Two nights was just about how much we could take, but it was an experience. During the days you could just laze around the pool and in the night you could head out to the party area where you find lots of night clubs and restaurants. And before you enter the night club you can spend a few hours at the outdoor disco to where you can buy all you can drink tickets and watch people get ridiculously drunk, dance on the bar counter and be sprayed with all kinds of glitter and balloons that rain down from the ceiling. Of course the same all you can drink ticket applies in the night club where you can watch drunken Americans dance sexy dance with each other on an uplifted dance floor, watch them take off their shirts when the guy in the song tells them to, and follow the occasional performance by different acrobats, break-dance artists and fire jugglers.

Well, it has been an adventure and it has been fun. We have seen more than we could ever have dreamed of and done things we never thought could be possible. But now it is time to go home. The thought of -5 degrees and snow doesn’t sound too appealing when sitting here in the sun and the 30 degree heat, but what can you do...
Home is still sweet home

---------------------------------

What happens in Cancun stays in Cancun remains copyright of the author AnnaMickus, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

Comment on this entry | Tweet this | Your own free travel blog | More Travellerspoint blogs

This was the perfect place to spend a few days before returning to Cancun. The weather has been perfect: blue and sunny skies almost nonstop, so we have cruised around in a golf cart, lazed on the beach, eaten some good food and had some cold beers most of the time. As I have said before; the life of the traveller can sometimes be soooo hard...

---------------------------

Last glimpse of Paradise remains copyright of the author AnnaMickus, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

Comment on this entry | Tweet this | Your own free travel blog | More Travellerspoint blogs

What the hell!!? Isla Mujeres was far more developed than we expected. Loads of American tourists stumbling drunk around, it looked like we had arrived to Disneyland. Our hearts sunk and in a depressed mood we went to bed. The next morning we thought maybe it will be better in the sun light and we thought we’d give the island a chance. So we rented a golf cart and headed out to explore the island in search for a nice secluded spot where we could spend our final days, away from all the touristy madness that was going on in the main village. Wow did we get disappointed! Driving in the golf cart it felt like we were only a wagon in a long train. Every other hillbilly on the island had also got the same idea as us to rent a golf cart and ’explore’ the island. We just thought; we got to get off this island as fast as possible. This wasn’t how we had pictured our last week in paradise to be. As we were doomed to stay another night on the island we then headed for the famous north beach for a drink. The beach was packed, like mackerels in a can of tuna. Well best to just grab something to eat and hit the sack so that we could get up early and catch the first ferry away from this hell hole.

---------------------------

Another tourist trap remains copyright of the author AnnaMickus, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

Comment on this entry | Tweet this | Your own free travel blog | More Travellerspoint blogs

The first days we took it easy, cruising around in Patrick’s golf cart and smelling the sweet fumes of crack that was rising from the shacks in the poorer part of town and sitting on the pier at a bar called Lazy lizard sipping down beers. Talking about lazy, we have become so lazy that nothing interests us apart from chilling out with a cold beer. Fishing? Nooo! Snorkelling? Nooo! Go on day trips? Nooo! Dive the world famous blue hole? Nooo! Have another beer? YEEES! One can tell that 14 months of travelling is taking its toll.

Suddenly we met John and Kristen that we had already met at Tobacco Caye

At one point while having delicious sea food we met a Finnish family that were travelling around, a bit of chit-chat, cool hadn’t seen any Finns for a while. Sitting at the Lazy lizard there was another Finnish couple. Walking back from the Lazy lizard we met another couple from Finland. Coming back to our hotel 2 Finnish guys had checked in! What the hell, we have met more Finns in Caye Caulker than we have during our whole time of travelling. Of the 5 rooms at our hotel, 3 were occupied by Finns at some point. It has been fun to have a bit of suomi ’meininki’, that is sitting in peace and drinking spirits!

Some of the Finns gathered

In the end, what did we do on Caye Caulker? Nothing apart from eating lobster and drinking beer!

---------------------

Caye Caulker remains copyright of the author AnnaMickus, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

Comment on this entry | Tweet this | Your own free travel blog | More Travellerspoint blogs

After spending a night in Dangriga we took a boat to Tobacco Caye that lies a bit out from the mainland. We hadn’t met anybody before who had been here, but somehow we felt that it could be a nice place. And oh, how right we were! Tobacco Caye is a small island that sits in the end of a huge coral reef in the Caribbean Sea. And by small I mean small: you can walk around it in like 4 minutes. It is surrounded by crystal clear turquoise water and it is covered by soft white sand, palm trees, a few hotels and restaurants, 2 bars and friendly people. If you want to see underwater life you just put on your mask and snorkel and swim out and you’re almost immediately encountered by colorful fish and coral. Patrick, one of our new friends who is also staying on the island even saw a shark the other day. It came so close that he peed in his speedos.

So what can you do on an island this small? Well nothing much; just relax, have a beer, swim, do some snorkelling, relax, have a beer... And when the evening comes the cute little bar at the beach opens so you can go there and listen to some Caribbean music and relax and have a beer...The other night there was almost like a small party going on at the bar and we got to learn how to dance the Garífuna dance. It is quite a dance, I tell you. If I had to choose one word to describe it, it would be ’sexual’. The thing you do is move your butt in a circle and rub it against the opposite gender. It is all in the hips! And as the music gets faster you move your hips faster and at some point the girl puts her hands against the floor and her butt up in the air while still moving the hips. And you can guess she isn’t dancing alone; of course there is a guy behind her shaking his hips. Well, don’t worry guys, we’ll teach you everything when we get home .

We have enjoyed each day in this fantastically sunny weather relaxing, swimming and mingling with people. We have made new friends from fellow travellers who also have been lucky enough to find this place. Every day we have eaten fresh seafood and drunken cold beers in the sun. You could almost call it paradise.

We got engaged on Tobacco Caye 27.1

------------------------

Paradise Island remains copyright of the author AnnaMickus, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

Comment on this entry | Tweet this | Your own free travel blog | More Travellerspoint blogs

We spent a night in Flores close to Tikal. Flores is actually a small island that sits in the Lago de Petén Itzá. After spending about an hour there we realized that it was just an island whose sole purpose of existence is to trap tourists there. There were only hotels, crappy restaurants and agencies selling tours to Tikal. So the next morning we set out for El Remate, a small village on the other side of the lake.

El Remate is a more relaxing place and more in our taste than Flores. We have spent a few days here relaxing in the sun and paddling in the lake. This morning we took an early ride to the Tikal ruins and got there just as the sun was rising. The ruins are spread out in the jungle so you have to do short walks through the forest in order to get from one place to another. There were a lot of monkeys climbing the trees and you could hear the howler monkeys howling in the distance. We were really lucky, because we got to spend some time alone marvelling at some of the impressive buildings rising high up in the middle of the jungle. A few of the temples rise around 60m from the ground and the view from the top of them was fantastic; you could see the whole surrounding forest and some other temples rising up from it. Tikal must be one of the most impressive ruins we have seen so far.

--------------------------

Grand jaguars and lost cities remains copyright of the author AnnaMickus, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

Comment on this entry | Tweet this | Your own free travel blog | More Travellerspoint blogs

When we arrived in Livingston it was again like arriving in a totally different country. Actually,it was like arriving on a different continent! This is one of the homes of the Garífuna people, descendants of African slaves that were brought to the Bay Islands (Honduras coast) after revolting on the St Vincent island in the caribbean. From there they spread all over the coast, also to Nicaragua and Belize. When integrating with locals and all kinds of other ship wrecked monkeys they gradually developed their own culture and even their own language. And that language is weird, I tell you. They speak English as well, but it is this cool caribbean ’jah man’-english, so it feels a lot like the caribbean here. They also have this Garífuna music which involves alot of drums and blowing in sea shells. It almost feels like we’re in Africa, with a carribean twist.

This is in the town center

This is where we stayed

So we have had a really change of culture here in Livingston. The weather was pretty crap in the beginning, but after that we have managed to mingle some with the locals and check out the local disco down by the beach. There was some serious body movements there, these African people really know how to shake that body. No way we would have even dared to enter the dance floor. We also did a walk down the beach to this place where they have several water falls, The Seven Altars they are called.

