Kuulumisia Milanosta

Talven ensimmäiset laskut

2012-01-24T00:14:00.000+01:00

Olen koko ajan Milanossa ollessani tiedostanut Alppien läheisyyden. Tarkoituksena on ollut käydä ainakin pari kertaa siellä laskemassa ja nyt joululomalta palattuani toinkin mukanani lumilaudan yms. laskukamaa. Viime viikolla sitten googlailin ja yritin selvittää, mihin pääsisin laskemaan kohtalaisen pienellä vaivalla käyttäen julkisia kulkuvälineitä. Parin muun potentiaalisen keskuksen joukosta lopulta sopivimmaksi valikoitui Madesimo. Nettisivujen perusteella tuossa paikassa olisi ihan riittävästi rinteitä (60 km) ja kelvollinen korkeusero mutta ratkaiseva tekijä oli tosiaan se, että sinne pääsisi suoraan bussilla Milanosta ilman vaihtoja viikonlopuksi.

Chiavennan kaupunki. Tämän jälkeen bussi alkoi nousemaan vuorille.

Bussi kohti Madesimoa lähti liikkeelle noin puoli kahdeksalta lauantaiaamuna. Näin aikaisin herääminen oli tietenkin hyvin tuskallista minulle mutta mitäpä sitä nyt ei tekisi hyvien laskujen takia. Itse asiassa jopa tuo bussikyyti oli mielenkiintoinen sillä alkumatkan Milanon lähiöiden jälkeen maisemat muuttuivat äkkiä lumihuippuisia vuoria ja nättejä järviä sisältäviksi. Sitten ehkä kahden ja puolen tunnin ajon jälkeen päästiin eroon järvista ja bussi alkoi kiipeämään kapeaa vuoristotietä ylöspäin. Välillä vähän jänskätti kun alla oli pelkät kesärenkaat, tiellä oli jotain lumimaista sohjoa ja tien vieressä usean kymmenen metrin pudotus. Kuski kuitenkin näytti osaavan työnsä ja pääsimme perille hengissä vähän ennen kello yhtätoista. Mielenkiintoisena yksityiskohtana todettakoon, että bussissa oli menomatkalla minun lisäkseni kaksi matkustajaa ja paluumatkalla yksi. En usko, että tuo firma kovin isoja voittoja tuosta reissusta teki sillä edestakainen matka kustansi 31 euroa.

Aurinkoa, vuoria ja hiihtohissejä.

Perillä Madesimossa kirjauduin hotelliin ja kiskoin laskukamat niskaan samantien. Rinteet oli alle viiden minuutin kävelymatka ja toisen samanlaisen ajan kuluttua olin jo hissin yläasemalla sovittelemassa kiinnittämässä siteitäni. Arvio matka-ajasta välille Milano-yläasema on noin neljä tuntia mikä ei sinänsä ole kovin paljoa kun ajattelee päivittäisen työmatkani olevan pahimmillaan tunti suuntaansa... Laskut sujuivatkin sitten oikein mukavasti vaikkakin reiteni ilmaisivat aika nopeasti, että kyseessä on tosiaan tämän talven ensimmäinen laskukerta. Onneksi hyvin kirkkaasti paistava Aurinko kuitenkin onnistui työtämään väsyneet reidet taka-alalle ja molemmat laskupäivät sujuivat siis oikein iloisesti.

Näkymä koti Madesimon kylää.

Noin yleisesti tuo Madesimon hiihtokeskus ei ollut mikään maailman suurin; erillisiä rinteitä oli ehkä juuri ja juuri se kaksikymmentä. Toisaalta osa - ja luultavasti juurikin se paras osa - rinteistä oli suljettuna lumipulan takia. Muita laskijoita rinteissä tuntui riittävän vaikkei kuitenkaan liikaa eli muutamia sumppukohtia lukuunottamatta auraavia aloittelijoita tai muita vastaavia ei tarvinnut väistellä liikoja. Selkeästi suurin osa muista laskijoista oli italialaisia mutta yllättävästi seassa oli aika paljon myös brittejä. En tiennytkään, että siinäkin maassa osataan laskea. Niin, ja ne britit ei sitten olleet sellaisia meluisia polttariporukoita vaan hyvin hillitysti käyttäytyviä myöhäiskeski-ikäisiä pariskuntaryhmittymiä.

Näkymä alas rinteeseen.

En tiedä vielä milloin menen seuraavan kerran laskemaan mutta tuskin kuitenkaan nyt viikonloppuna. Ehkä ensi viikolla sitten. Täytyy myös vähän selvittää, joska kokeilisin jotakin toista paikkaa seuraavaksi. Ei Madesimossa siis mitään vikaa ollut mutta vaihtelu kun tuppaa virkistämään ja voihan se olla, että seuraava laskettelukeskus on sitten vielä paljon parempi.

On säitä pidelly...

2012-01-19T22:05:00.002+01:00

Kun täällä Milanossa ei ole mitään ihmeempiä tapahtunut, ajattelin vähän kirjoitella säästä. Tai on multa aika monet siitä ihan oikeasti kysellykkin.

Ihan ensimmäisenä todettakoon, että ei täällä ole niin lämmintä kuin te siellä Suomessa kuvittelette täällä olevan. Päivisin kylläkin lämpötila välillä kohoaa ihan kymmeneen asteeseenkin mutta yleensä ollaan siinä viidessä. Öisin ja iltaisin lämpötilat tippuvatkin sitten miinukselle ja pipolle on ihan oikeasti tarvetta. Normaaleina talvina täällä kuulemma tulee ihan luntakin mutta tämä vuosi on paikallisten mukaan ollut epätavallisen lämpöinen. Lisäksi paikalliseen perussäähän kuulemma kuuluu sumu, jota on ihan reilusti täällä näkynytkin. Välillä kuitenkin paistelee Aurinko oikein kivasti ja tuntuu siltä, että olisi keväisessä Suomessa...

Ja ens kerralla kirjottelen jostain ihan kiinnostavasti asiasta. Niinku esimerkiksi lähikaupan kurkkuvalikoimista tai Alpeista.

Talvinen näkymä mun ikkunastani. Huomatkaa talojen katoilla oleva huuru sekä taustalla näkyvä valkoinen usva.

Paluu

2012-01-12T22:52:00.000+01:00

Joulu ja uusivuosi sujuivat molemmat oikein mukavasti Suomessa ja tapasinkin tuona aikana arviolta 50 % tämän blogin säännöllisistä lukijoista. Pahoittelut sille toiselle puoliskolle. Loma kuitenkin loppui ja palattava oli.

Olin oveluuksissani järjestänyt paluulennot siten, että minulla olisi reilusti aikaa lentojeni välillä Mynssenissä. (Ihan näin välihuomatuksena sen verran, että mitä useamman mä käytän tuota edellistä kirjoitusasua Münchenistä, sitä enemmän mä siitä tykkään. Ihan mahtavasti saksankielinen nimi taipuu suomenkieliseksi menemättä liian kauaksi oikeasta lausimisasusta. Alkakaa tekin käyttää!) Tähän tietenkin liittyi se, että minun piti herätä ihan hirvittävän aikaisin sunnuntaiaaimuna ja raahautua ehkä kolmen tunnin yöunien jälkeen kentälle. Mutta pääsinpähän Mynsseniin kuitenkin.

Marienplatz.

Heti laskeuduttuani Mynssenin hienolle kentälle, suuntasin kohti kentän juna-asemaa ja hyppäsiin junaan kohti keskustaan. Tuohon ajeluun meni arviolta 40 minuuttia jonka aikana ehdin kertaamaan mielessäni datiivit ja akkusatiivit siltä varalta, että joutuisin keskusteluihin paikallisten kanssa. Perille keskustan Marienplatzille päästyäni paljastui karu totuus paikallisesti säästä: vesi-räntä-seosta ja noin 0°C. Olin myös ovelana miehenä päättänyt laittaa sateenvarjoni ruumaan joten päätin kävellä sateensuojalta toiselle ja painua sisätiloihin kun kenkäni kastuvat tarpeeksi.

Joku kirkko.

Ensimmäiseksi tällaiseksi sadesuojapaikaksi valikoitui puolivahingossa jokin taidemuseo, missä oli käynnissä Egon Schielen näyttely: taulut olivat suurimmalta osin ihan kivoja ja muutamissa perspektiivejä käsiteltiin aika jännästi. Kenkäni myös kuivuivat museossa oikein mukavasti. Muut varikko pysähdykset sitten tapahtuivat ruuan, kahvin ja oluen merkeissä. Onnistuin sateesta huolimatta kuitenkin kiertelemään kaupunkia ihan mukavasti ja voinkin todeta, että kyseessä on oikein nätti kaupunki. Vanhoja ja jyhkeitä rakennuksia tuntuu olevan reilusti ja kaupungin läpi kulkee vielä kaiken lisäksi reilusti virtaava joki. Mynssenissä olisi siis varmasti ihan kiva vierailla joskus kesäisillä keleillä. Jatkolento Milanoon sujui myös oikein mukavasti ja perillä minua odotti siisti koti sekä yli kymmenenasteinen lempeä sää.

Joki.

Italialaiset jouluvalmistelut

2011-12-23T17:01:00.001+01:00

Luvassa on nyt vuoden viimeinen Italia-päivitys. Aihe on hyvinajankohtainen: joulu. Vaikka en ehdikään varsinaisesti nähdä, miten joulua Italiassa vietetään, ehdin kuitenkin tehdä muutamia huomioita heidän jouluvalmisteluistaan. Tässä siis lyhyt listaus aiheesta:- jouluvalot: täällä tuntuu olevan kovin tärkeää valmistautua jouluun ripustamalla värikkäitä vilkkuvaloja omalle parvekkeelleen. Aika kauhealta näyttää.- Panettone ja pandoro: Nähtävästi hyvin tärkeä osa italialaista joulupöytää on mainituilla nimillä tunnetut kuivahkot kakut. Kaikkein pienimpienkin markettien käytävät on tukittu laatikkoröykkiöllä jotka sisältävät erilaisia versioita panettoneista ja pandoroista. Osassa on rusinoita, joissakin likööriä mutta useat ovat perinteisen täytteettömiä.- Pitsalaatikot: Lähipitseriani Santa Lucia pakkaa pitsansa paketteihin, joissa lukee "buone feste". Laatikon sisus on kuitenkin entisensä joten en valita.- Joululahjat: Niitä ostellaan täälläkin. Kaikki kaupat olivat viime viikonloppuna kovin tukkoisia.- Pikkujoulut: Niitä ei ole!- Joukukortit: Ne eivät myöskään jostain syystä kuulu paikallisiin tapoihin eli vaikka kuinka yritin etsiä jouluisia kortteja, en löytänyt moisia. Pahoittelut siis kaikille, jotka minulta tervehdystä odottivat. Yritän uudestaan vuoden päästä.Ja eipä sitten muuta kuin hyvää joulua kaikille lukijoille! Toivottavasti kohtaamme lähiviikkoina!

Joukkoliikennelakko

2011-12-16T23:11:00.000+01:00

Heräsin tänään aamulla tavallisen uupuneena ja pienen pinnistelyn jälkeen onnistuin nousemaan sängystä. Tavanomaisten aamutoimien ja -palan jälkeen suuntasin kohti lähintä metroasemaa tavoitteenani päästä yliopistolle. Kävellessäni kohti metron sisäänkäyntiä huomasin, että kaduilla oli tavallistakin enemmän autoja mutta päättelin tämän johtuvan ihan vain siitä, että olin kerrankin herännyt samaan aikaan kuin muut ihmiset. Mutta sitten metroon johtavien portaiden yläpäässä totuus valkeni minulle samalla kun huomasin sisäänkäynnin olevan suljettuna: tänään on lakkopäivä!

Kuulemma paikallisen julkisen liikenteen työntekijät ovat ilmoittaneet pitävänsä vuosittain sellaiset viitisentoista lakkopäivää. Kuviosta tekee ovelan se, ettei noiden lakkopäivien ajankohtaa ole ilmoitettu! Käsittääkseni tieto tulee yleensä julki muutama päivä ennen varsinaista lakkoa mutta koska itse en oikein pysty paikallista italiankielistä julkista keskustelua seuraamaan, tulevat nämä lakkopäivät aina pienoisina yllätyksinä. Toisaalta lakkoilijat ovat kovin huomaavaisia ja takaavat liikenteen sujumisen ruuhka-aikoina joten useimmat paikalliset pääsevät töihinsä myös lakon aikana. Lisäksi rikkureita tuntuu olevan harmittavan paljon ja yleensä metroja kulkee myös lakon aikana mutta selvästi harvemmin kuin normaalisti.

Tänään siis oma metroasemani oli suljettu täysin ja rikkurivuorojen hyödyntäminen ei onnistunut. Päätin testata, josko bussit ja ratikat kulkisivat ja etsin paikallisesta reittioppaasta itselleni vaihtoehtoisen reitin yliopistolle. Ensimmäinen osa sujui hyvin ja päädyin siihen johtopäätökseen, että raitiovaunut olivat lakon ulkopuolella. Bussipysäkille päästyäni huomasin infonäytöstä, että bussi tosiaankin oli tuloillaan mutta selkeästi pidemmän ajan kuluttua kuin normaalisti. Päätin kuitenkin odotella ja kokeilla miten käy. Pienen odottelun jäleen bussi tuli, mahduin kyytiin ja kuvittelin pääseväni ahkeroimaan yliopistolle mutta n. 10 minuutin ajelun jälkeen kuski ajoi tiensivuun ja käski kaikki matkustajat ulos. Nähtävästi hän päätti liittyä lakkoon kesken rikkurointinsa. Hyvä niin.

Suomimainos Milanon metrossa.

Olin tuossa vaiheessa käyttänyt jo reilun tunnin yritykseeni päästä yliopistolle ja ajattelin, että on varmaan aika luovuttaa. Palasin ratikkapysäkille ja kolistelin takaisin kämpilleni. Päivä sujui siis kivasti kotona konetta näppäilen ja kävin lounaaksi syömässä mahtavaa, paksupohjaista pitsaa!

Firenze

2011-12-11T21:36:00.001+01:00

Viime viikolla kohdalle osui peräti kaksi vapaapäivää: Pyhän Ambrosiuksenpäivä ja synnittömän (tai saastattoman) sikiämisen päivä. Ensimmäinen noista oli keskiviikkona ja pelkästään Milanossa sillä kyseessä on Milanon suojeluspyhimys. Jälkimmäinen oli puolestaan torstaina ja voimassa koko Italiassa. Paikallisen tavan mukaan perjantaina on "silta" eli kaikki pitää lomaa tuolloin kun se nyt vaan olisi niin kohtuutonta mennä yhdeksi päiväksi töihin ennen viikonloppua. Täten minulla oli viisi kokonaista lomapäivää! Päätin viettää ne Firenzessä nähtävyyksiä katsellen!

Menomatka taittui iloisesti nopealla ja hienolla junalla, vähän niinkuin viritetyllä Pendolinolla olisi matkustanut. Aikaa kului puolitoista tuntia ja jännitystä matkaan toi se, kun sain tarkkailla kuinka paikalliset konnarit pyydystivät pummilla matkustamista yrittäviä. Paikallisten taktiikka tuntuu olevan se, että mennään junan liikkeelle lähtiessä vessaan ja laitetaan ovet säppiin. Konnarit kuitenkin näyttivät tuntevan tempun ja heillä oli vessojen lukkojen avaimet.

Ponte Vecchio.

Firenzessä kävi aika nopeasti selväksi, että kaupungissa riittää nähtävää ja kauniita taloja. Etenkin paikallinen Duomo oli hyvin vaikuttava. Yksi syy lienee se, että viereiset talot olivat kohtalaisen lähellä ja täten sitä oli pakko katsoa hyvin lyhyen etäisyyden päästä. Sisältä se oli kuitenkin aika pelkistetty ja jopa pienoinen pettymys. Kävin useassa muussakin kirkossa ja niissä sisustukseen olikin sitten panostettu jo huomattavan paljon enemmän. Onnistuin löytämään mukavan hostellin kohtalaisen läheltä Duomoa joten se ja keskusta kivat vanhat talot tuli nähtyä useasti ja monesta kulmasta.

Duomon kupu näkyi koko kaupunkiin.

Ymmärsin, että Firenzessä oli aikoinaan ollut ihan hirveä paljon rahaa koska paikalliset keksivät miten rahaa voi tehdä lainaamalla sitä eteenpäin. Voittona saadut rahat oli sitten hyvä sijoittaa erilaisiin palatseihin (kävin itse kurkkimassa mm. Palazzoja Vecchiota, Pittiä, Mediciä ja Strozzia) ja kaikenlaiseen taiteeseen. Noiden mainittujen palatsien lisäksi pyörähdin Uffizissa, missä esillä oli vaikka miten hienoja tauluja ja patsaita. Hienoin rakennuksista oli kuitenkin Ponte Vecchio. En oikein osaa sanoa tarkasti miksi, mutta se tuntui jotenkin niin hienon aidolta ja siltä, kuin se olisi kasvanut osaksi kaupunkia ihan itsekseen.

Taidetta Palazzo Vecchiossa. Tykkäsin etenkin tapetista.

Tuolla pyöriessä tuli oteltua myös useampi kuva joista osan laiton internettiin tänne. Samalla voitte myös vilkaista miltä Milano näytti marraskuussa ja millaisia hylättyjä rakennuksia löytyi tuosta Milanon pohjoispuolelta.

Uimisesta Italiassa

2011-11-23T21:51:00.001+01:00

Ehkä tiesitkin jo, että mä tykkään käydä uimassa. Vaikka välillä tuo pohjan tuijottelu vähän tylsistyttääkin, on kyseessä ihan hyvä tapa kohottaa kuntoa ja virkistyttää omaa mieltä. Ja koska uin Suomessa niin ajattelin uida myös Italiassa. Kerronkin seuraavaksi hieman miten uiminen Milanossa poikkeaa uimisesta Suomessa.

Ihan ensimmäinen askel uimisen aloittamiseen on tietenkin uimahallien etsiminen. Tämä vaihe sujui aikalailla samoin kuin Suomessa eli netistä löytyy kaupungin liikuntaosaston sivu ja sieltä hallien osoitteet. Tässä vaiheessa sitten törmäsinkin ensimmäiseen eroavaisuuteen: uimahallit on avoinna yleensä aamuisin ja iltaisin sekä vain tiettyini viikonpäivinä. Lisäksi näissä aukioloajoissa on hurjaa vaihtelua eri hallien välillä ja ilta-aukiolo on useimmissa halleissa välillä 21-23. En ole vielä onnistunut selvittämään, mitä uimahalleissa tapahtuu päivisin ja alkuillasta mutta veikkaan, että siellä vesijumpataan tai puuhataan jotain muuta pahuutta.

Seuraava uimareita kohtaava jännyys tapahtuu sitten pukuhuoneessa, missä seinillä olevat kyltit kieltävät alastomuuden tyyliin: "peseytyminen ilman uima-asua kielletty!" Kuivan maan vaatteet vaihdetaan uikkareihin pienissä kopeissa muiden katseilta suojassa ja monet pukevat tässä vaiheessa päälleen kylpytakin. Vaikka alastomuus pukuhuoneista on näin saatu poistettua, on uimahalleissa jostain syystä silti erilliset pukuhuoneet ja suihkut miehille ja naisille. Voisi nimittäin kuvitella, että jos kerta eri sukupuolet olla samassa altaassa pelkissä uikkareissa, voisivat he olla myös samoissa suihkutiloissa uikkareissaan.

Kun uikkarit on saatu puettua mahdollisimman vähällä alastomuudella, on aika tunkea vaatteet yms. kaappiin. Tässä vaiheessa suoraan Suomesta tullut uimari voi kuitenkin hätääntyä, sillä kaapeissa ei ole lukkoja vaan ainoastaan paikka mihin oman riippulukkonsa saa laittaa. Jos on ollut tarpeeksi fiksu ja tuonut oman lukon mukanaan, kaapin oven lukitsemisen jälkeen on vastassa seuraava pulma: mihin se avain pitäisi laittaa? Itselläni kun ei sattunut mukaan sellaista kumilenkkiä minkä avulla avaimen Suomessa sai laitettua nilkkaan kiinni. Pienen pohdiskelun jälkeen päätin, että avaimen voi sitoa kiinni uikkareiden kiristysnaruihin ja tunkea housuihinsa.

Kuten tuon lukon kanssa, myös seuraavaan yllärivaiheeseen kannattaa varautua ennakolta. Italialaisissa uimahalleissa on nimittäin lakkipakko! Minua oli onneksi varoitettu etukäteen tästä vaatimuksesta joten olin kumisen Arena-hatun ylpeä omistaja kun ensimmäistä kertaa laskeuduin italialaisiin kloorivesiin. Uimalakkipakko vaikuttaa uimareihin siten, että kaikki näyttävät nopeammilta kuin oikeasti ovat.

Vaikka ratojen käyttötarkituksia ei ole missään ilmaistu, ratajako tuntuu Milanossa olevan sama kuin Suomessa eli keskellä on nopeitten radat ja reunoilta on varattu liian monta kaistaa vesijumppaajien käyttöön. Onneksi vesijuoksijat kuitenkin puuttuivat. Uintietikettiin tuntuu täällä kuuluvan vahvasti se, ettei toisia ohitella. Kokeilin ensimmäisellä uintikerrallani tuota ja sain pitkähkön italiankielisen saarnan ohittamisen pahuudesta. Toinen täällä oleva yleinen tapa tuntuu olevan se, että uiminen lopetetaan yleensä n. 2 metriä ennen altaan päätyä ja se, että lepäilijät seisoskelevat altaan päädyissä koko radan leveydeltä siten, että kääntyminen kehenkään osumatta on lähes mahdotonta. Edellä mainittujen syiden takia yhtäjaksoiset yli 50 metrin uintirupeamat ovat aika harvinaisia. Positiivisena seikkana mainittakoon se, että ylihitaat sammakkomiehet ja -naiset pysyttelevät omilla radoillaa altaan reunoilla.

Yhteenvetona todettakoon, että vaikka siirtymä suomalaisesta uintikulttuurista italialaiseen on monivaiheinen, on se silti tehty. Kilometrejä siis kertyy lähes vanhaan malliin ja uimalakki pysyy päässä.

Italialainen uimahalli.

Yleistä höpinää Milanosta

2011-11-13T20:28:00.001+01:00

Vaihtoa on nyt takana kohta puolitoista kuukautta ja mulle on jo muodostunut jonkinlainen yleismielikuva Milanosta. Ensinnäkin on alkanut vaikuttaa enemmän ja enemmän siltä, että Milano ei ole mikään kovin kaunis kaupunki. Tai kyllä täältä siis löytyy oikein nättejä kulmia mutta noin yleisesti talokanta tuntuu olevan sellaista kolhoa ja tylsää 70-lukua. En sano varmaksi mutta minulle on syntynyt sellainen mielikuva, että sodassa kaupunkia pommitettiin aika reippaasti. Toinen kaupunkikuvaa tylsentävä tekijä lienee ollut sitten raha ja sen tekeminen kiinteistöjen avulla. Lisäksi joka puolella olevat graffittisuttaukset tekee kaupungin yleisilmeistä vähän rähjäisen.

Milanolainen kerrostalo.

Mutta on täällä tosiaan niitä hienojakin kulmia ja etenkin keskustassa on paljon vanhaa ja nättiä. Etenkin kaupungin tuomiokirkko Duomo ja 1800-luvun ostoskeskus Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II ovat hyvin vaikuttavia. Duomosta erikoisen tekee myös se, että sen katolle pääsee kiipeämään - kuten ehkä huomasitte edellisen tekstin kuvien perusteella - ja ihmettelemään kuinka täynnä sekin on kaikenlaisia koristuksia ja patsaita. Vähän erikoisempi nähtävyys on sitten tuossa edellisessä viestissä mainittu hautausmaa Cimitero Monumentale joka on täynnä toinen toistaan vaikuttavampia hautamonumentteja. Se on myös yleensä kohtalaisen hiljainen paikka ja siellä voi siis omassa rauhassa kuljeskella hautojen välissä ja ihmetellä kaikkia vastaantulevia pieniä yksityiskohtia. Viimeinen mieleen tuleva "oikea" nähtävyys on Castello Sforzesco ja sen sisällä olevat museot. Kyseessä on siis linna, joka on ollut osa Milanon puolustusta joskus silloin kuin muurit, keihäät ja vastaavat olivat osa sodankäyntiä. Myös Breran ja Naviglin alueet ovat oikein miellyttäviä paikkoja kävelyjä ja muuta hengailua silmälläpitäen. Nämä Milanon nätimmät kulmat ja etenkin Duomon edusta ovatkin sitten täynnä turisteja lähes koko ajan kun muualla Milanossa heitä ei juuri näy. Laitoin hieman valokuvia Milanosta Picasaan. Käykää katsomassa!

Duomo auringonlaskun aikaan.

Koska Milano alkaa olemaan nähtävyyksien osalta kierretty, olen alkanut harkita viikonloppureissujen tekemistä lähiseutujen kaupunkeihin. Etenkin Torino, Genova ja Firenze ovat lähellä ja kiinnostavia. Täytynee katsoa milloin ja miten noihin olen menossa. Ensimmäisen lähiseutumatkan itse asiassa tein jo ja se suuntautui Mantovaan ja Parmaan. Kummatkin kaupungit olivat ihan kivoja ja nättejä vaikka mitään järisyttävää ei tullutkaan vastaan. Tuosta keikasta on myös valokuvia.

Yksi Mantovan Piazzoista.

Vierailijoita Milanossa

2011-11-06T20:45:00.000+01:00

Viimeiset neljä viikonloppua - siis mukaan lukien tämä juuri loppumaisillaan oleva - mulla on ollut täällä Milanossa kyläilijöitä. Ihan ensimmäisinä kaupunkiin saapuivat Jukka ja Nea, jotka päättivät Italian kiertomatkansa tänne pohjoiseen. Heidän kanssaan kävin ensimmäistä kertaa Milanon päänähtävyydellä Duomolla sekä sen katolla. Näkymän oli hienot ja olin hieman yllättynyt miten paljon pientä koristusta ja patsasta katolla normaalien kirkonkävijöille näkymättömissä oli.

Jukka ja Nea Duomon katolla.

Jukan ja Nean jälkeen vuorossa oli sitten Sampsa joka sekin oli päättämässä Italian turneeta. Sampsan kanssa me sitten palloiltiin yhdellä isolla hautausmaalla sekä syötiin paljon pitsaa ja käytiin kaljalla. Sampsa oli myös ensimmäinen mun pienessä kämpässäni yöpynyt vieras. Eli tosiaan, jos mua joku haluaa tänne tulla vielä tulevaisuudessa katsomaan niin voin kyllä majoittaa!

