Oct 29 Cusco

The night was ok, but we are completely confused when we arrive in Cusco at 4:50 am.

Lots of people are waiting to offer us a taxi, accomodation and other things. We go to a corner and a lady with an ok offer for a hostal finds us. She organizes a taxi, we get in and are in a room only 10 min later. Great. So we get to sleep a little more with horizontally...

At 10 we are ready to hit the town, for breakfast. Arzu finds a great place on Foursquare and so we try to find our way there. The place is awesome, they serve real cappuccino, fresh orange juice and French toast...

Getting out from there after a while, we try to find the center of town. As we walk in one of the narrow alleys, I see a guy with a Starbucks cup and I chase him down. He is a bit shocked by my asking, but offers help for a desperate coffee addict and shows us the way :) I love Cusco already... 

Before we head there though, we do a little of sightseeing. There are a lot of churches here and you can really get lost in the tiny alleys and walkways, but luckily there are squares everywhere and you can find your orientation back.

Cusco is a really nice town. This is the first time since Cuenca, Equador that I have the feeling, I could stay longer than a day.

After our Lattes we start the shopping tour. Although it seems like they all offer the same things like in Bolivia and partly Ecuador, there are always things to look at and admire. The Mercado Central is unique. It has a mixture of artesanial things and food. In the hallways the women sell bread with ceramic faces baked in.

When we come out it is raining and we have to wait about 20 min before we can continue our explorer tour. The second the sun is gone, it gets cold and we wonder how cold it will be on the Inca Trail. Bht we are not thinking about that yet.

For lunch we have salad! Purified water for the washing makes it possible and it tastes great. 

This is a great and lazy day to relax. We go back to the hostal and sleep a little more before we get ready for a night out. We pick a club with live music, Arzu even gets dressed up (she brought clothes for that, I am in jeans and my most fancy t-shirt) and we check out the space before we look for food.

And then the evening takes an unexpected turn. We end up in a place that has pizza, Mexican and Peruvian food, right next to the club. In 1h we should have eaten... Well, no!

We sit down, don't get a menu for quite a while and when we finally order, the Australians from the next table start talking to us about how long they are already waiting for their food. The place is not really full, so it shouldn't take that long, and we are hoping.

We talk to those guys and the two women that are with them leave before their food arrives. Exactly one hour after they had ordered, they are getting it. They eat fast and leave since they will start the Inca Trail tomorrow.

We wait for 1.5h, even the guys that came way later get their food. So I go to the counter and tell them i don't want the food anymore. We get Arzu's soup and my Guacamole. And that is what we are having for dinner... After that we are both annoyed and tired and go home. This is not how we expected that night to go.

Oct 28 Isla del Sol and Peru

And again we have to get up early. This vacation is no relaxation when you check the times we get up, but this is how we wanted it.

Sitting in the boat to Isla del Sol it is smelling heavily like gas and then it starts to pour. I wish we would have stayed in the cosy bed and spent the day relaxing instead. But it is too late. 2h of freezing and holding a scarf in front of our faces later we are on the north side of the island. There is not much to do except for the 3h hike to the south side and we are searching for a coffee place to have our first coffee of the day. I am glad Arzu is as addicted as I am. The coffee place is really cold and so our mood doesn't improve. When it stops raining and we see a little bit of sun we head outside to search for the gold museum. We find a room that has a museum sign on the outside and check it out. This is fun. There are only a couple of shelves with old bones and vases. In 2 min we are done. 

So we decide to hike a little bit, but the first lama getting in our way scares Arzu and we go back to town, finding a place to lay down on the "beach" to relax and get some sun. 

BTW I am Canadian again today. :) The Germans which were with us on the boat are embarrassing and they even come from my home town Ulm. I cannot admit that I am from the same place.

After 3h we pass free range pigs :) to go back to the boat and go to the south side of the island where we pay 5Bs to go off board and have lunch with a great view. 