We also got to visit the local health clinic as Mickus managed to get his eye infected. We entered this room where a nurse was sitting and we enquired about a doctor to look at his eye. ”There is no eye doctor here, this is the Malaria section”.

--------------------------

Jah, man remains copyright of the author AnnaMickus, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

Comment on this entry | Tweet this | Your own free travel blog | More Travellerspoint blogs

------------------------------

Copan Ruinas remains copyright of the author AnnaMickus, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

Comment on this entry | Tweet this | Your own free travel blog | More Travellerspoint blogs

And it was all we expected and more. This is the kind of experience that makes you remember why you are travelling. We started our journey with an hours’ bus ride from Antigua and continued on foot. It was quite a hike (at least for us as we’re in such crappy shape) because it was mainly just uphill, uphill, uphill, and at that altitude it was even more demanding. But when we got up to a point where we could already see the top of the volcano we realized that it had all been worth it. Up there far away we could see the tip of the volcano and lava was pouring out from it. Every once in a while we saw big chunks of burning lava roll down the hill. Wau! That was amazing! And that was where we were going to climb!

It took us quite a while to climb up there and balance over the tricky shaped volcanic stones, but we finally made it. And it was just absolutely crazy! You could feel that the rock you were standing on was warm and when you knocked on it with the walking stick it felt a little bit hollow. At some places there were splits in the rock and you could see lava flowing underneath. You were really hoping that that hollow rock wouldn’t break! At three places the lava was just pouring out in big thick waves and we stood right next to it! Every once in a while pieces got loose and they started rolling down the hill. It was just madness! We took out our egg and put it next to the lava in order to boil it, but it was soon covered with a huge wave of lava that poured out from a crack in the rock. Some people were grilling marshmallows, and they got grilled pretty quickly, I tell you.

When the sun set, the lava seemed to turn even more orange and hot, and the view and the whole experience was just amazing. The view up there was otherwise also spectacular; we were actually above the clouds, so you could see them hanging down there with lots of other mountains and green hills surrounding us. We really felt alive!

We also made a trip to a village a few hours away from Antigua. We wanted to see some weird statues that are scattered around the area. The place wasn't at all touristy and there were really no options but to walk to the different areas where the statues were located (unless you wanted to pay a fortune on a taxi), so we started walking. After a while some guards patrolling the area stopped us and asked where we were going, cause the area was known to be dangerous. When they heard that we wanted to see the statues they took us in their car and took us to several places to see these cool statues beacuse they didn't think it was safe for us to wander around alone. So we got a private tour by local guards! And afterwards they dropped us off at the bus station. What service!

-----------------------------

Hot Magma remains copyright of the author AnnaMickus, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

Comment on this entry | Tweet this | Your own free travel blog | More Travellerspoint blogs

San Pedro La Laguna is a cute little town just by the lake. There are lots of cosy restaurants and many of them with delicious veggie food! One of our favourite places is Zoola, a really great and laidback place with a beautiful garden where the tables are really low so that you can lie on a bunch of pillows while you are downing a falafel pita and a bang lassie. There are several places to go out, but the most popular seem to be Buddha and Freedom bar in both of which we seem to end up in at some point every night. And the best of it all: they have electronic music! Yess!

Unfortunate for Kiru, he had to leave for Guatemala City after only spending one day in paradise. But better than nothing, right? We’ll see him back in Finland!

One very awesome thing about this place is that there are loads of indigenous Maya Indians living here. Most of them, even many of the men, wear traditional colourful clothes and they all speak their own language. The language is really cool, it is just the kind of language you hear in your head when you imagine two Indians in the old times sitting there in their hut in the dark dressed in some animal fur speaking about their catch of the day. But they also speak Spanish apparently as their second language, which is good for us because otherwise the communication could be a little bit difficult. They must be admired for their ability to speak at least two languages and adapt to all the international tourists and expats mingling with their lives (well they take advantage of us too, like charging double the price for the boats). The thing I find very good is that in most hotels and restaurants, even if owned by foreign people, you find local people as the work force. This way we are contributing to helping the Mayas getting their share of the tourism. They seem to be very happy and friendly people, everybody always greet us when they see us on the street. But they are also very slow in all they are doing, especially in making food. Making a meal sometimes takes ages, so you should never be in a rush if you’re planning to eat at any restaurant here.
The women here seem to like to carry things on their heads. They walk around carrying sometimes amazingly big packages on their heads. The best thing, though, must have been the girl I saw yesterday; she was carrying three cartons of raw eggs on her head!

The four days before New Year’s Eve was like a warm up for the big party. Every night there was something happening and most of them we ended up finishing at Freedom bar. So by New Year’s Eve we were all prepared for the big celebration! We had earlier found a perfect spot in San Marcos La Laguna on the other side of the lake. So we headed there in the morning and spent a fabulous day in the sun drinking wine and enjoying the fantastic view. The evening continued with dinner at Buddha and party in Freedom and Zoola. One of the highlights was on the roof of Buddha, when a big hot air balloon was released up into the sky. It was Fabulous. By midnight the drum and base was pumping at Freedom and fire shows were awed by the dancing people. The night ended as usual in a drunken frenzy and around 6 o’clock people started to stagger back to their holes. Welcome 2009!

After the celebrations we needed some good rest, so we retired to San Marcos La Laguna, the quiet hippie place on the other side of the lake. Here we have eaten some good vegetarian food and taken it veeery easy. This place is filled with all kinds of yoga-, meditation- and massage places so it is very easy to relax here.

The other day we did an interesting day trip to Santiago Atitlán, another town by the lake. There they have this statue of Maximón. Maximón is a god worshipped in the Guatemalan Highlands. He is believed to be a combination of the Mayan gods, the conquistador of Guatemala and Judas. People give offerings and ask for blessings from this god. We had a tuc tuc take us to the place where he was housed at the moment, and you could notice when we were getting close; drunken guys were staggering along the otherwise empty and dirty streets. When we got there we entered this room that was decorated with colourful ribbons and all kinds of other decorations. In the middle of the room was Maximon, a wooden statue dressed in human clothes with a cigar in his mouth. One guy was preaching something to Maximon and apparently his wife was sitting in front of the statue with similar clothes as the statue had. He was talking this native language so we didn’t have a clue what he was saying, but it seemed that he was asking for something and giving Maximon money in exchange. The rest of the room was filled with people drinking beer and laughing and joining the preacher with some assuring words every once in a while. When we entered the room we were immediatly handed a glass of beer and we joined the ceremony. Well I have seen all kinds of reasons to drink beer and get drunk during the day, but this must have been one of the best ones!

The new year’s celebrations never seem to cease here. Ever since we came here four days before New Year’s Eve until this day, firecrackers and very loud bombs of different kinds have been fired everywhere we have been, all the time. And it doesn’t matter what time of day it is, its always banging. And LOUDLY. You wake up at six in the morning and think world war three has started. I’m telling you, some of these motherfuckers are so loud that firing one back home would probably put you in jail for at least a month.

San Marcos La Laguna is place where you could get stuck for a long time. And many have; we have met people who just stayed and have been here for months or years already. I mean, what’s there not to like? Beautiful scenery, a refreshing lake to swim in, lots of good and healthy food, cheap massages and other therapies and nice people? (well maybe the firecrackers....) But as our time is limited we have to start moving. Bye bye Lago de Atitlán!

----------------------------

Happy New Year! remains copyright of the author AnnaMickus, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

Comment on this entry | Tweet this | Your own free travel blog | More Travellerspoint blogs

We didn’t waste much time because we only had that afternoon and evening to spend there, so we jumped on this mega touristy horse wagon thingy and took a mega touristy sightseeing tour around town. It was a blast. That’s about all we had time to do, because our bus was leaving the next morning at 5 o’clock from Managua. We agreed with a taxi driver that he would come and pick us up at 3:15 in the morning. And he promised he would be there. No way we wanted to miss our bus from Managua to San Salvador.

At 3:10 we wanted to get out from our hotel in order to catch the taxi. The door was locked and we couldn’t open it. What the hell? The doorman had told us that it would be possible to exit any time of the night...Great. We banged and banged on the doors and walls until finally some guy came to open the door for us. First he had to look for the keys for five minutes, though. Nice. What if there was a fire? Nobody would get out!! These people never seem to stop amazing us...