Sampsa esittää mielipiteen.

Viikko Sampsa jälkeen kaupunkiin pölähtivät Turo ja Hanna. Heillä oli takana oleilu Sisiliassa ja Milano oli matkan huipentumana käsittääkseni osittain Ryanairin takia. Tuohon lentoon liittyen meille ei jäänyt kovinkaan paljoa aikaa yleiseen kiertelyyn joten tuona viikonloppuna kiertely rajoittui lähinnä pikaiseen Duomo-pyörähdykseen sekä ihan hengailuun Milanon ehkä kiinnostavimmalla alueella; Naviglissa.

Turo valokuvaa nähtävyyksiä Milanossa.

Sitten viime torstaina kaupunkiin saapui sukulaisia. Perjantai tuli itse vietettyä töissä joten lähetin heidät Duomolle ja kerroin, miten sinne katolle pääsee. Lauantaina me sitten kierreltiin porukalla Milanoa sen verran kuin aika kovassa sateessa pystyttiin. Yksi myös itselleni uusista vierailukohteista tuon päivän aikana oli paikallinen luonnonhistoriallinen museo. Siellä oli perinteisten dinosaurusten luitten ja täytettyjen eläimien lisäksi esitteillä ihan kivoja kiviä ja kristalleja.

Keskisiä metrossa.

Eli näin lopuksi todettakoon, että oli oikein kiva kun täällä kävi väkeä kyläilemässä. Tulkaa te muutkin käymään!

Yliopisto

2011-10-25T23:38:00.003+02:00

Kun olen nyt jo esitellyt Milanon kotini, voisin seuraavaksi esitellä hieman Milanon yliopistoa. Vietän päivien parhaat tunnit Politecnico di Milanossa ja tarkemmin energiatekniikan laitoksella. Kyseessä on siis Milanon vastine TKK:lle ja jopa laitos on samanniminen kuin omani Otaniemessä. Ehkä suurin ero Otanimen vastaavaan laitokseen on se, ettei täällä tunnuta tekevän - ainakaan tuolla moottoripuolella - juurikaan kokeellista tutkimusta. Itseäni tämä ei tietenkään haittaa mutta ehkä hieman kummalliselta tuo kuullostaa. Kokeellinen tutkimus toisaalta on yleensä kalliimpaa kuin laskeskelu joten ehkä se on yksi selitys. Toinen iso ero Espoon kouluun on se, että täällä sukupuolijakauma on lähes normaali eli kampuksellä näkee myös naisia. Syynä saatta ehkä olla meidän rakennuksen vieressä sijaitseva bisnestiedekunta.

Jaan yliopistolla työhuoneeni kahdeksan muun jatko-opiskelijan kanssa. Tilaa on siis niukanlaisesti mutta olen jo aika hyvin tottunut tuohon pieneen tungokseen muuten paitsi hälyn suhteen joka haittaa jonkin verran keskittymistäni etenkin silloin kun yritän lueskella jotain. Mutta sellaista se kai on muissakin avokonttoreissa eli ei auta muu kuin totutella myös jatkuvaan meteliin. Jatko-opiskelijoista kolme on vastaavanlaisessa vaihdossa kaukaa Australiasta asti ja loput täysin aitoja italialaisia jotka mukavasti auttavat meitä tumpeloita vaihtareita paikallisissa jännyyksissä. Tämän lisäksi huoneen kalustukseen kuuluu inspiroivaksi tarkoitettu koriste-esine: Lamborghinin moottori.

Minun työpisteeni (keskellä) ja Lamborghinin moottori (oikealla). Kuvasta puuttuvat muut jatko-opiskelijat joita normaalisti on minun työpisteeni vasemmalla puolella sekä sen edessä ja takana.

Yliopistolla on useita kampuksia ja omani sijaitsee Bovisassa, hieman kaupungin keskustasta luoteeseen. En ole vielä saanut hankittua polkupyörää - enkä itse asiassa ole varma hankinkokaan - joten työmatkani sujuvat metrolla ja paikallisjunalla. Suoraahkoa pyöräreittiä pitkin matkaa kämpiltä Gorlasta tuonne olisi vähän vajaa seitsemän kilometria mutta koska julkisilla joudun kiertämään vähän keskustan kautta, päivittäinen matkani on hieman pidempi. Aikaa työmatkaan ovelta ovelle, sisältäen pikaisen kahvin matkan varrella, kuluu reilut 30 minuuttia eli se ei ole paha ollenkaan.

Ilmastointi vs. lämmitys

2011-10-13T21:54:00.000+02:00

Tässä mun huoneessani on ilmastointi. Tuollainen kiinteästi seinässä katon rajassa oleva ritilä mistä tulee kylmää ilmaa. Seinällä on sitten termostaatti josta saa säätää lämpötilan sopivaksi. Koska kelit on täällä hellineet, ei ilmastointia ole oikeastaan tarvinnut ja sieltä ritilästä on tullut hienovaraisen vähän kylmää ilmaa siten, että kämpässä on ollut mukavat 25°C suurin piirtein koko ajan.

Menin sitten eilen illalla onnellisena nukkumaan ja nukahdin tuohon juuri sopivaan lämpötilaan ja heräsin parin tunnin unien jälkeen noin kello puoli kaksi hikisenä ja kuumissani. Ajattelin ensin sairastuneeni johonkin hirvittävään tautiin mutta sitten tajuan, että huoneessa on oikeasti ihan pirun kuuma. Pienen tutkiskelun jälkeen käy ilmi, että se ilmastointiritilä syöttääkin huoneeseen kuumaa ilmaa ja aika reippaasti vielä! Yritän säätää ilmastoinnin lämpötilaa pienemmäksi mutta ritilästä tuleva ilma on silti kuumaa. Päättelen ilmastoinnin menneen rikki, kytken sen pois päältä, avaan ikkunan ja jatkan unia.

Ritilä

Aamulla mainitsen asiasta talonmiehelle ja ehdotan ilmastoinnin korjaamista. Käykin ilmi, että kyseessä ei ole vika vaan ominaisuus! Kuulemma Milanossa on säädetty jossain tietty päivä - nähtävästi siis 13.10. - jolloin joka paikassa pitää ilmastoinnit kytkeä pois päältä ja lämmitykset päälle. Tästä päivästä lähin viilennystä ei siis ole tarjolla mutta lämmitystä on! Hienoa tässä asiassa on se, että mulla oikeasti on lämmitys tässä huoneessa. Ei tarvitse palella talvella.

Mun asumukseni

2011-10-10T21:22:00.000+02:00

Viikko tässä sitten vierähti ennen kuin ehdin kirjoittaa lisää tekstiä teille. Ajatuksena oli kylläkin olla hieman nopeampi mutta viime viikko kului mulla aika kovasti SAE-paperia vääntäessä. Jonkinlainen teksti sitten syntyikin eli parhaassa tapauksessa - eli jos paperi on arvioijien mielestä riittävän hyvä - pääsen taas vierailulle Detroitiin tuossa vähän keväämmällä.

Sitten mä ajattelin kertoa teille vähän mun asumuksestani. Mun kämppäni on tällaisessa jatko-opiskelijoille, postdoceille ja muille vastaaville suunnatussa asuntolassa. Sen mitä olen tähän mennessä naapureitani tavannut, lähes kaikki ovat olleet jatko-opiskelijoita. Kansalaisuuksista iranilaiset on selkeästi suurin ryhmä mutta espanjalaisia on myös aika runsaasti. Pohjois-eurooppalaisia ei täällä ole muita joten saan olla kerrankin ainutlaatuinen! Talo on kohtalaisen uusi - ehkä jostain viiden vuoden takaa - ja itse asunto on sellainen pieni yksiö. Opiskelija-asuntolamaisuutta tähän paikkaan tuo myös se, että mulla ei ole omaa keittiötä vaan jaettu kerroskeittiö. Tämä tietenkin vaikeuttaa elämää hieman mutta toimii samalla myös erinomaisena tekosyynä hakea pitsa yhdestä naapuruston lukuisista pizzerioista.

Residenza Vitruvio. Mun huoneeni ikkuna on tuo, mihin Aurinko osuu.

Asunto oli valmiiksi mutta aika minimaalisesti kalustettu mikä tietenkin helpotti muuttojärjestelyjä huomattavasti. Ei tämä mikään unelmakämppä ole mutta ei toisaalta mikään pahakaan. Ihan hyvin tässä voi asustella. Milanoon matkaa suunnitteleville tiedoksi, että jos hankin/hankit ylimääräisen patjan tänne niin voin majoittaa yhden vieraan. Kahden vieraan kohdalla loppuu lattiatila kesken joten jos teitä on useampia tulossa, niin voin auttaa hotellin etsinnässä. Lisäksi jännänä yksityiskohtana mainittakoon, että asunnon kohtalaisen korkeaan vuokraan sisältyy myös kerran kuukaudessa vieraileva siivooja sekä lakanat, jotka pestään talon laskuun kerran viikossa.

Mun karu asuntoni.

Ensimmäinen viesti Milanosta!

2011-10-02T23:16:00.000+02:00

Mulla on ollut tähän mennessä tapana, että vähän pidemmiltä ulkomaankeikoilta mä pidän tällaista yleiseen tilannekuvaukseen keskittyvää blogia. Ajattelin, että ehkä sitä pitäisi taas jaksaa vaivautua ja kirjoitella satunnaisesti tapahtumista täällä Italiassa. Tässä siis teille - kaikessa kauheudessaan - J-P:n Milano-blogi!

Eli mä olen nyt Pohjois-Italiassa ja syynä on tutkijavaihto. Tämä tarkoittaa siis sitä, että Aalto-yliopisto lähetti minut tänne Politecnico di Milanoon oppimaan ja tutkimaan. Käytännössä mä teen täällä samoja asioita kuin Otaniemessa mutta vain italialaisten kaitsemana. Tarkemmat tehtävät ja vastaavat selviävät vähän myöhemmin - ehkä jo huomenna - mutta pääasiallisena tavoitteena olisi imeä oppia liikkuvien hilojen käytöstä näissä mun LES-simuloinnessa.

Mä saavuin tänne siis viime perjantaina illalla ja tämä viikonloppu on mennyt paikkoihin tutustuessa, käytännön asioita hoitaessa ja yhtä työjuttua vääntäessä. Asunto mulla on paikallisen yliopiston kautta ja naapurit tuntuvat olevan lähes kaikki jatko-opiskelijoita ja post-docceja. Tämä lienee kaikin puolin hyvä asia. Onnistuin viikonloppuna myös hoitamaan itselleni paikallisen puhelinnumeron. Se ja mun uusi osoitteeni löytyy FB:stä eli kaivakaa ne esiin ja alkakaa lähetellä tekstiviestejä ja postikortteja tänne!

Mitään isompaa en vielä selostele tästä kaupungista kun en täällä vielä kovin paljoa ole ehtinyt kierrellä. Onneksi tuota aikaa nyt kuitenkin on. Ensivaikutelmista voin kertoa sen verran kuitenkin, että autoja täällä tuntuu olevan jopa enemmän kuin Helsingissä, kahvin juonti hitaasti kahviloissa on sosiaalisesti vaikeaa ja mun naapurit on hyvin ystävällisiä. Lisää tekstiä ja pinnallista yleiskuvausta on kuitenkin luvassa myöhemmin. Pysykää siis kuulolla!

Jos tahdotte tässä odotellessa lukea enemmän ex-turkulaisten edesottamuksista maailmalla, suosittelen Mikon negailuja Englannista ja Teron seikkailuja Japanin ihmemaassa.

Näkymä mun ikkunastani

Photos from Colombia

2010-02-07T19:56:00.002+01:00

One more post! As you might have read, I lost almost all of the photos I took in Colombia. This was very sad as the Country really was my favourite. However, a friend I traveled in Colombia with, Marina, had copies of my photo dvd's and she sent me them. Out of the three dvd's, only one was not working. The two functioning dvd's contained more than a thousand photos and I have uploaded about a tenth to Picasa. Go and check them out.

Oh, and while viewing the photos, I really started to feel like going back to Colombia. It just was a great country to visit.

Conclusions

2009-10-19T18:35:00.005+02:00

Finally, the last post of this blog! I somehow ended up being very busy doing nothing here in Finland and just didn't have the time write this final post. However, today was a day of action and accomplishments!

First, it's the trip in numbers. I was surprised to have spent so much money during the trip. Everyone has been asking about how much I used and my estimate was maybe 3 000 euros less than what it really was.

Duration of the trip: 290 days
Number of countries visited: 17
Total cost of the trip: 10 700 €
Money used per day: 36 €
Cost of flights: 1 200 €
Number of flights: 8
Cost of insurances: 1 120 €

Then a bit about the highlights of the trip in the form of top 5's. A lot of people have asked me what was the best place, the nicest country etc. etc. These listings should give answers to those questions.

Nicest countries:

Colombia
Bolivia
Mexico
Peru
Kyrgyzstan

Best cities:

Mexico City
Bogota
Hong Kong
La Paz
Bishkek

Best places:

Little Corn Island
Ciudad Perdida
Taganga
Montañita
Cusco

Dodgiest places:

Central American capitals
Quito
Inglewood
Lima
Bishkek at night

Best nightlife

Bocas del Toro
Bogota
Motañita
Hong Kong
Taganga

Scariest rides:

The boats between Colombia and Panama
Shared taxis in Tajikistan
Buses in the mountains of Peru
Shared taxis in Uzbekistan
A flight with a Tupolev in Uzbekistan

And then finally, a link to my photos in Picasa. You'll find the best of my photos arranged by countries. Also, if you're interested in seeing a bit where I've been, download this kml-file and then open it with Google Earth.

Thank you for all my readers. I hope you have enjoyed my trip and I hope that there would be at least one person who has read all the posts. If there are any more long trips coming up, the trips will be blogged at this address.

Riga

2009-09-13T15:31:00.008+02:00

At last, here is the promised last travel update of this blog/trip. Still, as promised, I'll write some general comments about favourite places and overall costs a bit later so stay tuned.

Some street art from Riga.

But a bit about Riga. My flight landed in there early in the morning and I started by brushing my teeth at the airport bathroom. While there, a man is trying to use the fancy electronic non-touch taps but gets very confused. As the only people there were the people from my Tashkent flight, I guess he was an Uzbek and clearly had never seen a tap that works by just placing your hands under it. The guy spends about a minute looking for a way to turn the tap on and finally I had to show him how the thing works. After this he tries to dry his hands under the soap dispenser and gets very confused when it doesn't work: "ne robota!".

There were nice parks.

As my flight to Finland would leave Riga around 19, I had about 12 hours to explore the city. I had already been to Riga once about one and a half years ago and I had then seen most of the city already. Thus I didn't really need to do that much exploring or sightseeing. I then just concentrated on walking and just relaxing. Riga really was a nice city during the summer with its parks and the old city. The only real touristy thing I did was to visit the art museum, which had some quite nice paintings and an elderly guard who made me feel very impolite by letting me know that it's not proper to wear a hat indoors. Another very clear indicator of me leaving the developing countries behind was the amazing way how cars actually yielded to pedestrians who were crossing the street using a zebra crossing. Also, most of the time in Riga I was just amazed how fancy and expensive everything looked there.

A view of the Riga old town.

And then I flew to Finland, met a plenty of friends, had good coffee and went to the sauna. The trip was over.

Tashkent

2009-08-27T17:07:00.004+02:00

I got to Tashkent for the third and the last time. I didn't have much to do or see here as I'd managed to cover bits on the earlier visits. I started by visiting the local history museum and found a building very similar to the one in Bishkek. The division between ancient and recent history was also similar with the first floor being about Uzbekistan from the stone ages to the Russian conquest. This part was quite interesting and I enjoyed viewing the objects on display until I noticed that some of the things on display seemed to look very familiar. I realised that they actually were the exactly same objects as I had seen in Termiz at the local archeological museum. However, neither of the places had any mention which of the objects would the original one and which the copy. This made me a bit suspicios on everything I saw at the museum. Maybe they were all recent copies? Also an interesting feature at the museum was that the Mongol conquest was reduced to one small corner while Timur had quite a big section with a very grand mural on the background. The second floor, which in Bishkek's museum was dedicated to the history of the Soviet Union, was about Uzbekistan after the Russians took over. First few displays explained how the Russians were not too good masters and how the Uzbeks tried to get rid of them. Then there suddenly were plenty of displays with happy Uzbek-Soviet workers building dams, starting a nuclear physics institute and picking cotton. Then there was a big section about the first and only president of Uzbekistan with photos of him shaking hands with Georgo W. Bush, Vladimir Putin and Henry Kissinger. There were also plenty of his quotes on the wall but sadly only few were in English. The last bit of the museum was just about displaying different products made in Uzbeksitan.

Other sights I've seen in Tashkent include few parks with soviet architecture, a quite nice art museum, an old mosque-medressa combination and more modern administrative buildings. The mosque visit allowed me to see the worlds oldest quran. I also spent some more time enjoying the nice subway.

As I'm just about to leave Uzbekistan now, I'll write few general things and observations about Uzbekistan. First of all, the country is full of policemen. They're everywhere and they do nothing. For example a road construction site in Samarkand had about 20 policemen there with one of their main tasks being stopping people from walking through the area where the road was built. However, the road was full of people walking through with the police stopping only about every 3rd person. Also, the roads in Uzbekistan are full with police checkpoints but they rarely stop anyone even for asking bribes not to mention to enforce traffic regulations. Usually the policemen just sit in the shade and chat with eachother. The other thing worth mentioning about this country are the notes: the biggest one they have is 1 000 sum which is worth about 0,40 e. This means that when you change money, you end up with huge stacks of bills (which give good opportunities for funny photos) . Money changers (the blackmarket one's that is) are also easy to find as they all carry big plastic bags full of money.

And next, after less than 5 hours, I will fly to Riga and hence return to Europe. After 12 hours in Latvia, I will fly to Finland to Turku. I decided that the start point of my trip was Matti's flat in Turku and I've decided to finish the trip there too. This means that my nine and a half months of looking for and rediscovering life will come to an end on either Saturday or Sunday when Matti hopefully invites me to his place for some sauna and beers. The next update will be written in Finland and is followed by few final comments on the whole trip and on the places I've visited. I've also decided to compile some top 5 lists on the places I've visited so don't stop reading this blog even though I'm back.

Shakrishabz and Termiz

2009-08-20T14:11:00.004+02:00

After Samarkand I made a quick turn in Tashkent. This included an episode at the train station where an Uzbek taxi driver demonstrated how they do business in his country: he was asking 10 000 sum (3,80 e) for a trip of 1 km, that should normally cost about 2 000 sum (0,80 e). After me and my French group refused to pay this sum and walked to some other taxi drivers, the first driver followed us and started shouting to the other drivers who dared to talk to us. It soon became clear, that he was making threats to anyone who would agree to drive us to our destination. He was still asking a lot although he lowered the price to 8 000 sum (3,10 e). We finally met a very friendly driver who wasn't too scared and agreed on the correct price very fast. Meanwhile the first taxi driver was shouting very loudly and started to get a bit aggressive but we all managed to get to our hostel unharmed. I hope the nice and honest driver doesn't get in to trouble later. I heard of another similar incident where a group of taxi drivers was threatening to beat up a Turkish truck driver for taking two tourists in his car after the two tourists refused to pay triple the normal price for a trip between two towns. The Uzbeks seem to be very determined in general to rip-off the tourists but the taxi drivers are by far the worst.

In any case, after my return to Samarkand from Tashkent, I headed to the small town of Shahrisabz. This place was about an hour away so I made the visit a day trip and was able to see all that I was interested in seeing. The town was the home town of Timur, the newly appointed national hero of Uzbekistan, and had some nice historical buildings. I also made a visit to the local bazaar and bought a very nice traditional Uzbek robe that I will start using as my bathing robe and as something to wear when reading a newspaper at home.

Then I headed south to Termiz. The main reason for the visit were the archealogical sites around the town and the museum containing things from these sites. After spending many hours in a hot and crowded taxi, I discovered that both of the cheap hotels mentioned in the Lonely Planet were not available: the other having disappeared while the other would not accept non-Uzbeks as guests. The only remaining LP hotel was nice and fancy and was charging 50 $ (34,90 €) for a room. I found this a bit too expensive and went out to look for cheaper alternatives. After a short walk I found a hotel for 20 $ (13,95 €) and filled with German soldiers who would drink and talk loudly all night just outside my room. I visited the museum, ruins of a buddhist monastery and a mausoleum the next day and enjoyed especially the museum and the ruins. The mausoleum was not too much after seeing many much nicer ones in Samarkand. I'm not sure if the trip really was worth it. I then headed back to Samarkand where I will spend few days before heading back to Tashkent and then to home.

Tashkent, Nukus, Moynaq, Khiva, Bukhara and Samarkand

2009-08-19T13:56:00.003+02:00

When I got to Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan, the first thing I noticed was the lack of good budget accommodation. The cheapest place I found, a hostel at the railway station, had no showers and had the check out time at 8 am. The other two places I checked were both asking 15$ (10,65 €) for a dorm and had unfriendly owners. In the place I ended up staying, I accidentally met Dave (from Canada) whom I had met earlier in Urumqi. He was biking from Korea to Ireland and had gotten stuck in Tashkent because of difficulties in getting the Iranian visa. Apart from hanging out with dave, I did some small sightseeing by taking a walk at the centre of the city and riding the nicely 80´s subway. Tashkent seemed to be an ok city.

I was then joined by Eve from France and we took a flight to the very western end of the country, to the region Karakalpakstan to the city of Nukus. The flight was done with an old Tupolev which had fully folding seats and open, train style overhead compartments. I can just imagine how the luggage flies around if there is any turbulence. The slogan of the Tashkent airport seems to be "good luck" (this was written in many big posters at and around the airport) and made me a bit worried about the quality of the aircraft. Maybe I would need good luck to survive... However, all went well and we arrived to Nukus on time.

The main reason for going to Nukus was to do a day trip to the fishing town of Moynaq. Or, at least the town used to be a fishing town before the sea went away. When the Aral sea went away, the ships ended up at being on the desert and this was what we wanted to see. It actually was quite interesting to see rusting boats and no water anywhere. Also, the water and fish themed posters on the lamp posts were quite interesting.

The next place to visit, the walled city of Khiva, had real touristy sights. The city wall was impressive, the medressas were nice and the minarets beautiful. As for the negative side, often the restauration work had been a bit too ambitious and it was usually difficult to see which was original and which was built later. This proved to be the problem in the other main tourist sights Bukhara and Samarkand. The favourite thing Khiva, in addition to the beautiful mosaics on the walls of almost every building, was the fat minaret. Outside Khiva we visited a collection of old fortresses called Elliq-qala. These resembled some of the fortresses I saw earlier in Tajikistan except that they were built on small hills instead of sides of mountains. Two of them were quite impressive.

From Khiva we headed to Bukhara where we saw plenty more medressas and mosques. The most impressive sight there was the Mir-al-Arab medressa and the mosque next to it. I also liked climbing up and old soviet water tower to get good views of the walled part of the old town. The town also had a pleasant artificial pool at the centre and few overpriced but nice restaurants around it.

From Bukhara we continued to Samarkand with a shared taxi. On the way there, the taxi almost hit a car turning to the left and ended up making a bit too rough braking and then almost hitting some people by the road. This was especially scary when there are no seatbelts in the back where I was sitting. We almost died. In Samarkand the main sight was the Registan with its Tigerlike lion pictures on the main facade. Other interesting spots included few mosques and mausoleums.

Penjikent

2009-08-03T12:31:00.003+02:00

After two more days (from Thursday 30th to Saturday 1st) in Dushanbe, Katri flew back to Finland and I headed towards Uzbekistan. I had chosen to cross the border just outside the town of Penjikent (Панҷакент) and decided to spend a day there doing some sightseeing and relaxing. The main thing were the ruins of the old Penjikent. The ruins were well ruined and all there was to see, were some clay walls. I can imagine the old city being something like I saw outside Dunhuang in China. Then, after two nights in Penjikent, I crossed the border to Uzbekistan. Also, on the way to Penjikent a policeman was a bit angry at me as he thought that my visa had expired. The situation was solved after I spend few minutes explaining to him that August is the eight month of the year, not nineth.

This post will be short so that I will end it with a link and another with news I just found out yesterday.

Khorog and Wakhan valley

2009-07-30T13:09:00.006+02:00

The ride to Khorog (Хоруғ) went really well compared to the previous trip and we didn't have even one flat tyre. I guess Lada's just are better quality cars that Mitshubishi's. When in Khorog, we checked in to a nice and frienly homestay. Then after a dinner and some quick internet, we began to make plans for how to see the Pamirs.

However, very early in the next morning, on Saturday, Katri starts to feel the last nights bifstek behaving badly in her stomach. After her making few rounds to the nice western toilet, we decide to leave Khorog on Sunday instead. While Katri slept at the guesthouse, I decided to do some sightseeing and especially visit the crossborder market where Afghan traders were supposed to be selling their products to tourists and local Tajiks.

However, when I reached the bridge to Afghanistan, it turns out that there is no Afghan market this week. No explanations were offered, there just were no Afghan traders. I then visited the local bazaar instead and found some local socks. I finished my day by climbing half way up a mountain and making more plans with Katri about touring the Pamirs, starting on Sunday.

However, then quite early in the morning, it turns out that Katri is not feeling better but much worse. After a short negotiation, we decide to postpone going out from Khorog and get a doctor to visit Katri instead. The nice doctor, who came to our guesthouse with a nurse in an UAZ ambulance, told Katri to sleep and rest for few more days. I then decided to spend the day by visiting a ruins of a small fortress/temple in a small village close by. There really weren't much more than just some stones on top of a hill but it still was a nice day of exploring. I also found something that looked like an old shooting range with plenty of some kind of wrecked APC's as targets.

Then on Monday morning Katri started to feel a bit better and we headed to the Wakhan valley. The main attraction in the valley were the old, ruined silk road fortresses but there were also fine views of some snow capped mountains and a hot spring. We started by going first to the town of Langar at the very end of the valley and then after a nights sleep, we continued back and stopped at every interesting spot on the way. This was conveniently done by renting a 4WD and a driver. Most of the fortresses were just a collection of piles of rocks but the one close by to the village of Yamchun was different with clearly visible towers, long walls and impressive location. The fortresses actually reminded me of the Inca fortresses I had seen in Peru, most likely because of the similar location on top of hills/mountains. The hotspring was also quite nice altough they were charging 10 more for the entrance from tourists (10 TJS ~ 1,6 e).

