Chile has endless amounts of dust! And that likes to gather in our car. No matter how well we close all the doors and windows, dust finds its way nonetheless. No wonder, none of the campgrounds has lawns as we know from Europe. And the really beautiful places can mostly only be reached by dust road. Our Don Rayo can do them pretty well, but he doesn’t get away unharmed. Well, we’re not complaining, not a word! (read on…)

As we are lucky enough to find internet in a campground, first time in over 2 weeks, we might as well use it to send you a little update from our behalf.

Since Don Rayo, our new travel companion, was added to our life, our travels obviously changed a lot. He allows us to travel to all those far away places that no public bus would ever take us.
And we never missed cramping everything into our backpacks on almost daily bases… 20kg each … after over a year. Annoyances that probably most of you don’t think of that often, right?

Because we are still waiting on (read on…)

Hello everyone … we are getting a little lazy cause we’re not getting any responses … does anybody still read our reports or are y´all too occupied with daily life?? :0)
Don´t worry, so are we and that´s why we´ve been so far behind with our reports, lol.

To make a long story short: we travelled pretty much directly to San Pedro de Atacama. A place any of you need to visit once in your lifetime. The landscape is crazy, could be on the moon as well. We discovered the place by bicycle, in the scorching heat, acompanied by three lovely stray dogs who Mo adopted quickly as part of our family for the day. (read on…)

Happily back from the Galapagos, we spent a few days with our new friends Anita and Gonzalo who welcomed us to their house, showed and drove us around town and actually reconsiled us with Quito.

Then a short visit to Canoa at the coast where we also were welcomed with open hearts by Anke and Thomas (you remember the swiss-german couple in their Toyota-van we had met in Leymebamba, Peru). They spent their last few days in Canoa after managing a hotel for 4 months.
The next weekend, we met Anita and Gonzalo again in Quito and spent two wonderful days at Volcano Cotopaxi and other sights, sleeping in our tents. (read on…)

For our second honeymoon we treated ourselves with a holiday from our vacation, as some people pointed out. Something special for our anniversary, we thought.

350$ for the flight, 100$ entrance fee for the national park and the higher price on the islands made it clear that this is a “once in a lifetime” activity and so we booked for 3 1/2 weeks. (read on…)

Our next stop after San Gil was Santa Marta and its neighboring little fishing town Taganga at the caribbean coast.

You can do some nice cheap scuba dives in Taganga, besides that it’s mostly one thing: touristy. After 4 days below, in, above and at the water, we wanted to continue further north to Riohacha and beyond to the northernmost corner of South America, Punto Gallinas. But while checking out of the Hostel, Tino felt fevery.

Almost 5 fevery days later, the doctors found the cause of it: Leptospirosis. That’s an ugly bacterial infection, can be quite dangerous. Tino got antibiotics through the vein, which could be applied by Mo, so we didn’t even have to stay in the hospital – Yippieh! After 2 weeks (read on…)

Our life is changing quite quickly:

After finding out that Tino’s symptoms, which fit Dengue Fever perfectly, weren’t Dengue, we decided to leave the touristy, overpriced city of Iquitos. Finally, some strong debates about prices and if it was smart to go on another poop-water-for-cooking-lancha later, we ended up on the rapid boat to get to (read on…)

As always we were rewarded in travelling off the beaten track: In Mendoza, a town known lately for its coffee plantations and investing into tourism, was quite an experience.
Michel put it this way: We are so rich, we have everything here. I can play pool for 1 Sol (30cents) a night, I can surf the internet for 1 Sol an hour. I have the nature and I love to show it to people, and that happens to be my job.

And really, with them we had so much fun in this little town … Tino spoke on the local radio, we met a bunch of fun people, and were able to view a wonderful cave that was worth the visit even without all the technical challenges. (read on…)

In Leymabamba we felt for the first time that we were really traveling again. We hiked the 4hrs on muddy footpaths up to Congona, a Chachapoyan fortress that Onesiphoro and his wife Rebecca have on their chakra, their land. They welcomed us into their straw thatched kitchen house and proudly showed us around. Then, they gave us some sticks to walk back down the mudslide to the village. (read on…)

After we left Huanchaco, we headed towards the mountains to Cajamarca – a city with some historic significance: Here it was where the “last real” Inca Atahualpa was insidiously captured by the Spaniards.

After some time in prison he obtained the conquistadores´ promise to be released if his subjects would fill a chamber with gold and silver. But the Spaniards didn´t keep the promise and sentenced him to death by fire. But being burnt in the Inca culture meant as much as loosing the afterlife, so Atahualpa underwent a last-minute conversion to Christianity to avoid the fire. He was mercifully killed with the Garotte.

In the Cajamarca area, there are a few big mining corporations, so there are many Gringos in town, expensive european and US-american (read on…)