I guess I don’t even have to tell you that the taxi wasn’t there. And it never came. We started wandering the empty streets. Everything was dark and everything was closed. Greeeeeat. Even our plan B, the fancy hotel at the plaza was all dark and locked. No people or cars, not to even mention taxis could be seen...What to do what to do..... Suddenly we saw the head lights of a car that approached us. A taxi! We couldn’t believe it! Nothing else was seen or heard, and suddenly there was a taxi! We waved happily to stop it, but it just drove past us! Damn it! So we were back in the dark street again with no cars around. What to do what to do.... Suddenly the same taxi came driving again. This time he stopped. Yesssss! He was a bit amazed that we were going all the way to Managua at this time of the night, but agreed to take us. And even though he seemed half blind and didn’t know the way to the bus terminal we arrived just 2 minutes before the bus was to leave for El Salvador.

After riding the bus for a couple of hours new passengers came on the bus. Selma (from the San Blas trip) was one of them. So now we were four. Once in San Salvador, we headed to Playa el Tunco on the Pacific coast. Let the Christmas celebrations begin!

Christmas dinner

Last night we were watching the news and we saw a weird piece of news:
Peculiar things are afoot in Playa el Tunco, El Salvador. There have been reports of small funny looking creatures similar to gnomes moving around in the beach area. We have had many reports of glimpses of red pointy hats and rapid movements in the bushes. These sightings have been linked to various events of mischief and monkey business that have taken place in the recent days all around the Playa el Tunco area. The red hats have especially been associated with disappearing Finlandia Vodka bottles from Christmas dinner tables. Any information concerning these strange incidents will be highly appreciated.

------------------------

Summary El Salvador:

SCORE (4-10)
8- Gnomes!

------------------------

Merry fucking Christmas remains copyright of the author AnnaMickus, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

Comment on this entry | Tweet this | Your own free travel blog | More Travellerspoint blogs

------------------------

Summary Nicaragua:

SCORE (4-10)
8 bottles of rum!

------------------------

Piña coladas and cheese Gromit! remains copyright of the author AnnaMickus, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

Comment on this entry | Tweet this | Your own free travel blog | More Travellerspoint blogs

The next morning we wanted to take a bus over to Nicaragua and it turned out to be quite a hassle. Can you believe it, at 5 in the morning all the bus terminals were flooded with people that wanted to go to Nicaragua. So there was no room for three gringos, of course. Which meant we had to find some other place that would take us at least to the border. After walking around for an hour and people pointing us in different directions making us walk in zigzag, we finally found the company that supposedly had buses to the border. The line outside was huge, so we immediately realized we probably weren’t gonna make it to Nicaragua that day. Suddenly some guy working for the bus company told us to come with him pass the line and right to the ticket counter. What the h..? We got tickets and jumped right into the bus, which left in about 10 minutes. Sweet. Sometimes it pays to be a gringo, I guess...(i'm sure we paid more than everybody else, though...)

After crossing the border at Peñas Blancas and getting a bus to Rivas we got a taxi to Lago de Nicaragua. But before we could step into the taxi the driver had to move the hen that was riding in the front seat to the trunk of the car. Lago de Nicaragua is Central America’s biggest lake, which wasn’t hard to believe since the boat ride out to Ometepe Island took a long time and the waves were just as big as on the ocean. On the ferry we were lucky enough to meet Irish man Morgan, who had just built a house and some cabanas on a beautiful spot on the north east side of the island, so we got housing and a free ride organized without any hassle whatsoever. We arrived to Ometepe Island just as the sun was setting and started riding towards Morgan’s place in the back of a pickup truck. When we had driven about 15 minutes the truck broke down and we ended up downing a few beers in the darkness when waiting for another truck to arrive.

When we arrived at the hostel we noticed it had been well worth the journey to get there. It was a beautiful place with a huge garden with lots of fruit trees and different kinds of plants. We got our own little cabaña in the middle of the garden with a nice veranda overlooking the whole place. This was the perfect spot to relax and enjoy the sunny weather.

The Ometepe Island has been formed by two volcanoes rising up from the lake. Lava flows between them created the island and gave it its name, which means ”between two hills” in Nahuatl. The island is famous for its stone statues and petroglyphs that represent humans, birds, animals and different geometrical shapes. So the other day we went for an afternoon stroll, together with a German guy who was carrying around a Spanish version of the Monopoly game, to have a look at these famous pertoglyphs. We started the journey with a cup of coffee at Finca Magdalena that makes its own ecological coffee. The finca had a beautiful herb garden and a nice view over the surroundings. Then we headed out in the nature and checked out some of the carvings. To tell you the truth I wasn’t that impressed by the carving themselves, but it was a nice walk anyway beacause most of the island is covered with rainforest.

Here you can see the two volcanoes

Today we did a groovy trip to Ojo de Agua, a swimming hole with fresh water running down from the mountain. It was really refreshing to take a swim in the clear and cool water. Tomorrow we are heading to the Pacific coast, looking forward to that

---------------------------

Between two tits remains copyright of the author AnnaMickus, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

Comment on this entry | Tweet this | Your own free travel blog | More Travellerspoint blogs

This place has a couple of cool restaurants (with veggie food ) and bars, many of which play reggae music. Yesterday we had a little taste of the nightlife at a local reggae club after eating dinner at Chile Rojo that served really tasty Thai food.

Today we took a really nice bike ride along the coast all the way to Manzanillo, an even smaller village about 13km from here. It was really cool cycling there through the rainforest and then stopping every once in a while at the beach for some swimming. At a couple of places we heard some noise in the trees and stopped to see what it was: monkeys were jumping around on the branches!

--------------------

Summary Costa Rica:

SCORE (4-10)
6,5 Ticos!

---------------------

Water that smells like shit remains copyright of the author AnnaMickus, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

Comment on this entry | Tweet this | Your own free travel blog | More Travellerspoint blogs

The weather was stunning when we arrived and we had a nice breakfast in the sun. It didn’t take long before we had stumbled upon almost all the people from the San Blas boat. Selma was there, and so were Chris and Diana, the Irish guy and the couple from Brazil. We had an Indian reunion dinner and went out to some bars and a wanna be night club. The music was terrible but the company was good.

The next day we made a small trip to one of the beaches on the north shore, Boca del Drago. It was a beautiful place, but the weather had just been really bad there; huge storms had torn down some trees and the beach, which was usually a beautiful sandy beach, had been washed away by the ocean. You could almost see no sand. We managed, though, to take a small walk on the beach and enjoy the beautiful view.

Flooded beach

Today we did a boat journey out in the archipelago. We saw some dolphins playing around in the water and we visited the famous Red Frog beach. This beach was also totally washed away. Now you could really see how big an impact the weather can have on places. They said that usually there is many meters of sand, but now there was nothing. Just water. To make it even more depressing it started pouring down as we stood and watched it in amazement. Luckily there was a bar that sold rum; we bought a couple of huge cups of the stuff and suddenly the weather didn’t seem so bad.

Since the weather is so rainy here we have decided to move further north. Costa Rica, here we come!

----------------------------------

Summary Panama:

SCORE (4-10)
6,5 Kunas

-----------------------------------

Washed away red frogs remains copyright of the author AnnaMickus, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

Comment on this entry | Tweet this | Your own free travel blog | More Travellerspoint blogs

As we were approaching Panama City the jungle gave way to more urban settlements, and then we crossed a large bridge and on the other side we saw........Miami. Yep; large skyscrapers, shopping malls, designer boutiques, SUVs, luxury boats, fancy harbour, fast food restaurants, gangs, crime, poverty and despair. No wonder they call it the Miami of the south!

Well well, we were going to stay here for a few days as one little gritter from Finland was coming to visit us! That’s right, Kirulishen was heading over for 2 ½ weeks to do some travelling with us all the way up to Guatemala City. While looking forward to finally meet a good friend from Finland we had a few extra days to familiarise ourselves with Panama City.

A must see was of course the Panama Canal. So we headed over to the Miraflores locks which are the closest ones to Panama city. Suuper exiting....no not really, but we happened to arrive just as a large tanker was passing true so it was kind of cool, as an American would say.

