What was up in South-America?!: juni 2006

12 juni 2006

Brazilië: Manaus - Belém

After having spent only three days in Manaus and having slept on plastic matresses for three nights, it was now time to leave for Belém, at least hoping for better beds. This would be our next stop on the way back to Fortaleza. Same story as for the trip to Manaus, from Manaus to Belém, the only available transport was by boat. This time it would even be a 4 days' trip. The result, just as our previous boat trip: Spending some quality time in a very relaxed way and breathing the best quality air possible.

After we had arrived at Belém we immediately bought the bus tickets for our trip to Fortaleza. All in all we only had two hours to spend in Belém. Because we were still quite exausted from the boat trip, we decided to spend those two hours just in an internet cafe.
The trip that we finally made to Fortaleza was one of the worst, maybe even the worst, ever! Kids crying all day and all night long, just horrible, impossible to sleep in. Plus the fact that the bus had a terrible delay. Maybe it was all symbolic for approaching the end of the trip, of having to leave for Holland again. Anyway.... once we arrived in Fortaleza, we spent there a week or so to acclimatise a little bit from all the hardcore travelling we had done. And finally, on Wednesday the 26th of April all the wonderful times had unfortunately come to a defenitive end and we left Fortaleza, Brazil and South-Amerika...... but for ever?

See below for some of the ultime pictures taken during our boat trip from Manaus to Belém:

The middle deck of our boat: Our bedrooms

Just after departure, we had the opportunity
to see 'O encontro das águas', the place where
the rivers 'Rio Negro' and the 'Rio Amazonas'
come together, with their obviously different
colours

Wow, this sky didn't promise any good!

Just leaving from one of our stops

O yes, ofcourse there were trees in the Amazone...

Night fall on the Amazone river

After being on the water for hours and hours,
suddenly lokals with their houses and boats

'Bobos' in the bush, without bobos

Another congregation of lokal citizens at the river

Amazone family in a relatively big house,
even equipped with satellite

Yep, we also saw this...

Perfectly smooth water surface, always
millions of trees at both sides, beautiful
sky and its impressive cloud pattern

So piecefully it was, forcing everyone to silence

After being on the boat for days with just water
and trees, suddenly something looking
like houses

Houston, we have something like a city: 'Belém'

Houses of Belém built on water

Another view over part of the city, as seen
from the water

Brazilië: Porto Velho - Manaus

The trip through Bolivia has been a quite fast one, as we unfortunately were getting closer and closer to the planned date of our flight back to Holland. At that time we still had to travel an awful distance from Bolivia to the place of departure all the way in the north-east of Brazil: Fortaleza. Because of the risk to get stuck with the bus for a longer time in the Amazonion mud, we decided to take a plane from La Paz to the border with Brazil: Guajará-Mirim. After asking for it, we as 'flying Dutchmen' had the great privilege to enjoy the flight with the Dutch Fokker F-27 from between the cockpit and the cargo compartment, all the way from start to landing! Although there was just enough space to just stand between the cockpit and the cargo, it was a great experience!

Once arrived at the border we wanted to change onto bus as quickly as possible. Unfortunately that day appeared to be thé black day of our trip (no further comments). Finally we were able to catch that bus only the next day. It took us to Porto Velho where no roads existed to continue our trip, which made further transport to the next city on land impossible. The only options were travelling by plane or by boat. We decided for the option over water, which happened to be great:

Three days non-stop on a boat,
showering with Amazone river water,
the freshest and purest air on earth (!),
annoying Brazilian tunes that left the underdimensioned sound speakers on board all day long,
relaxing in its highest form and enjoying the sun all day long,
playing chess for a thousand times,
playing our recently bought Bolivian ' djembé' at the front dek together with the locals and other travelers,
staring at the stars and enjoying the silence at night,
and so on, and so on...

After three days of travelling on water, we finally reached Manaus, capital of Brazilian's province of the Amazone. At first sight it was just some first bigger city on the way, but soon it became obvious that this city in the middle of the Amazone was huge and stretched with its 1,8 million inhabitants! Again, as before, we only had a short stay in this city.

Get ready for the presentation of "Travelling over the Amazone - From Porto Velho to Manaus":

Beautiful view over the quiet Amazone river

The upper deck of our boat; the bar, music,
dance and games compartment

The lower deck; the relax, sleep, eat and shower
compartment

Yes, these were the ' beds' (so-called 'redes')

The morning view at the back; still water,
water and also beautiful skies...

The view over Manaus' port from our hostel

Some other buildings as seen from our hostel

The view from the other side of our hostel

Out of the blue this impressive building while
exploring the city

It was too big to catch in one picture; here's part two!

And here its entrance

At the end of that same street this square

10 juni 2006

Bolivia: La Paz

From Uyuni the plan was to take a train in the direction of a place near the capital of Bolivia La Paz. From there we would only need a short bus trip to finally reach La Paz itself, the highest situated capital on earth with its 3600 meters.
That night we had already left our hostel as our train would leave at one o' clock in the night. We spent the night with playing darts at a deserted bar in Uyuni, to kill the time until one o' clock. At the time we arrived at the railway station, just some guy told us the train had a four hour delay at least. After the half an hour we needed to realise this was a different category of train delay than what we were used to in the Netherlands, we tried to find a way to get some sleep or rest in those very 'comfortable' beds there. At five o' clock in the morning still no train and still no sleep, but by that time on the contrary we did already have a frozen and broken bone structure all in one. The combination of sleeping in the open air, an outside temperature of below zero and no blankets was something that was going to sit in your cold clothes (Non-Dutch readers should forget the latter too artificially created expression).

