The way towards the Brasilien border involves crossing part of a vast plain called the Grand Chaco. This is a dry and thorny lowland is penetrated only by a mud track and the infamous death train towards the frontier city of Quijaro. This train got its name because it almost never reached the destination. The track was and still is challanged by its remoteness and occationally washed away by floodings in the rainy season. The deformed track made it derail frequently. Sometime ago the old death train was replaced by a more modern train that takes the journey at a real [View Full Entry]

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Sucre was a both necessary and welcome stop on my way to the Brasilien border. It is a town of many universities and has been the capital of Bolivia for a long time. Still today many ideas and political movments are said to have their origin here. My visit was more extended than planed because the Bolivian busdrivers went on strike to paralyse the country. Rising fuel prises made them call the government for a zero taxation. When their service started again after three days the government had promised to do so. Later I heared the promise wasn't kept as usual... [View Full Entry]

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Potosi was once the richest city of South America. Silver and other precious material has been mined from its Cerro Rico, meaning rich mountain, for more than four centuries. And a visit to this city is still impresive today. High in the Andes I could hardly catch my breath in the first days. At about 4100m Potosi is as high as human settlements get. While the vast number of churches and decorated colonial buildings testify the wealth of the past, the mines inside Cerro Rico still opperate today. For most of the men that are forced by the alternative of unemployment [View Full Entry]

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In the middle of the Altiplano is the Salar de Uyuni, one of the biggest salt lakes on earth. I spent some days in the town with the same name visit the salt lake and to acclimatize to the high altitude conditions around there and the passes to come. With a group of mostly spanish speaking guys I had a guided tour of the lake. We drove in a run-down jeep across the extensive white, visited a salt producing family (Well, is more packing than producing, since the salt is already there. It just has to be dried and filled into [View Full Entry]

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Towards the Andes, deeper in the vast dryness of the desert is San Pedro de Atacama. It is a small town of clay-brick houses and a white-painted church next to the plaza. The broad valley around San Pedro is formed by some salty erroded desert hills in the west and the rising Andes in the east which form a dramatic backdrop of a chain of snowcapped volcanos at the border between Chile and Bolivia. Most remarkable on one end the high peak of Licancabur towers over it all. San Pedro's townsfolk, their thin belt of green fields around town, and of [View Full Entry]

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The Atacama Desert is the driest place on earth. For that reason it has been chosen as a site for various space telescopes. Astronomers and Astrophysicists value the dry atmosphere and the little amount of diffused light due to the remotenes because it gives them a much clearer view into the sky. It makes visits to the telescopes quite difficult though. I had arranged a visit to the telescope of the European Southern Observatories (ESO), the Very Large Telescope (VLT). This prestigious facility was built during the nineties on top of Cerro Paranal as a cooperative project between different Eu [View Full Entry]

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The planed visit to the ESO Telescope in norther Chile was waiting, so I didn't waste any time in Santiago but put myself into the next Bus to Antofagasta. When I woke up in the Bus the next morning and looked out of the window we had reached the first parts of the Atacama Desert already. The Panamericana was winding its way over dusty ocher hills with occational small villages in between. The further we got, the more abandoned it got, the villages gave way to a few smoking factories that looked much like mining, concrete, smelting and gravel industry. Finally [View Full Entry]

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Latest since the release of Jule Vernes "Around the world in eighty days" we know about that special day that you win when traveling eastwards around the world. You count you days by observing the continuous change of day and night while traveling. Finally you come back to the place you started from and if you counted correctly the folks at home will tell you, your journey took you one day less than you counted... How come? Imagine you do your journey in a very fast plane. The plane is so fast that you camo back on the same day...just imagine. [View Full Entry]

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For some time I lived at the airport. Some time willingly and some time unwillingly. I used the airport showers, ate airport food, figured out how to make most of all vouchers I got, made friends with other people living at the airport, moving to an airport hotel, and back to the terminal where a trolly was my home. A bit like in this movie, "The Terminal". But I had a chance to leave, I was not trapped there. Just a bit of patience was necassary. My flight to Santiago, Chile was via Papeete, Tahiti with Air Tahiti Nui. And the [View Full Entry]

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If I really want to be so crazy, here's the place to do it: Taupo Skydiving. Jump out of a plane, from 12,000 feet, roughly 3650 meter. Freefall for about 40 seconds, then hopefully the parachute of your tandem partner opens for a nice ten minute scenic flight and a smooth grass landing! So far the theory. I called the evening before to make a reservation, the next morning at around eight we drove to Taupo's small airport. Where else would you find a sky diving school. In Taupo there is three of them, thus, the low prices. For less than [View Full Entry]

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