Another sight we visited was the old town, Casco Viejo. It’s basically more or less a shady area that they are trying to fix up, which we noticed while reading the map and took a wrong turn; people told us not to go down that road. A man on a balcony was articulating hand signals of getting your throat cut so we quickly retreated to safer grounds. An interesting land mark was the abandoned ruin of Club de Clases y Tropas, the favourite hang-out General Noriega, which was heavily bombed during the US invasion in 1989.

Most evenings we spent splashing out on nice dining and drinks. We also visited the marina, which housed luxury ships that were so big that they almost could be mistaken for mini cruise ships. The gap between the haves and have not’s could be immensely felt in Panama City.

Wine and cheese at a wine bar

The day then finally arrived when Kiru was arriving so we headed out to the airport to give him a warm welcome. It was nice to finally see a familiar face and hear some stories from the motherland.

So after getting Kiru settled we headed out for a nice dinner and topped it off with a visit to one of the numerous casinos. We didn’t have more time than to double Kiru’s travel budget before we left as we had an early flight to catch. Yep, heading out by plane, the quicker the better in our opinion. Panama City isn’t a place you want to linger in any longer than necessary and besides we didn’t want to sit cramped in an 11 hours night bus to Bocas de Toro on a road that was rumoured to be in notoriously bad condition.

----------------------------------------

Kirulishen makes a landing remains copyright of the author AnnaMickus, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

Comment on this entry | Tweet this | Your own free travel blog | More Travellerspoint blogs

Luckily we didn’t have to worry about anything because the captain proudly informed us that he could take care of everything without anybody’s help: he would steer the boat, cook food for all 14 of us, do the dishes and clean the place all by himself. In fact, we were not allowed to even touch the dishes because we wouldn’t know how to use the water economically. And he would never ask anybody for help because he was so talented. He also told us that he is actually bored of the sea, in fact, he hated it, and that he couldn’t wait to retire and start some other business on mainland. All righty then! Let the fun trip start!

We were lucky. We got one of the cabins. Four people had to sleep outside, two of whom on a broken air mattress. Unlucky bastards. The journey started otherwise stupendously as well: the captain had forgotten to hand in our passports to the migrations on time, so we had to wait by the docks the whole day. When we finally set off we spent 2 hours at another dock in order to get gasoline for the boat. This was the first time he already asked for help to carry the heavy barrels of gasoline closer to the boat. And there was to be many more requests for help. What a jerk. Before we finally set off for real we got this delicious instant noodles dinner. Just a tiny cup. Nice.

It might have been a good thing that the captain had us starving, because as soon as we hit the open waters the waves turned really big and nearly everybody got sick. We ended up lying in our beds the first two days and nights because it was just impossible to stay up in that weather. The captain even got sea sick (even if he claimed never to get sea sick), and since the boat was overbooked, he had to sit in a chair on deck during the nights. This made him tired and really grumpy and he didn’t even bother making us dinner the second night. What an asshole.

After the hideous trip we finally arrived in the Archipiélago de San Blás off the northern shores of Panama. The archipelago consists of almost 400 islands, most of them which look like islands straight from a fantasy land, you know the ones filled with palm trees and surrounded by white sand and turquoise water? The water was now really calm and the views were just fantastic! The area is also at a convenient spot just in-between south and Central America, so supposedly a lot of drug trafficking boats drive through there all the time. Just a couple of days ago there had been a chase between a high speed trafficking boat and a police boat. The traffickers’ boat, which the police had shot full of bullet holes, was on display on one of the islands.

The San Blás islands are home to the indigenous Kuna people who run the place more or less as an autonomous territory. They have their own language and customs, and the women still wear their traditional dresses including these colourful beads they wrap around their legs and a big golden ring through their nose. The language is totally incomprehensible with just some weird ”chck-chck” sounds that made no sense whatsoever in my head, but anyway sounded absolutely fantastic!

We stayed at a few different locations during our 4 day stay there. The longest time we spent just outside this island where a couple of Kuna families lived. They visited us on a few occasions selling us sea food or these special garments the women make. They said a Kuna woman isn’t Kuna if she doesn’t do these garments. Two or several pieces of different coloured cloth are put on top of each other and different motives are created by revealing different shapes of the underlying colours. Mostly the motives describe things from their daily lives, like fish, crabs or shamans. The things are really small pieces of art.

Kuna woman selling her stuff

One sad thing about this place is that you see how much garbage is actually thrown in the sea. All kinds of stuff wash up on the shore, and you can’t believe how stupid people can be throwing all these things into the water. And not to talk about all the food scrap and toilet waste that all the boats that run through here let into the water. Sometimes a container ship drops a big container in the water (by mistake of course) and the locals break it up and loot it. A while ago the locals found a big container in the water, and when they broke it up they found it filled with televisions. They didn’t really know what they were, so they decided to let them loose resulting in a long row of televisions floating through the Caribbean towards main land. Must have been a sight. But at times they are more resourceful: if you are in need of flip flops, this is the place to do some shopping. They have a huge collection of flip flops from which you can select your favourite ones. But you never get a matching pair, of course.

The captain mostly kept us starving by serving ridiculously small portions and having us wait for the food for hours. I’m telling you, it is amazing how painfully long it can take to produce a pot of rice with iddy biddy pieces of vegetables in it. Luckily we had some snacks with us and bought some nice lobsters from the Kuna, so we didn’t actually starve. And most importantly, the crowd (except for the captain) on the boat was so great and the places we visited were so spectacular, that we had an amazing time anyway. During the days we mostly did some swimming and snorkelling checking out huge sea stars and sting rays, or hanged out on deck having drinks and eating peanuts.

We also visited a few islands to see how the Kuna live. Some of the islands were so filled with houses that there was no free ground left; the whole islands were just covered with small shacks and narrow alleys. It was really cramped and claustrophobic. The living conditions didn’t seem too hygienic, either: everything seemed a bit dirty and run down, and the toilets were built on top of the water, which made the water a bit shitty... Then again some of the islands were almost uninhabited with just a couple of cabins here and there that were surrounded by palm trees and beautiful beaches. They, again, seemed to be living in paradise!

Happy Independence Day Suomi-Finland! We celebrated it with some genuine ice cold Finlandia Vodka.

-----------------------------------------

Kunas and coladas remains copyright of the author AnnaMickus, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

Comment on this entry | Tweet this | Your own free travel blog | More Travellerspoint blogs

Cartagena is a town full of culture and contrasts. The town has a historic centre with fancy colonial buildings, nice restaurants, boutiques, malls, you name it. People walk around in their expensive clothes and drive around in their lavish cars. The other part of town is dirty and smelly with run down houses and filthy hotels filled with beggars, sick looking dogs and local fast food joints serving greasy fare. Everywhere you walk somebody is trying to sell you something, have you stay in their hotel etc. etc. In other words; there is something for everybody here! We took the opportunity to enjoy a little bit of luxury and had us a couple of piña coladas in the Café del Mar bar that is sitting on top of the big wall surrounding the old town overlooking the Caribbean Sea.

The other day we did an interesting little day trip. Some 60km away there is a small volcano. But this isn’t the ordinary type of volcano; it is a mud volcano. Yup, instead of magma, it spits out mud. And it is active still. We climbed up a ladder to the crater of the volcano and jumped into the cool smooth mud. Hmmm an interesting feeling it was, just like swimming in mud . It was hard to move, and impossible to swim your way forward. There were some guys who helped you to move by pushing you to the place where you wanted to go. And that wasn’t all they did: they also offered massages right there in the pool next to all slimy bastards and fatsoes. We kindly refused, but many took the opportunity to get felt up by the Colombian caballeros. At one point we were sitting behind this guy and suddenly small bubbles started to appear behind him. Hehhe, we thought; the guy was farting but didn’t realize everybody could see it. hihiii. The bubbles just got bigger and bigger until a really huge bubble burst and threw mud in everybody’s face. ”Uups”, he said. ”I shouldn’t have eaten those beans today”. Well actually, it was only the volcano spitting up more mud, but the guy had a sense of humour.