The way back seems forever but we still make it back on time. We get the laundry - and believe it or not it is dry - shop a little more, eat lemon pie, which is served by the slowest waiter in the history, and we are not spoiled any more and organize sandwiches. Arzu almost kills the waiter when he needs a calculator to figure out how nuch change to give from 110 to 120 we give him. And even then he has no clue what to type.

We schlepp ourselves up the hill to the hotel to get our thngs and have to wait for the bus to open (@Dad, Mercedes Benz) before we can sink in our first class seats. The 2 extra Euros were totally worth it and we enjoy the luxury. :)

15 min into the busride we have to cross the border. First we need to get the exit stamp from Bolivia and I am remembered of the border crossings in Africa. 

We need to cross the river by foot but not without stopping at the great Peru sign for a picture. We almost step into the wrong buildings twice and the bus lady is already annoyed with us, but finally we get our Peru stamp.

The bus takes three hours to Puno and the heat is not turned on, so we freeze like hell. The windows are leaking and I am glad I got the sleeping bag from the luggage. Otherwise we would have frozen to death.

In Puno we have a layover of 1.5h and are not allowed to stay on the bus. So we walk around the bus station which is freezing because all doors are open. There are still tourists though running around in sandals in 30degree weather. We are freezing through the layover and are having some fun in the restroom where the wall is sprayed with "do not wash your hair, armpits or feet here!" What?

When we board the bus again the heat is turned on and so the rest of the night is comfortably warm and we can even sleep.

Oct 27 From Uyuni to Copacabana

At least one cab is here when we come outside at 5:40am. We are driving through the dusty streets of Uyuni one last time and manage to get to the airport in time for the sunrise. There is exactly one (!) gate. :) Although we are checked in already and there are only 5 people ahead of us, we are in the queue for more than half an hour. 

The security check has a human scanner but no x-ray for the handluggage, so it gets searched individually. The gas heater in the waiting room is very popular with the Latvians which travel with us. First, we have breakfast ... Pringles and Twix. We are hoping to get more when we make it to La Paz. 

The Amaszonas Air plane looks good and we are positively surprised. The flight is nice and we have the best view on the salt flat thanks to the girl who checked us in on the right side yesterday.

It is raining when we land in La Paz and we are hoping that this fact will make the air cleaner, but that is not the case :( In the busterminal we find out that busses to Copacabana leave from the cemetery and we need another taxi. What is driving us can almost not be called a car anymore. The transmission is done after gear 1 and 2 and the noises it makes, makes you want to jump out immediately. Thanks to the rug and the hanging decorations in front of the dashboard we cannot see anything, but experience shows that nothing is working in the display anyway. 

We somehow make it to the cemetery and find a bus that leaves 20 min later. We buy more cookies because that is the only thing we can find at 8am and sit on the bus. Since this is not the fancy tourist kind, it is not heated and I run out again to get the sleeping bag so we won't freeze. The Bolivians love the "fresh" air coming from outside and leave the windows wide open in 40 degree weather and rain.

Wrapped in hat, fleece and sleeping bag we need 2h to get out of La Paz. Here there are many little communities which all have their own markets and inner life. 

At several spots we pick up more people and luggage. The mountain overshadowing La Paz has some fresh snow and looks beautiful so sugarcoated. 

The road to Copacabana is paved really well. We are amazed and happy and Arzu even gets to sleep a little. 

Several times we get stopped by the military and the driver has to show the passenger list. 

Then the bus stops at the lake and we all have to get off. The bus is being transferred on something that is supposed to be a ferry, but i am not sure, the bus and our luggage will make it. We have to take a passenger boat which looks equally unsafe and get shipped over the little channel. On the other side we walk to the place where the bus will "land" which is completely unnecessary because the bus is stopping in the middle of the town square. Noone is around anymore. Everybody went to get food or presents. Not even when the bus starts to honk loudly they come back and the bus needs to drive away before everybody comes running. This is the only way to Copacabana, the other one already leads through Peru.

