Moving on from Buenos Aires actually meant going back to lovely Uruguay, to spend some last few days there with all the wonderful people I met here. Goodbyes are always sad, which is why I am not going to elaborate - only this much: I did consider staying here, for various reasons - lovely people, Candombe, Grappamiel, my spanish is better than my french, Boris the cat, Redes is great, my housemates are great....basically, I will miss being here. But I considered only very briefly, because of course I have a whole variety of reasons to go back to Brussels - [View Full Entry]

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After happily surviving Iguazu, my original plan was to head to on to the brasilian coast and spend a few days there before heading down to Uruguay again. But then, having stayed in Montevideo for an entire month and not having seen Buenos Aires - only a short 200km swim away across the Rio de la Plata - seemed just not acceptable. So instead of going to Brasil, I took a nightbus to Buenos Aires, city of Tango (and much much more), arriving just in time to enjoy a wonderfully sunny sunday on the streets of San Telmo. It´s (sometimes hotly, [View Full Entry]

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From other travellers, I've heard anything between "It´s the most beautiful thing I've ever seen" and "It's just a couple of waterfalls, why do you want to go there?". I found myself to be somewhere in between: it's probably not the most beautiful thing I've ever seen (although just now, I can't think what the most beautiful thing I've seen is - maybe I'm just hard to impress) - but it is definitely beautiful, impressive, powerful, impressive. And it is definitely just huge. I´m adding some pictures, but pictures just never express it right - I would totally recommend going yourself! [View Full Entry]

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But all good things must end and so I had to leave lovely Samaipata, for a much wilder adventure: The bus to Paraguay I took the bus from Santa Cruz, Bolivia, to Asunción, Paraguay. In my guidebook, it´s advertised as a "gruelling, minimum 30h bus ride on one of the most bumpy roads of Latin America". At the bus terminal, the companies advertised it as a 20h ride in a comfortable sleeper bus with toilet. In reality, it was a gruelling 24h bus ride in a bus that was definitely NOT a comfortable sleeper bus, and a toilet you definitely did [View Full Entry]

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Wheather was not really much better today, but whatever! I wanted to see cloud forest and spend some energy! Luckily, a hardy troupe of 2 british, 1 american and 1 israeli, as well as even more hardy Carmelo the guide wanted to be out and about in the cloud forest as well, so off we went. And it was soo worth it! As if to reward as for being the only tourists (well, we all prefer "travellers", don't we?) venturing out into the Amboro National Park, it didn't really rain all day - but it really was cloudy. Luckily, we took [View Full Entry]

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A pity really that I rushed through La Paz from bus stop (arriving from Titicaca) to bus terminal (leaving for Santa Cruz) - La Paz is really a beauty when you get the first glance at it from above in the afternoon sun. Undescribable, so I won't even try. And I didn't stay anyway... I took a sleeper bus to Santa Cruz, which was sort of a waste, since the roads are so bad that you can't sleep anyway. So I mainly dozed for 18h - when I was awake for while at around 3am, my first three sensations were: (1) [View Full Entry]

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Lake Titicaca Having a strong cold and deciding to go to Lake Titicaca at 3800m is not exactly the smartest idea of all, but then I didn´t want to stay in Arequipa forever. So I jumped on the bus to Puno on the peruvian Titicaca shore, and from there straight on to Copacabana, Bolivia. And got stuck there. Copacabana Copacabana is a quaint little village on the lakeshore, and it is a major traveller's hangout. There are an incredible amount of cheap places to stay, and a lot of groovy places to eat, drink coffee, and drink the night away with [View Full Entry]

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Cañon de Colca Arequipa is not only Arequipa, it is also really close to the Colca Cañon, the deepest canyon in the world (or so they say - I´ve heard others say that the next cañon is actually deeper). Cabanaconde is only an easy and short busride away from Arequipa (bumpy road all the way in an old bus for 6.5 hours, most of the time either in the altiplano at above 4500m or at the edge of the - really really steep - canyon with not even a fence to keep the bus from going over) - and well worth [View Full Entry]

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So once the summit was over, I jumped on the first overnight bus to Arequipa, in the south of Peru. (Actually, it wasn't the first bus, it was a recommended agency - one without a history of stopping on the road to pick up people who are then not really picked up but instead empty the luggage compartments of its content....I still have all my luggage). 10 years ago, I spent a night in Arequipa, on my way from the Titicaca lake to Chile, and I remember that I hated it. But I also remember that I was awfully ill at [View Full Entry]

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Finally, the Enlazando Alternativas Peoples' Summit is over! With about 15 or 20 Friends of the Earth people from Latin America and Europe, we spent an absolutely crazy week in Lima, between Tribunal, self-organized activites, plenaries, and all the other side-activities (such as drinking Pisco Sour over a heated disussion on neoliberalism and Europe's historical debt) Enlazando Alternativas Parallel to the EU-Latin American heads of State meeting in Lima, a large network of social movements, NGOs, indigenous communities, activists, development groups....from both continents held the alternative peoples' summit "Enlazando Alternativas" in Lima. While the heads of States were trying to advance [View Full Entry]

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