Last stop Madrid

We are so 'lucky' that Iberia has a strike today, so our original flight back to Amsterdam is cancelled. This gives us a day to enjoy Madrid, where Miriam can do some hard earned shopping (Stradivarius, my favourite store!)and Allan has a bit of time to reflect on the trip and what we did during the now 8 countries we visited.

Some of the points that stood out where;

• Climbing a live volcano
• Dancing the Tango in Buenos Aires
• Drank whisky on a glacier
• Bought a cactus and had it confiscated
• Kissed under the Iguazu falls
• Got ripped off by every taxi driver in Rio
• Caught a piranha and set it free
• Took a motorcycle taxi (3 people on one bike)
• Ate an animal that people normally have as apet (guinnee pig)
• Got altitude sickness in spite of chewing coca leaves massively (5700m)
• Woke up to the sound of howling monkeys (they scream so loud, they probably woke up the whole country)
• Got food poisoning that kept a whole hostel 'entertained'
• Sawso manyaligators and caiman that we didn´t take pictures in the end
• Blew a tire in the middle of the desert
• Rafted and Canoped 600 meters over a valley. (look mom, no hands!)
• Danced a ritual Peruvian dance(so danced around silly) to make the condors appear
• Saw condors appear because of our dancing (we are sure)
• Got tired of eating empanadas
• Drank water from a river (was needed on our 5 hour hike)
• Stole a souvenir from a restaurant (It was Miriam, I swear)
• Saw all the things we where supposed to see; Machu picchu, Salt flats, Torres del Paine, Floating Islands, Copacabana beach, etc. etc. etc.

Thank you to all the people who have read our blog and made comments. Also we would like to thank the people who made our trip really unforgettable:Irene (our wonderful guide in Peru), our very nice fellow travellers Juan, Angelika, Colm, Ruud, Vicky & Richard, Joost & Wendy, Bart, Catherine & Jerome, always late Carlos, Jesus, Enrico, Rajani and Chris(who really looked like Jamie Oliver), Solana & Gonzalo to name a few, the wonderful crew from Aquario with Lisa & Tom andall the crazy fun people at the America Del Sur hostels in Argentina.

This truly was our epic journey, glad we could share it with you all!

The last days in paradise

The countdown really has begun. We have 4 days left and then we´re back in Amsterdam. As we´ve heard, the weather over there is not so good... Luckily we still have some days to enjoy the sun and the steady temperature of plus 30 degrees.

The last days we willspend with going to Lopes Mendes beach. This is a beautiful beach with powdery white sand and nice waves. Surprisingly there are very few people on the beach and we usually have it to ourselves.We tried a bit of bodyboarding, always fun, and worked some more on our tans (we found out that our sunscreen factor 30 is really not sufficient for the blazing Brazillian sun, even not for Miriam andAllan is burnt like Danish bacon).

Our hostel has been very nice. It has acozyvibeand it feels like one big family. So of course with had some nights with our fellow travellers having bbq (organized the Brazilan way, so about 2 hours later than announced) and a lot of caipirinha´s...after trying those we found out that the caipivodkas actually taste better; you live an you learn.

Today we deceided to be a little less lazy and go for a hike. We walked through the rainforrest and found a natural pool and a waterfall on the way.It was great to cool down in the fresh springs before hiking back to the village and have a well deserved ice cream. They have a great concept of self serve icecream, you get a bowl, scoop as much as you want and just pay by the weight., yummm!

If you´re looking for us, we´re in paradise...

We are enjoying our last week of our amazing trip on the beautiful island Ilha Grande. There are no cars on the island so we can actually breathe some fresh air again after Rio. Let it be said now, that city is nowhere near being ready for the olympics! Good luck learning English and getting the most basic things to work!

When we arrived in our hostel we got the key to their best room, the capitan suite. We have a balcony with an amazing view.Who could ever get enough of that...

We were in total bliss, until we found out that itis a national holiday. So when we decided to go snorkeling in aplace called the Blue Lagoon, sounds great right? Wellabout 2000 brazilians joined us...still Allan managed to snap a picture with nobody but Miriam on it.

Luckily the next day we could wave them all goodbye and the island is nice and quiet again. It is quite hot here, almost too hot when the sun is out, but then we think about Amsterdam and Copenhagen at this time of year and we feel better.

Yesterday Miriam had a girl´s night out to a Halloweenparty in the only club on the island. Becausewe were with 5 girlswithout anycostumes with us, we just dressed up a little silly.

It was a good night with a lot of Caipivodka´s. I foundout thateverybody in Brasilis into ´Favela Funk´ where peoplego really wild on. Ofcourse we also danced t ´I Gotta Feeling´ by the Black Eyed Peas. That song we must have heardthe most in South America.

In the coming dayswe will visit Lopes Mendes beach, which is supposed to be one of the nicest beaches in the world.And besides that, we´ll have some more relaxing, and probably some more cocktails too...

Rio part 2

So, we´re back in Rio. And we guess Allan´s laptop doesn´t really like Rio, because as soon as we arrived it broke down. That really sucks ofcourse, and it´s a bit harder now to keep the blog updated. But we will still try to send exotic images to all you people back in the cold :-)

Now we´reback, we deceided thatit was time for some sightseeing. At first we went to see the famous Christ the Redeemer statue. Unfortunately it wasn´t the best day to go and see it, as the statue was covered in clouds.People naturally started taking pictures of Allan instead, until we had a small break in the clouds and the statue appeared.

After that, we went to the the streetwere the Samba schoolsperform their samba´s atthe carnaval in Rio. When we were there, a woman started pulling downMiriamspants, and beforeshe knew itthe womanputher in a real carnaval costume... As you can see she looked really happy with the result ...(I guess I have to come back here for carnaval then...)