We arrive and are surprised by the huge church. First we need to change money and therefore we walk down the shopping street with all our luggage until we find a changing office/ travel agency. We take a taxi to the cool hostel, but unfortunately they have no room available. We are supposed to come back after 2pm to see if someone who reserved didn't show up. We have lunch there in the cute restaurant and have Lasagne and tomato salad. The owner must be German since they have potato salad, "Bratkartoffeln" and Fondue. 

Only the internet is not working and we cannot check our trip to Cusco. I just read that it takes 15h to get there by bus and I don't want to believe that. There has to be a faster way. My idea is to go back to La Paz and fly from there, but Arzu wants to avoid that city. She is looking for other ways to get there faster, but nothing is really working out. Another option is to take the bus to Puno in 4h and then a train to Cusco, but that means we have to leave tonight, skipping the Isla del sol. Since we are only speculating, we need internet and so we leave our luggage with the German owner :) and go to town to find a coffeeplace with internet. We cannot even find a coffeeplace though and so we end up in a crappy internet place where I have the keyboard drawer on my lap, the mouse is hardly working and the connection is slow. We find out that there is no better option and we go to a travel agency to book the bus. We see that there is a direct bus to Cusco which only takes 10h and has sleeping beds. Oh yes! Let's take it. They have no more space tonight, but tomorrow and so we book a trip to the Isla del Sol for tomorrow. And it is all cheaper than the horrorbus to Uyuni.

Back at the hotel we get a room and are really happy. The view is breathtaking, there are hammocks everywhere and it is clean. The toilet works as well :)

Finally I can do some laundry. The lady promises 3h, we give her 4 and start shopping... We come back to our comfy beds and rest a while before having coffee in the wood stove heated restaurant. 

At 8 we run down for our laundry which is not ready yet, they need one more hour. So we have dinner and finally a salad since they wash everything with bottled water. The water in Copacabana is so bad that it is even recommended to brush your teeth with bottled water. 

We go back to the laundry place at 10 but it is still not entirely done. Half of my stuff is still wet and Arzu's jeans as well. We take the dry and half dru stuff as well as the jeans and decide to dry it in the hallway in front of our room because there is a wooden stove. Finally I get to unpack my clothes line, improvise with two nails, put some more wood in the stove and we hope for the best. We go to bed and have the best mattress ever!

Oct 26 Bolivian hot tub and an adventurous ride back to Uyuni

We are on the road at 4am... To write that is is fricking cold at this time of the day is unneccessary, I guess. While loading the car I see Orion in the sky :)

The windows freeze and we can see icicles. The sunrise is not exactly what we expected after getting up so early and since the car is still only powered by one wheel we are going very slow. Ohr first stop is at the fumaroles, the steaming mudholes that smell like rotten eggs. In the morning sun it looks really great. 

1h later we get to a lake with a natural hot tub on the edge. The girls go in while the guys stay outside to organize a differnet car to take them and the Dutch girls to the Chilean border after this. 

The hot tub is really cool, well hot! and I don't want to get out anymore. One of the reasons is because there is no place to change and everybody has to do this outside with the wind in the still chilly morning. 

This is where we leave the 4 others. They are getting a different transportation to the border since our car is still not working properly and this way we can go straight back to Uyuni with Franz and our one-wheel powered animal :)

We are going in the opposite direction from everybody else and I am not sure whether this is so good since we will not be able to pull the car out of the sand if we get stuck again. Franz is driving more careful now, talks more and offers plenty of picture stops.

Arzu has some stomache issues and tries to sleep although we are shaken to the bones again. Our first "horsetrip" in La Paz seems like a smooth ride now. The "roads" he is driving can only be guessed by us, but Franz knows what he is doing and if he thinks it is a road then it is. We pass a point where Franz tells us we are at 4950m! There is snow! From here it is downhill.