The next day, somehow, we managed to arrive in La Paz. Just as Uyuni, even a big city like La Paz continued to show us this completely different world and culture than we'd ever seen before. For example there were no supermarkets but everything was on sell at one huge open-air market instead, where the whole population was doing its groceries. Or the streets of La Paz, that were very crowded with cars and people 'kris-kras' crossing the streets, and they were messy too with garbage just lying around. Some last funny thing was part of one of the main streets in La Paz spontaneously collapsing and going down after a bus drove on it. All this was simply great to experience!

One of our greatest experiences ever was the mountain bike tour we did there just outside the city: The so-called 'Camino de la muerte' through the Andes. The tour started in a bus, taking us up to a height of some 4600 meters to start. From there on we did everything by bike, with at one side always the beautiful mountains, and at the other side always the view of thousands of meters into the deep ravine! The view was just beautiful, magnificent, amazing, impossible to describe. The same words could be used for the feeling these enormous mountains gave us as being little creatures! 'Breathless' could finally be used for describing the lack of oxigen that hit us when we were doing the nine kilometer climb on the way.

All this, and more, has visually been registrated below:

Night vision over one of the streets of La Paz

The street in which our hostel was situated.
Amazing how hard it was to climb these
streets at such high altitudes and
corresponding lack of oxigen

La Paz is built on and surrounded by mountains
and hills. Here a view from one of the squares
over such a hill

Yep, this is not only seen in the Netherlands...

One of the crowded market streets in La Paz.
Look for tall Europeans in this picture!

Caution! No one at work repairing
collapsed street

Bolivian female dress code (7 [!] dresses)

Public transport in La Paz

Just before the start of our mountain bike
tour over 'El camino de la muerte'

At the start this foggy view into the deep,
to make us feel comfortable

Our right view just after 'take off'

Our left view just after 'take-off'

Here, on asfalt, you could reach a speed
up to not too slow

Wooooow, sooooo nice!

Continuing the tour on some rougher roads

Number 1 and 2 in the race, enough ahead
to take another break

Again, beau-ti-ful! A nice overview of the
region we covered by bike. At the right the
small and narrow path that took us
through these enormous mountains!

At the finish - the winners!

The first and only plane we took in our trip;
a Dutch (!) Fokker F-27, taking us from La
Paz to the border with Brasil.
After asking for it, we were called to take
place/ stand in the cockpit, from start to landing!

Bolivia: Uyuni

As we were travelling from Salta to the northern border, we saw the people, and especially their faces and clothes, slowly change there towards another style. Faces were getting rounder and rounder and clothes were getting more colorful every kilometer. In addition, the landscape was turning rougher and rougher, less cultivated by men. All in all, it became clear that we were heading into something completely new, something completely different, a culture that was entirely unknown to us, that had nothing in common with what we were used to: Bolivia. The bus trip first took us from Salta to the border with Bolivia. There we had to cross the border at La Quiaca by foot, heading for the train station in Villazón to take us to our next destination: Uyuni. When we arrived at the place however, we heard there had been a train accident that week, so there wouldn't be any train at all for that complete week! Therefore we switched to a quickly inventend plan B. We first took a bus to another place where we were going to spend the night. On the way our too old bus got a flat tire, so there we were, in the dark , in the middle of a few stinking Bolivians, in the middle of nothing, never knowing what was going to happen. It was especially this part we liked so much, this big adventurous aspect. Anyway, in a way we made it to a place where we could sleep; the end of an excting day.

The next day we had to get up early already, because there was only one jeep a day that went to Uyuni, the place where we were planning to visit the salt flat 'Salar de Uyuni'. We were 11, but the 6-hour transportation was achieved in a jeep that should fit 8 persons, so it was very cosy in there. It was even more fun with the company of a local Bolivian woman, with her so typically Bolivian smell, something so horrible it could almost kill you. Anyhow, even that couldn't affect the beauty of the nature all around us there. And in the end we even managed to arrive in Uyuni, where we would spend the next day at the salt flat. Salar de Uyuni is the biggest salt flat in the world with its 10 000 square kms and is situated at a height of 3650 meters . It contains some 8 meters thick layer of pure salt which has been formed some 40 000 years ago. At that time the place was part of a giant prehistoric lake. When the lake dried it left behind to modern lakes, and two salt deserts, with Uyuni one of them. It is estimated to contain the huge ammount of 10 billion tons of salt of which less than 25 000 is extracted each year. The encounter with the salar was breathtaking. The view of this white substance alike snow was incredible, it was everywhere around you as far as your eyes could see. In addition the reflection of the sun in the salt was blinding. As longer the sun was heating up the salt, the uppermost part of the salt layer became like a liquid mirror, reflecting the sun, the clouds and the surrounding mountains at the same time. As we were riding over the salar, it felt like riding on water, impossible to describe with words.....
At the end of our trip in Uyuni we visited a family salt company. We were very impressed by what we saw there; the whole family working hard, including little kids, to pack all the gained salt into plastic bags for an hourly fee of a roughly € 0,10!

Check out the pics below of our trip to Bolivia and all the salty stuff we got to know in Uyuni: