At first Lina and me would like to wish you a Merry Christmas! I hope everyone had a good family time with lots of presents and too much food! I'm currently residing at the house of a plastic surgeon now, so for those who want a post-Christmas lipo.. Always welcome!

Second I'd like to wish everyone already a happy new year where everyone will quit his job and start travelling!!! The world is bigger then your little work cube, get out there and go see it for yourself instead of reading this and looking at my pictures and saying: 'I wish I was there..'

Here, Christmas was quite different than back home. It is also a family event, but we ate a starter at 6pm and then started dancing(salsa and other latino dances) until midnight. Then the little kids could open their presents and only after that we started eating(around 1am). And then we continued drinking and dancing! I was obliged to dance with all Lina's aunts, and there are quite a lot..

Tomorrow we leave for the Caribbean coast and will go camping for 3 days in the famous Tayrona park that is known for its most beautiful beaches in the world. NYE will be celebrated at a friends house in Santa Marta!

The last weeks of travelling have been quite calm. I left Cuenca(Ecuador) Early in the morning to cross the Peruvian border during the day.(bordercrossings can sometimes be quite messy) And this time that was really the case! Worst bordercrossing ever! My bus stopped at the emigration and I went stamping out, but when I wanted to return to the bus, it was gone.. with my luggage!! I did not remember the buscompany's name, but luckily I still had my ticket with the name on it. So I asked around and the bus went to the therminal and would be there with my luggage. I took a cab to the terminal and immediately a guy jumped in my cab and said he would guide me through the whole bordercrossing process.(ofcourse for a lot of money in exchange) I refused, but he insisted and kept following me. Once I had recovered my luggage I jumped into a new taxi and was rid of the first con. The cab dropped me at a supercrowded bridge not even 1km further, it was sunday, so market in the centre of the city. At that bridge con #2 was waiting for me and he showed me a taxi licence(which was fake I suppose) and he offered me a cabride to the immigration. I accepted, because it was 3km south of the city, but then we walked into a little alley where a old car was waiting with a guy in it, so my fake cabdriver was not even the driver. They took me nicely to the immigration, but then it all started going wrong. They wanted to give me a ride all the way to my desination in Peru(Mancora) for 80$! Or a ride to the closest therminal which they charged 30$! I wanted the bustherminal, but then they started driving super slow so I would miss my bus and needed to accept their 80$ offer. We talked for a bit and forgot the quarrel, but when we got closer to the therminal they started again asking for money through all kinds of reasons. When they drove into a little alley and asked for 30$ for gasoline it became too much for me. There was not even a gasstation, but they were going to buy it on the black market. They started harassing me and then I decided to pull out my swiss knife(which is quite big) and threatened the guy sitting in front of me and saying to the driver to bring me to the bustherminal without any more loops. Ofcourse I was afraid of my own act, but I had to do it, or I would have ended up paying hundreds of dollars!

They shut up and drove silently to a buscompany's HQ, because apparently there was no therminal! They dropped me off and I gave them 5$ for the effort and ran into the HQ. The busride costed me 2.5$, which is quite cheaper than the 80$ the cons tried to charge me.

Once in Mancora I arrived at my hostel, you can check it out on the net: http://www.lokihostel.com/mancora , I was happy again! It looked like a 5star resort on the beach with pool, bar, party's and only packed with young travellers and all this for only 8$! This immediately made me change my plans and I decided to stay there for 6 days! The plan was to surf, but the first day we could not go out there, because there was this huge swell coming in from Hawai. The waves where huge and someone almost drowned! I worked a bit on my tan and read a bit the first day, the second I started to surf. It is going ok. I master the broken waves, but the step to the unbroken waves is quite big, so that might take a while more. The rest of the week was about catching up with friends from previous cities, reading, tanning and surfing. (Quite a lazy week)

On fridaynight I took a bus to Lima. I sadly skipped Huaraz, but I might go back there later on. The busride to Lima was amazing! I had a cama seat, which means a seat that can go totally flat! It can be compared with business class flying, because there was a hostess bringing us food and drinks! I never had this luxury on a bus, and it costed only 3$ more than the regular seats..

'Lima is an ugly city with not much to do!' For a capital it is a sad city. Not much musea, not much safe neighbourhoods, ... The only pretty part is the beachside, which is the part where all the superrich live, so it is quite and police everywhere. I was happy to leave soon! The only good thing we've done was Chinatown! It is just too crazy to be true. It is packed with people, like being at a rockconcert in the streets. I have to admit everyone was Christmas shopping, but still. They have shopping centra looking like buildings with more than 2000 stores, but each store doesn't exceed 5 square meters and they all sell about the same. You can buy about anything in Chinatown and it all costs about nothing. Without exaggerating it all costs 10 times less then what we would pay back home!

They tried to sell us mini turtles for 2$ on the street! We were thinking about it for a moment to buy 10 of these and have a turtle race on the pool table in the hostel, but we had no idea what to do afterwards with the animals.. So we did not buy them, but you can buy about any animal you can imagine! I heard from another traveller that he saw an anaconda in a box and a baby gorilla! All of this ofcourse off the main market and in a back alley.

As you know I am now in Colombia in a city called Villavicencio. Haven't really seen much of it, except all the houses of Lina's family. I miss the Belgian Christmas weather! It doesn't really feel like Christmas when it is 25-30 degrees and sunny outside.

The sixth of January I fly out of Bogota to Buenos Aires to meet up with my friend Karel from Belgium and from then on we're going to conquer South America together for the following couple of months!!

I hope you all have a good time at home and let a lot of bottles pop for NYE!!

You can all save up my Christmasgifts for the 3rd of July when I come back home!

Big kisses to you all and may all your wishes come true!

G. on holiday