We see Lamas, other animals with a name I don't remember and even emus. All of a sudden the landscape is green and it looks a little like in Iceland. At 11 we stop in a town called Vila Vila, in the middle if the desert and Franz is preparing our lunch while we are very happy to have a clean bathroom with running water. We use it extensively. After a couple of days in the desert you are happy with the small things I guess, :)

After lunch we are in the red valley. Here we have weird rock formations, a lion eating a lama. But some of us are not interested in that right away. They have other business to attend to. What happens at the lion and the lama stays there :)

Once we are down from the mountains and everything is green, there are rivers and we have to go through quite a few with the car, no bridge. 

At around 1 the shaking stops and we are on a paved road. The car made it and got better while we got down from the insane altitude. But the happiness about the paved road only lasts for a couple of minutes and we are back on a dirt road. This will go on and off until Uyuni now. We pass San Cristobal which is a big mining town. Now we are the minibus. First we pick up an old woman and once we let her off, we pick up a guy. Franz finally has someone to talk to and I dry my bikini on the hot seat while I move closer and closer to Arzu's shady side.

At 3pm we are back in Uyuni and Franz drives us to the hotel the Dutch girls recommended because it has Wifi. :) We need it urgently to check if the flight was confirmed or whether we have to go on the bus again at 8. I cannot get Wifi in the hotel and so I run across the street to the internet cafe. Everything is dark. There is a citywide blackout and it will last for another hour. So we have to wait.

2h later we still have no power and just when I start texting ny sister to check my email, the lights go on and so does the signal. I have an email saying the flight is confirmed but we have no reservation code or eticket number. We also cannot do online checkin, so we figure out that there is an Aerea linea Amaszonas office in Uyuni conveniently located 3min from the hotel. They are open and 30 min later we have our boarding passes. Things are a bit slower here, yes. 

Now we can check into the hotel and finally get out of the dirty clothes, take a shower and find some food. 

It seems like there are only Italian restaurants in Uyuni and so Pizza it is. They have a wood stove abd wine by the glass. A perfect night.

Coming back to the hotel we try to organize a taxi for 5:40 to take us to the airport. We had asked the lady in the hotel but noone is around anymore when we get back to tell us whether they reserved one or not. Let's see whether it will work out...

Oct 25 one wheel drive

Breakfast is at 6:30, dry bread. Bt where should they get fresh bread in the middle of the desert? I am anyway impressed how the people live here. And this was the luxury kind compared to what we are expecting tonight. We had electricity and running water. 

At exactly 7 the Europeans are outside with their luggage, Franz is already jumping around on top of the car to get our stuff up, only the Latinos are still missing. :)

In the car we are still quiet. Nobody seems to be in such a good mood as our Turkish neighbor which already talked nonstop this morning and we are all happy he is in a different car.

For a while we are driving through differnet landscapes. Besides other tourist jeeps there is nothing. A "road" - if you want to call it that - is defined by more than four cars taking the same path. There are many ways leading to Rome - or through the desert. We see the train to Chile, some colcanoes, one of which is active right now, 3 lagoons with flamingos and a lot of sand and rocks.

Just before we arrive at the last lagoon, the red one which is especially beatuiful between 2:30-3pm, The jeep gets stuck in the sand. Anyway the car has made some funny noises all day and Franz already had tried to fix so ething before. When we try several times to drive the car out again we notice that actually only one of the wheels is turning, the one that is stuck. 

He is diggin and digging, we bring rocks for the foundation. At least 10 attempts and nothing. He gets the car jack and starts to pump. We bring more and more rocks. Fernando the Brazilian is really mad we have a broken car. We girls try to help but we are not even supposed to push from behind. There are several more attempts with no success and finally another car is coming. Together with the driver and the guys from that car we push and finally get the car out of the sand on the third attempt with them. Finally we make it to the lagoon, our second hostal.

When we arrive my headache is so bad that I don't even want to exolore the lagoon. I gi to bed immediately hoping it will get better. Fernando is here as well with stomache issues. We are at 4700m... The headache seems to come from the shaking in the car and from the altitude, it won't get better and I get up. The girls tell me I need something sweet because that will help the altitude issues. So I have coffee with a lot of sugar, there is anyway no milk. :)

Franz is outside trying to repair the car. We notice that it is getting cold very quickly here and we are afraid of the night. There is no electricty and the light in the common room is powered by a car battery. Dinner is really good again and we get a bottle of wine from Franz which we only manage half though.