The local's tendency for double pricing and overcharging tourists was visible in other places in the Pamirs too with hostels charging normally 10 USD (~7,1 e) for a night's sleep on a mattress on the floor. The place seems to be developing towards a bit more expensive destination for people intrested in mountains and wilderness. I guess this can be a good thing for the local economy but it could be even better if they could also get the tourists on budget there by not ripping off everyone.

The return trip from the valley was horrible as first it seemed that there would be no one willing to drive as back to Khorog. We were a bit in a hurry to get back as Katri's flight is leaving on Friday and it can be quite a long ride from Khorog to Dushanbe. We finally found a person going there with his friend and he agreed to take us there. The trip started well with a flat tyre being replaced really quickly and the guy driving confidently. However, half way to Khorog they stopped to buy some beer and started drinking while driving. When the driver opened his third bottle of Baltika, we started to consider asking them to leave us where we were but that would have meant us sleeping under a rock in the middle of nowhere. On the way to Khorog there were two police check points but it turned out that the policemen were more interested in checking our passports than stopping people driving drunk. After 3 hours of horror, we finally made it to Khorog and were happy to be alive and to get some sleep.

Then on the next day, on my birthday, we got a car heading back to Dushanbe. This trip can be done, in theory, in about 14 hours although the Lonely Planet gives an estimate of 20 hours and I've heard stories of people spending 24 hours on the road. Our trip starts well with a competent looking driver and two empty seats in the car. After about 3 hours of driving, the driver picks up two Tajik men, who were really badly in need of a shower, and we continue towards Dushanbe. The interruptions on this trip were one flat tire, about 7 police checkpoints (where the driver paid bribes and me and Katri had to show our passports), 2 meals and then a 3 hour break when the driver wanted to sleep. We arrived to Dushanbe at 7 in the morning after 21 hours of traveling without sleep. This probably was the worst birthday I've ever had.

Kalaikhum

2009-07-25T08:10:00.005+02:00

The main thing to see in Tajikistan are the Pamirs at the eastern part of the country. There are plenty of mountains, some ruins and even few Kyrgyz yurts. Apart from that, there's not much but still the area is crawling with tourists. Or not there's not that many of us here but still much more than in the other parts of the country. Me and Katri had decided to head there and as the car ride to the local capital of Khorog was supposed to take about 20 hours, we decided to split the trip in two and sleep a night half way at Kalaikhum.

We woke up early in order to get to Kalaikhum at a reasonable time as it still was quite far away. Or not far by kilometres, about 230 of them, but it would take time as the road was again supposed to be really bad. We got to the bus station at around 7 and then found a car heading to Kalaikhum. Then we waited for about an hour for enough passengers to show up and we were ready to start driving at just a bit after 8! Or actually then we were told that the driver will now go and get his cargo: three sheep which he was planning to put in to the boot of the Mitshubishi 4WD. This operation took about an hour more and we were finally ready to start driving at 9:30.

As some of the readers might already know, sheep smell. In addition their shit smells too and as they did not get any toilet breaks, there was quite a lot of smell in the car. The driver however had a solution for this: air refreshener that someone might use in a toilet. So everytime the smell of the animals in the back was too strong, he would spray this strawberry aroma around in the car. I wasn't sure which was worse. During our lunch stop he bought a bottle of cheap arabian parfume and started to spray it around instead of the awful strawberry spray. The smell was now bearable.

Other minor annoyance during the trip included a collapsed road (about 30 minutes of waiting), a stop at a bazaar (about 30 minutes of shopping), a collapsed bridge (about 5 hours of waiting) and a flat tire (about 30 minutes of tire changing with some Iranian construction workers). The car wasn't in too good a shape either as to start the car, the driver needed to connect the battery of another car to his battery. This was a bit bigger problem when there were no other cars around. In addition the driver had to stop about 5 times to show his papers to some local policemen. It also seemed, that he had to bribe them everytime as before going to the police, he slipped a 1 somoni (~0,16 e) bill between his papers just before meeting the police. Me and Katri also had to show our passports a couple of times but got away without paying any bribes.

A nice thing to mention about the trip would be beautiful mountain views and especially the views to Afghanistan, which happened to be just on the opposite side of the river that was running just next to the road. This meant that we were driving most of the time only about 50 metres from Afghanistan. It was possible to see houses built of clay (with no electricity), some nice trees and fields. You could also see people walking in their robes and burkhas with donkeys.

The biggest annoyance during the trip was when we got a flat tire for the second time. This happened around midnight and just about 30 km before the end of the trip. As we had already used our spare tire, we couldn't just change the tire and continue. I suggested to driver to make a call and get a new tire or something similar, but it turns out that at our spot there were no cellphone signal. He then concludes that the only reasonable thing to do, is to wait for another car to pass and to get a new tire from them. As I wasn't feeling like sleeping in the smelly car, I was thinking of taking a torch and looking a bit around. When I was about to do this, the locals in the car got very alarmed and told me not to use any lights. The reason, I was told, is the proximity of Afghanistan. They didn't want the Afghans to know that we were there...

Then after about four hours of sleeping and waiting, the driver suddenly gets up and becomes very busy. He takes the flat spare tire and asks me to join him. It turns out, that there is a small village, with a mechanic, just a 5 minute walk away from where our car was. He then wakes up few people and they then finally manage to get the tire fixed and changed. I have no idea why he didn't want to tell of this possibility to anyone when we got the flat tire and why he had to wait until 5 to wake up the villagers. We finally arrived to Kalaikhum at 7, meaning that the trip took about 24 hours instead of about 6 hours in was supposed to take.

In Kalaikhum there was nothing interesting apart from the mountains and Afghanistan on the other side of the river. Me and Katri concentrated on sleeping and eating and decided to continue to Khorog the next morning.

Dushanbe

2009-07-19T14:41:00.005+02:00

The trip from Istravshan to Dushanbe started well as I managed to secure the front seat of a shared SsanYong 4WD taxi. Because of the type of car and the information that the 200 km trip to the capital would take about 10 hours, I was expecting quite a bad road. We started by climbing up some mountains and getting really excellent views. The highest point we reached was about 3400 metres and the road really horrible. There was a tunnel under construction so that in the future the trip will probably be less scary and a bit faster.

After maybe 3 hours of driving, around 12:30, the road is cut off by a Chinese team of construction workers. It turns out that the Chinese government is improving the road with all Chinese work force. Even the people sweeping the dust and sand away were Chinese. An explanation I heard for this, was that China is providing a cheap loan to Tajikistan but it requires that the money must be fully spent in Chinese things.

I assumed that we would be able to continue our trip after lunch. Surely the road would be soon open for traffic again, that's how the road construction site work! However, after a while it turns out that the road is cut off until 17:00. I wasn't very happy about this but just accepted it and sat down to read a book. More and more cars were coming to the road block and people were quite eager to continue their way. The roadblock was operated by a Chinese guy who didn't seem to be able to speak much Tajik or Russian. Instead, he shouted his instructions to the locals in Chinese and if they didn't understand, he shouted the instruction even louder. He also behaved quite rudely to people asking him when the road would be open, usually just shouting at them and pointing them to go and wait. He reminded me of some nightclub bouncers who really love to abuse the power they're given.

Then the time 17:00 comes and passes without the road opening. Some of the people waiting start to get a bit angry and I'm starting to get worried for the Chinese guy at the road block who still behaves arrogantly and keeps on shouting to the locals. At some occasions he's surrounded by some 20 Tajiks and he still keeps on shouting at them in Chinese. After a while, a new time is announced: we would be able to continue towards Dushanbe at 21:00. I continue to read and occasionally I watch the Chinese shouting and wait for a fight to break out. As the road being blocked is the only one between the northern and central parts of Tajikistan, there are about 300 cars lined up to wait the road to open and probably a similar number at the other end of the closed stretch. I really wonder the logic of the construction workers to block the whole road for the whole day!

Then, at 21:15, after more than 8 hours of waiting, the road is opened. Just before the cars were allowed to drive through, there was a small fight, probably between the Chinese guy and some of the angry locals, but I can't really tell more of what happed as it was already dark and I couldn't see what was happening from where I was sitting. We, and the other 300 cars, were then raced towards Dushanbe. The ride was quite scary as just half a metre after the edge of the road there was just darkness. During the day you could see how high we were and how deep you would fall should the car drive out from the road but at dark, you had to leave all that to your imagination. That made it really scary. As the closed stretch of road was maybe 20 km, after a short ride we start to see cars racing to the opposite direction and the traffic starting to jam as some parts of the road were only wide enough for one car to go through at a time. I am really surprised if no accidents happened during that night. Later we drove through a tunnel which was not yet fully ready. The road inside the tunnel was really bumpy and partially flooded with about 20 cm of water. It was a really surreal experience to drive through this not too well lit tunnel of several kilometres, with water splashing all the time and occasionally overtaking some strange looking tunneling equipment. Dushanbe was reached at 1:30.

Dushanbe turned out to be quite a nice city. There are, in the same way as in Bishkek, a lot of trees and parks where you can take walks and just relax as well as some interesting 60/70's buildings. A big difference to Bishkek is, however, that there are streetlights and manhole covers in Dushanbe! The main street, Rudaki, was a pleasant place for walks.

My first task in this city was to acquire the Uzbek visa so that I would be able to visit Uzbekistan as the finale of my trip. I had everything that was required for the visa (letter of invitation, photocopies of my passport, a passport photo and money) and was able to get it during the first day in the city. I also reached one of the other goals I had set for the visit by finding a nice hotel with clean sheets to sleep on.

As a part of the sightseeing here, I decided to visit the Nurek Dam, the worlds tallest dam. I have to say I was expecting something even bigger and the day trip wasn't really worth the effort. The town of Nurek featured some crazy soviet monuments as well as a very beautiful bus station. The other sight out of town was Hissar with its fort and medressas. The fort was in ruins after the red army had bombed some rebels holding it during the 20's and the main thing to see was the quite nice gate. The medressas were alright too although nothing too impressing.

After few days in Dushanbe, Katri (a friend of mine from Finland) came here to join me for about two weeks. In Dushanbe we walked around a bit and visited a local museum. Nothing too much as our main goal is in the Pamirs, in the east of Tajikistan. Then early on Tuesday morning we took a shared taxi to Kalaikhum.

Jalalabad, Batken, Khojand and Istravshan

2009-07-14T14:20:00.006+02:00

As I mentioned in the last post, the UAZ ride ended in the town of Jalalabad (Жалалабат). Like the town of Osh, Jalalabad is also in the Fergana valley and the majority of the inhabitants are Uzbeks. This means, that while the look of the buildings stays the same from other parts of Kyrgyzstan, the people look and dress different. To start with, there are more headscarfs and people sit on the floor (or on a bed like thing with a table on top of it) instead of using chairs while eating.

I stayed in a nice and a bit too expensive (500 som ~ 8,2e) guesthouse for two nights and did nothing too big while in town. There was a nice bazaar and an interesting park. I also spotted the obligatory statue of Lenin. After the second night and the second breakfast at the gueshouse, I took a shared taxi to Osh and continued from there to Batken (Баткен). On the way my taxi had to go around the Uzbek enclave Sokh, which made the travel time a bit longer. It seemed, that the Kyrgyz were building a proper road around this small bit of Uzbekistan but at the moment it still was unpaved.

Batken was a small, uninteresting town with not much there. I saw, again, a statue of Lenin and noticed that there was some kind of a concert going on. I was later told that this was related to the upcoming elections in Kyrgyzstan. I slept one night in Batken and the next morning I was ready to head to Tajikistan. I changed all my remaining Kyrgyz soms (worth about 100 e) to Tajik somoni and got almost a 5 cm stack of bills. The money exchanger was a nice fellow and gave me two rubber bands to tie around the stack so that I wouldn't lose any of the bills. Then all to do was just to take a taxi over the border.

Normally the border crossings work so, that you take one car to the border, walk accross and then another car to the first town in the new country. As the Kyrgyz and Tajiks can cross each others borders without any big hassles, the driver would take me all the way to the other side of the border to the town of Isfara for the price of 200 som (~3,3 e). First we stopped at the Kyrgyz border post where the officials got suspicious when my visa had two stamps instead of one: "Why two stamps in visa?". For this they had to run around and make phone calls. The Tajik border post, maybe 2 minute drive away, was manned by under 20 year-old guys doing their military service. They were all very impressed to meet someone from Finland and all, maybe 5 or 6 soldiers, wanted to shake hands with me. Then they all explained where in Tajikistan they were from and told me to visit their home towns. The driver wasn't too happy about this waste of time and asked for more money (100 som ~ 1,8e) when we reached Isfara. As I had already been ripped off too many times by the Kyrgyz taxi drivers, I stayed tough and the driver drove away with the preagreed sum of som.

From Isfara I took a minibus to Khojand (Хучанд) . At arrival I was really hungry and decided to have my first ever Tajik meal. I got some shashlik and noticed that they were much bigger and better than in Kyrgyzstan. Good start in Tajikistan! Next I found my hostel and was a bit dissappointed: the hotel didn't have a real shower, the sheets were dirty and the springs of the bed were so old that it was almost impossible to sleep in it. The "shower" was just a hose attached to the tap in the bathroom and I was allowed to use the hose only after requesting it many times from the owner. Other guests didn't seem to bother with washing. As for the town, the main sights were some old city walls and the tallest statue of Lenin in Central Asia. The local bazaar was also quite nice and busy.

I didn't feel like staying in the bad hotel any longer so I decided to move forward to the town of Istravshan (Истаравшан), few hours south. First I went to see the hostel that the Lonely Planet called the best hotel in town and I was shown dirty rooms and asked the price of 60 somonis (~ 10 e). Sometimes it is necessary to stay in a bad hotel but I really hate to pay too much for it so I went to check another hotel I'd noticed earlier. The room was even dirtier and the sheets clearly hadn't been changed since the last guest. I asked them to change the sheets but instead of changing them, they just claimed they would be nice and clean. As the price was 25 somonis (~3,9 e) for a private room with a toilet and a real shower, I took it. During the stay in China, I developed a method for sleeping with dirty sheets, ie. spreading my clothes on the bed and sleeping on top of them, so I am not too worried. I just hope that the level of the accommodations would rise as I move further south.

Also, seeing the bad hotel room, I decided to head to the capital Dushanbe tomorrow and I'm hoping to find a nice place to stay from there. The other reason going there quickly is that I will apply for my Uzbek visa in Dushanbe. To be able to leave tomorrow meant that I had to see all the sights I had wanted to see during today. I started by trying to visit an old fortress but I was chased away by three angry dogs, with one of them looking not too healthy. Next I visited the old town of Istravshan and had fun walking around the small alleys. The look of it was quite close to the one in Kashgar, just that the alleys were a bit bigger. After a while of walking, I was invited to have some tea and watermelon slices to a local's home. I wasn't able to communicate much with the master of the house as we didn't have a common language. What I was able to understand was that he was a taxi driver, he had 3 children and that a used Mercedes is worth 2 000 euros in Germany and 5 000 euros in Tajikistan. Because of the last fact, the man's brother buys used cars from Germany and drives them to Tajikistan and makes his living this way. The results can be seen on the streets of both Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan so that most of the cars in traffic are old German cars with occasional NL or LV sign on some of them. Also, most of the public transportation is done with minibuses bought from somewhere in Europe. I've so far seen vans with German, Swedish, Finnish, Norwegian and Dutch texts on them.

Jeti-Öghüz, Cohckor and Naryn

2009-07-11T09:07:00.006+02:00

My visit to the Jeti-Öghüz (Жети-өгүз) sanatorium was not the visit to a haunted house I was expecting but a strange experience with old soviet health resort complex. The ugly building offered accommodation, massages and food, all of which I enjoyed very much. Still there wasn't lot to do and I was happy to move forward to Kochkor (Коцкор).

In Kochkor the main sight was the close-by jailoo and the mountain lakes of Köl-Ükök and Köl-Tör. From a local travel agency, I booked and paid two nights in a yurt at the jailoo including the meals with the herder family, who owned the yurt. I was treated with plenty of tea, yoghurt and bread in addition to the warm dishes they offered to me. After the first night in the yurt, I walked to the two mentioned lakes and enjoyed the mountain views a lot. The smaller and the one higher up, Köl-Tör, was still covered in ice and to reach it, I had to walk through some small patches of snow.

On that day, I spent total 9 hours walking and on my return to the yurt, with my feet hurting a lot, I meet two middle-aged Spaniards. They start to explain to me, quite aggressively, how I cannot sleep in the yurt anymore. They say that they've booked the whole yurt from the travel agency and don't really care where I will sleep. I was too tired to argue and just went to have some dinner with the family. The family told me the Spaniards were a bit crazy and said that I could sleep in the small house they had. The house had one room and covered less than 10 square metres. The family had three members and that night they were also accommodating the guide of the Spaniards and a vetenarian so that there would be total 6 people in that small house in order to make the Spaniards happy in the quite large yurt. However, the Spaniards finally changed their mind and didn't throw me out from my yurt.

The views at the mountains and at the summer pastures were quite nice. I especially enjoyed seeing groups of horses galloping around the plains in between their grass eating. Apart from the cows, sheep and horses, there were also plenty of large rodents. The locals called them mice but I am quite sure that they weren't. These things were about the size of a large cat, lived in holes they had dug in the ground, made bird like noises when you walked near and looked a bit like a mixture of a beaver and a squirrel.

Next I headed to the town of Naryn (Нарин). The main reason to go there, was to progress towards the southwest of Kyrgyzstan and then to Tajikistan. I also hoped to meet some people to share a ride to the ruins of Tash Rabat as hiring a car on my own would have been too expensive. At first everything seemed to go well as at the local CBT travel agency I was told they had a car going to the Torugart border crossing and that they could drop me off at the ruins on their way. To come back, I was told, it would be very easy to hitch a ride from a truck or other car. I agreed to take the ride and was told to be ready at 6 am. I woke up at 5, ate breakfast and was ready to be picked up. However no one came and after 45 minutes of waiting, I gave up, packed my big backpack and walked to the local bus station with the intention to head west to Kazarman and then to Jalalabad (Жалалабат).

The ride to Kazarman was uncomfortable and done with a crowded minibus. Half of the way was unpaved and the air inside of the bus was hot and full of dust. "Entertainment" was offered by a Kyrgyz man who drank a bottle of vodka and then bothered all the passengers with his stories. To me he tried to explain something about how strong and fat the Kyrgyz are and how they are good in drinking vodka. However, the trip from Kazarman to Jalalabad was very comfortable and offered great views. The comfort was due to the car, a nice UAZ jeep. The reason for this choice of vehicle was the condition of the road. It climbed up the mountains, was unpaved and in quite a bad condition. There were few normal cars on the road too, but I was very surprised that you could do this trip with out a 4WD car. The sights from the highest point (about 3000 metres) were great and it was sometimes a bit scary to see how deep the valley was and how steep the mountainside was just outside the road.

On the way to Jalalabad, as with almost all the other car trips I've made here, the driver stopped at some random yurt in the middle of nothing in order to buy kymyz. While the women of the family were filling the drivers bottles with kymyz, I sat down in their jurt to observe this operation. I was then offered first a bowl of kymyz and then later, some boiled internal organs of a sheep. I tasted some and they were surprisingly good. However, when they later offer me and the driver the eyes and the brain of the sheep, I had to decline.

Cholpon-Ata and Karakol

2009-07-02T13:37:00.003+02:00

As the weather was sunny and hot in Bishkek, I thought a small beach holiday would be a great idea. I headed to the lake Issyk-Köl (Ысык көл) and to the resort town of Cholpon-Ata (Чолпон-ата). I was expecting a lot as the town is known to be a popular spot for the Kazakhs. However, the morning when I left, the temperatures dropped below 20 C and the sky turned gray from clouds. After checking in to a small guesthouse, I went to the beach and found it, suprise suprise, empty. As the next morning turned out to be nice and sunny, I decided to give a second try for the resort town. I started my day by riding a horse to some local petroglyphs. The ride wasn't very exciting as it was mostly done on some small streets and the petroglyphs were not too nice either. After riding I went to beach and found out that it was almost empty. I didn't dare to swim myself as the water was a bit too cold but instead just watched the beautiful lake view and the snowcapped mountains on the other side of the lake. To tell you one more negative thing about Cholpon-Ata, I noticed that the food prices were more expensive there than in Bishkek or Osh. I mean that the prices in the menu's were about the same, but after you had ordered it turns out that the rice is not included in the dish, or that the salad is extremely small, or that you have to pay for the music which is just a man singing karaoke. I was very happy to move on.

The next place was at the end of the lake and called Karakol (Каракол) . After Cholpon-Ata I wasn't expecting much but I was then happily surprised as Karakol turned out to be a nice and pretty small town. The houses in the town were mostly small, lowrise buildings made of wood and often painted with a combination of white and a happy colour. There were also few large apartment blocks and the obligatory statue of Lenin. The orthodox cathedral was pretty and I enjoyed just walking around the town. Just outside the town there is the grave and a memorial of a Russian explorer called Przhevalsky and it was quite a pleasant place to visit as was the small village just outside the memorial.

During my stay in Karakol a sad event occured: My dear camera stopped working. As you might remember, it behaved strangely already in China but was still working. From today, there will be no photos. Or no photos until Tajikistan where I will get my old pocket camera! My friend Katri will come there as a part of her summer holiday and she will bring this old camera to me. This means that there's only a two and a half week break in photos. Sadly the scenery in Kyrgyzstan in just amazing. As my next stop, I will visit a haunted old spa...

Bishkek

2009-06-28T09:32:00.004+02:00

From Osh I headed north to the capital of the country, Bishkek (Бишкек). The ride was about 11 hours and it was done in an oldish shared Mercedes taxi. The public transportation between the towns in Kyrgyzstan is not too good, so a usual way to get from town to town is to find other people going to the same way and share a private car with them. Usually there is one spot where the cars are leaving so you just show up, tell the drivers your destination and then wait for more passengers to show up. The ride to Bishkek went smoothly and the roads were in quite a good shape. It also turns out that the speed limits are enforced in this country! During the trip I saw about six policemen with radars at different points. My driver was able to avoid getting fined not by driving slowly but by having a device that would warn him when there was speed control radars around. Also, the scenery on the way was just amazing. Beautiful mountains and valleys, Plenty of farms and big fields, green pastures with yurts, sheep and herders. Kyrgyzstan just might the most beautiful country I've ever seen, If you leave out the lake district of Finland, that is. During this trip Colombia has been the only other country so far where I've just been amazed of the beautiful views seen from my bus windows.

Bishkek turned out the be a very green city. It has almost a million people living in it, but still feels quite small and relaxed. There are plenty of parks and treelined streets to walk on. I also found quite a few beautiful 60's or 70's style buildings. However, I've been to only one to think so and almost every other person I meet, tells me just how ugly these old Soviet constructions are. There are also few big plazas with statues of which I recognized one Lenin and one Marx-Engles pair. Apart from the parks, there really wasn't that much to see.

The most important reason for staying the city was to get the Tajik visa. My visit to the embassy was painfree and I got the visa in just three days. Encouraged by this, I decided to get the Uzbek visa while still in Bishkek but I then ran in to problems. It turns out, that Finns need to have a letter of invitation to enter Uzbekistan. However, this isn't as colmplex as it sounds, I just need to pay 35$ to a travel agency who will then invite me to the country. Getting the invitation takes up to 14 days so I will (hopefully) get my Uzbek visa later in Dushanbe, Tajikistan.

Of the few sights in town I saw the national museum. The museum had two parts with the first floor explaining lenghtily about the progress of the revolution (with plenty of Lenin's all different poses) while the second floor was a bit more conventional explaining about the history of Kyrgyzstan. As all the text were only in Kyrgyz and Russian, I really didn't get too much out of the museum. The other bigger sight was the ancient tower of Burana a bit outside the town. The 40(?) metre high minaret was surrounded with a really lovely countryside and I was again reminded of how beautiful this country really is.

Few other things that make this a great country are the kebabs (just like at home!) and the saunas (almost like at home!). This might also indicate that I'm a bit homesick already and ready to return home but I've really enjoyed having the opportunity to eat greasy meat and to sweat around naked men. That I have to admit that my first visit to a Russian style sauna was a bit of a surprise with the temperature being a bit higher than in the Finnish saunas: I almost burned my ears and my bum. After few tries I understood that I really don't need to sit at the highest level and was able to relax.

Today is my last day in Bishkek and I will head tomorrow to the Lake Issyk-Köl. The rest of today I will spend by reading my book and hanging out at the hostel's small pool.

Kashgar and Osh

2009-06-21T11:27:00.006+02:00

The train ride was nice and I arrived to Kashgar (قەشقەر) well rested. I took a bus in to town and then a taxi. A hostel had been recommended to me at the previous hostel in Urumqi but I had no idea where this recommended hostel would be. I had a business card, but as I had no map or had no idea of the streets, I thought that it might be easier just to let a taxi driver take me there. It's not expensive to drive taxis in China anyways.

However, it wasn't as straightforward as one would think. As both of the hostels were Chinese owned, the business card was in Chinese. This would not be a problem in most places in China but in Kashgar the majority of the population are Uyghurs and many of them can read as much Chinese as I can. So, the taxi driver had no idea what the card said and just drove around, stopping random people on the street to ask directions. No one else was able to read Chinese either. After a some time of driving me around the town, he managed to find his way to the neigbourhood where to hostel was (it was known, that the hostel was close to a big mosque) and then I was able to find the hostel by following the street signs (they were in both Chinese and Uyghur). At arrival, I suggested to the hostel owner that it might be smart to add directions in the local language to the business card.

The main sight in Kashgar was the old town. It consisted of small alleys, low buildings made of bricks and of the Uyghurs selling things on the streets. It was very interesting to just walk and get lost at the maze like town. The Chinese, however, are very busy removing the old town. Big sections were being torn down and new, huge and ugly buildings were to be constructed there instead. To access one thing strip of the old town, you had to pay a small fee. My guess is that that small part will be preserved for the tour groups of tomorrow while the other parts will be completely torn down. Visit this town before it's too late! I would guess that in 15 years it will look like any other Chinese town.

After Kashgar my next goal was to reach Kyrgyzstan. I normally prefer going to the border by public transportation, then walking across and then taking a bus to the first town on the other side. This didn't work this time however so I ended up taking a bus that would go from Kashgar to the town of Osh (Ош) in Kyrgyzstan. The bus was a bit expensive (470 RMB, ~ 49,60e) and dirty old Chinese sleeper bus that would take about 20 hours.