To finally get some niceviews over the city we went to Sugarloaf mountain. Luckily we had some better views here and wecould look over the city.

Today the weather was much better, so we immediately lied down on Copacabana beach to catch some sun.

Now we just had dinner at a restaurant near the beach where Allanhad a big lobster. It is the lobster in the middle...Allan also had a bit too much sun.

Tomorrow we are travelling to Ilha Grande to hopefully catch some more sun and work on that tan before it´s time to go home again.

It's Tuesday, this must be Uruguay....

Today we took a short boat trip to Uruguay and the city of Colonia. It is the 7th country we visit on this journey, and it turned out to be the shortest visit of them all.

As usual we had to get up at 6 in the morning, and it seems that for people on vacation we have been doing that way too often. The boat ride to Colonia only takes one hour from Buenos Aires and we started with a guided walk of the old city.

They seem to have everything here in Colonia and manypeople reportedly wish to live in the city when they retire. It is easy to see why; The beautiful streets, the slow pace of life, the very nice climate and of course the opportunity to rip off tourists coming off the ferry from Buenos Aires.

We where still adjusting to a new country and currency when we sat down at a small cafe and ordered a very small breakfast consisting of two mini sandwiches and coffee. The bill came back over 20 euros and that brought out the Dutch in Miriam and she dutifully complained for hours afterwards. Even as I write these words, she is lying next to me and muttering '20 euros tjah!' over and over.

Apart from the huge leap in prices we enjoyed the day and took the ferry back for our last night in Buenos Aires.

Buenos Aires Part 2

It's already our last day in Buenos Aires, time really flies! When we arrived in BA we took a taxi to the Art Factory Hostel where we had a reservation. I actually looked forward to staying there, because the pictures I've seen looked very nice.

But when we arrived it turned out to be the worst hostel ever. The room hadn't even been cleaned, so there were dirty towels on the floor, the garbage cans were filled with dirty toilet paper and it was very smelly. When we said something the girl at the reception replied that it would be cleaned, no worries. But they only took away the dirty towels... So when it was too late at night to change something we had to sleep in that dirty room. When I showed the room to the cleaning lady she was in shock and started cleaning right away... We changed hostels and I didn't know I could be sohappy with a clean room. America Del Sur is the best hostel in BA and in Calafate, if you go here, stay there!

On our first night in BA we felt like going to a concert so we went to a place called 'Ultrabar' to check out some rockbands; girlie garage rockband ' The Kellies' and headliner 'Spleen'. They were both pretty good, only the singer of the last band sung so out of key, our ears started to hurt...and would probably have started bleeding if we had stayed all night.

The next day we went to the sunday market in San Telmo to buysome souvenirs and watch the street artists. Naturally Miriam had been waiting a long time for this opportunity to shop, and she went a little crazy. Before lunch she had already bought, bags, scarfs, jewellery, headbands a poncho, 3 wallets and more crap to take home.

Yesterday after even more shopping and walking around and a return visit to the dentist we went to see music show 'La Bomba De Tiempo', with a group of percussionists.

We ran into a girl we met in El Calafate and a friend, it is such a small world. We watched the show together which was cool. It was a big party where everybody was jumping around. They served one liter beers, so the mood was high and the dancing great. See if you can spot Miriam in the crowd.

Our week in The South

We are a bit behind with updates, as we are now back in Buenos Aires. So we left the cold weather behind, and also the beautiful nature.

Last week we went to El Chalten to do some hiking, which was very nice. We walked through some magical forrests and saw glaciers, Mount Fitz Roy and icey lagunas. In this area, the water is so clean that you can drink it. Very handy, because we didn't have to carry around liters of water in bottles. The weather changed a lot, and it was a bit frustrating to walk for 3,5 hours to see a grand view of a laguna and mountains only to have the weather change and become cloudy. The 3,5 hours walkng back in rain is then not as fun.

After that we wanted to see some more glaciers and did the 'All Glaciers Tour' on a catamaran. It turned out that it sounded nicer than it was, because the boat was filled with old people with only one goal: to standin front of you when you wanted to take a picture. Still the views were very nice. (In this photo we usedphotoshop to removea woman with purple hair)

On our last day in the south we went on a trip to the famous Torres Del Paine park in Chili. Ifyou would like to stay there there is a hotel that cost 1000 dollas per night with a 3 night minimum. We decided that maybe we could just go back to the hostel instead. Again the weather wasn't really helping us, as we experiencedsome snow storms where we couldn't see anything and it was very very windy.

But again, the views were so nice (when the weather cleared up) thatwe couldn't be bothered.

Now we are back in Buenos Aires, and the first thing we noticed was how clean the airactually was in El Calafate. Now wewalking around in the fumes of the city, and it's a big difference!Miriam can catch up on her shopping, she has already spotted a painting 120x60cm and a vase that weights 8 kilos. I wonder if they are easier to get home than a cactus.

Drinking whiskey 'on the rocks' in Patagonia

At the moment we are chilling in our hostel in El Calafate in the south of Argentina. We are staying here for a week, and the week is packed with walking on glaciers, taking boats along glaciers, visiting national parks with snow covered mountains and even a visit to Chili.

Yesterday we did some trekking on the Perito Moreno glacier, which has the size of the whole city of Buenos Aires.

It is made of ice that's 300 years old. Since we are in South America we almost only experienced good weather, but this day it had to rain, rain, rain... Completely soaked we walked on the glacier. Luckily the views were so great and the trip was so nice, we forgot that it rained.

Of course our visit to the glacier had to end with some real whiskeys 'on the rocks'...

Tonight we are going to enjoy some meat at a BBQ, and tomorrow we are off to El Chalten, a mountaintown where we can hike all that meat off again...