In order to get some hot water for my Gatorade hot water bottle, I go to the kitchen which is in the next house. It is a typical Bolivian house with everythg in the same room, wood fired stove, table with benches and a bed. Franz is here to get warm again from working on the car. The whole family seems to live here (grandparents, parents, kid). They are making pancakes and eating hot soup.

The sky is clear and the stars seem really, really close, you almost want to touch them. I find the Southern Cross and also see two shooting stars.

At 8:30 pm we are all under the covers in our sleeping bags because it is really cold and the alarm clock will go off at 3:30am.

Oct 24 The bad night and the salt flats

The hotel owner did not exaggerate but rather understate. Before Oruro we are already shaken like on a powerplate thanks to non paved streets. Sleeping is almost impossible.

At 2 am the bus stops and the drivers are changed, which is good to see, but unfortunately the road is getting worse and worse and soon we are only sliding around between sand and gravel. Sleeping is impossible and at 8am we arrive in Uyuni, not in our best moods. Even here hardly any streets are paved and everything is dusty. We are shocked but way to tired to fully realize it.

In the office of the tour operator we get more information about our trip and then we have two hours to find breakfast and finally some coffee as well as a place with internet to book a flight back to La Paz. After coming back from the desert we are sure we do not want another night like this.

There seems to be no restaurant with internet and our coffee addiction leads us into a breakfastplace. I brought my toothbrush and want to change in the bathroom, but there is no running water and fromthe way the toilet looks like, I also don't have to pee anymore...

Only reluctantly I eat the dried bread and drink the instant coffee with milk powder, which is the normal way of servinng coffee in Bolivia. And there is no Starbucks anywhere...

In a convenience store/ internet place we find wifi and get to use it for 15 min. The couple running place is checking closely and already yelling at a tourist who is on the phone, almost taking it from him although he is willing to pay more. 

I am frantically searching for a flight from Uyuni back to La Paz and when. I get it the confirmation will be only in a couple of hours, great!

In the coffeeshop next to our pickup place we are lucky with the bathroom and the coffee we order just to be nice is real! We do have to wait for it for a long time though because it has to be made in the real coffeemaker by the boss himself. The ladies cannot do it and boss is out. He has 15 more minutes before we have to go and it works out, on time for my second nose bleeding session. The first one. I had on the bus already. Thanks La Paz and your old cars, I guess.

Until we are really sitting in the car we have no idea who is travelling wih us. I am still armdeep in my backpack to get the stuff I don't want on the roof and when I take my hand out my middle finger is hurting and swelling up. I have not noticed being stung, can't see anything else. Weird.

When we are picking up two more girls in front of their hotel I am running around trying to find some ice for the finger. But that is an issue here. I panic and the creativity kicks in. At the butcher I see some yoghurt in the fridge, so I want to buy it. When. I touch it though, it is not cold. Why should it be coming out of a fridge where there is also meat? I am handing the yoghurt back and give up. It will be fine.

2 Brazilian guys, 2 Dutch girls, Arzu, Franz - our driver - and I are on our way. First stop: the train cemetery. Here we can find old and rusty trains. Everything just like the way here is dusty and every step creates a cloud of dust. My nose is not happy and starts bleeding again. This time it won't stop and being in the car again with the windows closed in the heat and the shaking are not helping. I go through several tissues and it won't stop. We have the next stop at the entrance of the salt flat. I run out past the tourist stalls towards the Banos sign. The toilet lady shouts after me that I need to pay, I turn around show her my bloody face and keep running.

I have no clue why she has a right to collect money for what she calls a toilet anyway... But with some water from my bottle and some of my own toilet paper I can stop the bleeding. I hope it will be fine now, but with all the dust, changes are slim.

