Pictures #2

Hey all,

I arrivedwell in Bogota about three hours ago. It is super chilly out here! I don't think we beat the 14degrees. Leticia was a nice place to relax for a couple of days. The reggaetonparty yesterday was amazing. I met four Colombian girls there that took the same plane as I today and they want to celebrate my birthday here in Bogota with me, so if it will be as good as yesterday, I'm in for one more! Apart from that, Leticia is a quiet, nice place where everyone rides with motorcycles, because getting a car out there costs a lot! There are no roads leading to civilization.

The police is very nice and gave us a couple of rides through town because we were to heavy loaded for the mototaxis. They even advised us the best bars in town!!

Moving from one place to another is done most of the time by mototaxi, and it was fun when the group I was hanging out with all took a different one at the same time and they would race to our destination.

Internet is very fast in the hostel here, so I took advantage of it to post a huge amount of pictures! Check the following links(Facebook):

Caribbean Colombia and Angel Falls:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=120641&id=634868429&l=5af764eac1

Roraima trek:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=121115&id=634868429&l=8fdfa1c0e3

Manaus and the Amazon cruise:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=121144&id=634868429&l=9d84ac4e4a

You can also find 2 pictures of me on http://www.globespots.com/, it's a website where you can find objective information about travel destinations. The precise links are: (you have to scroll to the right)

http://www.globespots.com/photogallery.php?photogalleryID=29

http://www.globespots.com/photogallery.php?photogalleryID=30

I hope you are all satisfied with these pictures. Now you know what I'm up to.

Hasta la proxima for some more news!

Ciao,

G. on the road

Cruising the Amazon

Oi!

After the Venezuela periple I arrived in Manaus, a city that is completely build from imported materials through the Amazon and also is the seaport the furthest away from the sea! The golden years of the rubber had a clear impact on the development of the city. The main building is the Teatro Amazonas, which is completly buildout ofimported materials from Europe and even the wood that comes from the Amazon was sent to Europe to be carved and sent back.

I went visiting the an oldrubber plantage with some Brazilians and they gave me my first intensive course of Portugees, because the museumguide didn't speak English. The Argentinian guy from the group had his birthday, so we had a party that night with a great churrasca! (Quite the same as a BBQ) But after a while we ran out of meat and went searching for more around 10pm. The streets were packed with students who just finished their classes and were partying in the streets.

After a while we ended up in a neighbourhood that didn't look that safe. People were watching us and it turned out we were just at the border of the favelas. Even the locals from Manaus say: 'They should drop a bomb on these favelas!'. Eventually the we got safe back, but without meat.. The nightguard from the hostel wanted to celebrate it even more and took us to a very cool place outside of town, packed with partying locals and again I was dropped in the middle of all these Portugees speaking people! These party's are really fun to meet locals and talk about the life in a city in the middle of the jungle.

The other nights in Manaus we went twice to the Teatro Amazonas. One night there was this eclectic, crazy dance/theater/.. I don't know what it was, but it was insanely strange. The other night we attended the Amazon Philharmonic orchestra. It was an amazing performance in this beautiful theater.

The 31st we left Manaus with our cruiseboat! Instead of a fitness, there was an iron bar with two concrete blocks on it, instead of a theatre we had a tv, instead of a luxury dining room we had a crappy place were we ate twice a day chicken,rice,noodles and beans(I'm so sick of that food! Really starting to hate it) and breakfast was a dry cookie with a cup of coffee that tasted like liquid sugar. Instead of a room with a view we had our own hammock with your neighbour constantly swinging and bumping against you because there was not enough place. Instead of a nice bathroom we had a room with a shower of brown Amazon water and right underneath the shower stood the toilet, so you had to stand over it. HARD CORE cruising I call this!

So to keep busy during the seven day trip on a river: we read, took naps, played cards and chatted with the locals. I met some verynice people! Once a day we stopped in a harbour of a city along the Amazon and unloaded supplies, because these villages are only accessible through the river.