The border crossing was called Irkeshtam and was situated high up in the mountains and with quite a nice views. The views especially on the Kyrgyz side of the border were just amazing with high snow capped mountains and deep green valleys with sheep and yurts. On the way there I also saw a pretty poor looking village where people were living in containers. The explanation came later as an Uzbek on the bus told me that there had been a large earthquake at the area some six months earlier. The border crossing itself was quite interesting as apart from our bus the only people going through there were Chinese truckers. Also, our bus driver greeted the officials on both sides with some unknown gifts (a big bag for the Chinese and a cardboard box for the Kyrgyz). I really don't know more of this, but my guess is that they were bribes of some kind. The bus was also transporting a lot of cargo so maybe they managed to avoid some payments this way or maybe there was something on the bus that was not supposed to be allowed to go over the border. Also, I saw two men slipping a 50 som bill (0,85e) between their passports just before they handed their passports to the Kyrgyz border official. I didn't bribe anyone and got through without any problems.

After the border the bus stopped few times on some Chinese work colonies. They seemed to be building a road from the border to Kyrgyzstan proper and also seemed to be living separate from the locals. Strange arrangement. Then after 20 hours, I reached the city of Osh at 4 in the morning. Luckily there was a taxi waiting at the bus station and the driver knew where my desired hostel was located. However, after waking up the guy at the hostel, it turns out that there were no beds left but that there would be few available in the morning and I was asked to return at 8. I left my backpack there had then about 3 hours to walk around Osh in the dawn. It was an interesting walk and later I was able to take a nap and finally get some sleep.

Osh is the second biggest town in Kyrgyzstan and was supposed to have about 200 000 inhabitants. It didn't look like it though as all the buildings were quite small and there were plenty of trees around. All in all it was quite a pleasant city but you could see that it had seen better days. Many of the houses were either really simple or in a very bad shape. The main sight in town was a big rocky hill called Salomon's Throne. It was famous especially because it was claimed that Mohammed had once prayed there. In any case, the views from the top were really nice. The town bazar was also quite big and had quite a wide selection of goods.

Ürümqi, Turpan and Ürümqi again

2009-06-20T15:44:00.002+02:00

After a train ride through the desert, I arrived to the city of Ürümqi (ئۈرۈمچی). The city was, as I had already heard, big and busy. Even though I wasn't expecting a small Uighur village, I was still a bit surprised on how big, rich and busy the place was. It was also about the same as any other Chinese city, or maybe slightly more pleasant. However, the Uyghurs, a minority in the city, were quite clearly visible and gave the city a certain (possibly) Central Asian vibe.

The main thing I was planning to do in the city was to apply for the Kyrgyz visa. On Monday morning, I walked in to the consulate and was ready to fill the application and hand over the money. I was a bit surprised that in addition to the normal things with a visa, the person behind the desk at the consulate gave me a blank A4 and said: "tell us your story". They wanted me to write them a letter, in which I was to tell them why I wanted to travel to Kyrgyzstan and who I was. This kind of a thing has never happened to me with visas anywhere! I wrote a letter praising the country, told them that I was on an around-the-world trip and they seemed very pleased. The visa would be ready in a week.

Apart from the visa business, I've just been walking around city and reading books in the evening. There hasn't been much of interest in the city itself but I've found the Uyghur food to be excellent. There are even some things that very much resemble a pita kebab...

As the visa processing takes a week, I decided to head to a town called Turpan (تۇرپان) just 2 hours away. The main sight there were the ruins of an ancient city called Jiaohe. The oldest parts of this ruined city were about 1600 years old and all the buildings seemed to be made of clay. I guess they wouldn't have survived this long if they would have been anywhere else than in a desert. The ruins were quite impressing and I enjoyed touring them.

There was no public transportation to the ruins and as I didn't want to waste money on taxis, I rented a bike. When I left, the sky was overcast and it wasn't that hot. Even though Turpan is surrounded by trees and vineyards, it still is a city in the desert and the temperatures were expected to be above 40C. The way to the ruins went fine but while there, the blue sky appeared and I started to fry. I still continued biking and tried to find a minaret that was supposed to be the second sight in the town. I biked for some hours in the horrible heat, saw pretty countryside and quite basic houses but didn't find the minaret. I think I was quite close but I just had to turn around as I started to feel quite weak. Luckily there was a shop selling Pepsi and a minibus that would take me and my bike back to town. This time the Sun won!

When back in Ürümqi, I decided to concentrate on relaxing and have a small holiday from traveling. When you're on the road for a bit longer, at some point you actually get tired of traveling, sightseeing and changing places. To get rid of this travel tiredness, a good way is to do no touristy stuff for a while and just concentrate on reading, watching movies and hanging out. This is exactly what I did. Except that I didn't watch any films and ended up doing a bit of sightseeing by visiting a bazar and a park. As a pert of the relaxing, I visited a local bar with few people from the same hostel. We had a nice night with the high light being the DJ playing a reggaeton remix of an old Ace of Base hit and a large African man getting angry at me because he thought I was making fun of his religion by pretending to be Jesus.

Next I'm off to Kashgar with a 24 hour train trip!

Dunhuang and Liuyuan

2009-06-20T15:00:00.002+02:00

At arrival to Dunhuang I just saw sand and rocks from the train windows. The railwaystation then had a few trees around it and on the way to the town I saw more trees and even some fields. Dunhuang is an oasis city that was an important place along the silk road. The main sight in the town, the Mogao Caves (莫高窟), is also related to the silk road and to the wealth it brought in.

I started my sightseeing my visiting the Crescent Moon Lake (月牙泉), an oasis with a crescent shaped lake in the middle of large sand dunes. I was expecting something like Huacachina in Peru as I had heard of sandboarding and dune buggy rides. At arrival to the site it turns out that it's a normal Chinese tourist attraction: a big gate, high entrance fee of 80RMB (8,2€), few hundred Chinese tourists in tour groups and all kinds of extra services (camel rides, electric cars for people who think 300 metres is too far to walk, hats, etc.) for hire. Still a bit like Huacachina but just with 10 times more tourists. The dunes itself were quite interesting and by climbing them, I was able to escape the tour groups. The lake really was the shape of a crescent and the temple(?) next to it looked really nice.

Then the next day I went to see the Mogao Caves and the thousands of Buddha's inside. I was expecting something like the Longmen Grottoes I visited earlier, but Mogao Caves were much better. I was amazed from the first cave (a thirty+ metres Buddha) to the last one (1400 year old wall paintings) and really enjoyed the tour. The caves had Buddha's of different sizes, ranging from the 30 metre one to some of about 10 cm. All walls and ceilings were covered with colourful paintings of either Buddha's or Buddha related scenes. Only some of the caves were open to the public and I heard that tour groups visit different caves at different times meaning that if I ever return to this part of the world, it will be interesting to visit the caves again. Sadly photography was not allowed so I can't show you how it looked like, you just might have to visit this site yourselves. It was not possible to tour the caves independently but in the end I was happy to be with a guide as she was able to explain a lot about the history and the meanings of different statues and wall paintings.

The train station in Dunhuang only has connections to east so in order to reach Urumqi, I had to head to the small town of Liuyuan. The two hour drive to the town was quite intresting as the road had maybe 5 turns and most of the time we were just driving in the desert with the road continuing as far as one could see. At arrival it turns out that there really isn't anything in the town. My train was leaving at 1 am so I ended up with about 8 hours to waste. Two hours I managed to spend by walking around the town and taking photographs of old, abandoned factories. Then I spent 5 hours in an internet cafe writing emails and facebook messages to people.

Every now and then when you're traveling, you meet people who are extremly interested in the culture of the country they are in. Or it's more like that they love the coutry/culture without any kind of criticism. I met a lot of these kind of people in Latin America and they were usually very interested in dancing salsa and were very eager to speak Spanish to everyone, no matter if they were understood or not. Now in China, I met a person who took the whole thing to a new level. He really likes China and he told me, that he wanted to become Chinese. He said that he observes how Chinese men behave and tries to be exactly like them. He was already dressed up as an average Chinese man by wearing running shoes, a polo shirt, suit trousers and a cap with a logo. He was also drinking green tea all the time from the kind of jar the Chinese use. However, the scariest thing he had learned to copy, was the uncritical thinking and patriotism the Chinese have. We had a small discussion of Tibet, and he was proudly explaining how bad the Tibetan culture was and how it really is a great thing that Chinese culture will replace the Tibetan one. And of course Tibet never was independent to him but always a part of China. Also, he was a bit sad as he aknowledged that the Chinese will never accept him as a fellow Chinese because of his European looks (he was Swiss) but he was hopefull that maybe his children (he did't have them yet) will be accepted as Chinese. Scary.

Luoyang and Lanzhou

2009-06-20T14:49:00.003+02:00

The city of Luoyang (洛阳) was only about 2 hours away by train from Zhengzhou. I checked in to a "youth hostel" which ment it was a hotel that was offering a possibility to share a room with others and was also a HI member. The room was very clean with a very comfortable bed and the bathroom even had a toilet seat! Oh, the luxury! The price for this exclusive room was 50 RMB (5,2e) meaning that only a 20 RMB (2,1e) increase in the room prices gives me a lot more luxury.

The main sight in Luoyang were the Longmen grottoes (龙门石窟). These caves with buddhist statues were carved a long time ago and were now badly damaged but still very impressing. This time the damagers seemed to have been at least some old Chinese dynasties and early 1900's western archeologists. There was a huge number of small buddhas and six really big buddhas on the cliff face. It really was nice to see those statues. In the same area there was also some kind of a temple/palace and a garden with the tomb of a famous Chinese poet. These sight made a really nice day of touristy touring. The other sight I saw was the old town of Luoyang. The old town was a street with old style buildings and plenty of shops between two old gates. It was a nice place to walk.

From Luoyang I headed to Lanzhou (兰州) with a night train. I wasn't expecting to see any big sight in there so I booked the next night train right after arriving there. This meant that I had about 10 hours of sightseeing to do and headed to the White Pagoda and the park around it. This place allowed me to get good views over the Yellow River (it really was yellow!) and I had quite a pleasant walk there. There were few pagodas and temples with the main thing being a tibetan pagoda on the top of the hill. The Chinese enjoyed these surroundings by drinking beer and enjoying the shade. After Lanzhou, I headed to the desert, to the city of Dunhuang (敦煌).

One of the things I really dislike in China are the toilets. First of all, they're almost always of the squatting type. I have met some people who actually claim to like those but I think they have somehow misunderstood something. Squatting cannot be nice. The other bad thing about the toilets is how dirty they are. Of all the countries I've visited, it's the Chinese loo's that are the smelliest. And it's not just that the people wouldn't be able to pee in the hole in the ground but often they seem to miss the target when they're taking a shit. Then combine this with no one ever flushing and the cleaning happening every second year. It's worst when the toilet is a big public one and has a thousand users a day...

Wuhan and Zhengzhou

2009-06-20T11:04:00.003+02:00

Sorry for the small break with the posts, but it's really not my fault: China had decided not to let me blog my trip. It's not just my blog that was cencored from the Chinese, it's the whole blogger/blogspot web site that on China's black list. This means that the Great Firewall of China is preventing me from accessing my blog and from posting anything on it. I've written the next few posts while in China but I have published them now when I have reached the freedom loving nation of Kyrgyzstan.

My trip in China started by taking a train from Tsim Sha Tsui (that's in Kowloon, Hong Kong) to the Chinese border. There I crossed to Shenzhen without any troubles and took a train to Canton（广州）and was surprised how fancy everything was. The train was new, modern, fast, expensive (about 70 RMB ~ 7 €) and filled with people who were dressed almost as well as people in Hong Kong. Then in Canton, I ate at a local fastfood chain and was surprised to pay 30 RMB (3 €) for a meal there. I really started to suspect that China had grown a lot richer and a lot more expensive in the four years since I had been there the last time. I then took a night train, again looking fancy but not as fancy as the last train, to Wuhan (武汉).

I arrived to Wuhan early in the morning and after a bit of walking, found a hotel. Then everything started to look as I had remembered as the hotel room was very worn out, a bit dirty and in a house that looked like it was ready to be torn down. The squat toilets were there too, as dirty and uncomfortable as before. The price was also something that I was expecting: 30 RMB (3,1€). That day it was raining a lot in Wuhan so I grabbed the umbrella I had bought in Hong Kong and started sightseeing.

The main sight in town was the Yellow Crane Tower. It's a tower that was built maybe 15 years ago to look like a tower that stood in the same place some hundreds of years yearlier. The signs at the site didn't say when the original tower was destroyed, but as with many other historical things in China, my guess it was removed during the cultural revolution. The current tower was nice and even had a lift in it. There also was a park around it with nice pavillions, paths and ponds all made to look old but actually constructed during the last 20 years. One of the pavillions had a shopt selling pictures and all kinds of other stuff related to Mao but had on the side few pictures of Marx, Engels, Lenin and even Stalin for sale.

The other sight I saw was a park similar to the one I described above, except that instead of the old looking tower, they had a big tv tower there and the park was almost empty from tourists. It looked like it had been a popular spot some years ago but had then fallen out of use. I was also impressed when I crossed the Yangtze river on a bridge. It really was a huge river with plenty of cargo boats carrying all kinds of stuff to be shipped to Europe and America. Otherwise Wuhan was a normal, big Chinese city with dirty streets, chaotic traffic and a lot of shops.

From Wuhan I took a train to Zhenzhou (郑州). The train took a bit longer than I expected and when I finally arrived to Zhengzhou, it was midnight. I was tired and not very excited about the idea of walking around the centre to look for a reasonable hotel. The solution to this problem is the same in most of Chinas cites: go to the cheap and bad hotel next door to the railway station. The one I got was again 30 RMB (3,1€) and I had a really nice view from my room in the 7th floor. That was the only nice thing about the room. The sheets looked like they hadn't been washed in a month while the room looked like it hadn't been cleaned in 10 years. There was also a pile of metal frames (of beds?) in my room. The toilets smelled so bad that I think it hadn't been cleaned in 20 years and the shower only worked during evenings and had cold water with nice views to the building accross the street (and they could see me too through the big, uncovered window).

Despite the bad hotel, I slept well and started my day trip to the Shaolin temple! This place is famous for the monks that practised Kung Fu all day long. Later I learned that they also used to fight pirates. I took a bus saying "Shaolin" and was eagerly awaiting to see some tough monks. When the bus stopped in front of a temple, I was very happy and excited. Then it turns out that we were not in Shaolin but in some other temple close by to it and that the bus was actually doing a tour of some kind instead of being a normal public bus. I was told that the next stop would be in Shaolin and that we would have about 45 minutes at the first temple. The temple itself was nice but I still was waiting more to see the monks and their Kung Fu. After a short drive the bus stops in front of a big gate and everyone starts to move towards the temple behind the gate. Then again I'm told that Shaolin is the next stop and this is just another famous temple close by it. We toured the temple, I found it nice and then got back to the bus. Then after another short bus ride, I can already see something that looks like the Shaolin: plenty of tourist buses and many decorations with people doing Kung Fu. We drive past this and the bus stops in front of a restaurant. It turns out, that it's lunch time for the tour group. I'm fed up at this point and just walk to the Shaolin area maybe 500 metres away while the tour group leader is panicking and afraid that I will be lost if I go to the temple alone.

After I get to the temple area, it turns out that it's not just the Shaolin Temple that's there but a collection of paths, pagodas, few temples and even a mountaintop. All these create a big tourist attraction with hundreds of Chinese. I saw few monks and a Kung Fu show but it was clear that the whole place is nowadays just a big tourist site. Also, it turns out that most of the buildings at the area were built during the 90's and they were destroyed some time during the 20's. It was a nice place still. My tour bus was returning back to Zhengzhou at 18.00 and it turns out that I really didn't have enough time to see everything at the tourist complex. I saw plenty, but would have liked to spend a bit more time there instead of wasting time at the smaller places before Shaolin. Also, my camera started to behave strangely with the lens jamming after a photo of two. I'm still able to shoot photos but it's still a bit annyoing (and scary) to unjam the thing. I really hope it's not completely breaking down...

After getting back from the tour, a dinner and some internet, I got back to my crappy hotel. There I was greeted by the owner who wanted me to pay for the second night I stayed there. The only difficulty was that I had already paid for the second night that morning, just before I left to Shaolin, but the person who I gave the money, was not the owner but an employee and not present at the time. As the owner spoke only Chinese, it was slightly difficult to explain this to her and she though that I didn't understand the problem and that I was trying to avoid paying. To make me understand her point, she started to shout at me as loud as she could and writing Chinese phrases on paper. When I tried to explain that I don't understand much Chinese and that I have already paid, she shouted at me even louder. At some point she invited another employee of the hotel to help her explain the problem to me, and then I was shouted at by two Chinese women. This went on for about an hour when I was finally able to explain them, with a combination writing times and dates on a paper, few simple Chinese sentences and by doing a mime performance, that I had really paid my bill. Then the owner turned silent, looked offended and allowed me to sleep my last night in the horrible hotel. The next morning/day, I headed to Luoyang.

During the stay here in China I've seen the Chinese yell at each other quite often. I've only been shouted at once, but I wouldn't surprised if it happens soon again. Maybe the loud arguing instead of talking things through, is a result from the general atmosphere from the society. If you don't agree with the Chinese government on an issue that has some importance (ie. some one can make money out of it), they'll send some thugs to scare or beat up the person disagreeing. Maybe the normal people are doing just the same in their everyday life.

Hong Kong

2009-05-26T11:12:00.005+02:00

At the Hong Kong airport I had to fill a form about my health status and hand this to the officials. They were trying to detect ill passengers so to stop the spread of the pig flu. In addition to the flu symptoms, the form also asked about the countries visited during the last week. I wrote down USA and Mexico and as the officials inspected this form, they decided that I needed to see a doctor before I could enter Hong Kong. I was given a face mask and taken to a room where my temperature was measured and the doctor asked if I had any symptoms of the flu etc. As I didn't have any symptoms, they finally allowed me to enter the city but told me that they would call me some days later to ask if I was still alright. I guess the case with SARS has made them a bit more careful than people in other countries.

After getting to town, I checked in to a cheap hotel in the Mirador Mansion at Tsim Sha Tsui. My room was small, about the same size of the bed that was in the room, but good enough for me. After taking a shower, I rushed to get a kebab (first real one since the beginning of the trip!) from Istambul Kebab and then went to the water front to enjoy it and to watch the sky scrapers. Then it was Star Ferry to Central and Lan Kwai Fong/D'Aguilar Street 7-11 where I met few friends from my exchange student year; Regina, Paulrich and Eliee. We had few beers and talked about what's been happening since I left Hong Kong.

Then on Saturday the two Brits I met in Peru, Chris and Natalie, flew in. I knew that they were coming to HK just a day after me but it was purely by accident. On the bus from the airport they had met another Brit, Paul, who then joined us and I took them to a Saturday night tour of Hong Kong: Indian food at Chungking Mansion and then to LKF and Wan Chai.

After the nice Saturday night I have been mostly touring old familiar places and showing Chris, Natalie, Paul and Paul's sister Rose around. I also submitted my Chinese visa application and did some shopping. I've been really surprised how much I still remember of the things and places here. The city seems to be about the same as before with just small changes like a new 7-11 opening at Lan Kwai Fong and the subway getting few extra stops.

As you might have noticed, I decided to rename to blog once more. I felt that going to a new continent is a reason good enough for this change. Also, I'm now starting my long way back home.

Los Angeles

2009-05-23T06:00:00.005+02:00

Right after writing the last post, I walked to the border and started to queue. I clearly wasn't the only person who wanted to go from Mexico to USA and it took me about 20 minutes to get to the desk where the officials were inspecting people's passports. It then turns out that I would need a form W-something-something and that I could get it from a building that's located close to the beginning of the queue. I got a feeling of not being let into a night club when I walked past the thousand eyes on the line and went to the office where they were handing out the forms. I found a window where they were selling those forms for 6$ and I gave the money and my passport to the official. He looks at my passport for a while, puts it back and points to another desk without saying anything. I walk there, stand in a line for a while and I am given a form which has about the same questions as the form I had to fill in advance online. After I've filled the form, they take all my fingerprints and photograph me and then I am told to go to the window where I tried going first. The official seems a bit annoyed when I disturb his book reading but this time he takes the money and stamps the form and then points to the direction of the first queue I had been to still without saying a word. Then, about 15 minutes more of standing in line, I am finally allowed to enter the United States of America.

From the border to Los Angeles I got nicely with a bus and then reached a guest house I had found online. It was situated close by to the airport so that I could conveniently reach my flight on the morning of 21st. The hostel was in the part of the town called Inglewood. I found out that it wasn't the nicest place in LA and heard that there is even some problems with some gangs. I didn't encounter any problems, the homeless people didn't ask me for money and the sound of planes landing and taking off reminded me of Stördal. So like a google search told me, 'it's not as bad as the "ghetto" term implies.'

For sightseeing I had only one day and decided to visit the Getty museum. They had a nice collection of European paintings, statues, random items and some photographs. The building and the location were both quite impressing and I enjoyed my visit a lot. After a while in the museum I got a bit too hungry, I left, ate and then headed to Hollywood. I spent some time walking and looking at the stars on the sidewalk and also found the foot prints of 3CPO and R2D2 from in front of the Chinese Theatre. Also, I saw the Hollywood sign on the hills too. Getting around with public transportation in LA was easier than I expected but it still took time as the town was quite spread out. The buses and trains were ok.

I then took an Air Canada flight to Hong Kong via Vancouver (I saw some mountains from the airport window!). I'm now in HK and will report more later...

Guadalajara, Mazatlan, Hermosillo and Tijuana

2009-05-19T18:04:00.004+02:00

The short and nice bus ride to Guadalajara went well and I even found the hostel, where Heidi was staying, quite easily. It was really nice to meet someone I've known for more than a year and also to be able to get rid off all the guide books. I gave some travel hints to Heidi, told her to visit few nice spots I've been to and toured Guadalajara with her. The hostel where we stayed at had free bikes for guests and of course we went biking. However, the city wasn't exactly bike friendly and it wasn't a pleasure to ride the green bikes we had. It was too dangerous to ride with the traffic and in many places the side walks were blocked, under construction or crowded. This made biking only slightly faster than walking. The main sights in town were the cathedral (nice) and an old hospital(?) with some dark murals. The city had a nice centre but was otherwise quite ugly.

From Guadalajara I headed to Mazatlan, a bit north and a bit west, and got there after an 8 hour bus ride. The city was by the Pacific, had a dirty beach and few blocks of pretty colonial centre. Otherwise the place didn't seem too nice so after a good nights sleep I headed north again.

This time the bus took 14 hours and at the end of the day I reached Hermosillo. I had decided to travel during the day to get the views and as I am not able to sleep much on buses, I thought it would be more comfortable to sleep in a real bed after each day in a bus. The road to Hermosillo started with farms and fields and for maybe the first 7 hours, that was all I could see. There weren't too many towns on the way. The latter part of the trip was just some bushes and sand with beautiful mountains on the background. The scenery looked very beautufil especially at sunset. Hermosillo itself was ugly and dodgy. I got a room from a hostel and left early in the morning.

The next destination was Tijuana. Again, I started early in the morning and spent the day watching out from my window. The whole trip was just sand, bushes and cacti. The mountains were there too on the background but at some point a fence appeared between me and them. The map indicated that the road run quite close to the US border so I concluded the wall to be that. Also, during this ride, our bus was stopped three times by the Mexican army. Some of the luggage and the bus was searched possibly for drugs and weapons. I arrived to Tijuana at night and knowing that there has been some problem with the drug cartels, I took an expensive taxi (160 Pesos, about 9,10 €) to a hotel. The hotel was not very fancy and had sheets with plenty of holes and stains that looked like blood. When I asked to see another room or of the possibility to get new sheets, the owner just told me to go out and find another hostel if I didn't like hers. As the streets were empty and all the police I've seen were carrying automatic rifles, ski masks, helmets and other military gear, I decided to pay the rip off price of 165 Pesos (9,40 €).

Now, I'm just about to cross the border to the Great Satan. I'll write more later.

Mexico

2009-05-14T01:14:00.004+02:00

The feared bus trip went quite well and lasted only about 14 hours. I managed to get some sleep but also my back aching. the bus dropped me quite nicely very close to the centre and I was able to walk to a hostel just next to the cathedral and the main square. With a first glance Mexico City looked very pretty and prosperous

After my breakfast at the hostel (included in the price) I started exploring the city. I had already received some recommendations and tips about places to see and decided to visit the National Art Museum first. On the way there I saw the main square Zocalo (very nice and big), few central streets (beautiful buildings, calm atmosphere) and the postal palace (very pretty). The museum had a collection of colonial and postcolonial paintings and was all in all quite an interesting place to visit. On the way back from the museum I was able to see a bit more of the streets and buildings of the centre and I got more and more convinced that Mexico is a beautiful and a nice city.

The next day, Monday, my main goal was to get the Chinese visa. I started off to the embassy to the other side of the town with a combinations of the metro, bus and taxi. The metro was efficient and very 60/70's in a good way so that it had certain visual similarities to some Finnish health centres. As the metro can get a bit crowded, I was wearing my face mask and tried to avoid being too close to people who were coughing. When I finally reached the embassy, a security guard at the door told me "no hay visas!" It turns out that the Chinese embassy had stopped issuing visas because of the flu. I just have to hope I will be allowed to board the plane in LA.

And as the flu was mentioned, I guess I could explain a bit how it can be seen here. In very many places in the city (but also in San Cristobal and on the way here) it is possible to see big posters explaining the proper way to sneeze and other information on how to behave in order to minimise the risk of spreading the flu. Also, many metro stations and museums were giving hand sanitizer to visitors and in some place they were even measuring the body temperatures of everyone. One museum I visited gave face masks to all visitors and the guards in the museum made sure that everyone really was wearing one. Not very many people were wearing the masks though in normal situations so that maybe 1 out of 10 people in the metro had a mask. My scariest moment with the flu was when a German sharing a dorm with me declared that she had 38,8°C fever. I suggested her to visit a doctor but she refused and just wanted to fly back to Germany because they "have better medicine in Germany".

Another museum I visited was the Anthropology Museum. The museum building was a beautiful 60/70's building with a grand fountain at the courtyard. The exposition started by explaining about how people ended up populating the Americas and then started to display loads of old statues, pottery and other things. The museum was huge and after seeing about 1/4 of the displays, I was just exhausted. I still managed to tour the whole place even though I went through some of the sections quite quickly and just after finishing the last display, the security guards started to guide people out. It might have been a good idea to give two days for the museum.

