. Afterwards he refills the cup, offering it to the person he was saluting before and the whole procedure starts from the beginning...
Once you're offered chicha, refusing is not an option, so you can't avoid having more and more of it, and with each cup it actually gets better and better...
The drinking ritual was interrupted occasionally, when a band of around 10 drummers and panflutists entered the place and everybody started dancing. In the beginning I had some difficulties moving my stiff German hips to the traditional rhythms, but the chicha helped me solving these problems very quickly.
The evening ended downtown Cochabamba in "La pimienta", one of the hippest clubs in town, with somewhat more modern rhythms and melodies...

New year's eve and the Gasolinazo

For new year's eve, we were hesitating between a trip to Cuzco in Peru or to Copacabana at the shore of the lake Titicaca...we finally decided to go to Copacabana since it was only a 12h bus trip while the trip to Cuzco would have taken more than 20h. So we went buying the bus tickets on Tuesday 28th...8 hours to La Paz in a (hopefully) comfortable night bus and another 4 hours from La Paz to Copacabana.

Unfortunately president Evo Morales had announced the abrupt stop of the subsidies for gasoline on Christmas, resulting in an almost 100% increase of the gasoline prices. He was probably hoping that the people, being in calm and peaceful christmas mood, would not mind a lot. His plan seemed to work the first days after Christmas, on Wednesday 29th, however, the atmosphere on the streets changed and people started rioting and fighting with the police. Moreover the busdrivers all over the country went on strike, which meant that we had to bury our plans for new year's eve...

Instead of Copacabana, we finally went to "El Poncho", an eco restaurant, serving only organic food, situated in the hills outside Cochabamba with a wonderful view on the city...we really had a lot of fun, with bolivian music and dances all the night, and a shaman praying to Pachamama, the Mother Earth, and giving us good spirits for the new year.
At 6 a.m. they finally served Fricase as breakfast, a speciality from La Paz. It is a very spicy pork stew served with corn and Chuños - small, black, dehydrated potatoes. As I've been told, Fricase is a very popular hangover cure in Bolivia, often eaten early in the morning after a party. Afterwards the restaurant shuttle brought us back to the city from where we took a taxi home. As soon as we entered the taxi, the driver turned around telling us with a big smile on his face: "Hey folks, have you already heard heard? The Gasolinazo is over. The government will continue subsidizing gasoline and the prices will stay as low as they used to be..."

Bolivian Christmas

Cristo de la Concordia

Hills around Cochabamba

View from inside Cristo

I was a bit worried of spoiling Sandra's christmas celebrations, arriving christmas eve at 9 pm making her leave home and pick me up at the airport. But I was worrying for no reason, cause obviously Bolivian Christmas starts christmas eve at midnight. So we had dinner around 11 pm - pollo al horno, oven roasted chicken with corn and potatoes, yummy - and at the stroke of midnight we were wishing each other feliz navidad with a combination of hug and handshake…first a handshake, then a hug followed by a second handshake…it took a while until each of us had hug-handshaked everybody. Afterwards we had a glass of champagne and gave the presents…got a nice bolivian sweater from Sandra, which will be very useful for my trips to the Andes or to Patagonia :-)

I went to bed quickly after that, cause I was quite exhausted after my 24hr trip...

Christmas day started very calm, I slept until lunchtime, in the afternoon we went downtown for a walk…along Prado, a broad avenue and the main axis of the city center with lots of bars, cafes and restaurants, to Plaza Colon and further on to Plaza 14 de Septiembre with the beautiful cathedral from the 17th and early 18th century.

The day after I had the pleasure to try one of the regions specialities: Las Planchitas originales (siempre imitados, nunca igualados)…a blending of beef, chorizo, potatoes,eggs, onions and bananas, all fried together in a ca. 20 times 40 cm rectangular pan…really delicious…I would say a must for everybody visiting Cochabamba…

At the end of the christmas weekend, we made a little trip up to the "Cristo de la Concordia", a statue of Christ on top of the San Pedro hill, about 300m above the city of Cochabamba at an elevation of almost 3000m. With its height of 34 meters it is a few meters taller than its more famous brother in Rio de Janeiro. It used to be the tallest in the world, until November 2010, when the 36m tall "Pomnik Chrystusa Krola" was built in the polish city of Swiebodzin. From up there you really have a magnificent view on the city and the surrounding hills and mountains. The highest of them are around 5000 m high…I absolutely have to climb one of these mountains one day…