Inside the salt flat we stop again and see some piles ready to be transported back to the town for processing. This is really cool and there is no more dust. Everything is "clean" here. The desert is unbelievably light and without sunglasses it is like when I am skiing. Everything is really really flat, you can see very far. White, white, white...

At the flag place the Brazilians are happy. Their flag is the most common here. :)

For lunch we stop literally in the middle of the desert and while Franz is preparing lunch out of the trunk we are starting to take the illusion pictures. Very funny. The ground is really hard though.

We drive and drive and my eyes are closing. When we stop we are in front of an island in the middle of the desert, full of cactusses. We have one hour to walk up and explore. Since my nosebleeds it is hard for me to breath and we almost don't make it all the way up. 

At around 5 we leave the Salt flat at the other end of Uyuni for our first night in a salt hotel. We are the first ones and get the best rooms. Then we also take a shower. For 1.20$ it is even hot for 7 min.

Our room seems cold but everything except for the foundation is made of salt blocks.

For dinner we get a typical Bolivian soup, which is really good and the Bolivian national dish we get after is also tasty. This is definitely in the top 5 of the best food. I have had in the past weeks. For entertainment we get to hear stories from a guy from the next table. He has an opinion about everything and has been everywhere. Arzu is embarrassed because he is from Turkey and so she is Canadian for the night. :)

At 9pm we are in bed and pretty surprised at how warm it is. The salt really keeps the cold outside and I am sleeping really good, like I haven't in a long time.

Oct 23 Markets and carbon monoxide poisoning

Since we are leaving for Uyuni with the night bus at 9 we let the day start easy and enjoy our apartment. Fresh and for the first time really good bread is hanging on our door with some juice and we have breakfast...

Our luggage stays here in an area that seems safe, and we go downtown to look at the famous markets. They are all behind San Francisco Church and we are lucky that the taxi driver takes backroads to get there. It is already pretty hot and combined with the load of really old cars, the smell is almost unbearable. The Witches Market is unique and we see weird things like little lambs, dried up on a stick, lots of stones in different shapes that mean different things like prosperity, luck, money,... And of course there is the myriad of teas being sold for all kinds of sicknesses. Under every stall - which are crammed on the narrow and steep sidewalks - are bunches with different herbs. People seem to know what they need and the tourists go for the stones.

The other markets kind of merge into the witches' market and so we also look at fruits and very few veggies. The artesanal market is very nice, lots of colorful things and since I am not going to send that 250$ package to Germany now, I have to be careful what I shop... :)

We notice that basically everything people need is sold on the street. There are almost no supermarkets and you can literally get everything you imagine out there. 

Our breathing gets worse and worse. The car smells combined with the height are not good for us and so we are lucky that we can go to the busterminal at 8 to catch our bus to Uyuni.

The guy from the hostel is wishing us good luck on the sleeping part. After Oruro it is apparently only a dirt road. We'll see.

The office of our bus company is still closed and so we wait inside the bus station. We pick the worst possible spot and have to listen through the high pitched voice of a girl shouting out "Potosi, Potosi" every 20 sec. That is a town. A guy without teeth who is putting a lot of coca leaves into his mouth shouts the same thing, but it is so muffled, that we can hardly understand. The second the girl takes a smoke break, the next one comes shouting "Oruroruro". 

We are happy when we can leave this zoo and go to our bus which will serve us a warm meal, gives us heat and wifi.

The bus looks good and we are happy. Once onboard the row in front of us is empty and so we spread out. The warm meal is cold and the wifi is not working, but who cares? The Japanese guy does. He keeps asking and then falls asleep rapidly.

It takes almost 1h to get out of La Paz. The bus is aching up the steep hill towards the airport and the lights get less and less. Soon everything is dark.

We try to sleep and with the anticipation that the guy might be right and we will not sleep in the second part of the night, that is a good idea.

Oct 22 Arzu is here

I didn't sleep particularly well although against all fears my room was warm.

At 7 I wake up, but Arzu is not there. I am checkking online and see that she is active on Facebook. This can only mean one thing. She is in the lobby :) and I am right. Yipieee!