One of the days I spent mostly by walking around the town. I started with the centre and visited a high rise. The views were good and I got a good idea of how big the city really is. Other thing I noticed from the tower was the pollution. I haven't seen anything as bad since China. From the tower I continued to a park and some nice monuments. Then, while looking for the angel of independence -monument, I ended up to some really nice and posh neighbourhood with big high rises and people in business suits.

The final day here, today that is, I spent at Teotihuacan. This old pre-colonial city was a bit out from town but I was able to reach it easily with a combination of the metro and a bus. When I entered the site, I saw an impressive pyramid in front of me. I thought "wow, it's really nice" and started to take out my camera. Then, by accident, I happened to look left and realised that the pyramid in front of me was the small one. There in the distance were two huge ones. Teotihuacan really surprised me with it's size and also with the size of the structures. I had nice ruin day!

Tomorrow it's time to head to Guadalajara. I'm meeting Heidi there and giving her some of the too many guidebooks I'm carrying. I'm on a bit of a tight schedule but I hope to be able to do some sightseeing in the city too before heading further north. Also, I feel that I haven't seen enough of Mexico City and I need to come back here someday...

San Cristóbal de las Casas

2009-05-08T22:20:00.004+02:00

The 12 hour bus trip to Mexico went well and it's starting to look like it was the last trip with a bad bus in Latin America. Right after crossing the border to Mexico, the buses turned to be nice and fancy like almost everything else here. It's very clear that Mexico has more money than the Central American countries (excluding Costa Rica). The border crossing at La Mesilla was quite easy with really nice and helpful staff at the Guatemalan side. They were watching the Champions League game between Chelsea and Barcelona but still were happy to give me directions to the Mexican immigration office. Then on the Mexican side, the only border guard was very occupied with the same football game and was a bit angry at me when I dared to disturb him. As he was watching the game, he just took a quick glance on my passport and stamped it with an amazing speed. I think even Osama bin Laden could have gone through that borber post that day without anyone noticing. After the border, my bus was stopped three time by the police who seemed to be looking for illegal immigrants. Every time when they stopped to bus, the people with the darkest skin had to show their ID's.

The first town I stayed in in Mexico is San Cristóbal de las Casas. It's another pretty colonial style town and actually one of the prettiest so far. There are nice churches, pretty houses and few hills where it's possible to get nice views over the town. I think it's my second favourite colonial town right after Quito. As I mentioned that Mexico seems to be a bit more prosperous than the other countries so far. This makes San Cristóbal also more cleaner and better maintained than the other colonial towns I've been to. Prices have gone up a bit from Guatemala but they still aren't too bad. For example, I managed to find a nice hostel for 70 pesos (~3,96 €) and cheaper meals can be bought for about 40 pesos (~2,26 €). Also, the people are dressed up almost as well as in Bogota and many of the cars look new and shiny. The other great thing about this country is the food. So far I havent been enjoying the meals that much as usually the normal cheap dishes have been just combinations of beans, rice and bad meat. Here I've been eating tacos, enchilladas and combinations of beans, rice and ok meat. Also, beer is cheaper than in the neighbouring Guatemala (1 €/bottle vs. 1,5 €/bottle in a bar). As the EZLN has been active around these corners of the country, all the touristy markets are full of merchandise related to them. If nothing else, they've at least managed to create an extra source of income for the locals.

Tomorrow I will leave for the capital, Mexico City. The bus trip will take 12 hours, according to the bus company, or 19 hours, according to the Lonely Planet. This means that tomorrow I will spend between 12 and 22 hours in a bus starting at 17.30. It's going to be so great that I can hardly wait! Also, Mexico City has been more affected by the swine influenza. I have prepared by buying a mask and mentally preparing to use it. There are some people already here in San Cristobal wearing masks but according to the news, there isn't very many cases of the flu here. I've just avoided being close to people but in Mexico City I need to be a bit more careful. The reason why I'm going there is that I need to apply for a Chinese visa and the only Central American Chinese embassy happens to be there. All the other countries here seem to have diplomatic relationships with Taiwan.

Another J-P's Travel Blog Special: The Things I carry

2009-05-07T22:58:00.004+02:00

In the comments of my last post, Eero asked me to write about how much and what I'm carrying here with me. I thought it was a great idea, went through my stuff and made a list (with comments):

Big backpack

That's the black Haglöfs I've had for ages. Most of my stuff is carried in this. The backpack is getting old, worn and is starting to fade. This just might be the last trip I'm making with it.

Small backpack

This is the small green Haglöfs I've had for a while. I carry things here that I need in buses, boats, trains etc. and also the stuff that I consider too fragile or too expensive to have in the big backpack.

Camera bag

I'm keeping my camera and all the camera related stuff here (surprise, surprise!). It's usually inside my small backpack when on buses in order to hide the camera better.

Nikon D80
2 lenses
2 batteries for the camera
2 memory cards
GPS logger
8 AAA batteries for the GPS logger
Small notebook
Pen
USB cable
Sun glasses
Travel insurance card

These things go with the mentioned camera bag.

Pair of sneakers
Pair of army boots
Pair of flip-flops

The sneakers I have are the yellow ones I bought last spring in Trondheim while the army boots I bought just for the lost city trek. They're a bit heavy to carry around but they really were needed. I might do some more hiking or such later in Central Asia. Flip-flops are in use whenever it's warm enough to wear them.

2 poloshirths
2 t-shirts
2 shirts
Hoodie
Jeans
2 pair of shorts
Pair of surf shorts
Swimming trunks
Swimming goggles
Gore-tex jacket
Pair of gloves
n pairs of underwear
n pairs of socks

I'm quite happy on the number of clothes I'm carrying. It's sometimes a bit frustrating to carry the hoodie, the gore-tex jacket and the gloves with me but then sometimes, like just now, I find them really useful. With so many mountains here, there is need for warmer clothes too. I will soon get rid of the other poloshirt as it has some mysterious holes in it.

Toilet bag

So that the accidentally opened bottle of shampoo won't be a disaster.

Toothbrush
Toothpaste
Nailclippers
Shampoo
Moisturising cream
Deodorant
Thermometre
Pills (for headache, diarrhea and others)
Contact lenses
Open water diving licence
20 Swedish crowns
Cotton swabs

These are the things one needs in order not to start smelling and that can be found in the toilet bag.

MP3 player
Cell phone
4 battery chargers
Electric razor

The things that require electricity. The MP3 player has been a really good thing during long bus journeys but unluckily the charger its charger is starting to break down. I use the razor occasionally to trim my beard.

4 Novels
Spanish-English-Spanish dictionary
3 Lonely Planet guidebooks
Physics textbook
Address book
3 notebooks
PADI AOWD manual

I have too many books with me. I could well do without one or two novels and it was a very stupid idea to take a book about quantum field theory with me. One of the Lonely Planets was given to me as a gift, one I borrowed from my sister and one I bought. I hope to get rid of all of them soon as I might meet Heidi, a friend from Turku, quite soon in Guadalajara.

Moneybelt
Mexican pesos
US dollars
3 Visa cards
Passport
Vaccination documents
Wallet
Other stuff that happens to be in the wallet

The moneybelt keeps the things, that enable me to travel, safe.

Leftover coins and small bills from the countries I've visited so far
Some euro coins
Needle and thread
2 rolls of tape
Printouts
2 kinds of mosquito repellant
Glasses
Case for my glasses
Soap for laundry
2 locks
Deck of cards
2 rolls of toilet paper
Torch
Mask against the pig flu
Reggaeton CD
Sun screen
Earplugs
Sleepmask
Keys
Maps
Some plastic bags
Scissors
More than 10 DVD's with photos

Then the stuff that I could not figure any comments about and didn't fit the previous categories. Also, in the beginning of the trip I had a hat and then later bought another one but both of these are lost now. The other one was claimed by the Caribbean while the other was stolen.

I have a bit too much to carry but apart from the too many books I have, it's difficult to figure out what is extra. I would be able to survive with few less items of clothing but it's worth the extra kilos to carry the things I have now. Let me know if you spot an useless item on the list.

Lake Atitlan

2009-05-06T00:29:00.002+02:00

I started my tour of the Lake Atitlan from Panajachel. The town seemed to be main tourist site around the lake and had a large number of shops, restaurants and bars. I was tempted to buy some hippie trousers but didn't. They look ridicilous. The views over the lake were magnifiscent but apart from that, there wasn't much to do (I arrived there on Sunday, so no point in sitting in bars to pass the time).

My next target was the town of San Pedro on the opposite side of the lake. I got there with a boat and found a very nice hotel (but still for 5 €). San Pedro was almost as touristic as Panajachel but still the pace was a bit slower. The tourists were more of the backpacker kind and prices a bit lower. The views over the lake were, again, good.

As a day trip from San Pedro, I took a boat, again, to the other side of the lake to the village of San Marcos. This village is a hot spot for hippies and they claim that there are some kind of energy lines going trhough the village making it a good place for meditation, joga and such. The hippie density was higher than in other places I've been to and there were many places offering courses on joga, meditation, healing with herbs etc. Apart from the hippie part of the village, there was also a real part with normal locals leading a normal life. This part was the more interesting one and offered some great views of the lake.

In general I can say that the lake is really beautiful. Being a crater lake and bounded by some mountains and volcanoes, it really is a special place. Especially the blue water and the reflections of the volcanoes from the surface made me consider this to be the prettiest lake I've seen outside Finland. The other interesting aspect here were the Mayas. There were plenty of people around here dressed in traditional clothing and also speaking their own language so that it seems to be almost more common to hear Mayan on the streets than Spanish. I find it very refreshing and interesting to see and hear people from a non-European culture especially as the last time was few months ago in Panama when I visited the Kuna. This is one of the reasons why I would like to do more traveling in Guatemala (and also in Bolivia) a bit later on. Let me know if you are at some point planning a trip here, maybe I'll join you!

Tomorrow I will challenge death and enter Mexico. If I don't return, my sister can keep my tv.

Antigua

2009-05-03T00:12:00.004+02:00

Apart from the already explained hospital tour, my stay in Antigua consisted mostly of sightseeing and coffee drinking. Antigua is another nice colonial style city and didn't offer that many new things. It was again pretty, but still about the same as Granada, Leon, Cuenca, etc. etc. However, Antigua was a bit more polished than the other and had few pretty churches (or ruins of churches). It also had a good collection of café's and I ended up drinking a bit more coffee than I have been used to during this trip. I don't know why there suddenly starts to be good (not instant) coffee available but I have a theory: Americans drink good coffee and I'm getting closer to the US now. Also, Antigua is extremely touristic and most of the tourists are Americans so maybe they are demanding better coffee during their holidays.

The only sight outside Antigua that I visited, was the volcano Pacay. This active volcano was a bit outside Antigua and was highly recommended to me be few people I've met on the road. I've already seen few volcanoes but this one was a bit special as the main thing to see on it was lava. The volcano is sending out smoke and actually erupting continuously but not with a rate too high so it was possible to hike to the volcano and see some rivers of lava coming from the crater or from the side of the volcano. It was a strange feeling to see rock flowing and moving down the slope. For me it looked like a long orange snake, slowly moving on a landscape like in Mordor. I could get less than 2 metres from the lava but then the heat became too intense and I didn't dare to go closer as I was afraid to damage my camera and melt the soles of my shoes. Every now and then there would be a piece of the glowing orange rock rolling down the slope. Quite an unique experience even though there were about 50 other people on the same site with me.

As for the continuation of my travel, I have decided that I will continue according to the plan and enter Mexico quite soon. I have read a plenty of news about the flu there but as "WHO advises no restriction of regular travel or closure of borders", I decided to continue as planned but I'll wear a mask and avoid other people though. Before Mexico, I'll visit the Lake Atitlán.

Also, take a look on the photos I've uploaded from the posts starting from the one about Turbo!

A J-P's Travel Blog Special: Vaccination Fun!

2009-04-30T22:37:00.005+02:00

As you might remember, I was bitten by a dog in Nicaragua and required total 5 shots to get rid of the possibility of getting rabies. My last shot was scheduled for yesterday (29th April) and I started my vaccination hunt with big hopes in Copán Ruinas, Honduras. As before in Nicaragua, I walked directly to the local health centre and asked for the vaccination. I was told that they didn't have the vaccination and that I should buy one from the pharmacy. I visited all the pharmacies I could find from the town (total three) and none of them had the vaccination. I concluded that rabies isn't a problem in Honduras and a village like Copán Ruinas would be too small to have a shot available. As my next destination was anyways the ultra touristic town of Antigua in Guatemala, I decided to get the shot there.

As the trip to Antigua took the whole day, I was not able to visit the local health centre until today (30th April) morning. I found the health centre and asked a nurse for the injection. She then asked about the type of rabies vaccination I had received earlier. I showed her the paper I had got in Nicaragua but it only said "Vacuna Antirrabica Humana" with no other explanations. The nurse told me that they had two different kinds of vaccination available, the other somehow related (possible where the weakened virus is grown) to chickens and the other to rats. As I had no other information, she just sent me away and told me to call the Nicaraguan health centre where I had received my first shot.

As I had no number available, I had to start from an internet café and try to find the phone number of the health centre in Juigalpa. After some google searches, I found the phone number of the Juigalpa office of the Nicaraguan health ministry. As my Spanish isn't good enough for real conversations and I find understanding Spanish over the phone even more difficult than on face to face situations, I asked one of the women working at the internet café to make the call for me. She agreed to make the call after I had managed to explain my situation to her in my broken Spanish (Necessito una vacuna antirrabica. Una perro! En Nicaragua primera dose o solo una tipo de vacuna y aqui dos tipos de vacuna. etc. etc.) She made the call and got the number of the health centre where I was treated for the first time. Then she made another call but the people at the health centre just told that there is only one kind of vaccination in Nicaragua and that's all. It seemed that the people at the Nicaraguan health centre were not very excited answering some random Guatemalan about what kind of vaccinations they are using.

I then walked back to the health centre to ask if the nurse, or some one else with some kind of medical authority and knowledge, could call the Nicaraguan health centre and ask the right questions from the right persons. When asking this from the nurse she told me again to go away and make the phone call and said that she wouldn't make such a call. She made it clear that there would be no vaccinations until I would know the type I had received. Also, it turns out that they only had in store one kind of vaccination, called Rabipur and this was the one made with chickens.

As I felt that I wouldn't get any answers calling the Nicaraguan health centre, I decided to go to a private hospital, ask to see a doctor and hope that they would know more about the treatment and might be willing to make the call the Nicaragua if necessary. Very soon after arriving to the private hospital, I was told that they do not have any rabies vaccinations and that I should go to the health centre. When I told about the responses I had received from the health centre, they adviced me to visit the close by public hospital.

The hospital was a short bus ride away and was quite busy. After a short search I found the section of the hospital where vaccinations where handled and asked about the rabies shot. The reply I received was to go to the health centre. I then decided to make one more phone call to Nicaragua and managed to convince another local internet café worker to make the call and ask the questions. The phone call went in a very similar way as before with the Nicaraguan person not being too willing to share information to the random Guatemalan caller and I did not get any more information. Also, during the search for the phone number I found few web pages telling that, in rabies treatment, the change of the type of the vaccine is not recommended but is not dangerous and in any case preferred to the disturbance of the treatment schedule.

I decided then to go once again back to the health centre and ask to see a doctor and discuss how I should proceed with the treatment. The nurse was not willing to give me a vaccination still and jus told me to relax as "I won't die of rabies anyway" and that it would be dangerous to take two different kinds of vaccinations. As you should know, rabies is very lethal with wikipedia saying "There are only six known cases of a person surviving symptomatic rabies" and WHO stating that "Once symptoms of the disease develop, rabies is fatal." I was then more convinced that I really should see a doctor. I then told the nurse that rabies really is fatal and that I would like to meet a doctor. She replied that the doctor is not at the healt centre at the moment. Just as I was about to ask where I could find a doctor and when the doctor would be back, a man in a white coat appeared at the door. It turns out that the doctor was in the health centre after all. After a small discussion with me and the nurse, the doctor said that it wouldn't matter that much about the type of the vaccine anyways (mismo, mismo!) and told the nurse to give me the injection. She then stopped talking, started to look a bit offended and gave me a shot of rabipur. The treatment was again fully free of charge.

It took me about 4 hours (and meanwhile all the Finns were celebrating life and spring) to manage to get the vaccination and finally (or hopefully) be fully secured from the bite. If I have a reader or two informed in medicine, I would be happy to receive information if the course of treatment has been the correct one and if I should be happy or concerned. When thinking a bit more about the whole mess, it seems to me that both in Honduras and in Guatemala the nurses actually didn't want to give me the vaccination and just made up excuses to avoid it. As the treatment is free of charge, maybe they didn't want the rich tourist to spend their medicine budget and just wanted me to find an expensive private clinic for treatment.

Now I'm off to have my Vappu beer and wish a nice picnic for the readers in Finland!

Copan Ruinas

2009-04-30T03:28:00.004+02:00

Touring the ruins at Copán was really great. It's just this kind of sites I'm after with temples, statues and ruins in a slightly forested setting. Also, these were the first Maya ruins I've seen and I'm already liking them more than the ones by the Incas. I have to admit that the Incas did build their cities in more impressing places but the Mayas (at least in Copán) put a bit more effort in to the buildings.

A stela.

The site at Copán had few pyramids, a ball court and ruins of several more normal buildings with the whole complex situated about a kilometre away from the village of Copán Ruinas. There were not too many tourists around when me, Thea and a Frenchman called Olivier toured the ruins. Apart from the impressing buildings the site also had a nice collection of stelas, statues and other carvings with many of them moved to a nearby museum. I'd really like to see more Maya ruins but I guess it has to wait until my next trip to Central America.

One of the pyramids at Copan.

The village of Copan Ruinas was a nice place but just a bit too polished for tourists. It was of course nice to walk along the nice and clean streets but it just didn't feel like normal towns in Central America feel like. After just two nights in Copan, I left for and reached Antigua.

Skulls...

As probably everyone has read, Mexico is suffering a bit from the swine influenza and it has really made me consider of alternative routes to LA. However, the flu seems to be now also in California (and quite a few other countries too) so escaping this possible pandemic doesn't seem too easy. I haven't made any decisions about changing plans but there might be some. Also, if I ever make it to Asia, I will skip Thailand, Indonesia or what ever I was planning and just head straight to Central Asia. As I have only 3 months to make it back to Europe, I figured it's better to tour the countries on the way a bit better instead of beach and party in SE Asia.

Tegucigalpa, La Ceiba and Utila

2009-04-29T02:09:00.009+02:00

The trip to Utila was long: first a day in a bus to La Ceiba and then, after a night's sleep in a rat infested hostel, to the island of Utila. In order to reach La Ceiba, I had to go first to the capital of Honduras, Tegucigalpa. I just changed buses there but had to spend about 2 hours around the bus station but still had enough time to see how dodgy the town was. Around the neighbourhood where I waited for the bus almost all the shops had bars in their doors so that it was not possible to enter them. I guess they just can't let anyone in or else the shops would be robbed. The few shops that permitted people inside had at least one guard with a shotgun hanging around. I was happy to skip sightseeing in Tegucigalpa and can really believe it to be the second nastiest city in Central America (San Pedro Sula is supposed to be even worse). I didn't really spend time in La Ceiba, I just checked in to a hostel (Banana Republic) and found out that they have rats. I only saw one in the kitchen but the staff said that there would be more around. They didn't bother my sleep and I was ready to take the Utila Princess to the island of Utila.

On the way to Utila.

Right after landing on the island I singed up with Captain Morgan's Dive Centre for the advanced PADI course. For the price of 259 $ (~ 197 €) I got a course of 5 dives and 2 fun dives to be done in 3 days. I also got free accommodation at the dive centre's hotel on the Jewel Cay. However, as I was tired from traveling and waking up early, I decided to spend a day (two nights) just relaxing on Utila before the course.

The main street of Utila and Captain Morgan's Dive Centre.

Utila turned out to be a bit what I expected: plenty of touristy bars, restaurants and dive shops. It also reminded me a bit of Bocas del Toro, probably because of the houses built on stilts and the lack of beaches nearby. It also became very clear that diving and American tourists were the main source of income in the town. The first night I spent exploring the night life of the town and met straight away Thea, the Australian girl I had first met in Huanchaco in Peru and later in many other places (Montañita, Baños, Bogota, Taganga and Barranquilla). In the same bar, I also met two Dutch girls I had first met in San Juan del Sur. It's very strange how you end up meeting the same people again and again even without planning it. It gives a feeling of certain stability to the constant change of places you experience while traveling. The next day I just spent walking around and preparing for my dive course.

View of Utila from Jewel Cay.

Jewel Cay is a cay a bit away from Utila and is completely filled with houses. As the island is small, there is not too many people living there and not a single motorbike or car. The hotel Captain Morgan's Dive Centre had, was located on one end of the cay and there were quite nice views from their pier. It would have been nice place to hang out and read books if there wouldn't have been a horrible eastern wind there. The wind had some good results though as the temperature wasn't unpleasantly warm and the mosquitos stayed away.

The pier of Captan Morgan's hotel on the Jewel Cay.

For some reason there were no others taking the advanced course so I ended up getting private classes. My instuctor was a Swiss girl called Gina. She had been traveling around Latin America and then about 2 years ago, she got to Utila, took a dive course and decided to stay. She had no plans of returning to Europe. The first dive we did was the deep dive. We went down to 30 metres and experimented with eggs, a coke bottle and with a test that was supposed to reveal nitrogen narcosis. I was a bit slower down there but I don't think a change from 20 to 23 seconds in a test of putting numbers in order makes a big difference. The dive I was most excited about was the wreck dive. We visited an old cargo ship that was sunk 11 years ago. It was quite an interesting sight to see the wreck and also to notice how quickly the nature had started to take over. In addition to these two dives I did the peak buoyancy and the navigation exercises while the night dive as the final one. It was quite interesting to be underwater in the dark and only see what my torch was showing. We also saw some light emitting plankton. If I would wave my hand in dark, there would be tens of small sparklike reactions from the plankton. Then, after the course, I did the two fun dives. In total managed to see few rays, some squids, sea slugs, eels and plenty of the more common fish but also learned a bit more about diving.

After Utila, I headed to the Copan ruins and met, again by accident, Thea. I'm moving tomorrow to Guatemala and will write more soon.

Leon

2009-04-21T02:51:00.003+02:00

Leon was a bit like Granada but with buildings in slightly worse shape and less tourists around. This was both a good and a bad thing as I had no pressure to do touristy stuff but then there really wasn't that much interesting to see. The touristy stuff I did was mostly about walking around the hot streets of the city, sweating a lot and then feeling ill because of being dehydrated. I also visited a nice art gallery/museum (Fundacion Ortiz).

A street in Leon. No kings in sight.

However, there was one bigger sight I was really looking forward to see close by to Leon: the Flor de Caña distillery! I have tried to taste different rums during my trip and I've tried many good ones but the best so far has been the one from Nicaragua. Also, as there has been talk with few friends in Turku of starting our own rum production, I felt that it would be good to see how this drink is made. The distillery is located in the town of Chichigalpa, about an hour away from Leon. I headed there with Adam and Tracy (the two Americans I met in Turbo) and we all were really excited when we got in front of the distillery's gate. We were there without any tour groups as for some reason there were no organised tours from Leon but we had heard that it was still possible to tour the distillery independently. At the gate we smelled the sweet rum fumes and saw a big truck drive out from the plant and then walked to the gate. There the guard told us that it really wasn't possible to tour the factory. A bit dissappointed I headed back to Leon while Adam and Tracy went to see a local baseball game. We got over our dissappointment later in the evening when we were sampling a 12 year old Flor de Caña Centennario rum.

The closed gates of the Flor de Caña distillery.

I left Leon today and just arrived to Honduras. The bus trip to the border was slow and dusty meaning that I had to stop in a smallish town close by to the border. I will continue tomorrow and hope to reach Utila before dark.

The Corn Islands and Managua

2009-04-17T19:00:00.007+02:00

After a night spent in Bluefields me and Céline took a boat to the Corn Islands. It was a nice trip with sun, some waves and a vomiting dog. Someone was taking their dog to the island and the poor thing didn't handle the movements of the boat that well. The owner wasn't around and didn't care but we had to see and smell the suffering. During the boat trip we also came accross a huge US warship that seemed to be a some sort of a catamaran. No idea what it was doing there, maybe fighting terrorism or drug trafficers.

On the way to the Corn Islands.

The Corn Islands consist of two islands: the Big Corn Island and the Little Corn Island. The boats and planes all arrive to the Big Corn and the bigger island also holds most of the population. My original plan was to spend a night on the Big Corn Island and then two or three nights on the Little Corn Island. I was a bit worried that I would not have anything to do and then get bored with just reading books. However, just on the arrival to the Big Corn Island I started to get the feeling that I should stay a bit longer. I don't know exactly why I started to feel like that but I think the turquoise water and the palm trees might be partly to blame. In anycase, I had to start with a night at the Big Corn because of my rabies shot.

I'm free at last, sins forgiven!

Big Corn Island was not a place you would really call busy but there still were a number of cars driving around and honking. Also, there was a general feeling of unsafety there and we had heard rumour of muggings happening in different parts of the island. Big Corn would have been a nice place to stay but we had heard that the Little Corn Island was even better. As soon as I had my second rabies shot, we took a 30 minute boat trip to the smaller island.

Some nicer views of the Big Corn Island.

On arrival to the Little Corn we noticed that there were no real roads on the island. Just small paths, some paved but mostly just dirt. People seemed friendly, views were beautiful and the whole atmosphere of the place was very relaxed. The east side of the island had the prettiest beaches and few cheap accommodations right at the beach so we settled in there. Then, right after changing into my surf shorts, time started to behave in a funny way.

A beach on the Little Corn Island.

Without me really noticing it, 4 days had already passed and I really hadn't done anything. It seemed to be enough to fill a day by just chattting to people, walking around, swimming and eating. I hadn't even managed to read much and I also wanted do some diving. Céline was eager to continue her holiday so she left on Monday and I visited the Big Corn Island to ge a rabies shot. I also decided to tour the bigger island on a bike. I was joined for this trip by Eve, a nice French girl that stayed in the same hostel. It proved to be a nice day and we discovered that the bigger island really wasn't that big but also that the smaller island was much nicer. At this point me and Eve also agreed that we will return to the mainland with a boat on next Thursday.

Some cows on a beach at the Big Corn Island.