In one of the villages I went for a walk, because the captain said we had a 2hour stop. Another guy from the boat wanted to have a beer in town, so we went to a bar and had a chat. After a while the barman came over and asked us if we were from the boat.. because it was leaving!! We didn't hear the boat horn because of the loud music in the bar, so we ran as hell downhill(the village was on top a a hill along the Amazon river) to the boat that was already half loose from the port and everyone on the boat was cheering at us as we ran! This was one of the most intense moments ever! Eventually we made it and afterwards we had a good laugh about it and the locals really started to like me! The other crazy moment on the boat was on an afternoon when we were playing cards on the top deck, the boat suddenly made a 90 degree turn and went full speed direction shore. Everyone started to wonder what happened as we got closer to shore, and then ... the boat had a massive impact, we had just crashed into the riverbank with no reason whatsoever!! Nobody told us what happened or why it happened. Probably the Captain was drunk and fell asleep, but it was a major panick moment on board! The boat luckily managed to get loose from the shore and we simply continued the journey.

Wefinally arrived well in Tabatinga/Leticia and I'll be leaving this little lost bordertown tomorrow(Sunday) in the afternoon and fly to Bogota. Normally I could have left earlier, but there is a good reggaeton party in town tonight and someone from the boat wanted to go there with me, so I'll be dancing in the middle of the Amazon tonight! It's a crazy idea if you think about it, but awesome if you're here!

I'll upload pictures today normally! Be patient!

Have a good time at home!

G. on the road

Epic journey through civil disobedience aka anarchy!

The 14th of October Simon and I started our trip in Santa Marta for the Final Destination: Ciudad Bolivar 48hours later. It is modest to say that this trip was epic. After the first 20hours with a buschange in Bucaramanga (Colombia) we arrived in Cucuta. As some of you may know the major reasons why there are no tourists in Venezuela are the money exchange and black market problem, the security that is nihil and the corruption of police and military. So before we started our trip we tried to figure out how to solve the money issue. We pulled outtwo million pesos out the ATM and went exchanging half of it on the street into dollars, very dodgy and fast transaction, but the bills were real and the rate was good. The other million we exchanged into Bolivars inCucuta in an official exchange bureau at a very nice rate.

With way too much money in our pockets we headed to the border and stamped perfectly out of Colombia, but after crossing the bridge that separates the two countries we already felt not so welcome when seeing the tourist information bureau totaly burned down.. After the necessary paperwork we were happy to walk into Venezuela! The border police was friendly to help us explain how to get to the airport and busstation to compare prices,(bustrip was eventually way cheaper) but after walking a couple of meters further into Venezuela we entered a buscompany office and a guy came out of the backdoor pulling out/in a gun of his pants, but luckily the guy from the border arrived and the strange situation ended without knowing what might have happened. We took a local bus from San Antonio to San Cristobal and were held up three times by the military roadcontrols in the first hour! each time we had to open our bags, empty them on a table, let a dog go through our stuff and survive the millions of questions that they asked us! 'Why did you go to Colombia? With whom did you travel? Why are you in Venezuela, for how long? How much money are you going to spend? ... and they kept asking these questions at a lightning speed in Spanish.. Horrible! I was kind of tired of the first 24 hours in these buses and on a point of a mental breakdown of these intense controls! But it went even worse. At the second control a officer came on the bus and checked everyones ID and took our both passports with him and left the bus. The locals told us to run after him, because it often happens that they threaten to tear your passport in to in exchange of a bribe. And to whom can you complain if this happens, because they are supposed to be the ones that protect you! So we ended up sponsoring corruption with 100$ and could 'safely' continue our trip. During the last 24 hours of busride between San Cristobal and Ciudad Bolivar we were controlled a couple of times more at any hour, even in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere!