Walking up the volcano

A certain question has often risen during this trip: Why do things easy when you can do them hard? Once again we got to experience something that made us ask this now already so familiar question. We had decided to go to this beautiful beach, Playa Blanca, just south of Cartagena. The easiest way to get there is by boat from the market. The boat takes you to the beach in half an hour. So early one morning we jumped into a taxi and told the driver to take us to the market from where the boats leave for Playa Blanca. Will do, sir. He dropped us off in the middle of the market where no water was to be seen. Well done, sir. Everybody told us to jump on the bus that was standing next to us; take the bus and then after a while you change to the boat. All righty then, I guess these guys know, I mean, they live here. We ended up driving the bus for an hour, arguing about the price of a canoe to take us over a river, waiting for a ferry for an hour, hitchhiking with a friendly Colombian family, and walking an hour in the mud for an hour after the jeep got stuck in and flooded with water from a meter deep mud pool in the middle of the road. But how could it have happened? I mean, the family had hired a guide to direct them through the complicated muddy dirt road that led to the beach. And you’ll never guess what the last words of the guide were before we got stuck? ”I am the guide; I know what I’m doing, so trust me when I say that we should go straight through here – right in the middle!”

Walking the rest of the way

Well something good came out of this anyway; we got to know these nice Colombian people who drove... or tried to drive us to the beach. We ended up spending the day with them on the beautiful beach and eating lunch made by their buddy Tony, who had a hole in his throat, so he had to push the plaster on the throat when he was speaking with this hissing whispering voice, and whose two front teeth wanted to fall out of his mouth all the time because they were so loose.

These are the people who gave us a ride

”Why did you take the bus? Why didn’t you take the boat? It only took us about thirty minutes.” – said the couple we had met on the mud volcano tour. They were suddenly sitting there under a palm tree by a nice looking hut on the beach. We ended up staying there with them, sleeping on the second floor of a very simple but suitable building overlooking the beautiful beach and the wonderful ocean.

We stayed up there on the upper level

This is the view from there

We saw this small tornado on our way back from Playa Blanca

Once back in Cartagena we decided to try this interesting Colombian custom: the chiva rumba party bus! I’ve never seen anything exactly like this, but it is pretty cool, really. They have these big colourful open air buses with many benches in a row. On the middle row there is a live band playing all kinds of sambas and rumbas and the alike and on the rest of the benches there are lots of party people playing different instruments and singing along with the music. And that’s not all. There is a party leader in the front of the bus screaming into a microphone all kinds of stuff to get the people in a better party mode AND handing out rum bottles, mixers and ice for the party people to enjoy. There are loads of these busses driving around town and when they drive past each other one bus tries to be better than the other by singing louder and dancing harder. When the tour is finished, the bus drops off the whole gang at some night club where the party continues. We ended up visiting a few other night clubs as well and ended up in Electra where the common pattern seemed to be very lightly dressed local girls picking up rich foreign tourists in search for some fun.

On the rumba bus

We managed by the way to find a sailing boat that will take us tomorrow towards Panama and the San Blas islands. They say this boat and captain is one of the best ones, so we have high hopes for the coming days. And as it happened, when we were just coming out from a restaurant, we bumped into a guy who we had got to know in Canoa, Ecuador. With him were another guy and a girl, Selma, from France. So we went to have a beer at our favourite bar in Cartagena, this little place where they play fantastic Colombian music and serve cold beer and whiskey (the place is actually called ”whiskeria”, but they only have one bottle of whiskey under the counter in a card board box). We started talking and it turned out that Selma is going on the same boat with us tomorrow! The world is small.

------------------------------------------

Summary Colombia:

GOOD
- Friendly people
- Club Colobia was a good beer
- Beautiful country

BAD
- military check points

SCORE (4-10)
- 8,5 lines of coke!

----------------------------------------

Rumba fart in volcano remains copyright of the author AnnaMickus, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

Comment on this entry | Tweet this | Your own free travel blog | More Travellerspoint blogs

From Santa Marta it was only a 15min taxi ride to our destination, Taganga, a small village in a bay on the Caribbean coast. So we jumped in a yellow match box car and off we went. Once in Taganga, a toothless smelly homeless guy showed us the way to Techos Azules, the place where we wanted to stay. We stayed the first night in a smelly bunker (well that’s the only choice you sometimes get when you’re stupid enough to show up in the middle of the night), and then next morning we switched to a lovely room with a beautiful view over the bay and the village. Niiice. We had arrived!

View from our room. That's the village down in the bay

Mickus went to this cute gay barber who gave him a blow job

The plan was to stay just a couple of days in Taganga and then head to Tayrona, a national park on the coast just east from here. But oh, how wrong we were. We should already know by now that you shouldn’t make any plans. They get screwed anyway. It didn’t take long before Mickus suddenly got this terrible diarrhoea accompanied by a really high fever. Not so niiiiice.

It took a lot of rest and a lot of antibiotics to get that one under control. But on the bright side, we had the opportunity to get to know Taganga better and best of all, find this excellent restaurant that served the best fish and best langoustines we’ve ever had. We became regular customers. We also made a day trip to Santa Marta, a dirty little town with nothing special to write home about. But we managed to by some food and snorkelling gear for our trip to the national park! We were ready to go!

Once Mickus was back on his feet again we decided to do what we had come for: go to Tayrona, the place everybody we had met had been raving about. It turned out to be harder than expected to get there. You see, the rainy season had been going on now longer than expected, so the roads were kind of in bad shape and the ocean was a bit rough. We decided to get a boat there because that was the easiest way to get there. To our disappointment the last boat had already left when we got to the shore and the Israelis that we could have shared a boat with had such a bad hangover that they decided to postpone their trip. Nice. So we walked back with our heavy backpacks to our hostel where the guy had just finished cleaning our room. Surprise! We’re back!

The next day we packed our bags again and headed to the beach again, this time so early that we for sure wouldn’t miss the last boat. This time, to our disappointment, a captain and his crew were sitting on the shore looking bored. They explained to us that the sea was too rough and dangerous to make the trip that day. It would be risky to try to get to Tayrona, let alone get into the shore of the park. Great! We wouldn’t believe them. We spoke with another captain, and he was happy to take us as long as we got a bigger group to go with us. After a while we had managed to gather a group of five; two Spanish guys and a Canadian girl were eager to get there as well. By this time captain number 2 had got the news about the rough sea and refused to take us. It would be too risky. Great.
To our astonishment captain number 1 now came up to us and informed that the waters had suddenly calmed down and that he would be happy to take us. But of course for a little bit more that the price we had agreed on earlier. Of course.

Well hopefully the waters would be calmer now, we thought, and jumped in the boat. The beginning of the trip went excellently, and we were wondering what all that fuss about too big waves had all been about. But then suddenly the waves grew bigger and bigger... It got rougher all the time and soon everybody had to hang on for dear life so that they wouldn’t fall off the boat that was being seriously rocked by the 3m waves that were surrounding it. As an extra twist it started pouring down so that the captain could hardly see where we were going. We were just amazed that he had even taken us out in this god forsaken weather to risk all our lives. I just tried to hold on to the boat and keep myself calm, which required a lot of skills as I was watching the huge waves that we were riding forcefully hit the big cliffs just meters from us. When we had been on our way for about an hour and a half, the waves were getting just bigger, the rain wouldn’t stop and one of the Spanish guys was repeatedly crying out that we were going to die, the captain decided were not going to make it all the way to Tyrona. We had to take a break at a nearby beach and then return to Tanganga where we arrived a few hours later. We were cursed. We would never get to Tayrona.

You can imagine the amazement of the landlord when we came back once again. This time they hadn’t even bothered to clean our room.

This was yesterday. Today it is rainy again and the sea is still rough. And supposedly the roads have literally rained away, so to get there by car isn’t an option either. Regrettably we have decided to skip Tayrona and head for Cartagena. Who wants to be on a beach in the rain anyway?

Sicko remains copyright of the author AnnaMickus, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

Comment on this entry | Tweet this | Your own free travel blog | More Travellerspoint blogs

Already when driving to the border we noticed a new phenomenon: there seems to be a lot of old North American big cars here, the kind that have huge engines and beautiful shapes, you know these old Dodge cars with a long front and long back and sometimes the front seat is just a long sofa. Think Death Proof, the Tarantino movie. It is like we have come back to the seventies. Especially the taxis are cars like this. We found out the reason soon: the petrol in this country is very cheap. You can fill a 60 litre tank for the same price as you buy a cup of coffee or an ice-cream. I read somewhere on the Internet that the petrol here is probably the cheapest in the world. Niiice.

