Sukellus Vene

Arriving to Lima, there was noone to contact and so decided to take a taxi to my accomodation since it was late already. I managed to talk the driver down to 50 Soles and told the driver to stop at an ATM, just to find my Credit Card to be over the limit!! So they not only booked the ticket I had cancelled, but they also made my card go over the limits. Now I am here in Lima, no cash, no credit card and a driver who is waiting to get paid... no dollars, no soles, but wait - I got the money which was meant to pay the ticket from Frankfurt to Heidelberg. Those 15 Euros would be exactly 52 Soles!!! Driver was not happy at all, but I opened both wallets to him ... read more

met this guy in SF who had a wrong ticket for Local Transportation and sought for reimbursement without success. So he tried to sell his 10$ ticket of stored value to other passengers. I told him that my trip will be only 8$ and he agreed on the price. However, feeling pity for the guy, I paid the full value. At the destination I have the remaining 2$ ticket to a young traveller who seemed very happy about the little gift. A day later in Fort Lauderdale one lady had no use for her day ticket anymore and saved me 6$ of bus trips by giving it to me. We started chatting and she tells me about her cancer and how it changed perspective on life. Her goal is to make people happy, one a day. ... read more

So I left the last maya ruins of this tour to take a flight from the world's allegedly most dangerous town - by homicides per capita, that is. My mission was to get form the bus station of San Pedro Sula to the airport. And for some mysterious reason there is no bus connection, so taxi is a must. The price was a rip-off, double the price of a 4 hour bus ride in the morning from Copan...AFTER I managed to negotiate the price by agreeing to take other passengers with different destinations on the taxi. But in a city like this you don't want to argue about prices much. To my surprise I realized that locals paid just as much for the ride as me, so I was not even ripped off. Just had a ... read more

Merida, Yucatan is my first stop off the beaten path. Way to meet the locals and as the saying goes do in Rome as the Romans do... so I went to the market and had my first local dish. Some tortilla with something that resembled chicken in a broader sense. Since my Spanish is still virtually non-existant, I simply pointed and told the waiter I want that. To which he looked at me like I was the first gringo to set foot onto the New World. Well at least I was the only White around, for sure... But I insited, thinking if locals can eat it, I should give it a try. So I had a dish named "black chicken" and was quite happy with it, and so was my stomach, as it turned out. But ... read more

Condor? Yes, German is a must ;) So here we go, with that cheap-noble airline towards Cancun. Colonial experience of our time. Well, the Condor is about to get extinct - considering the food rations onboard, it must die of hunger... Else, I am going to face the challenge entirely unprepared. Time for getting accustomed to the equipment there is on the flight, also for learning Spanish. The word for thief is... oh damn I already forgot. The final days were abnormally stressful. Sending my work at 2 am and 3 hours of sleep, that stupid road contruction causes a royal traffic jam, so I manage to check in just 8 minutes before the counters closed... the reward: Place near the emergency exit with extra leg space and noone in the seat nect to me. Can´t ... read more