We were exhausted when we arrived at destination and decided to book our tour the next day to the Angel Falls. We flew with a little Cessna over the Gran Sabana to Canaima, a little village in the middle of the jungle along a brown lake that is only accessible through planes. The first night we went with the group to the local bar and around midnight went back to our rooms, but Kevin(acool UK man who was on honeymoon) and I stopped at the soccerpitch and played a little two on two game against seventeen year old boys. They played like Ronaldinho, but made too many nice moves and eventually always lost the ball and the european style of 'straight to the goal with no nonsense' overcame them and we won the game at 3-5 in our favour. Because we both had huge blisters on our feet we decided to head back and call it a night.

The next day we took a little boat for 20 minutes upstream to some rapids, we hiked one hour through the gran Sabana and took another kayak-like boat again for the last two hours of upstream ride. The driver was insane and went straight through low-water rapids and when we got stuck, the men(we) had to jump out and push the boat through the rapid. Eventually we had to hike one more hour uphill to the bottom of the Angel Falls and yes, the trip was totaly worth it!

Back in Canaima the group flew back to Ciudad Bolivar, but Simon and I had decided to take a plane to Santa Elena de Uairen the next day. The only problem was that we ran out of money, so we had to borrow a tent from another traveller and slept for free on the beach along the lake and had just enough together to buy ourself two bananas and dinner.

The next day we flew out of Canaima over the beautiful Gran Sabana and its table mountains and had a taxi stop with our Cessna in this very remote village before we continued our flight to Santa Elena. Once there we had to find a place where we could exchange some dollars into Bolivars, because as you might know: if you take out Bolivars at the ATM, you get a rate of 2.5 Bolivars a Dollar and the black market gave us in Cucuta 5.7! This black market rate constantly changes, and is lower inside the country, so we asked around and we eventually found the best rate in a Panaderia(bakery) where they wanted to exchange our 100 and 50$ bills at a 4.8 rate. With this money we bought ourself some fine pastries and booked our trek to the famous Roraima table mountain. It is the highest of its kind and lays right on the triple point (Brazil, Guyana and Venezuela).

The group was very cool and the night before we left we had a breefing where the tourmanager explained us how special Roraima is. He wrotethree books about aliens, the positive energy that came out of the mountain, the feng-shui spirit of the mountain and much more funny/crazy stories. With the whole group we went eating and discussed all the UFO stories he told us and how it was not possible to explain the fact that a lot of rocks on top had a special shape like a flying turtle, monkey eating icecream, rhino, Fidel Castro,.. There are millions of rocks and with a lot of imagination and the effect of years of erosion everything is possible, but for him it was the work of aliens..

Anyway the next day we left full of energy and eager to see these strange shaped rocks! The two first days we hiked over the Gran Sabana to the foot of the mountain and the third day we hiked up the 2800m high rock! It were three intense and fast hiking days, but the team was in very good shape. On top we saw some hummingbirds, small black frogs with a yellow belly and other animals and over 1000 kinds of flora that is unique in the world. The top of the mountain looked like a moonlandscape. Rocks, rocks and more black rocks with stunning canyons inbetween.

Three days later we were back in Santa Elena and after some necessary laundry, ashower and a goodbye of Simon, I left the next day to La Linea (the border between Venezuela and Brasil) with David (UK boy that was on the trek and with whom I'm here in Manaus and going to Tabatinga by boat) and Heidi (Belgian woman from Ghent). Once there we had immediately some army-men jumping on us as vultures and took David and I into rooms and again a full backpack control, pants down, shirt up and the series of questions. (luckily no fingers up cavities) I answered everything well and we could finally stamp out of this crazy country where I wont return in the next eras!

I previously said that I might go to Caracas, but after hearing that almost every tourist that goes there gets mugged and robbed by armed Venezuelians and the police, I wisely decided to avoid that suicidal city! So I only phoned to the family and told them about my findings about the country they lived in and they totally agreed that is was an anarchy where everything is corrupt.

The cab had abandoned us at the Venezuelian border, so we had to hike 2km to the Brazilian immigration. Immediatly I got confronted to the fact that everything works here in Portuguese.. It is understandable, but impossible to talk. I'm trying hard, but I will need a lot of practice.