After crossing the border and getting our bags checked again we stumbled into a coffee shop and had some food after not eating for ages. We noticed there that people here seem to be as friendly as in Colombia, and that they share the same interest in foreign tourists as well. We also noticed that this country is freakin expensive! We won’t survive long here on our budget. Luckily, if you are fortunate enough to be carrying dollars or euros you can change them on the black market and get almost the double than what you get if you get the money from an ATM. So we’re not totally screwed...

When we got on the bus to San Crístobal we heard people behind the bus scream ”rubio, rubia” (blond) at us. I guess they’re even less used to white people here than in Colombia...But the ”bus music culture” seems to be the same here: the music plays all the time, and it plays LOUD. If it isn’t just music, it is a music video, and if it isn’t a music video, it is a movie. And it is made sure nobody can be without hearing each and every word of the movie whether they want or not. Very seldom is it quiet. In some buses they even have these really huge sound systems rigged somewhere close to the driver and you can just see those huge speakers moving when the music is blasting out from them.

From San Christobal we took a bus to Mérida in the mountains. We didn’t spend much time there as the town didn’t have anything new to offer us (yup, soon we’ve seen it all) and after all, our destination was the Caribbean coast! So we took a ”ohmygodcanthisseatgetanymorecramped” night bus to Coro on the Caribbean coast. It wasn’t all bad because as usual they were showing movies on the bus and we were also lucky to spot some of for that region famous lighting without thunder. The sight was quite spectacular when the sky lit up in the distance in a light yellowish big shape.

Mérida

Chavez on tv

In Coro we saw some huge sand dunes in a national park and then we mostly just wandered around town. Coro is one of the most well preserved colonial towns in Venezuela, but to be honest it wasn’t that impressive... After a couple of days in Coro we went to a peninsula just north of it and spent a couple of days in Adícora by the beach. Finally, the ocean that we had been waiting for for such a long time! We celebrated it with some delicious passion fruit daiquiris and some local rum and wine. The warmth of the water in the ocean was surprising; we could’ve stayed there for hours! The amount of waste on some of the beaches was also amazing! How can people do this to our beautiful nature?

What the heck happened to the sizes of the beers?

As the few places we had visited in Venezuela seemed a bit rough edged and dirty we decided to head back to Colombia. When we go to the bus station in Maracaibo, a town a couple of hours’ drive from the border, we had a pleasant surprise: there were no buses that went to the border, the only way to get there was by car. So we did what any sane gringo on a shady Venezuelan bus station would do: we went to a dirty alley next to the bus station and got in a car with a fat dirty driver who demanded we pay immediately or he wouldn’t drive anywhere. Well it was a bit comforting that we shared the car with a young woman with her two kids who were also going to Colombia.

After a stop at a petrol station I was convinced that the driver had planted drugs in our bags because I saw him moving around things in the trunk and his mood somehow changed from being quiet and half rude to talkative and very friendly. I was sure he was playing together with the border police and would try to demand huge amounts of money from us in order to get us off the hook. The woman in the back seat also appeared to be a bit nervous and quiet so I started suspecting a collaborate scam between the two of them. At the border when we were walking back to the car after getting stamps in our passports the car wasn’t where it had left us. ”Well that was it, there went the bags!”, we thought. But in the next second we saw the driver waving to us a bit further down the road. So as usual, the guy turned out to be a genuinely friendly guy who had done his best to get us as quickly and safely as possible over the border to Colombia. As soon as we had passed the border the woman also seemed relieved, put a smile on her face and exclaimed how happy she was to be back in Colombia where everything is better and nobody bothers you.

---------------------------------------------

Summary Venezuela

SCORE (4-10):
7 Chaveses!

---------------------------------------------

Mystical lightning and dirty beaches remains copyright of the author AnnaMickus, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

Comment on this entry | Tweet this | Your own free travel blog | More Travellerspoint blogs

The new bus experiences just don’t seem to stop. We have encountered a totally new feature: bargaining on the price of the ticket. Yes, really. Even though the prices are listed on a board behind the counter, you can get it down quite a lot. E.g. we just got a bus ticket for 55 000 pesos, but the listed price was 93 000 pesos. So the difference, 43 000 pesos, is like 16 Euros! Can you believe it? Another new bus experience is that here in some buses they have trash cans! Never seen that before during our journey! In one bus they had just plastic bags hanging from the seats, but in another we actually saw real bins on the side of the seat! Wau! Sadly enough they still seem to be using the traditional waste disposal way they have used throughout the continent: opening the window and throwing it out on the street. The ”don’t litter” sign with the threat of fines has no effect. How about some education?

Another new thing is the military check points along the road. Up here in the north it is a bit better, but in the south it was crazy; more or less every 30min there was a military check point. At the check points everybody has to get out from the bus and show their identifications. The men have to go against the bus with their hands up and get body searched by a soldier. To be honest, the women could be carrying anything underneath their clothing, because they are not touched at all... Then all the bags are searched. Almost all of the soldiers are very young, and many of them seem to search our bags just out of personal interest to see what we are carrying rather than being concerned about our security. But all of this is done out of security reasons, of course...

We’re now back at about 2500m altitude, which is a bit annoying because my head is all messed up again and it gets cold at night. But it doesn’t matter, after this we are heading for the Caribbean! Jihaa! And it has been nice anyway to see this town as I have always wondered what Bogotá would be like after hearing so many scary stories about it. Well one of the first stories we heard here was when we overheard some guys talking and they said that there had been 5 muggings with a knife just around the corner from our hostel. Niiiice.

Well at first glance the town didn’t seem to be much of a place to be in, but after a few days here we have noticed that there is something to it after all. There is a nice old part of town with lots of bars and cafés and artisans selling their stuff, which is pretty cool. Then there is another part of town that is more the ’yuppie’ part where you can find lots of boutiques, malls and nice restaurants. We actually had one of our best meals in a long time there in an Italian gourmet restaurant. We celebrated the birthday once more there with some really nice Italian food and delicious wine. Yummy!

Then there is the centre of town, which is a really typical centre with just high buildings and lots of traffic. One Sunday afternoon we had a weird experience there when we walked through there and there had just been some kind of a second hand market and the place was jammed with poor people. It was so strange because it was like the market of the living dead with smelly people dressed in dirty ripped clothes and some of them started to follow us begging for money. We hurried quickly out of there. It is truly horrible to see how many people are living in really bad conditions and how they have to beg in order to survive. Some people sleep on the street with no mattress or nothing just straight on the pavement. In this city you can really see the difference between the rich and poor, with the well off people dining in nice restaurants with almost Finnish prices and the poor people begging in the streets.

Speaking of rich people, we went out one night to this night club in the 41 floor of an old hotel. It was this fancy house club with a view over the whole city and with rich kids dancing and drinking expensive drinks. We almost had a shock when we ordered two drinks at the bar and the cost was almost 20 Euros. I wonder if it would have been more economical to buy the whole bottle of rum as seems to be the local practice. Seriously, here and in other Latin American countries we have been to, it is very usual that you buy the whole bottle from the bar and get these small shot glasses with it. At one place in Bolivia you couldn’t even buy just one shot; you had to buy the whole bottle. The Latin Americans would get a shock in Finland where you can’t even buy a double whiskey without getting it in two separate glasses so that you know how much you are drinking.

They have a really funny way of naming their streets here in Colombia. The streets form a grid and the horizontal streets are called ”Calle” and the vertical ones ”Carrera”. An adress can be Calle 23 5-23, which means it is on Calle 23, 5 meters from Carrera 5 towards Carrera 6. I just had to mention this because it is a bit funny.