Again, time flew by magically and we didn't feel like going away on Thursday either but decided to postpone leaving to Sunday. The time between Monday and Thursday was used by chatting to people, eating, walking around, swimming and also with two dives. We visited the dive spots Yeallow Tail and White Holes. The dives were a bit more expensive than at Bocas del Toro but still not too expensive: we paid 65 $ (49,90 €) for two dives. During these dives we saw huge a stingray, about 8 nurse sharks, some squirrelfish, pretty orange corals and plenty of other fish that I didn't recognise. In addition I saw an eagle ray while swimming close by to our hostel. Also, I finally decided that I will definetly do my advanced scuba course in Utila when I get there a bit later.

Views over the Little Corn Island.

As mentioned, there was really no need to do anything while on Little Corn Island but time still flew by. After wake up I usually just chatted with people and watched the sea while drinking coffee. Some of the chatting I managed to do in Finnish as there were few other Finns on the island too and two of them were even from Turku! Even if you don't read any Finnish, there are few photos from the island on Jussi's and Elina's blog. Swimming in the clear water was another nice activity I was involved in on the island. I would estimate the visibility to be around 20 metres and the water temperature almost 30 C. It really was a great pleasure to swim a bit out from the beach and then look at the beautiful island and all the coconut trees at the beach.

The beach on the east side of Little Corn Island.

The one negative thing I can come up about the island were the crabs that would come out during the night. There were tens of greenish and reddish crabs that would walk on all paths but also inside our rooms. They weren't aggressive but still looked a bit scary. I know they had some kind of a plan to eat me but luckily they didn't manage to excecute it.

My room was the one just left from the tree.

As Sunday finally came, both me and Eve were both sad to leave the island. I guess I had had enough time there but I still felt like staying. I'm still not sure if it was the right decision to leave or not. The days at the island were clearly the best of my trip so far. The way back to the mainland was done with a night ferry that had nice and uncomfortable cabins. The ferry seemed to have some connections to Norway as many of the signs inside were written in Norwegian. After the ferry ride, it was time for two more boats and a bus before we got to Granada.

This is the view I had while drinking my morning coffee.

After a short stay in Granada we headed to Managua. Eve flew back to Paris and I did a day of sightseeing in the capital city. Everyone I had talked with about Managua told me not to go there. They told I would be mugged immediately and the city had nothing interesting to see. I still decided to take a walk to the old centre that had been mostly destroyed by an earthquake some years ago. On the way there I saw the cathedral of the city and found it to be the ugliest I've ever soon. It had personality but was still very ugly. In the old centre then I saw few old buildings in bad shape and a museum that really didn't have anything on display. This convinced me to take a taxi back to my hostel and spend the rest of the day in cinema. The city didn't feel too dangerous though.

The pretty ugly cathedral of Managua.

Now I am in Leon, the other colonial town of Nicaragua. It's hot here and it looks like Granada. I will write more about it later when I reach Utila and the diving heaven of the Bay Islands...

Tipitapa and Juigalpa

2009-04-01T02:33:00.004+02:00

As I mentioned, the plan was to go from Granada to Juigalpa. This required 2 bus changes: one in Masaya and one in Tipitapa. The one in Masaya went nice and fast and the second change seemed to go quick too. The problems started when I decided to go to the toilet in order to prepare for a toiletless bus trip of several hours. While approaching the bathroom behind a restaurant, I heard Celine shout that the bus is coming. I turned around and started running back to the bus stop. After few steps I hear a dog bark and then feel a bite in my leg. I guess he didn't like people running is his house.

Luckily the bite wasn't deep at all and there was hardly any blood coming out. It was more like getting a scratch from a nail or something similar. However, my skin was broken which puts me in risk of getting rabies. After washing and cleaning the wound, I tried asking the owners (luckily it wasn't a street dog) if they had vaccinated it against rabies. They claimed that they had but for some reason didn't have any documentation of it. As Tipitapa was a small town in the middle of nowhere, we decided to continue to Juigalpa before seeing a doctor.

The bite.

The first thing we did after arriving to Juigalpa was to buy ice-cream. Right after that we went to the local health centre and met a doctor. Luckily Celine is fluent is Spanish and so I was able to communicate with the doctor. After a short chat we found out that the right thing would have been to go to the doctor at Tipitapa where they could have sent someone to get the dog that bit me to be tested of rabies. As the dog was outside the Juigalpa jurisdiction, I was told to get rabies shots (total five during the next month), a tetanus shot and some antibiotics. The Nicaraguan public health care system turned out to be completely free for everyone so I did not have to pay a single Cordoba for the treatment, medications or the shots. Also, I didn't spend any time in the queue and received extremely friendly service. The health care seems to be better here than in Finland!

A street in Juigalpa.

The town of Juigalpa didn't really have anything special. The church and the central plaza were nice though and we visited a museum with some petroglyphs, random items and a one eyed fetus (a bit creepy). Then after some hours in a bus and two in a river boat, we finally arrived to Bluefields and we're getting ready to head to the Corn Islands. My next rabies shot is scheduled to be taken the day after tomorrow so I will have a chance to visit another Nicaraguan health centre at the islands.

The church of Juigalpa.

Granada

2009-03-30T04:05:00.004+02:00

There has so far been many towns here in Latin America that have been famous for their beautiful colonial style buildings and almost every time when I arrive to these towns I am dissappointed because it's just a collection of pretty, but quite modest European style buildings. This same happened with Granada. It's nice here, but it's not really that special. The cenral plaza was nice as were some of the other streets but still there was nothing I wouldn't have seen before.

The main square of Granada.

I would have left the town faster if it didn't have the nice hostel I'm staying at (the Bearded Monkey) and a pretty crater lake just outside the town. The lake offered a nice break from the hot weather of Granada and I got another chance to swim in freshwater. This time there weren't even any sharks around! Apart from the trips to the lake or places where it was possible to see the lake, I've mostly concentrated on relaxing.

The crater lake.

As mentioned, our next destination are the Corn Islands. In order to get there, we will go to Juigalpa tomorrow (an extra stop to reduce time spent in buses) and then the day after tomorrow to Bluefields where we can take a boat to the islands.

San Juan del Sur and Ometepe

2009-03-28T00:31:00.005+01:00

The first hour in San Juan del Sur was a big surprise as the prices of accommodations seemed to go up from Panama instead of being cheap. It turns out that San Juan del Sur was full of Canadians who owned the hostels and dragged the prices up. The cheapest place where I ended up offered a bed in a dorm and one free beer per day for total 8 $ (6,01 €). However, the place was nice and the owner let me to write my name on the wall. So, if you're ever visiting Big Wave Dave's Bed Head Shed, look for my name.

The beach of San Juan del Sur.

The town of San Juan del Sur is built around the beach and few surf spots close by to the town. As mentioned, there were a lot of Canadians who had settled down but also plenty of tourists. I didn't really like the beach nor the town so I just spent two nights there. During that time I met three other Finns and heard rumours of few more.

As I am from the most beautiful part of Finland, the part with a lot of lakes, I am always eager to visit lakes in other countries. Nicaragua has a huge one in the centre of it, called Lake Nicaragua. What makes the lake even more special is that there is an island, called Ometepe formed around two volcanoes in the centre of this lake. I wanted to climb one of the volcanoes and take a swim in the lake.

The ferry to the island and the other volcano.

The climb to the volcano was sweaty and the path full of mud. It took me (and a group of 5 other people) about 2 and a half hours to get to the top. The biggest disappointment in this climb was that we didn't get a view above the island from the top because of the dense forest. However, the lake in the volcano's crater made the hike worthwhile. We also saw some howler monkeys on the way back from the top. The lake was good for swimming but I was a bit scared to swim there. The reason for this was not my general geekiness but the fact that there are freshwater sharks in the lake...

The view of the other volcano from half way up of the other.

On the island I met a French girl (Celine) who decided to copy my travel plan. For that reason, we are both now in Granada and plan to move to the Corn Islands during next week.

Bocas del Toro and Costa Rica

2009-03-21T22:49:00.005+01:00

I changed my plans a bit from what I told you earlier. Nothing big, I just didn't spend a night in David but continued straight to Bocas del Toro. This really was worth it as Bocas was a really nice place. Bocas del Toro, or actually the biggest town of Bocas del Toro on the Isla Colon, is a relaxed Caribbean community living on tourism. There were numerous bars, hostels, resorts, dive and surf shops on the island as well as tons of tourists.

Few houses at Bocas.

I also discovered that the Americans are right now having their spring break and for this reason the island was filled with young (they looked like they were 15 years old) Americans. It also ment that the bars were full and the party was quite good on every night. Bocas actually had some really cool bars and I especially liked two of them: Barco Hundido and Aqua Lounge. Visit them if you happen to be around! Both of them were by the water and actually built partially on top of the water. Both also had an opening in the "floor" where it was possible to swim but Barco Hundido had a sunked boat in this hole and a sign saying "swim at ownrisk. Everything cut you!" so no one was swimming there but just some fish. Also, both of the places were partially open air so it was nice to look at the stars while enjoying few beers.

Bocas es amor.

In addition to the nightlife, it was possible to dive, surf and lie at the beach. I was planning to surf but it turns out that the nicest breaks at Bocas were reef breaks with really sharp and nasty things underwater. I then decided to surf somewhere else. I did two dives during my stay (The Gardens and Hospital Point) and managed to see a plenty of corals but not that much fish. Even though the visibility (maybe 20 m) was better than in Taganga, I still preferred Taganga as a dive site because of the bigger number of fish around. The beaches at Bocas were a bit further away and I didn't visit all of them. I've seen better what they had but they still worked out quite well.

Playa Bluff, situated about 5 km away from the town.

The other interesting thing that I found at Bocas was the big number of Finns there. So far during my trip I've met about 8 Finns, most of them in Peru, but during my 4 day stay at Bocas I met 7 more! I also heard rumours of a Finnish charter group that had just flown away. It has been interesting to observe the distribution of different nationalities during my trip. In South America the most common home countries among travelers seemed to be Ireland, Australia, UK and the German speaking part of Switzerland. There were also other nationalities but in clearly smaller numbers. It's too early to say anything about Central America, but there seems to be plenty of Americans (the one's from USA) here.

The view from the porch of my hostel.

After Bocas I wanted to go to Nicaragua and had to pass through Costa Rica. I didn't want to spend too much time there as the Country is supposed to be much more expensive than its neighbours but also because the main sights really didn't interest me that much. It was mostly about natural parks and beaches but they exsist in other countries too. I spent one night in the town of Liberia and then after a breakfast continued accross the border to Nicaragua. I'm now in the beach town of San Juan del Sur and will explain more of it later...

And as I am now officially on a new continent (North America starts at the canal) , I decided to give a new name to the blog. I hope it doesn't confuse you, my dear reader, too much.

Panama City

2009-03-15T22:21:00.004+01:00

After the previously mentioned incident at the airport, we got to the Casco Viejo neighbourhood and checked in to a hotel and were ready to explore the city the next day. Casco Viejo is the old centre of "New Panama City", I'll explain more about the old Panama City later, and had a nice collection of pretty colonial style buildings. Some of them were quite run down but some in very good shape. The neihgbourhood is really ideal for walks. During the night time some of the streets turn a bit dodgy but I haven't felt unsafe anywhere. Also, around the corner from our hotel there is one of the coolest clubs I've been to: built in to an old citi bank building and made to look more like an art gallery. Beers were a bit expensive though ($2).

A Casco Viejo street view.

The mentioned old Panama City, Panama Viejo, is about 5 kilometers away from Casco Viejo and was the original site of the city. Right now it's just a collection of ruins as pirates destroyed it while looking for plunder. The sacking was directed by Captain Morgan. The ruins were nice and the highest standing structure was the tower of the Cathedral.

Ruins of the Old Panama.

The last bigger sight here was the canal. I just came back from a short visit to one of the locks and really feel that I've seen everything worth seeing in this city. It was nice to watch the big container ships float by but the canals aren't that exciting after all. Once you've seen one set of locks, you've seen them all.

A ship going through the Panama Canal.

Apart from the Casco Viejo neighbourhood the other part that catches your eye here is the new and modern centre with plenty of high rises. Panama seems to be a favourite destination for American pensioners and they're buying flats from these towers. Panama City seems to be quite prosperous in general so probably the wealthier locals are getting apartments from these tall buildings too. If nothing else, the occasional toourist gets a nice photo of the profile of the city.

View of the new centre from the old centre.

As I am tomorrow crossing the canal and heading up to North America (I define that as the border of the two continents), I'd like to reveal a bit more of my travel plans. My flight to Hong Kong will leave on 21st May from Los Angeles which means that I have 2 months and a week to get there. This will not leave me too much time to explore each country so I have decided to concentrate more on two of them: Nicaragua and Guatemala. The reason why I chose these countries are their low prices but also the recommendations I've gotten from other travelers. Especially Guatemala should be great with all the Maya ruins they have there. Of the other countires, Costa Rica and Mexico I will go through quickly mostly because of the high costs of traveling there. Honduras has some good value diving and I've been even thinking of doing the Advanced Padi course there. Tomorrow I will leave the capital of Panama and head to the town of David and spend a night there just to break the trip in half. Then the next day, I'll go to Bocas del Toro to enjoy some sun, surf and beach!

Turbo, Capurgana, Puerto Obaldia and Mulatupo

2009-03-13T21:11:00.005+01:00

The road to Turbo wasn't the best I've seen in South America and especially the last 4 hours were quite bad. Luckily the car didn't have a punctured tire until after we just arrived to the town. I had a nice portion of salchipapas while the tire was being fixed. As the Sun was already down and my boat towards Capurgana left at 9 am, I didn't have time to tour the city. Later I heard that Turbo is a properous town for the reason that it happens to be north of Medellin and right on the shortest smuggling route to the US. It also has a reputation of being dangerous but I din't feel unsafe there at all. Then the next morning, on Wednesday, I took a speedboat to Capurgana.

The port of Turbo.

In my hotel in Turbo I met two Americans (Adam and Tracy) who were also headed on the same direction. We got on to our boat and started wondering how rough the sea would be as all of us had been warned about rough seas. The beginning of the trip went well but then, maybe half way, the waves started to get bigger. It's a bit difficult to estimate how tall they really were, but I believe we were in the middle of 3-4 metre waves. This made the boat to jump in to air every now and then and gave some pain to our buttocks as the seats weren't so soft. I was a couple of times a bit worried the boat might capsize. Nothing bad happened and we all reached to town of Capurgana in full health.

Some scenery on the way to Capurgana.

The nature around those parts of Colombia is really beautiful. There are big untouched forests right to the sea shore and plenty of nice calm bays. However, we were adivised not to go into the forest as these parts of the coutry are popular among drug runners, the rebels and the paramilitias. The towns and the coast seemed to be alright and even had big resorts for the rich people. Capurgana is a town of 3000 people close to the border of Panama. They had few restaurants, an internet cafe and the immigration officials. There wasn't really that much to do there though and the beach of the town wasn't that interesting either. We didn't visit Zapsurro but heard it was about the same as Capurgana but just with fewer buildings. Then, after a nights sleep, we took another boat and headed to Puerto Obaldia on the Panamanian side.

The port of Capurgana.

The ride to Puerto Obaldia had even bigger waves than the earlier ride and we had a smaller boat. When arriving to Puerto Obaldia all of us were soaking wet but luckily the plastic bags or rain covers on our backpacks had kept our luggage dry. On arrival to Puerto Obaldia we discovered that the town was much smaller (about 500 inhabitants) and had even less services and entertainment than Capurgana. We weren't very concerned as the plan was to continue with a boat further as soon as possible. At the beginning everything seemed to go fine as we met some other people, including a Swiss guy (Andi) who would spend more time with us later, who were interested in continuing further with a boat and we agreed to share a ride the next morning. We even found a local boatman to take us to the next stop. However, the next morning Tracy had gotten ill and wasn't able to travel. We also found out that the sea just might be a bit too rough for the boat trip and decided to try again the next day. During that day a group of four Chileans arrived to town with motorbikes on board their boat. They also wanted to continue and our boat captain saw this as a good opportunity to make some money. We agreed to leave the next morning with the bikes and the Chileans with us. Then when the next morning came, it turns out that the Chileans weren't coming with us but wanted to charter an aeroplane to take their motorbikes to Panama City! This meant that our boat wouldn't depart and we had to spend yet another day in Puerto Obaldia.

The airport of Puerto Obaldia.

It might sound very pleasant to spend time in a quiet, untouristy town next to the Caribbean but it really isn't. There was nothing to do in the town but just to sit in a restaurant and read books. Occasionally we could see the soldiers stationed at the village running to the football field and play a game there. Also, we were not allowed to leave the village as the surrounding jungle seemed to be unsafe. Then finally after the fourth morning our boatman agreed to leave and take us to Mulatupo, which was supposed to be "less isolated" than Puerto Obaldia.

The main street of Puerto Obaldia. Our hotel is the second building on the left side of the road.

The boat trip to Mulatupo was slightly nicer than the previous two, even though Adam ended up having bleeding buttocks because of the jumping boat. At this point our group consisted of me, Adam, Tracy, Andi and two Italians. When we reached the destination, we learned that Mulatupo is a fully indigeneous village. Almost all of the 2000 the inhabitants were from the Kuna group and it seemed that it was not that common to get foreign visitors to the town. There were a group of people welcoming us to the village at the docs and everyone was very curious of where we were coming from. The children were running after us and some of them were very interested in touchin my beard. Some smaller children ran away crying when they saw us.

The main square of Mulatupo.

We got our accommodation from a house that was normally used for English and Spanish lessons and our food came from the few shops or from a "restaurant" that was more like someone's living room and was open only when the owners felt like having it open. About 80% of the building in the town were made of bamboo and had thatched roofs. There were no roads but more like paths between the very closely built huts. The first few hours in the town were very interesting but then it became clear that there really wasn't anything to do. First we tried organising a boat further towards the San Blas archipelago but it soon came clear that the villagers didn't really want to take us anywhere and that the sea was slightly too rough.

Some huts and canoes in central Mulatupo.

Mulatupo had daily flights to Panama City so after a day of trying to organise a boat, we agreed to fly back to civilisation even though we all considered flying as cheating. We were told that the flights would depart at "maybe 9 or 10, sometimes in the afternoon" so we decided to go to the airline office first thing in the first morning. We woke up around 6 when the sun came up and then around 7 were ready to walk to the airline office when we saw the plane fly over us. That morning the plane happened to depart at 7 and we missed it. The next plane was sold out and we finally had to spend two more nights on the island. There wasn't much to do on this town either. I first hoped to be able to swim but when I noticed that all the toilets went straight in to the sea, I gave up the idea.

A traditionla bathroom. Notice the smart way of getting rid of flushing the toilet.

Then after two days of sleeping and reading, a small plane took us to the busy Capital, Panama. The first contact here with the local officials was when we were asked to go trough the immigration again. The Americans were required to buy a tourist card, as this had been unavailable in Puerto Obaldia. However, the officials wanted a bit extra and asked for $10 even though the card is supposed to cost $5. As they really didn't have any other choice, the Americans paid the bribe but after getting our from the immigrations, reported the incident to the police. Surprisingly the police took the matter seriously and after a half an hour of a lot of talking, the Americans got the money back and we learned that the Panamanian police seems to take corruption seriously. Good for the country.

The terminal building of the Mulatupo airport.

The next thing in program is sight seeing in Panama City followed by visiting the Canal. Then I will head up to the Bocas del Toro.

Cartagena

2009-03-04T04:24:00.007+01:00

Unlike the pirates, I was able to enter Cartagena without any problems. We (me, Marina, Stefan and Michael) got here on last Wednesday and settled in the Getsemani neighbourhood in the old town. In general the old town of Cartagena is really posh but our part is slightly different with drug dealers and other dodgy people hanging out at the street corners during the night time. We haven't had any problems here but have heard stories of people having to bribe policemen in order to avoid unvoluantary visits to jails.

Cartagena has a really really beautiful old town. The streets are narrow and buildongs old. You almost get the feeling of being somewhere in Europe. Also, most of the shops and restaurants in the old town are fancy and there are plenty of package/money tourists around. I've understood that quite a few of the big Caribbean cruise ships stops here and also there are some direct holiday flights from the USA. In other parts of Colombia there have just been poor backpackers. In any case, it's a extremely beautiful city. In addition to the old houses, the city has walls around it as well as few fortresses. All were built to prevent pirate attacks during the colonial time. I visited the biggest fortress around found it very impressing.

The other sights I visited were just outside Cartagena. The strangest sight was a mud volcano. Those who haven't taken the necessary geology lectures might not know that mud volcano spits out mud instead of lava and that the mud is coming out because of the higher pressure found deeper in the earth. At the 10 metre tall volcano we were able to take baths at the crater. It felt really strange as you were not able to feel any bottom to the mud pool and also as you would float really really easily on this liquid. This meant that standing straight in the mud had me floating with mud up to my chest but no higher. During this trip I also learned that mud is not a nice thing to have in your eyes.

The more conventional sight outside Cartagena was a pretty beach called Play Blanca. It's normally visited on day tours from Cartagena but it was also possible to sleep in a simple guesthouse at (or almost) the beach. I decided to spend to days there and really enjoyed doing nothing. However, the weather happened to be cloudy for the first time in 10 years during the dry season and there wasn't that much tanning action going on. I concentrated on reading books and sleeping. Was great fun! The beach itself was quite pretty and the special thing was how it was really empty after the tour boats had gone home. A long beach and less than 20 people on it.

Now I am on my way to North America! I've just arrived to town of Turbo, on the coast west from Cartagena and I plan to take a boat to the Panamanian border tomorrow. I might spend few days in a town called Zapsurro as it's supposed to have some excellent beaches. After that I will continue hopefully to the San Blas islands just off the coast of Panama and then past the Canal and to a new continent! Also, my travel plans have cleared up a bit more now as I booked a flight from Los Angeles to Hong Kong (via Vancouver) for May 21st. From Hong Kong I most probably continue to Indonesia or Thailand. After a small holiday there I hope to return to Europe overland trhough Central Asia. I plan to be back home at the end of next summer

I have added some photos to older posts starting from the Bogota post. I hope you like the shots. More might be added soon!

Barranquilla

2009-02-26T00:24:00.002+01:00

Finally the carnival is over! It was great fun but also hard work. I arrived to Barranquilla on Saturday afternoon with Marina and on our way to our booked hotel, we met the German (Michael) and the Austrian (Stefan) who were with us at the lost city trek. We decided to stay at their hotel because it was cheaper (25 000 COP/7,60€ vs. 45 000 COP/13,70€) than our original option. The prices were much higher than normal in Barranquilla because of the carnival.

The carnival started officially on Saturday and finshed on Tuesday but I heard that the unofficial carnaval (drinking and partying) had been going on in Barranquilla for few weeks already. The official program seemed to consist mostly of different kinds of parades, dances, theatre and musical performances. There seemed to be a lot of program around the town in different locations and I am sure we didn't see everything that was going on but I think we still managed to get the main points. On Saturday we saw a parade of different floats, while on Sunday there was a parade without floats but with dancers. Monday's highlight was a roundabout party where a band played in the centre of a roundabout while people danced clockwise around them. Tuesday then seemed to be a bit more calmer day with just some dances and some more speech intensive shows.

The normal way to enjoy the program seemed to be with beer or rum. During the evenings most locals were having house parties or just drinking on the streets. The song that was playing the most was mama ron which translates to something like suck rum. My Spanish isn't good enough to understand the lyrics of the song but I was told that it is about El Ñato and about how he doesn't want to work but just to drink rum. People seemed to take the advice as most of the shops and businesses in the city were closed during the four days...

Unfortunately I didn't take a singe photo during the carnaval. The reason for this was that it was very popular to spray foam or throw white powder on other people. The foam came from spray cans sold everywhere and the white powder wasn't cocaine but ordinary flour. For some reason it was very popular to spray the foam in the face of unknown people so we also did receive our fair share of pain in the eyes. If there was no foam around, it seemed to be perfectly ok to throw water or beer on other people. As my camera isn't foam/beer/flour/waterproof, it stayed in the hotel room. Also, spraying foam on people's faces and then pickpocketing them was a popular way to lose your money. From our group, Michael lost some money and his cellphone this way.

All in all, it was a fun extended weekend. Now we (the same group) just arrived to Cartagena and we are ready to explore this pirateproof fortress! Yarrr!!

Ciudad Perdida

2009-02-18T00:16:00.004+01:00

The trek is over and I am still alive against all the odds! Also, I even consider the whole thing as a positive experience. We started by taking a 4WD bus to a small village about 2 hours away from Santa Marta. From there we continued on foot. Our group had 13 trekkers and three guides/porters as well as two donkeys to carry some of the food. The price for this fun was 420 000 pesos (131 €) and I consider it to be a real bargain compared to the more popular and very commercialised Inca Trail.

Our all terrain bus got stuck.

The walk to the ruins and back took 6 days with about 5 hours of walking each day. The walk was made a bit more difficult by the hills we had to climb but also because of the hot weather. Luckily it didn't rain during the days as rain would have increased the amount of mud on the paths a lot. The guides/porters prepared us food or snacks 3 times a day but a couple of times there wasn't that much to eat (for example just some soup). Also, the food was a bit too often served with rice and beans which has now forced me to eat pizza almost every day.

Some trekking food.

The nights we slept in hammocks set up in some huts on the way. Even though most of the days were nice and warm and we ended up sweating our shirts wet, most of the nights were cold. We were offered some blankets but these were usually smelling quite bad and on two nights I chose not the have a blanket and ended up feeling a bit cold despite jeans and a goretex jacket. However, the days were so tiring that I was able to sleep plenty of hours despite all the inconveniences.

The main area of the lost city.

During the walk we didn't see too many wild animals apart from all kinds of insects. There were plenty of mosquitos but no danger of malaria as we were most of the time above 800 metres. For some strange reason I got almost no bites while other people from my group suffered from huge numbers of mosquito bites. We also saw few big and nasty spiders and other strange bugs. The forest was full of birds and we could hear them all the time. The forest we trekked through was not uninhabited and quite often we met local natives. They were all still living in their traditional huts and dressed in white clothes and wellington boots. Also, all of them had long hair, both men and women and often didn't speak that much spanish and behaved in a way much more shy than the other Colombians I have met so far. I felt that their life had changed very little from the time before Columbus.

Steps to the lost city.

The nicest thing in our walk were the stops by some natural pools in the rivers. We had few chances to take a swim next to a beautiful waterfall in a crystal clear water and wash off all the sweat. One of these pools even had few lianas and we could use them to swim us to the water. I entertained the other hikers by doing very demanding gymnastics tricks! The presence of rivers also ment that we had to take of our shoes and walk through the streams to get to our goal. The deepest crossing were up to my waist and the current was usually quite strong.