We took a cab to Boa Vista and from there we took a nightbus to Manaus, a huge city in the middle of the Amazon where the Brazilian vibes are hard to ignore! Music everywhere, but also the tropical heat is hard to ignore.. The moist heat is heavy on my lungs!

Venezuela is known for its cheap fuel, but it is insanely cheap! 100 liters of gasoline cost only 2 USD!!! Water is 50 times more expensive! You can see at the Colombian and Brazilian side of the border people with a lot of jerrycans selling fuel. Venezuelians cross the border with 90liter fueltanks, syphon them and go back. After doing that three times a daythey can earn up to 300$..

This story is long enough fornow, so I'll post the Manaus shananigans next week!

Hasta la proxima gringos!

G. on the road on the SOUTHERN hemisphere!!!! woohooooo!

Colombia, mi corazón!

After the amazing first night in Cartagena(Colombia), I settled in the dodgy, but cheap area of the town close to the old part. The old city is so beautiful! All the Spanish colonial mansions have been restored and painted and the streets are guarded bythe police, so it is perfect for tourists to hang out even at night. I posponed my departure to Santa Marta with a day, so I could go and have a massage in the mud volcano nearby. A crazy experience! you float on the mud and the massages feel so good! Afterwards you get washed by local women in the green lake, my skin felt reborn! In the afternoon I went with the aussies from the boat and an Israeli to the castle of Cartagena, quite impressive withall the underground tunnels. So the next day I left for Santa Marta(another city along the coast) with three Irish guys.I booked my trip to the Lost City and we went to the beach with a cab that had 'Rapido y Furioso' written on his frontscreen.. Worst decision ever! Since then I always managed to take cabs with insane drivers! The beach wasn't such a nice experience, because every 20seconds a different guy walked by us to sell: ice,beer,alcohol,massages,coffee,juwelry,mango,coconuts,... Eventually we wrote in the sand 'NO GRACIAS' so we could enjoy the beach! I took a banana ride for only 2$!

The next day I leftfor the Ciudad Perdida trek. After a mad trip through the jungle we arrived at the startingpoint of the hike. The jungle heat jumped on us and our shirts got soaked in 30minutes! When it started raining, it was not even worth it to put on a raincoat. The three day hike through to the Lost City was amazing (and tough!) Constantly up and down, rivers to cross,.. and at the end there are 1200 stairs to take up! The views really look like in the Indiana Jones movies. The city itself are a couple of ruinsand terrasses guarded by the Colombian army. Very strange guys, but we had some fun and took some pictures withtheir guns!(boys and toys..) The hike back was through the same way over dangerous cliffs and rocks. (in Europe there would have been ropes and security everywhere, here none..) The second day our guide asked us if we wanted to visit a Cocaine 'factory'. Before sunrise a guy from the 'factory' would come and wake us up and walk through the jungle to a remote location. The guide could not come with us and did not know where it was. In the 'factory' that was a 'demonstration' for tourists (yeah right! As if they would throw their product away after the 'show'..) they made a product that was 1 step away from the stuff on the streets. Apparently they sell it and the final person probably mixes some flower or milkpowder with it before it gets sold. Anyway, it is a discusting process! They use a huge amount of gasoline and pure acid to make a couple of grams! The gasses are highly toxic, discusting.. The penultimate day we decided to do the last two hikes in 1 day, so we ended up walking high speed and arrived exhausted and soaked back at the jeep.

After the trek we went all relaxing for a couple of days inTaganga before all going our ways. In the hostel we shared a room with an Aussie that lived for the lastseven years in Venezuela, but just broke up with his girlfriend and decided to take a break in Taganga. We ended up listening to his sad break up story and he kept on whining about her, but in exchange he cooked for us an awesome two course dinner!The next dayI decided to go to Venezuela and was lucky to have met this very cool guy from the UK (Simon) on the trek with whom I've beentravelling all the way through Venezuela.

Colombia was awesome so far! I'm going back for some extra weeks in Bogota, Medellin and Cali soon!