We actually did a really touristy thing here. We went to a museum! We visited the Museo del Oro, the gold museum. It had all kinds of pretty cool objects made out of gold made by pre-Hispanic cultures in Colombia.
Next stop: Venezuela. Wonder what that will be like.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

B-O-G-O-T-A remains copyright of the author AnnaMickus, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

Comment on this entry | Tweet this | Your own free travel blog | More Travellerspoint blogs

We started chit chatting with the shaman and he showed us some pictures of famous shamans and of his master shaman that lives down in Putumayo. He also presented us his shaman license which was kind of funny; a credit card size card with personal info and a face picture of him all dressed up with the feather hat. After this the shaman placed a mattress on the concrete floor in the courtyard just outside the ‘shaman room’ and told us to sit down. This would be our ‘resting’ area for the night. The shaman then talked for a while with Tom in Spanish as the shaman unfortunately didn’t know any English. One of the stories he told was about the different types of shamans there are. He himself was specialized in healing. His master, a famous shaman living in Putumayo, was one of the greatest currently living shamans and was a master in most of the fields of shamanism. He had the capability of shape shifting and had mastered one of the most difficult tasks of shape shifting into a jaguar!

After chit-chatting for a while it was time to try the ayahuasca. The shaman told us to follow him into the sacred room where he pored up a large bowl of ayahuasca. The taste was immensely bitter and not like anything I had tasted before. In lack of a better explanation, it faintly reminded me of stomach acids with a hint of washing powder in it. We gulped down a large bowl each. The grandpa also took one, as did the shaman’s 9 year old ‘soon to be shaman’. Finally the shaman himself drank a large bowl of it. We then went back to the mattress to wait for the visions to start.

Ayahuasca is a sacred plant and has been used for healing and visionary purposes by indigenous communities in the Amazon basin for millennia. The brew is prepared by boiling the vine mixed with various other plants. The final brew contains the active ingredients of MAO Inhibiting harmala alchaloids and a hallucinogenic alkaloid N,N-dimethyltryptamine(DMT), which is only active when combined with the MAOI. Ayahuasca as it is called in Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador means ‘Vine of the dead’ or ‘Vine of the soul’ in Quechua. In Colombia it goes under the name Yage. When consuming the brew intense vomiting always follows and sometimes even diarrhea.

So with the knowledge of these facts and armed with an extra pair of underpants we were anxiously wondering what would follow. And 20 minutes later I did. It started with a light cramp in the stomach that gradually increased. I tried to lie down in order for the cramps to ease and keep the brewin for as long as possible. This was only successful for a few minutes as suddenly the stomach spoke fiercely; ‘You have 3 seconds to get to the toilet, buddy!’ And in the light of the one candle placed on the concrete floor I made a dash for the toilet. Having thoroughly cleansed my stomach, luckily through the front and not the back door, I went back to sit. It was now that the more interesting part of the evening started. I will give only a brief account as a thorough one wouldn’t fit the purpose of this blog and surely bore most readers.

First there were strong visuals when keeping the eyes shut. These geometric visuals where constantly moving, merging and changing shape. You felt yourself being transferred to another world. Not sucked into it, but rather like a wall was dissolving in front of your eyes. Then when opening one’s eyes the visual world started transforming as well. The texture of the walls and floor started changing. It was like one was transformed into a Mayan or Aztec temple. A lot of zigzag texture, similar to patterns seen on handicraft from these civilizations, was visible everywhere. Then suddenly a mouth harmonica started playing ever so slowly. It was like the sound could be felt on many different levels. Apart from hearing it, it was more felt on a visual and emotional level. It traveled the landscape rising and falling for a long time. Time had ceased to exist at this moment so giving a certain time frame of events would be impossible. The shaman then emerged from his room wearing feather plumes and playing the mouth harmonica. Everything was very peaceful all the time, and everything the shaman did made sense in a newly found way. At some point the shaman used a ‘smoke bowl’ (similar to what the orthodox priest use to spread smoke) in the room and the emotional landscape exploded into a different meaning. Never before had a scent had such a deep impact on me. He also used a ‘brush’ made of leaves and when flapping it in the air it gave a noise similar to a flock of birds in flight. Combining all these elements the shaman then started dancing and gaps in ones vocabulary hinders one from truly describe the surrealistic world one had entered. The dances he performed where magnificent, not in complexity, but how well everything fitted together. It was like he had painted up everything on one’s mind and by altering slightly his tone or movement he could change what was being painted on the mental canvas.

The emotions one felt and the sensory ‘bombardment’ makes one realize how limited in scope the normal day to day senses one uses and emotions one feels actually are. Ayahuasca shows that there are limitless different states of mind and a lot to experience, and in a way gives one a kick in the ass saying ‘Wake up! Why live in a robot state, when there is so much more to experience.’

The night carried on with the shaman withdrawing to his room back and forth, grandpa playing the mouth harmonica once in a while and us all taking more brew. One then started carefully and slowly moving around in the physical world, mostly on shaky legs to the toilet and back , which it in itself could be made into a tale. The shaman and grandpa then continued taking more ayahuasca long after me and Tom had stopped. At the peak of the experience alien creatures came up close to me, never saying a word, they just came really close. And I thought; ‘What the hell is going on?’ Am I visited by alien creatures from another galaxy trying to make contact? Is this the spirit of the plants revealing themselves and trying to communicate? Am I seeing into the smallest particles of life, a window into the DNA structures and the cornerstones of life? A gateway to the Jungian ‘central fire’? My fears and hopes? Childhood memories or future events? Creatures from an archaic past submerged in the unconsciousness? Or am I just coo-coo in the head? A lot of questions that my current knowledge in this subject can’t answer if there even is one profound answer. But one thing is for sure: if anything should be learned from this experience, it is that everyone lives in their own reality, which can be quite different from one’s own. I must say ayahuasca showed me this quite profoundly. At some stage during the night when I was ‘out of my mind’ so to speak, a thought occurred to me: ‘Is this how it feels to be mad?’. This made me realize that the lines between sanity, insanity and unsanity don’t have to be that great; it just depends on the perception of the viewer. And in the end Aren’t we mere mortals in a sea of perceptions?

Afterwards, when walking back to the hostel at 6am and the sun was rising, I felt myself light bodied, full of spirit and in a higher state of awareness of myself and my surroundings. The whole experience was so different from anything previously experienced that it felt like the deeper meaning, if there was any, would take some time to digest. But one thing is for sure: my own belief in shamanism and its claim to heal and spiritually guide got a large credibility boost. Having been in ‘the spirit world’, let it only be an imaginary fantasy world created from the dimethytryptomines, and having being there with a skilled shaman that surely knew what he was doing, took the experience to another level.

The fact that the shaman had taken far more of the brew than us but still had managed to move around with ease in that utterly bizarre world guiding and making sure of our wellbeing, made me realize something: one can’t fail to grasp how successfully Christianity has succeeded in eroding the pagan beliefs and shamanism that connected us with our gaian roots in the pre medieval times. A transformation to an ego society with uncontrolled consumerism and rampant destruction of our natural resources is what I think might be the cause of modern society lacking a deeper spiritual meaning. This is one insight I think the ayahuasca tries to teach you by revealing how interlocked the animal kingdom is with the plant world. In a way, everything is a large breathing organism and having unbalance in one part will ultimately cause disturbance in the whole organism. Where does this knowledge come from? Hard to believe that it would just be a few molecules in the brew playing tricks with one’s mind and not having a deeper meaning considering its long traditional use and the general wisdom of the shamans. Could it be that the brew is just a catalyst opening gates in the mind, reveling parts of thoughts, perhaps from a collective consciousness, and letting them bubble up from the unconscious to the surface.

Anyway, I hope the modern revival in the interest of shamanism and spirituality will in time change the now glooming outlook of our future into a more meaningful one founded on value based society.

--------------------------------------------------

The cuckoo calls remains copyright of the author AnnaMickus, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

Comment on this entry | Tweet this | Your own free travel blog | More Travellerspoint blogs

And this time is was rum and aguardiente. Lots of it. And of course there was tons of beer. And let’s not forget the absurdly drunken people. The extra spice this time was that the heavily drunken men could be riding a horse making the poor horse do ridiculous moves trying to obey its master. Another extra spice was the cocaine. It wasn’t visible, but we heard there was lots of it around.

And of course there were street stalls selling all kinds of greasy sausages and unrecognizable animal parts. The most impressive one must have been the lechona, a whole baked pig that was stuffed with rice, meat and peas. The one mostly fitting our diet was the arepa, a thick corn pancake served with different kinds of fillings.