A rebuilt hut.

The entrance to the lost city was through about 1200 small stone steps starting from a river. They were quite steep and at this point everyone was quite tired already. After the climb we were met by some Colombian soldiers as it turns out they are guarding the ruins. The reason for this seems to be tourist kidnappings that had occured few years earlier but also the cocaine production that went on in the surrounding jungle. The soldiers were nice and even let us pose for photos with their guns (photos will be online a bit later). We spent one night at the ruins and had maybe 5 or 6 hours of daylighttime at the ruins. It allowed me to do some walking on the more remote parts of the ruins on my own and I have to say the feeling there was quite special. The ruins had been fully(?) excavated but they had already started to grow moss and tall grass. Most of the time I was alone at the ruins and only occasionally met some patrolling soldiers. I think there were less than 30 tourists at the site when I was there and then maybe 20 soldiers. It really gave the feeling of having the ruins for yourself and this is really rare nowadays. The ruins itself were not that special as the buildings were originally made of wood and grass which had then rotted away. The remaining structures were stone terraces and few rocks with carvings. It still made the place really impressing as there were quite a lot of them and they were set in the middle of the jungle. The other surprising thing about the lost city was it's size. At first it seemed to be quite small but then I always discovered a new stone path going deeper in to the forest and by following it, I found a new terrace. I didn't have time to explore all the ruins because of the time (which would have been enough for Machu Picchu) but understood that the style didn't really change in the other parts that much. Also, the guides told us that there is another similar, but even bigger, city deeper in the jungle. There are no treks to this site right now because of the ongoing cocaine production and guerrilla/paramilitia action at the area. Maybe during my next visit to Colombia I will be able to go there too!

After returning from the jugnle I have just been diving and taking it easy. I've now done total 6 dives here and had great fun underwater. I've now seen a lot of moray eels but also a cornetfish (or maybe it was a trumpet fish, I'm not that good in identifying tropical fish), sea snails, lobsters and something very snake like. I might do a bit more diving here on Friday and definietly at some other spots along the Caribbean coast.

My next destination will be Barranquilla and the carnival. It is supposed to be the second biggest one after the more commercialised one in Rio. It should be great fun and 4 tough days of partying...

Taganga and Santa Marta

2009-02-10T23:03:00.004+01:00

The Caribbean coast is just great, except that the sea temperature is slightly chilly: about 24C. It feels actually uncomfortable when you are going there after being in the heat of 34C for a while but then gets comfortable after. It´s a tough life here...

View over Taganga.

The city of Santa Marta is hot and not that pleasant. I only spent one day there doing some shopping and touring a miniature gold museum. Nothing special really to be told about it. I´m now staying in the village of Taganga, just outside the city of Santa Marta in the northern coast of Colombia. The main things to do here are diving, enjoying the sun and the treks through the jungle to a lost city of a pre-colombian civilisation. I´ve been enjoying the sun all the time and today I went diving. The prices seemed to be reasonable and I paid 100 000 pesos (about 30€) for two dives. I took a small boat to the dive sites with a group of Irish and Colombians. The first dive I did was great especially as I haven´t done any diving for about 3 years. However, everything came back to me surprisingly fast and I managed to enjoy the dive quite much. Visibility was good, maybe 20 metres, and we saw few moray eels, plenty of colourful fish and a lot of beautiful corals. The second dive was then in a water with less visibility (less than 10 metres) and had about the same animals as the first dive. I will definietly do more diving later here.

A street in Santa Marta

Tomorrow I will head to the jungle and to the mentioned lost city. It´s a 3 day walk to the ruins, then 1 day at the ruins and 2 days of walking back. Two of the nights on this trek will be spent at the lost city. I can just imagine how many ghosts there are! Also, I heard that there will be few river crossings and some nice swimming possibilities on the way. Participating on the trek means also that I will not be reading my email or my facebook for almost a week. I can´t even remember when I´ve been last time separated from my internet that long! There will be a lot of exciting things to tell in the next post!

Some boats at the Taganga beach.

Giron

2009-02-08T21:33:00.002+01:00

Giron is almost too small for its own post but I'll still give you a small update. Two days ago I changed my mind and decided to go Northeast instead to Northwest to Medellin as I wrote before. I was really eager to get to the Caribbean but as the bus to the coast would take about 20 hours, I decided to make a stop in half way in the town of Giron. Nothing special there, just a nice and small colonial town. The other change in the plans I made in the last post was that Marina decided to come with me to the Caribbean. Then, after 10 more hours in a bus, we arrived to Santa Marta right next the the Caribbean Sea.

One thing I've noticed here in South America is that there are a lot of policemen everywhere. I think I mentioned this earlier in some Peru post but I can now mention it again as it's even more extreme here in Colombia. I guess it is because of the unrest in the country and the big differences in income. However, in addition to the policemen, you see a lot of soldiers here. On the way from Bogota to Giron our bus was stopped twice by the army and all of us got our papers checked. Also, all the men in the bus were required to go through a body check by the armed soldiers. They seemed to be looking for guns and guerrillas. None were found on our bus.

More of the Caribbean in the next post! Also, I mentioned earlier that my cellphone started to work. This is not completely true as it doesn't have coverage in many places and I am not able to receive sms's even though I seem to be able to send them.

Bogota

2009-02-05T22:40:00.004+01:00

The capital of Colombia is excellent! There has been a lot to see and do here and the week has gone past really fast. I arrived here on last Friday with an Irish girl (Marina) I met earlier in Popayan. She's accompanied me to many of the museums and sights here in Bogota and it will be slightly sad to start traveling alone again. I'm leaving to Medellin tomorrow and then to the Caribbean to enjoy the warmth.

The main square of Bogota.

The main thing here in Bogota has been the many museums they have. I started by visiting the national museum and learning a bit about Colombian history. It was slightly more difficult than I expected as all the texts in the museum were only in Spanish. The next museum in turn was the gold museum. While in Lima I visited a museum with plenty of gold items but it was nothing compared to the one in Bogota! The police museum was then the most unprofessional museum I've been here in South America but still turned out to be quite entertaining by displaying all kinds of random objects from old guns to a mural of Moses. Then yesterday I went to the best museum of them all: the Botero Donation. Or actually it was a combination of some works donated by Botero, a money museum and an art museum. They had on display, in addition to the strange fat figures by Botero, works of many other artists including Picasso, Miro and Dali.

Some objects from the gold museum.

In addition to the museums we also visited few places overlooking the city. The first was the top of a skyscraper while the second was a top of a mountain. Both of these places showed how big the city really is. We also made few excursions to the night life here and found it to be quite ok.

View over Bogota.

In general Colombia and especially Bogota seem to be more prosperous than the countries I've been so far. Of course you see very poor people here too but there seems to be more clean streets, fancy cars and fashionably dressed people. I've understood that Bogota isn't the safest city in the continent but I felt much unsafer in Quito, Guayaquil and Lima.

A singer and some street art.

San Augustin

2009-01-29T23:20:00.007+01:00

The road from Popayan to San Augustin was unpaved and bumpy. I really got the feeling of traveling somewhere deep in the countryside. Then one hour before arriving, there suddenly was asphalt and this feeling disappeared. I'm not saying that San Augustin wouldn't be countryside, but it just isn't the very small village everyone claims it to be. I would rather call it a small town. In any case, it's a quite nice destination with plenty to see!

The window of my hostel room.

The main reason to come to this small town were the hundreds of stone statues made by some unknown precolombian civilisation. These statues were placed mostly next to the graves of important people of this culture, but also in other ceremonial locations. I was told that most of the statues depict shamans, warriors or gods and it seemed that many of the statues were eating babies. This makes sense as the culture in question used to sacrifice babies. Also, the views here are really great as there are some tallish mountains around and there is a nice river running through the locality.

Me and some mountain/river views.

The nose of a statue.

These statues were spread to about 6 different locations and there was some distance between these points. First day I (and some other people from the hostel) visited these sites by horses. It was great fun as this time I had a real horse (no more mules) and it even galloped quite a many times. The second day of touring was then done by a jeep as the distances to the sites were much larger. We also saw few tall (up to 300 metres) waterfalls.

Me and a waterfall.

After two days of hard core sightseeing, I had to rest a day. It was great just to eat, drink coffee and read books. Now my batteries are charged again and I'm ready to head to the capital of Colombia, Bogota. Also, check out the new photos at the Montañita posts.

Ipiales and Popayan

2009-01-26T01:15:00.002+01:00

I am now in the country of guerillas and good coffee! It's now my second day in Colombia and so far everything has been good and no problems anywhere. The food has been slightly better than in Ecuador, Peru or Bolivia but most importantly, the coffee is real coffee and not the horrible instant stuff. Also, the people seem to be slightly more friendly than in other places so far and they seem to be curious to see foreigners here.

The first town in this country, Ipiales, was just a border town where I had to spend a night because I didn't want to travel at night. Even normally I'm not a big fan of night buses because of lost sleep, lost scenery and the bigger risk of accidents. However, here in Colombia you still need remember that there is a kind of a civil war going on and night time travellers might encounter some paramilitias or guerrillas. So I'm not going to take any night buses here.

After Ipiales I arrived to Popayan and have now spent a day here. There isn't any special sights in the town but just the pretty and white colonial buildings they have here everywhere. I've had a pleasant day of walking around and chatting with few people I met. Nothing special. Tomorow I will continue my travel to San Augustin and to the archeological sites next to it. It will be great to see some more ruins again!

Photos

2009-01-23T01:26:00.002+01:00

I'm adding some photos every now and then to some of the older texts. I'll try to remember to mention which of them. There are now new photos on the text about Guayaquil, Alausi and Riobamba. Also, in the previous post I claimed that we rode donkeys. This was not true as they really were mules.

Baños (part 2), Puerto Lopez, and Quito

2009-01-20T01:30:00.006+01:00

Sorry for the pause in updates but I just didn't manage to spend time in front of the computer. I'll try to be here for you more from now on. This post will be quite fast again as there has been a lot happening and I'm too tired to write down all the details. Ask me later how these places were if you're interested.

First a bit more about Baños. As mentioned, we took a bike trip down to the jungle. As Baños is in the mountains and the jungle is not, the whole way was supposed to be downhill. Or at least I wanted it to be downhill. It was mostly, but there were some nasty uphills too. In anycase, it was quite an easy 70 km and we saw many nice waterfalls and one really big one. The end of the bike trip was in the town of Puyo that was in the edge of the jungle. There were nothing there really so we just had a dinner and took a bus back.

As the weather was really cloudy in Baños, we didn't see the big volcano that was next to the town and as Tone is a real geophysicist and wanted to see a volcano, we decided to take a scenic route to the coast. We first took a bus to Ambato and from there to Guaranda. There were nothing interesting in these towns but the road between them went past a nice big volcano Chimborazo and allowed us to take great photos of it. The road went somewhere above 4000 metres so even the clouds didn't bother us.

After a short stop in the ugly Guayaquil, we took a bus to Puerto Lopez, which was a small fishing village in the middle of a nature park. We ended up staying in a quite a fancy hostel with big gardens and nice hammocks. For activities, we watched how the fishermen tried bringing wish to shore from their boats while hundreds of pelicans and frigate birds tried to eat the fish and also visited the nature park. Our first visit to the park was to an island called "Isla de la Plata". There were lot's of boobies there, both blue and red footed, as well as frigate birds. After some hours of bird watching, we had the chance to snorkle a bit and I was able to see plenty of fish. Also, I started to feel like it would be a good idea to go diving some time later during my travel. The other visit to the nature park was with donkeys. We spent a full, rainy day riding around the jungle like forest with our slow but reliable donkeys and saw lots of plants as well as birds and jungle rats. We didn't see any howler monkeys but heard them clearly.

Then on last Monday Tone flew back to Norway and I continued to travel on my own by taking a bus to the capital of Ecuador, Quito. I've so far had one day of sightseeing here but I can already say that it's quite an amazing city. To start with, the city is built between mountains and you get really nice view of and from them. Also, the older part of the city is full of pretty colonial buildings, churches and monasteries. I had great time walking around and climbing towers of a church. However, after the Sun has gone down all the shops close and the streets go empty of normal people. I was walking back to my hostel yesterday around 8 and I really felt scared of being mugged even as I was staying in the part of the city that is supposed to be the safest.

I've now started to feel more and more that I've seen enough of Ecuador and would like to move on. As everyone I've met has been saying really good things about Colombia, I will head there next despite the warnings of Don Eduardo.

Guayaquil, Cuenca, Alausi, Riobamba and Baños

2009-01-11T22:19:00.004+01:00

Guayaquil was, like most of the big cities here, not very nice. I was a bit mislead by the fancy bus station they had, but otherwise the town is ugly and dirty. Or, they have a nice pedestrian thing by the river and a hill that has few restored houses. I was quite happy to get out from there after two days.

View from the Peñas at Guayaquil.

After Guayaquil me and Tone headed to the town of Cuenca. All the quide books say that Cuenca and Quito have the nicest colonial buildings in Ecuador and there really seemed to be few nice ones in Cuenca. It will be nice to go to Quito later and compare. After Cuenca we headed to Alausi where we took a scary train ride called the Devil's Nose. Alausi was a really small town with the only interesting thing being the starting point of this mentioned train ride.

View from the Devil's Nose.

From Alausi we headed to Riobamba and had lunch there. We also took some photos while walking to the bus station. From Riobamba we went to Baños, next to a big volcano. The town is smallish with plenty of touristic facilities. The main attractions seem to be mountainbiking, hiking, rafting and watching the volcano and some mountains. Our plan here includes at least a 70 km downhill mountainbiking trip to the Amazonas...

Montañita, part 2.

2009-01-04T19:32:00.004+01:00

A week here in Montañita has gone by really fast. I have been trying to surf every day, except first of January, but haven't gotten too much results. The big waves here really seem to be a bit too much for me. I had one nice day when the waves were slightly smaller and when I had the biggest long board in town, but otherwise my surf attempts have consisted of a lot of paddling and then being tossed around by the waves. I'll keep on practising!

The beach of Montañita.

New Year's eve went fine here. I teamed up with two Germans and two Peruvians from the same hotel. As I mentioned earlier, the town is full of tourists, bars, etc. This ment that all the streets in the centre of the town were filled with people celebrating the New Year. The main thing still seemed to be at the beach where the locals burnt those paper-mache puppets, which symbolised all the old things left behind, and the surfers run to the sea at midnight to catch the year's first wave. After that, there was kind of a beach party on some bars at the beach. All in all a nice way to spend the moment when a year changes into another.

It's today my last day here as I will head to Guayaquil tomorrow. I'll meet Tone from Norway there, as she will join me here for two weeks. We'll head to the mountains to see some volcanoes and do some mountain biking.

Montañita

2008-12-31T18:41:00.006+01:00

The reason to come to this town was to learn to surf, enjoy the Sun and relax. I've tried all three and the only part going without problems is the relaxing part. First of all surfing. Montañita has a beach break and a nice sandy beach. This is a good thing as there are no nasty rocks just below the surface. The bad thing with this is that the waves seem to break much faster than at the point break in Mancora. I don't know if this is a general property of different types of breaks or just the difference between the two places I've seen. In anycase, I'm having much bigger problems catching the wave here than I had in Mancora. Also, the waves are here much bigger than in Mancora and look really scary when you're either on top of them or paddling towards them. I was tossed around by some big waves few times but didn't hurt myself even a little. Anyways, I managed to stand up few times but it was difficult.

A surfer (not me) and some scary waves.

The Sun was shining a lot on the first two days I spent here but then it has gone hiding. No one knows where; there are just some clouds where the Sun was earlier. Today is looking better than yesterday so there might be some hope. For relaxing this town is perfect. It's filled with bars, restaurants and hostels in the same way as Mancora but there just are more of them. During the nights the streets are full of South Americans and tourists from farther destinations, all walking around with beer bottles and going from a restaurant to another. Tonight there will probably be quite a good party.

Montañita at night, a view on the "cocktail street".

Also, I noticed that many of the local houses and shops have puppets made of papier-mâché in front of them. They are in many different forms ranging from normal looking people to Homer Simpson. I understood that these are burned when the year changes. It will be interesting to see how it goes and how many houses burn down at the same time.

A jedi that was burned at new year's eve.

That's it! I wish all a happy New Year 2009! More posts on this blog next year!

Tumbes

2008-12-29T04:17:00.002+01:00

As the surf wasn't good at Mancora and I felt that I had had enough hammock time, I packed my stuff and headed north. Other motivator was that the owner of our hostel decided to double the room rates for new year's. However, same thing applies to Montañita and I'm right now paying way too much ($10) for my not so nice room. Also, it seems that my finnish cell phone operator Saunalahti doesn't work in Ecuador, so don't bother calling or texting. I have no signal. The internet connection at net cafe's is also really bad so no photos to be expected here eiter. Sorry.

Anyways, I started my exciting trip to north early in the morning and headed to what Lonely Planet calls "the worst border crossing in South America". Dodgy things started to happen even before I reached the border at the town of Tumbes. I needed to drop some post cards to a post box and was going to take a tuk-tuk to the nearest one when an additional guy jumps to the tuk-tuk. This being the normal way to get mugged, I of course told the driver to stop and left. The driver then tries to talk me over to come back but a policeman comes and interrups the attempt. He tells the tuk-tuk driver to go away and asks where I tried to go and offers a ride in his fancy patrol car...

Before telling what happens next, I'll tell about what I've heard about the local police. At least LP says that they're all evil and you should stay as far away from the police as you can. They're said to demand bribes from tourists and work together with the drug dealers. I've so far met one person who knew someone who had drugs planted in his belongings by the police and then arrested. Also, I understood that during the last decades, they've taken part in some "disappearings" of not-so-popular locals... Before this I haven't had any contact with them nor I have seen then in action but there are lots of policemen in Peru driving around in their fancy cars. Some towns have them hanging out in riot gear during the weekends.

Right after I had put all my luggage in their car and closed the door after me, all the things in the previous paragraph came into my mind. I was quite sure that my body is found in some remote river after few weeks with a bullet in my neck. The two policemen were very curious of where I was from and asked all kinds of questions while we were cruising trough the town. First stop was a restaurant where they bought some food and the second was at the post office. I dropped my 4 letters there and thought that these will be my last communications with my friends. Then we drove to some other address where they delivered the food that they had bought earlier. Maybe it was their boss or someone who wanted lunch? After that, they shouted instructions to some tuk-tuk drivers with their loudspeaker and finally dropped me to the bus station. There they shook my hand and told me to have a nice trip! No bullets, no bribes! So at least to my experience, the Peruvian police are nice and honest! Don't believe the Lonely Planet!

After that it was no problems but just sitting in a bus and getting another bus in Guayanquil. I didn't have time to visit the city yet but at least the bus station was the poshest I've seen here. Everything looked expensive and shiny. Ecuador might end up being more expensive than I expected...

Mancora

2008-12-23T00:54:00.005+01:00

I'm now in Mancora and even surfed a bit! I got here almost a week ago and find the town quite nice. The atmosphere is relaxed and the weather is sunny. There's basically only bars, restaurants, hotels, and hostels in this town as well as a beach. There's plenty of backpackers but still the majority of people here are Peruvians. All are just laying in the Sun by the sea. However, the town is a bit more expensive than other places in Peru but still quite cheap. Other thing worth complaining here is the Panamerican highway that goes through the centre of the town. It's a bit annoying eventhough there's much less traffic than what you would expect to have on the main highway of the whole west coast of South America.

A view on a street in Mancora.

For surfing they have a rocky point break here (I'm learning some surfing vocabulary!) but the waves haven't been too big. That has been ok to me as I really need just to practice cathing a wave and standing up on my board. I 've rented a longboard on four days now and had it for 1,5 to 2 hours each time. I guess I'm doing some progress but it is still quite difficult to catch a wave and then stand up. Each day I've managed to get up maybe only 3 times. I'm also surprised how much swimming there is in surfing. Or it's not really swimming as your lying on top of the board and you don't need to use your legs. In anycase, it's hard work and a really good exercise! Also, I've learned that it's smart to protect your head when you fall of the board as you will easily get the board in your face. The rocks, that are only about half a metre below the water, might also give some bruises if you fall to the water in a wrong way. In addition to getting bruises, you can also be burned by a jellyfish while surfing...

The lighthouse and few shops on the panamerican.

As you probably already know, this is the first beach destination on my whole trip. It's been sunny in other places during the trip too, but this is the first time I've walked around without a shirt. This has lead, of course, to minor sunburns but thanks to excessive use of sunblock, I'm not the reddest person on the beach!

The Mancora beach.

Apart from the beach, the surf and the bars, there's not much in here. So when I'm not at the beach or surfing, I'm usually just reading and lying on a hammock. It has been probably the least stressing Christmas ever for me. Right now the combination of tides and winds isn't favourable for surfing and it will probably stay like that for few days, so I've been thinking of heading north to Ecuador and Montañita. It's supposed to be a town similar to Mancora but slightly nicer. I hope to spend my new years eve there.

Chiclayo

2008-12-20T01:48:00.002+01:00

Now I have managed to see the last ruins in Peru! No more of piles of rocks! Or depending a bit what's in Ecuador and if I continue to Colombia, there might be some more coming up. But in any case, there will at least be a small break now.

As mentioned in the last post, the town in question was Chiclayo and there were some ruins close by. The town itself wasn't that impressive: same kind of plazas, streets and restaurants as elsewhere in Peru. I guess I've seen enough of this country and I'm getting ready to move on.

View of the local cathedral and the Plaza de Armas.

The ruins were also quite familiar looking after the visit to Chan Chan nearby Trujillo/Huanchaco. That is, there were some structures made of clay. Clay really doesn't seem to be very good material for building ruins as it erodes away quite nicely and leaves behind just strange looking hills. I'm sure these ruins were quite nice when they were built.

Clay ruins. They're a bit eroded.

Some of the ruined buildings were used as burial sites for the local kings in the same way as the Eqyptians used their pyramids. For this reason, better than the visit to the ruins was a visit to a museum showing what they found from the ruins. There were loads of gold, pottery and people buried with the king and a lot of it was on display. The museum really made the stop at this town worthwhile.

As mentioned, I'm a bit bored with ruins and museums now and that is exactly why I'm really waiting to reach the next destination: Mancora. It's a beach resort a little bit before Ecuador and is supposed to have a lot of parties every day, a nice beach, good weather and surf. In Huanchaco I met two Aussies (Jimmy and Thea) who had spent some weeks there before coming to take a rest from partying to Huanchaco. I will most likely meet them again when I get there tomorrow. I haven't decided how long I will stay in that place but at least over Christmas. I hope to learn more surfing and just relax.

Lima (again), Trujillo and Huanchaco

2008-12-18T00:43:00.003+01:00

After Cusco I was back in Lima. This time I decided to check out the museums. I was told by Don Eduardo to check out the museum with plenty of gold I assumed it was the Museo Larco. They had some gold and silver as well as some quite interesting pottery... I also had the chanche to visit a local night club with few locals and a Chilean and an Italian guy from the same hostel. It was hot, humid and full salsa like music.

Some gold from a museum.

From Lima I took a 10 hour bus to the town of Trujillo in the north and then a went to a smaller town of Huanchaco just outside Trujillo. The main reason for stopping here were again some ancient ruins that were built by a pre-Inca civilisation. They had built a whole city out of clay but what was now left, was more or less just big piles of sand. Some of the structures were restored and gave a small hint of what it had been once.

I took a small walk around Trujillo yesterday with some Aussies I met at my hostel and we all agreed that it was quite an ok town. Nothing special there but still, quite nice. In Huanchaco the main thing seems to be the beach. I was even able to try some surfing for the first time today. I signed up for some lessons and was finally able to even "surf" a bit. I think I just need to practice more and I'll be signing sponsorship deals soon!

My next target tomorrow is 3 more hours to the north, in the town of Chuclayo. They have more ruins and museums there...

Some photos

2008-12-11T17:43:00.003+01:00

I finally found an internet connection fast enough to put some photos to the blog. Check the 4 latest posts for them!

Pisaq, Machu Picchu and Ollantaytambo

2008-12-11T01:06:00.003+01:00

Next to Cusco is the biggest cultural attraction in all Peru: Machu Picchu. As with many other fantastic places, it's not just me who knows it's there and the place is then a target for loads of other tourists too. The Peruvians have noticed this and have decided to profit from this interest on their cultural heritage, meaning that it's very expensive to go to Machu Picchu.

As Machu Picchu is located on a remote mountain top, the only way to get there is to get a train to a town called Aguas Calientes and then proceed to the lost city itself. The train is greatly overpriced for non-Peruvians who pay almost 10 times more than the locals. I wanted to go there as cheaply as possible, which ment taking a bus to the last train station before Aguas Calientes, to a town called Ollantaytambo, and then taking a 75 sole (18 e) train from there. However, there are plenty of Inca ruins around Cusco so I decided to make one additional stop at town of Pisaq.

Both Pisaq and Ollantaytambo had old Inca ruins on top of the mountains around these towns. Especially in the case of Pisaq I had to do a plenty of climbing. The days were really sunny and even though there was a lot of sweating, the ruins were really worth it. It was quite special to find these ancient buildings on mountaintops. The views were also quite great. Touring those smaller ruins prepared me for Macchu Picchu quite well.

Some ruins at Pisaq.

As I mentioned, before Machu Picchu I had to stop at Aguas Calientes. The town really seemed to be there only for the purpose of tourists shortly stopping there before and after the ruins. The most original thing they had there were some hot springs with some adjanced pools. I had to try these baths and noticed that in addition to being nice and warm, they smelled a bit. In any case, it was quite nice to be in warm water for a short while. After a night well slept, I headed to Machu Picchu with the first possible bus at 5:30.

View on the main street of Aguas Calientes.

Arriving to Machu Picchu in the early morning was quite a special thing. As we were the forst ones to get there, the place was very empty for the first hours and made it possible to enjoy the ruins even more. The weather wasn't the best when I arrived to Machu Picchu as it was quite foggy and it was raining. However, the fog created a special feeling to the visit as, depending on the wind, parts of the ruins and surrounding mountains were hidden and revealed at different times.

Rainy Machu Picchu.

Next to the ruins itself there was a mountain called Wayna Picchu and it was possible to climb it if you were among the first 400 people who reported themselves to some members of the staff. The climb required quite a lot of work but it was worth it in the end when you got excellent views over the whole complex. The mountain top had also some smaller Inca ruins.

Me with a strange pose on top of Wayna Picchu.