Venezuela story coming up tomorrow! I'm going to have a walk around Manaus(Brazil) now and tonightthe nightguardfrom the hostel wants to go to a rockparty out of town! Music is everywhere here in Brasil! In the three hour cabdrive from La Linea (the border) to Boa Vista we've been listening to Forro. (pronounced Foho) Crazy uptempo mishmash music, but it keeps you awake!

Hasta mañana amigos!

G. on the road

Coming up..

Aloha todos!

Sorry for letting you wait for more stories, but it's coming! Today I'll be leaving Venezuela to Manaus (Brasil). I'll post some stories from there, because 64k internet is not ideal..

So far I can already say that everything is ok, Colombia is definetely one of the best countries in the world and I agree that Colombians are the second most happy people on the world(after the Danish) and I can also confirm that you better stay away as far as you can from Venezuela. It's an anarchy where there are no rules and police and army are corrupt! (I have been confronted..)

More news tomorrow or in the next days! Photos will come as well, but a strong selection needs to be made. Already 4gig of pictures.. (+-600)

I'll end by giving a fun fact about us Belgians: we are apparently the only nation in the world that still uses handkerchiefs! Everybody always wonders what the use is ofthat piece of tissue in my pocket..

Hasta pronto gringos!

G. on the road

ps: On trekkings we always play games, if you want to entertain yourself for a couple of hours here is one of my favourite: Find the 10 countries that are only 4 letters long. (in english) After some trekking hours I found them, so it's up to you now!

Pictures

Dear all,

A short note for those who want to see the pictures. I decided to put them on facebook, because you can upload them by batch there. I'll share you the link each time there are new ones.

First album:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=111892&id=634868429&l=adeb7fb4f0

If anyone can't see this, leave a comment please.

And then a little rectification: for those who think I'm an alcoholic because I drank once too much on an island, I apologize. As if no one ever drank too much on vacation..?! You only make mistakes once, and so far it is still that one time!

Next time you'll hear from me will probably be when I'll be in Bogota. This will probably be in a week or three. First one week in the jungle, then a couple of days in Caracas and then I'll probably go visit the Angel Falls.

Hasta la proxima amigo's!

Paradise San Blas & Sailing in the Caribbean (censured)

It´s been a long time, and a lot has happened since.. Where to start?!

As announced I've been to San Blas with a bunch of awesome Americans! One had already been there and knew Robinson, one of the Kuna(indigenous people from the islands) chiefs. We took off around 7am at a supermarket in Panama! Around noon we arrived on the island. Suddenly a couple of guys decided to swim to another island at about 2km. I was walking around the island and decided to join them, so I ran straight in the water and we started swimming. Half way Justin decided to go back and he gave me his rubber tire in which he was swimming. I was exhausted from the nights before(acclimatisation)+the hot sun on my back+the rubber burns in my armpits from trying to swim with the tyre = it wasn't the perfect situation for an afternoon swim. I had for 1week ugly rubber burns under my arms, but it's ok now.

So after one night on Robinson's island sleeping in my hammock, 4 of the Americans decided to go to another island 2h away and I decided to join them. It was a deserted island and ours for 4 days! Max arranged it for us to get it for free if we took care of ourselves 100%. Normally you'd have to pay 10$/night. So off we went and set up camp underneath the coconut trees, the only vegetation on these islands. You might wonder: 'What do you do for 4 days on a deserted island?' You need to have done it to understand.. First of all you live with the sun, so wake up at 5-6am and go to sleep around 9pm. You can walk around the island, do a couple of push/pull ups to keep in shap, go for a swim, stand for hours on a spot and enjoy the sounds en view and think about anything or just hang out together and have discussions. During our boat trips we saw some flying fishes and dolphins. The exact name of the island we were on may not be shared, but it was as close to paradise as I ever got!

