Finally, after only four months I find the time to finish the last travelblog of my trip. Sitting at the moment in Denver/USA and am a bit bored. So I decided to do something useful. Hope I still remember everything…. Madrid was on the list of cities to visit as I had to fly through it anyway. I thought it nicely breaks up the long flight and I haven’t been to Spain before. The one thing that is quite noticeable is that there is so much more variety of food available here than in South America and Australia. I am still [View Full Entry]

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If you read my itinerary you might have realized that I was supposed to fly out on the 10th of July from Santiago de Chile. I realized a couple of weeks ago that I might have some extra time in Bolivia with nothing left to do. As my schedule in Europe was a bit tight anyway I decided to fly a bit earlier. Unfortunately (or luckily) there were no earlier flights out of Santiago so I decided to visit my favourite city Buenos Aires again and fly from there. Another nice side effect was that I could arrive in Germany just [View Full Entry]

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If you never clicked on the huge icon left of this text then now is the time. Clicked it? See the big white spot in the middle of the picture? That’s the Salar de Uyuni with 10.580 square kilometres the world's largest salt flat. The salt is at the outer fringes only a couple of centimetres but closer to the middle up to 6 meters thick. That’s enough salt for all the soups in the world. The nice thing abut the Salar is that it also doubles as a huge canvas for tourists to take pictures. The salt is absolutely white [View Full Entry]

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Potosi owns a couple of superlatives. It’s the world’s highest city at 4070m, was once the riches city in South America and once had more inhabitants than London or Paris. That Potosi was founded in 1545 is thanks to the Cerro Rico “Rich Mountain” which contained huge amounts of Silver. The Silver content of the ore mined exceeded up to 70 percent. Today the content of metals is a maximum of 30 percent and always a mixture of different metals. Millions of Indian labourers were forced to work in the mines and many of t [View Full Entry]

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Since the beginning of my trip I was successful to circumvent the worlds most biodiverse region the Amazon without touching it. Safe the best for last could be my motto but the truth is that I was always to far away or it was just too expensive to go. I finally got my chance in Bolivia. The main hub for the Amazon jungle and pampas tours here is Rurrenabaque (or Rurre) which must the one of the best (and cheapest) places to go. The rainforest here is in near pristine condition as not many people live around here and it is [View Full Entry]

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La Paz is the worlds highest capital city at a altitude of 3,600. That means three things. First the city is in the Guinness book of world records, second it's cold and third you are out of breath if you walk up two stairs or a steep road of which they have plenty here. Not much to report from here as I spent most of the time either shopping, trying to send a parcel home, in my hotel room in my bed trying to get rid of the cold I got at Lake Titicaca or sitting in internet cafes writing travel [View Full Entry]

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The “World most dangerous road” or “Death Road” as it is lovingly called by some tour operators in La Paz is a 40 km stretch of dirt road on between La Cumbre and Coroico just outside of La Paz. The stats say that on average 20 vehicles go over the unprotected edges and around 100 people loose their lives on this stretch of road per year. The cliff drops in some places a couple of hundred meters before gravity is defeated by well ground. The reasons why there are so many accidents is that the dirt on the road is very [View Full Entry]

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Lake Titicaca is (and here comes another superlative) the highest commercially navigable lake in the world at over 3800m. It is also mentioned as one of the highlights of Peru in my guidebook. What they don’t mention that it’s also a freaking cold place and not that interesting. Did I mention that I disagree with my guidebook? Ok it’s not such a bad place as it might have some attraction to some but let's start from the beginning. I arrived in Puno after a nice 8 hour bus ride from Cusco. You really have to say that s [View Full Entry]

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Machu Picchu is likely the most famous archaeological site in South America if not the world. About 400.000 tourists visit the site per year (at least you’re never alone). It was founded ca. 1440 and was inhabited until the Spanish conquered the Inca Empire. The name Machu Picchu is not the original Inca name for the site as this one was forgotten over the centuries. The name is derived from the mountain the city is built on which simply means “Old Mountain”. The city was more a luxury retreat for the Inca nobility than a n [View Full Entry]

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Cusco is the longest continuously inhabited city in South America. It was the capital of the Inca empire and the seat of the last free Inca before the Spanish disposed of him (speak murdered). One of the literal translations of the word Cusco is "Centre or navel of the world". The city was planned to be shaped like a puma and with a little imagination you can see that. It had four quarters each representing one of the Inca provinces. A road was build from each province to the capital and each province leader had to have a house in Cusco [View Full Entry]

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