Obviously we managed again to arrive in a town during fiesta time. And you have probably guessed what country we are in – Colombia! Actually we arrived a few days before and decided to check out what the fiestas are like in this new country we just arrived in. Well as you already noticed, it is quite similar to the ones we have already witnessed. The horses were a new thing, though. We got to see these weird horse competitions where the horses walk this strange fast walking but with a slow pace. Then they walk over a stretch of wooden floor so that you can hear the fast steps of the horse shoes bang towards the wood. And when the audience sees a horse they think walk well they scream and applaud and cheer with their beers and glasses of aguardiente and rum. Rum seems to be really popular here, as does aguardiente, a cane alcohol flavored with anise.

On this festival we ourselves have been quite of a sight as well. People here seem to be more interested in gringo tourists than they have been elsewhere. One night when we were sitting with our new Belgian friend, Tom, in one of the beer tents (yes, we managed to find one where you only could hear the music from two other tents) people just kept coming up to us wanting to know who we are, shake our hand and wish us welcome. One guy new the words to every song (except one) and sat with us and sang for us for half an hour.

The festival started with a bunch of horses riding through town

It was interesting to sit and watch the fiesta evolve during the evening. Some people seemed to concentrate on the drinking while others were more interested in the dancing. And of course some fancied both. A funny thing was that even really tough looking guys were standing like small puppies around the dance floor gathering strength to ask somebody to dance, and when they finally did they danced to this really fast and joyful music really seriously with a concentrated face. When the song was finished they ran off the dance floor. Other couples knew their thing and danced like professionals to all kinds of different beats. But of course the music was Latino all the way, just different types of it like salsa, cumbia, reggaeton and loads more that I don’t know the names and the differences of.

First we didn’t think the fiesta lived up at all to Bolivian standards, but later we had to admit it got pretty close. People got incredibly drunk and could pass out right there in the chair they were sitting. Many didn’t bother to even go to the woods for taking a leek. They just stood up and went to one side of the tent and made their business right there one meter from where we were sitting. And at one place they had a corner dedicated to peeing right next to the tables sp you just had to turn around and do your business. Well at least they didn’t unzip right there in their chair, I mean, that’s already something, right?

Well it hasn’t only been fiesta here in San Agustin. We have also done some walks and checked out some cool statues, we have chilled in this lovely hostel we found by coincidence, we have celebrated a birthday, and we have taken a special tour... But first I have to tell you about our trip to here from Ecuador. It was...shall I say... interesting. To begin with, we had to wait 8 hours at the border, because suddenly they supposedly didn’t have any stamps at the Ecuadorian border to stamp us out with. Uuh, well that’s only natural that there are no stamps at a border crossing... Another rumor was that there was no electricity so the ’system’ couldn’t be used. A third rumor we heard was that somebody had stolen 300m of optical cable and that was why the system was down. Whatever the reason was, we stood there practically the whole day waiting for the doors to open just in order to get an exit stamp. We saw a lot of stuff during that day, the most funny of which was a group of middle aged Finns that were travelling through America on their huge motor bikes. They had started in Alaska and were going to Argentina. Pretty tough guys, huh?

After spending a night on the Colombian side we got up early in order to get to San Agustin the same day. But it wasn’t supposed to take long anyway, because looking at the map it should only be about 150km. Oh, how wrong we were. Again. I guess we never learn. The first part from Pasto to Mocoa looks like 60km on the map. It took 7 hours. And the road, oh man, it was beautiful but oh, how crazy. I have to tell you that THIS must be the world’s most dangerous road. It was so narrow that at times when you looked out the window you couldn’t see the road, just a 200m drop down to nothingness. And it was winding and bumpy as hell and it just went on and on and on... At some point the people around us started pointing out the window and jabbering about like crazy. They pointed at a slope beside the road where the vegetation was strangely cut of all the way down. This was the place where 3 months ago a bus went over the edge. Nobody survived. Great. The only thing making up for this thrilling experience was that the surrounding nature along the road was just fantastic. We were driving through beautiful rainforest with small waterfalls here and there. And all the time it was getting warmer – we were getting down from the mountains.

The death road

So we got to this cute little town in the evening and headed straight for a pizza because we were really hungry after the 11h bus ride. We were wondering where we should stay the night when a woman asked us if we needed a place to stay. She and her husband lived just outside of town in a lovely garden and they were renting out some rooms. It sounded perfect, so after our pizza we headed up the hill to this gorgeous place overlooking a beautiful valley and the town. There was a wonderful garden with all kinds of plants and there were hammocks to chill in. In other words it was just perfect. We spent many days there enjoying the views, drinking wine and piña coladas and eating home made whole meal bread. Sadly this beautiful place would become our place of hatred...

View from our porch

A fascinating thing about San Agustin is that there are a lot of pre-Colombian cool statues spread out in the surroundings. We did a couple of walks in order to check out these mysterious things. All these statues seem to represent people of some sort, but some of them have animal characteristics like jaguars or frogs. They seem to have functioned as some kind of tomb stones. A few of them where set in beautiful places looking over some stunning views.

Checking out how coffee grows

Oh, and as I mentioned already we got to celebrate a birthday here. It happened to be Anna’s birthday a few days ago so we celebrated that with some piña coladas and chocolate cake together with Tom and Paulina. When we got into town in the evening, our favorite bar offered us some weird shots that they lit on fire and that we drank with straws. After having a few beers at a local bar, the evening ended with a bottle of local champagne that tasted like bad chewing gum and made us almost throw up because it was so nasty.

Happy birthday

Enjoying weird blue shots

One day we went to visit a local family that used to live in the Putumayo region growing coca for a living. They were forced to move from there after they had been threatened to get shot to death if they didn’t leave in 2 hours. So they came here with the whole family and were now living off growing coffee and the occasional tourist who stayed with them. The money they earned now was much less than before. They offered us some homemade chicha and gave us a special tour there in their house...

A glimpse from the special tour

We also met another family who had been forced to move from their home, this time from the rain forest. The head of the family was a guy around 40 years with wife and kids and his father. The guy and his father were shamans and had been trained in the jungle for several years my master shamans. This guy was a medical shaman, but one of his masters was more of a spiritual one, and could turn into a jaguar if he wanted. As it happened, these two shamans also performed Ayahuasca rituals, so Mickus got a new opportunity to try this mystical wine of the gods. You can read more about his experiences in the separate entry.

Is that a mushroom?

During the whole time in San Agustin we had been eagerly waiting for the 4th of November, because that was the day the world was hopefully going to change: it was the day of the presidential elections. We had already arranged with Francoise, the owner of the hostel, to watch the spectacle on his tv as he said he had an English spoken news channel (CNN International) that was going to air it. We had inquired about the channel already a week prior to the election and reconfirmed it several times during the week. So we were all excited and had planned to get drinks and make some popcorn and watch the thing the whole night. But as it got time to start watching the show our hopes and expectations were shattered into pieces. When we asked Francoise to put on the program he nonchalantly just said that he had remembered wrongly; he didn’t have the channel he had said he had, but that he would inform us how the elections went. THAT PIG! He couldn’t have bothered telling us when he noticed he didn’t have the channel! So now we had just a short time to find another place to watch it. We packed our bags, stormed out of the hostel and swore on revenge. I guess we should have listened to our own advice in the first entry of this blog: NEVER TRUST A FRENCHMAN.

Despite a multitude of calls to several hotels in town and out of town, and the help of a really friendly taxi driver, we couldn’t find a hotel within a 50km radius that would show the elections in English. Luckily we found this dirty little hostel that had cable and showed many local channels and one Spanish channel that had 24h coverage of the show. So we didn’t totally miss the elections after all. Better than nothing. We opened a bottle of rum and a bag of crisps and started watching.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Vampires and drunken horses remains copyright of the author AnnaMickus, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

Comment on this entry | Tweet this | Your own free travel blog | More Travellerspoint blogs

BAD
- Americanized
- US dollar
- Exhausting taxi drivers who tried to fool you
- Untrustful tour operators
- A bit too average
- Fake shamans

AVERAGES
- A beer in restaurant or street stall: 1€
- Price for double room (comfortable): 15€
- Dinner for two: 15€

SCORE (4-10)
7,5 bananas!

Summary Ecuador remains copyright of the author AnnaMickus, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

Comment on this entry | Tweet this | Your own free travel blog | More Travellerspoint blogs