Once back at Robinson's island I needed to get to Carti(another island) where the boat would pick me up to sail to Cartagena (Colombia). I had to be there at 9am, but in the morning there was another tropical storm hiting about 10 beaufort and as Forrest Gump said, rain can indeed come from above, horizontal and beneath you with these tropical storms! So I couldn't leave the island and I was afraid to miss my boat! Finally the wind and waves settled, so we could go to Carti. Once there: no Windseeker.. In panic I went to the island in search of a cellphone to contact the captain.They delayed the departure with one day and I had to be on another island.. Really getting sick of all this and in no position to bargain I had to pay $25 to get there.. After another 45minutes I eventually got to the good island which was the 'airport' of the archipelago. The landingstrip was just long enough to make a little plane take off! Exept of the landingstrip there were only some concrete ruins of a hotel from the early 1930's.. This would be the place where I will spend the night. After some negociations I got to put up my hammock for $5 under a roof and take a fresh shower! The 4 other people were real toerists that came in by plane and spent $300 for their stay!We all had dinner together and the 2 dutch women had a bottle of champagne they wanted to share with me and the Colombian and Panamanian guys.

The next day the boat was there and we took off to other islands to do some scuba diving on a wrecked boat. The captain Mike smoked like a chimney and constantly cursed with the F word on his help and cook Mauricio which is half Italian and half Scottish. You couldn't understand a word of what he said, but he was a real cook, so the food we ate was delicious! I think I might have gained some weight on that boat.. The co-travellers were the 2 Aussies with whom I had visited the Panama Canal and a Dutch guy. We had some good times!

After 3 days we left for the big sea and huge swells! The boat started rocking as a rollercoaster, but our stomachs were all ok. The first night I got the shift from 12 to 2am and it was kind of stressy to constantly check for huge cargo-boats, but all went well. Last night we arrived around 1am in Cartagena en because Josse has to leave tonight we decided to go for a party with Mauricio! We dressed up and took the denge on shore. Because the douane was closed we were actually illegally in the country, but we decided to keep a low profile. We arrived at this amazing club where every girl could participate to the miss World election! NOT 1 was bad looking! We had so much fun! We tried to do our best in the Salsa room, but I still need a lot of practice before I can ask a girl for a dance in a club.. Eventually I started talking with this guy (21y old)about business and finance and he spoke a perfect english! At 4am the club closed and he invited us over to continue the party at his place. He lived just 2blocks away so we went and what we found there is too crazy for words. He owned, yes he owned a $26mln old spanish colonial mansion! The second most expensive 8 levels high house with 22 rooms, a swimming pool AND a rooftop jacuzzi.. The guy's father is a huge bigshot here in Colombia and probably one of the only that didn't got rich trough cocaine..

This was kind of it, tomorrow I'll visit Cartagena and arrange the 7-day trip trough the jungle to Ciudad Perdida. After that I might hit off to Venezuela for a couple of days.

Uptil now I met so many people with all different knowledge and stories! On a trip like this you learn more than in University!

Hasta la proxima amigo's! The landsickness is kind of kicking in and the screen starts to wobble around..

G. on the road

El primer dia

Hey all!

First day in Panama! Sleeping in a dorm with a fan that makes as much noise a 20year old motorcycle wasn't that easy, luckily I was exhausted..

I baked my pancakes with banana for breakfast and then took off with a couple of Americans to discover the city.We bumped into a beautiful ruin of a colonial palace! check the pictures.

Normally I was about to leave Panama as soon as possible, which would mean tomorrow, but the boat isn't leaving, so I decided to go for a couple of days to the San Blas Islands, better known as 'Paradise on earth'! I just bought myself a hammock and fishing hooks, so I'm ready to be the new Robinson! If you want to get an idea of what these Islands look like: http://www.tropicaldiscovery.com/regions_panama/san_blas/isla-pelicano-san-blas1.jpg

Tomorrow at 5am the jeep takes us to the Carribean coast trough some rough jungle and then we'll sail to the islands. So you won't hear from me until I get back from this paradise..

Take care, and so will I!

CIAO gringo's!

Ps: to answer the questions: The weather is freakin' hot and cloudy with some sun coming trough.

The beer Bilbao is kind of weak in taste, but ok to drink . There is worse available..