Now the Bolivia trip can start.

First we need to switch hotels because we want to stay a second night. In a side street not far from the hotel we get a whole apartment for the price of the hotel. Our things need to be driven by taxi, which we are reusing to go downtown. 3600m altitude are breathtaking, especially for sealevel-Arzu. :)

We are tourists again, taking the sightseeing bus. With a 30 min delay something that looks like a bus shows up and we get on board to check out the southern part of the city. The rich guys live here as opposed to what we are used to, that the rich live high above the city, but in this case the climate is much better at 3000 than at 4000m. The poor live on top with a great view of the chaos :)

Traffic in La Paz is dominated by the mini busses which function as public transportation. There are bigger busses which were already outdated in the 70s and make the American schoolbusses look like a luxury coach. 

We drive to the moon valley and it really looks like we are not on this earth anymore. It looks a little like Bryce Canyon, verry surreal. 

The bus that wanted to become a truck in an earlier life, shakes us through and through and Arzu makes the right comment: "I am sitting on a horse!" And this is exactly how it feels. :)

After 1.5h we are back at the Isabela Square and head for lunch before we take the tour of the northern part of the city like the good tourists.

We take one of the minibusses and squeeze in with the other Bolivianos. Very funny and we are reminded of the tuktuks in Thailand, at least when it comes to the carbon monoxide smell.

We have lunch in a really fancy coffeeplace and forget about the coca tea. Then we book a trip to Uyuni with a guy who is totally fascinated that Arzu is from Turkey. That is very exotic here, Germans and French can be found anywhere. The bus to Uyuni is overnight and has heat and Wifi. For me the first is the more important in this case.

The second sightseeing trip starts on time and we are looking at the city center, the bus is aching up and down the narrow streets and there are several times when we almost get strangled by hanging power and phone cables. 

La Paz used to be a really beautiful city, but it seems like there is no money to fix all historical buildings. Most home owners apparently don't even have money to finish their houses and paint them. The biggest part of the city is still unfinished. 

This is in interesting city, but completely crazy. 

Looking for the Hard Rock Cafe we climb up the streets behind the San Francisco church and we almost choke with the car smells and the altitude. Those old cars really stink!

There is no Hard Rock Cafe anymore and you might wonder if there ever was one. 

We go back and check out the San Francisco church, which is beautiful from the inside. It is not really old, which is surprising. And then finally we manage to try the coca tea. It is not as bad as we thought.

For dinner we want live music, which is hard to come by on a Tuesday night. We are back in our apartment having used all possible transportation devices. 

Google, Lonely Planet, Foursquare... We decide on a restaurant close by, but when we get there it is closed. The taxi driver is not very helpful and we decide to go downtown, but then Arzu spots a Spanish place and we go there. Here Arzu is having her second steak of the day :)

2. Oktober Der grosse Schock

Stell dir vor du kommst um 20 Uhr von der Arbeit nach Hause, telefonierst noch waehrend du etwas isst und machst dich gegen 21:30 dran, endlich deine Sachen fuer den in 12h anstehenden 5-woechigen Urlaub zusammenzusuchen. Wenn du dann merkst, dass dein Trekking Rucksack nicht in deinem Zimmer, nicht im Keller und auch sonst nirgendwo zu finden ist, bricht Panik aus!

Ein Anruf zu Hause und der Rucksack ist gefunden, 160km weit weg :(

Der liebste und beste Papa der Welt steht vom Sofa auf, ueberlaesst sein Feierabendbier, von dem er gerade mal einen Schluck getrunken hat, der Oma und macht sich auf den Weg...

Bei mir angekommen, bekommt er dann ein Belohnungsbier und darf sogsr uebernachten. Um 1 geht er beruhigt ins Bett, nur ich wusel noch durch die Wohnung...

Um 4am ist auch der letzte Punkt auf der ToDo Liste erledigt. Der Urlaub kann kommen!

5 Wochen durch Equador, Peru, Bolivien...