After my 10 hour visit to the ruins I was really tired and hungry (there were no reasonably priced food there) but at the same time felt like I'd been to a really special place. I have to admit that Angkor Wat in Cambodia was much bigger and better when it comes to ruins but the location of Machu Picchu at a mountain top makes it very special.

And a bit of my plans. I'm leaving Cusco tomorrow and heading back to Lima. I'm already horrified of the 20 hour bus trip that I will have to take. I chose a bit better company for this reason but it's still going to be quite a tough thing. In Lima it's going to be some museums and then I'll head north and try to find a nice place to surf!

Cusco

2008-12-07T01:15:00.005+01:00

When I arrived to Cusco, I was suprised about how clean, prosperous and full of tourists the town was. It really seems that old Inca ruins attract people from all over the world. This of course is good for the local people as they get all the money they want from fat tourists but a bad thing for poor backpackers like me. Food is expensive, accommodation is expensive and everyone tries to sell me some souveniers or massages. Luckily I was able to find a reasonably priced room and a market with cheap and good salchipapas (chips and sausages, taksari/makkispekkis!).

Some great and cheap food.

After walking a day around the town, it's really no wonder why all those tourists have come here. The town really is extremely pretty with small cobble stone alleys, nice plazas and impressing churches. In addition to just walking around, I dropped by at the cathedral and really enjoyed the tour. There was, among others, version of the last supper where Jesus eats guinea pig and an altar for a saint who helps unmarried women get married... There also quite a large Inca fortress on a mountain top next to the town with excellent views. Next to the fortress there was a big white Jesus, which can be seen all over the town and especially during the night when he's quite well lit.

Me looking at Jesus with Cusco behind me.

As I complained a bit about the prices in Cusco, I'd like to explain a bit what I've been spending so far. To start with, I hope to stay under 500 e/month including all the costs but I have to admit that I'm probably above that as Peru is a bit more expensive than I expected. In Bolivia that kind of money would most likely be sufficient. So far in Peru I've spent usually on accommodation 15 soles (3,8 e). This has bought me a dorm, a shared room or a private room depending on the place. In Cusco I ended up paying 20 soles (5,1 e) after a lot of bargaining for a single room with a bathroom and breakfast. It was a good deal as other options would have easily gone to somewhere around 30-50 soles (7,6-12 e) and the room was also quite nice. Bolivia was much cheaper and there the same level of luxury costed me 20-25 Bolivianos (2,1-2,6 e). What comes to food, it is quite easy to find a "menu" of soup, main and a drink for max 3 soles (0,76 e) but this is sometimes quite tasteless. Here in Cusco an excellent plate of salchipapas and a coke will cost 4 soles (1,0 e). Every now and then I feel like spending and end up eating a pizza or pasta in a backpacker restaurant for 15 soles (3,4 e)! A bottle (0,6 l) of beer costs usually 4-10 soles (1,0-2,5 e) depending if you buy it in a shop or in a bar. Ecuador is then supposed to be slightly cheaper so I hope to cut down the costs in few weeks...

Copacapana and Isla del Sol

2008-12-05T22:49:00.003+01:00

I've now reached safely the old Inca capital of Cusco and have been exlporing it for a day and a half and plan start my journey to Macchu Picchu tomorrow. However, you need to wait a while to hear more about this as I need to tell you about Copacabana and Isla del Sol first. As I mentioned earlier, me and a Brit from the same La Paz dorm (Kate) had our aim on an island in the Lake Titikaka.

The bus trip from La Paz was nice and easy with a quite an interesting ferry accross a small strech of lake. Our bus was driven on board a small ferry that looked like it would sink any moment. We passengers had to take a slightly more boat like ferry across and after 15 minutes or so we could get back to the bus. After arriving to Copacabana we checked into a hotel and had our first meal of the local delicacy, the trucha. As Copacabana is situated by the big lake, there's plenty of fish around and the local favourite seems to be this trout. It stayed a bit unclear if trucha refers just to one species of trout or many but I at least received different kind of fish every time I ordered trucha in a restaurant.

The bus ferry.

Copacabana was a nice and small town with plenty of backpacker restaurants and bars. There were even few hippies on the streets selling some simple selfmade jewelry. They looked like they've been on the road for a few years... No matter how nice Copacabana felt, the biggest attraction there was the ferry to the Isla del Sol just 2 hours away.

View of a street in Copacabana.

Isla del Sol is the largest island on the Lake Titikaka and is according to the Incas the birthplace of the Sun. This ment that in addition to nice lake views, there were few Inca ruins. The island has around 5000 inhabitants and felt really nice and quiet despite some tens of tourists staying overnight there. Me and Kate decided to spend two nights on the island so that we arrived to the southern part, spent a night there, walked to the northern part of the island and then took a boat back after a nights sleep. This plan worked very well as the views were nice, walks good and the ruins quite ok.

Me on Isla del Sol.

When having a late lunch on the island right after arriving there, we started to hear a strange sound of drums coming maybe half a kilometre away. We, of course, went to investigate an found a group of local people on the hillside playing music, drinking beer and walking around with a llama. Some of the oldest people around had bread, fruits and even bags of crisps on top of their clothes while the people walking around with the llama were dressed in bright colours of pinkish purple. It seemed like there was some kind of a village festival going on. At this point we heard that it actually was a llama sacrifice ceremony! According to a guy we met, the locals sacrifice a llama to the Pachamama once a year and we had accidentally arrived on the island on just that day! After a while of being dressed in bread, dancing, drinking and running around with the llama, the music stopped and the llama was brought next to a shallow hole dug in to the ground. There was a big crowd in front of me, so I just could see four men grabbing the llama by its feet, turning it on its back and then a man walking to it with a knife. Then after maybe a half an hour of something happening over the llama, the crowd returned to their beers and where the llama was earlier, there was just its skin and some pieces of meat. The head, feet and the intestants were buried in the shallow hole that was now covered with some rocks. I hope Pachamama got happy and that these people will receive good harvests and plenty of tourists during the coming year.

The llama sacrifice ceremony. Notice the people dressed in bread and the almost dead llama.

After the island I was supposed to come directly to Cusco but my stomach started protesting again. This time the reason is probably either some mayonnaise or a dodgy hamburger. For this reason, I broke my trip into two parts by staying overnight in Puno. At this point Kate headed to the coast and went to Cusco where I joined the British couple I met earlier in Ica (Chris and Nat). They had just completed the Inca trail and were still in town.

La Paz

2008-11-27T20:57:00.003+01:00

I told you earlier that my next goal would have been Copacabana. It was, but I accidentaly ended up in La Paz instead! I decided to visit few of the smaller towns on the south side of Titikaka on my way from Puno to Copacabana. The trip to first one went well and I was able to take a look on some precolonial fertility temple. Then when I tried catching a bus to the next small town, all the locals started telling me it's impossible. I decided to try but all the buses just drove past without stopping. Then after about half an hour, a basque-portugues couple walked to me and told that they were trying to get the same bus. They both had quitted their jobs and went travelling just like me!

After maybe of an hour of waving to buses we finally managed to stop one and got on board. Then at some point the basque discovered that the bus wasn't on its way to the border crossing to Copacabana but to the one closer to La Paz! At this moment it was too late to get a new bus back so we all decided to head to La Paz. The border crossing was really easy as the Basque handled everything and I didn't even need to see the officials!

The Bolivian capital is quite an extraordinary place. It's built in a valley between some steep hills and you can get really nice views down to the city. The city itself is also much more alive than for example Lima (or any other Peruvian city I've been to). The streets are full of vendors of all kinds, women with their traditional costumes and normal people. As Lima felt a bit dangerous at some times, La Paz at least feels safe. There's also few pretty buildings and churches around. I'm staying here at Hotel Cactus, the first place mentioned in the Book. It has attracted a lot of french for some reason and is quite noise at night.

I've been hanging out here with the Iberian couple I met on the way here and also a bit with a Brit who's staying in the same dorm as I am. She's also joining me to Copacabana tomorrow. After Copacabana and Isla del Sol my plans involve Cusco and then heading north towards Ecuador. I hope to be surfing before christmas...

Puno

2008-11-23T21:45:00.003+01:00

After well slept night I was finally able to take a look around Puno. The town is surrounded by mountains from one side and the lake Titikaka from the other side. After the biggest town in Peru (Lima) and the second biggest (Arequipa), Puno feels small and calm. The traffic on the streets isn't too bad and in addition to tuk-tuk's, they even have some nice bicycle rickshaws. Then on the other hand, there isn't that much to see here. I managed to cover some markets, the harbour, a mountain top, a pedestrian street and few churches during the first day easily.

Today I attacked the prime attraction of the town, lake Titikaka and more exactly the floating islands. These small raft like islands are built from straws and have been there for quite a while. I took a tour boat that stopped on few of these islands. The whole thing was quite touristic with plenty of souvenir stands at each stop. In any case, it was interesting to see these structures and I even got a small presentation (in Spanish) how they are made. It seems that the base is constructed from the roots of these straw plants and then the floor consists on the non root part. All the houses are also built from the same things and they even eat parts of these plants!

As I'm currently at the altitudes of around 3800 metres, it's really easy get burned. I've been so far using a lot of sun block but still I've managed to burn my left ankle and my lips. Another thing caused by the altitude is that the nights are cold (around 10 C) while the days are hot. I will stay at these heights still as my next target is Copacabana which is by the same lake Titikaka, just further towards the west in Bolivia. I'm also planning to drop by in La Paz before going to Cuzco to see a lot of ruins.

Arequipa

2008-11-22T02:41:00.003+01:00

Sorry for the small break in posts but I was first busy and then suffered from a mild food poisoning. The bus journey we took from Nazca to Arequipa went really well. No problems at all and I was even able to sleep in the bus. We arrived to Arequipa on Tuesday morning and got a nice hostel from the centre of the town.

Nazca was quite close to the sea level and then Arequipa is at around 2400 metres above the sea level. The first indication of the altitude was that a tube of face lotion I had with me, had a bigger pressure inside and was bulging a bit. After small walks around the town I started to feel really tired and had to take a nap. This might have been because of the bus journey and not being able to sleep that well, but I think it's more exciting to blame it on a mild case of altitude sickness!

While going to Arequipa a Dutch couple joined me and the two Brits I was traveling with. Rest of the group was very adventurous and they wanted to go rafting! I had no say on that and ended up going down rapids in a rubber boat on Wednesday. It was surprisingle easy and fun. I didn't even fall into the water! During the afternoon I made a visit to a museum about a mummified inca child sacrifice. Some mountaineer archeologists (how cool is that!) had found this girl from a top of a volcano nearby with some other offerings. I learned that the Incas treated the mountains as gods and every now and then sacrificed children to them. They climbed up the mountain, killed the child and buried him/her there. The tour at the museum had the real mummified child on display and I have to admit, it was quite odd to see a person who had died more than 500 years ago.

Then on Thursday morning, horrible things started to happen. My stomach went crazy and I was running between the toilet and my bed all the way until noon. It seemed that I had eaten something bad. After some thinking, possible culprits were identified as "combinado", "churros" or "pisco sour". No matter what caused it, I started to feel alright during the afternoon and I was well today in the morning. As our hostel owner had booked the place full, I decided to grab my backpack and head towards the Lake Titikaka and the town of Puno. I arrived here just few hours ago but didn't see that much of the town as it was already dark when the bus reached it's destination. It will be interesting tomorrow to see how the world's highest lake looks like and how the town is.

Nazca

2008-11-18T00:09:00.004+01:00

As I mentioned in the previous post, today I headed to south. Haven´t gone too far though as I´m currently in the town of Nazca. This place is famous for the big lines in the desert sands. You´ve all probably seen some photos of them and they are made so, that you need to be in the air in order to see them. The town is full of travel agencies selling plane tours where you will fly over the desert and see the lines from the air. I was feeling a bit scared thinking that if a flight costs less than 100$, how much maintance you will get? That is, I skipped the flight and just climbed to a small tower where I could see two small figures. Wasn´t that impressing but that´s what you get when you don´t feel like getting killed.

I want to mention few more things about Huacachina. First of all we (me, two Brits and an Aussie) took a tour of 3 wineries and a chocolate factory. Or that was it was supposed to be. In reality it was one winery, one bar, one crazy museum and a chocolate shop. The winery was nice and it would have been nice to see more of those. The "museum" was so wierd it was already good. They had a miniature boat made out of human bones, some odd Inca skulls and a lot of different 50 to 200 year old stuff all piled up in a barn or a storage room. The second unmentioned thing about Huacachina was that we climbed up some sand dunes. The views were great but it was a lot of work to get up there. Sand isn´t the easiest thing to climb up.

I´m now with the two Brits and a Dutch couple and we´re waiting to get to a night bus to Arequipa. The bus is supposed to leave at 23.30 tonight and arrive at 8 the next morning. The others had heard of rumours of bus hijackings on this route. Let´s hope ours does make it.

Huacachina

2008-11-16T17:33:00.004+01:00

I decided to leave Lima after only one day and head south. I guess my main interests in the south of Peru are the lake Titicaca and Macchu Picchu. As it takes some hours to go that south, I´ve decided to make some stops on the way. The first was here in Huacachina, next will probably be in Arequipa and then I´m already next to the big lake.

Huacachina is a village around an oasis. The place is surrounded by sand dunes tall as small mountains and the biggest thing in town seems to be sandboarding. That is, sliding down the dunes with old crappy snowboards. I tried it yesterday but it wasn´t too much fun as the boards were in really bad condition and the speeds didn´t get too high. There´s supposed to be sandboarding competition today with speed trials and even big air! Will be interesting to see how that goes. In anycase the place is quite special with desert views and palm trees. It´s also a big backpacker destination. I´m currently hanging out with two Brits and an Aussie who I met in the bus on the way here.

And next I´ll go lie in a hammock and read some books. Maybe later walks on the sand dunes and photographs. And thanks for all the comments so far!

Lima

2008-11-14T01:46:00.005+01:00

Hola and welcome to the new blog. Welcome new (Norwegian) readers and I hope the old (Finnish) readers stay. Also, if my English is too bad to be understood, feel free to comment. Also, I'm right now really tired so the text will be simple and straight to the point.

First a quick summary of the moving: My friend Jukka drove to Trondheim, we packed everything with the help of Eduardo, Jon, Emanuel, Eirik and Markus and then after a short sleep, headed to Stockholm. The drive went quite well with weather ranging from snowy winter to sunny autumn. In Stockholm we drove the van in to the boat and reached Turku the next morning. Then just a short drive to Helsinki and unpacking. There are photos of this moving, by me and Jukka.

After a week of meeting old friends, it was time to start flying. First two flights were nice and easy: Turku-Stockholm and then Stockholm-Madrid. Even the part with Spanair was nice. I arrived to Madrid around noon and managed to check in my backpack right away. Then I started my day of sightseeing and photography in Madrid. My sister Outi gave me some tips on what to see (she lived in Madrid for half a year) and I thin I managed to see most of the centre. One of the highlights of the day was when I found a bar that served Duff beer. Yes, the same beer as they have in Simpsons.

After 10 hours of walking I was ready for 12 hours of flying. Luckily I was able to get some sleep on the plane and was at least half alive when I arrived to Lime this morning at 7 am local time. After that it was hostel, shower and another 10 hours of walking. That is, I'm really really exhausted right now and already dreaming of dreaming.

But before dreams, a little bit about Lima. The city seems to be a medium sized mess with some parts being messier than others. The area I'm staying at, Miraflores, seems to be a bit more fancier than the centre of the city with big malls and fancy shops. The centre had a bunch of churches and palace like buildings. I took a tour in the catacombes of a monastery and viewed the coffin of Francisco Pizarro. Tomorrow will be more touring and deciding where to go next. Most probably I will head south along the coast the day after tomorrow.

That's it, more and better stuff later!

Viimeinen turska

2008-10-29T21:48:00.002+01:00

Tässä on tämän blogin viimeinen viesti. Norjassa oleminen loppuu ja samalla myös siis Öljyä ja Turskaa. Älkää kuitenkaan hätääntykö sillä reissublogi ilmestyy tähän samaan osoitteeseen kunhan reissu tässä pian alkaa. Nimen lisäksi blogissa vaihtuu myös kieli. Syynä ei ole se, että Madventureskin vaihtoi kieltä vaan se, että muutama norski on ilmaissut halunsa seurata mun edesottamuksia tuolla Etelä-Amerikassa. Toivottavasti tämä ei haittaa ketään kauheasti.

Muuten Norjassa viimeiset päivät sujuu kaivoa poraten ja tavaroita pakaten. Jos hyvin käy, kun Jukka perjantaina karauttaa tänne pakulla, mä olen porannut kaksi öljykaivoa. Voin sen ylpeänä sitten merkitä CV:heni.

Se oli siinä sitten. Kiitos lukijoille, nähdään pian.

Nimiäänestyksen toinen kierros

2008-10-01T21:07:00.003+02:00

Nimiäänestyksen ensimmäinen kierros on päättynyt ja näyttää kovasti siltä, että lukijoiden mielestä tuli pilattua hienot uranäkymän irtisanomisella. Itse en ehkä ole samaa mieltä, mutta katsotaan miten käy. Jokatapauksessa viimeinen kuukausi Norjassa on lähtenyt käyntiin ja lähtölaskenta Etelä-Amerikkaan on alkanut. Äänestyksen toinen kierros alkaa nyt ja päättyy muuttopäivänä. Matkakuntoon ajattelin blogin hoitaa sitten Suomesta.

Matkasuunnitelemia en ole tehnyt lisää juurikaan, ajatuksissa on vain epämääräistä haahuilua Perussa, Boliviassa ja Ecuadorissa. Paluu saattaa hoitua Brasilian kautta. Rokutukset ja malariapillerit kävin hakemassa eilen kun taas matkavakuutus on vielä vähän vaiheessa. Suomalaiset vakuutusyhtiöt eivät tuota myönnä kun en ole asunut tarpeeksi Suomessa ja norjalaisiin en ole vielä ehtinyt ottaa yhteyttä. Tässä lähiaikoina pitäisi sekin kuitenkin hoitaa kuntoon.

Loppuun sitten syksyinen ruskakuva Trondheimistä. Nauttikaa syksystä ja älkääkä antako finanssikriisin masentaa!

Muutto ja lennot varattu

2008-09-17T22:13:00.003+02:00

Blogin päivitystahti on hieman hidastunut, mutta eipä täällä mitään odottamattomia ole tapahtunukkan. Yritän sitten reissun päälle päästyäni kertoa useammin, mitä tapahtuu. Jos se siis ketään ylipäätänsä kiinnostaa...

Paluu Suomeen on edistynyt logistiikkansa puolesta suorastaan häikäisevällä vauhdilla: Muuttopaku, laivakyydit ja muuttaja on varattu. Kuvio menee siis niin, että Jukka noutaa kahdeksan kuutiota vetävän pakettiauton Helsingistä ja ajaa sen laivaan torstaina 30.10. Hyvin levätyn yön jälkeen Jukka karauttaa metalliorillaan kohti Trondheimiä jossa kämpän pakkaaminen ja siivoaminen alkaa lauantaina 1.11. Kaikkien mun tavaroitteni pitäisi mahtua tuohon autoon ja kun ne sinne on pakattu, suunnataan kohti Suomea jonne saavutaan maanantaina 3.11. Sitten enää tavarat vinttisäilöön ja muutto on suoritettu! Pakettiautossa on tiettävästi kolme istumapaikkaa joista tällä hetkellä varattuina on vain kaksi. Halukkaat voivat ilmottautua allekirjoittaneelle.

Suomessa viihdyn jopa reilun viikon. Sen tarkemmin en ole suunnitellut mutta torstaina 12.11. otan Blue1/Spanair -yhdistelmän Turusta Tukholman kautta Madridiin josta puolestaan jatkan Air Cometilla Limaan. Paluuta en ole vielä varannut koska paluun yksityiskohdatkaan eivät ole vielä selvillä. Hintaa noille lennoille tuli yhteensä noin 550 euroa.

Lopuksi vielä kuva vasarasta. Jukka laittoi tuossa jonkin aikaa sitten linkin vastaavanlaiseen kuvaan ja olin itse kovin epäuskoinen moisesta virityksestä. Piti siis itsekkin kokeilla ja pienen virittelyn tuloksena sainkin kuin sainkin tuon systeemin tasapainoon. Pienten laskujen ja testailun jälkeen päädyin sellaiseen päätelmään, että kyseessä on vain hieman omituisen näköinen heiluri. Tuo naruripustus saa vasaran varren painamaan viivotinta ylöspäin ja täten tasapainottamaa tuon viritelmän.

Vuosi

2008-08-20T20:57:00.002+02:00

Tänään tuli täyteen vuosi Norjassa. Tai oikeastaan jo viime yönä. Olen itse aika yllättynyt miten nopeasti aika rientää. Toivottavasti nuo vuodet vierivät tulevaisuudessa edes vähän hitaammin tai muuten tässä muuttuu jo itsekkin vanhaksi. No oli miten oli, 365 päivää takana ja 71 edessä.

Viime viikonloppuna mulla oli täällä vieraana Jouni. Se saapui kaupunkiin torstai-iltana ja jatkoi matkaansa Riian kautta Suomeen maanantaina aamulla. Sen kummempaa ohjelmaa en Jounia varten tehnyt, kunhan käveltiin ympäri Trondheimia ja katseltiin maisemia. Siinä samalla tuli käytyä mm. Munkkisaaressa katsomassa millaisessa ympäristössä ne munkit aikoinaan juopottelivat. Valokuvia on taas saatavilla.

Lauantaina päätettiin sitten tehdä jotain Norjalaista ruokaa ja pienen pohdinnan jälkeen menuun valittiin valaspihvejä kermaisella pestokastikkeella. Valasta kun ei (kai) laillisesti voi kovin monessa maassa syödä. Myönnettäköön, että hieman huono omatunto tuon rauhoitetun eläimen syömisestä tuli etenkin kun omien tietojeni mukaan niiden metsästyskään ei ole kovin kivutonta puuhaa (räjähtäviä harppuunoita, joihin elukka ei edes kuole). Norjalaiset kyllä puolustaa valastusta jopa kovemmin kuin kuningastaan. Niille kun hieman yrittää aihetta kritisoida, saa vastaansa agressiivista argumentaatiota sen puolesta, että lahtivalaita on meret pullollaan ja se eläin suorastaan hinkuu sieltä merestä paistinpannulle. Kaikesta huolimatta, ruokatesti päätettiin tehdä ihan mielenkiinnosta ja tuloksena todettakoon, että valas maistuu maksalta. Eli huono omatunto tuli ja liha maistui pahalta. En suosittele.

Valaanpaistaja

Uusi suunta

2008-08-07T19:09:00.004+02:00

Viime tekstistä on ollutkin hieman aikaa jo. Mutta ei se mitään, otetaan nyt vahinko takaisin. Toisaalta, ehkä ihmiset on muutenkin olleet kesälomalla eikä tarvettä näitten tekstien lukemiselle edes ole ollut.

Uusia asioita on kuitenkin tapahtunut, ilmoitin nimittäin pomolleni, että nyt riittää öljybisnes. Olen siis sillä kolmen kuukauden irtisanomisajalla ja viimeinen työpäivä StatoilHydron palveluksessa on perjantaina 31. lokakuuta. Kovasti kyllä jännitti tämä päätös mutta toisaalta oli se helppoakin: työ ei vaan tuntunut mielekkäältä. Niiden öljykaivojen paikkojen miettiminen kun ei tuntunut tarpeeksi mielekkäältä elämänsisällöltä. Työ kuitenkin haukkaa yli kolmanneksen elämästä. Seuraavana askeleena onkin sitten yrittää päästä kiinnostavien aihealueiden kimppuun eli todennäköisimmin jatko-opiskelemaan. Mitään ei ole vielä sovittu mutta pidän teidät kyllä (jossain määrin) ajan tasalla. Täytyy nyt vain toivoa, että tuli tehtyä oikea valinta eikä tullut luovuttua lupaavasta öljyurasta ihan turhaan. Lopuksi vielä lainaus työjunamatkalla korvaan osuneesta, tähän tilanteeseen hieman liittyvästä, Jimi Hendrixin kappaleesta:

Will I live tomorrow?
Well, I just can't say
But I know for sure
I don't live today

Sitten siihen mainittuun huomiseen. Ennen tuota jatko-opiskelua, suunnitelmissa on jotain ihan muuta. Olen nimittäin miettinyt, että surffaus olisi varmasti mukavaa puuhaa. Siispä seuraava kohde onkin jossain lämpimässä maassa, missä tuota lajia voisi opetella! Tällä hetkellä se kaikkein lupaavin kandidaatti on Ecuador. Siellä on kuuleman perusteella rantaa, surffimahdollisuuksia ja halpaa. Siinä samalla voisi sitten myös kierrellä Outin jalanjäljissä hieman tuota Etelä-Amerikkaa. Seuraa ei ole vielä mukaan ilmottautunut, joten vapaamuotoisen hakemuksen voi lähettää sähköpostitse minulle. Mitä aikaisemmin ilmottautuu, sitä enemmän on sananvaltaa reittisuunnitelmiin.

Koska maisemat vaihtuu, öljy pysyy maan alla ja turskat meressä, tarvitaan blogille uusi nimi. Julistankin siis suuren nimiäänestyksen alkaneeksi! Tuossa sivupalkissa on minun alkukarsimani ehdotukset. Jos kaikki on huonoja, omia ehdotuksia saa ehdottaa. Koska tuohon viimeseen työpäivään on kuitenkin se reilut 80 päivää jäljellä, äänestysajan umpeuduttua kaksi eniten ääniä saanutta ehdokasta pääsevät toiselle kierrokselle. Presidentinvaalien tyyliin siis.

Ja Jukka ehti jo muistuttaa, että kuva unohtu. Täytyy totella. (Tuo kuva löytyi siis ihan kulman takaa.)

Reissu rokkiin

2008-07-13T18:55:00.005+02:00

Hei taas. Viimeisen tekstin jälkeen on taas sattunut ja tapahtunut vaikkakin suurin osa (mahdollisista) lukijoista tietääkin yleiset linjaukset kerron silti kuvioista täällä. Kävin siis Turussa ja Ruisrokissa. Aikaisemmista reissuista matka poikkesi siinä, että lentokoneen sijaan käytin ekologisempaa ja halvempaa juna-laiva -yhdistelmää. Miinuspuolena tässä sitten oli 27 tuntiin venynyt matka-aika.

Reissu alkoi työpäivän jälkeen työpaikalta Stjørdalista josta kuljin ensin Helvettiin ja sieltä sitten norjalaisella junalla Östersundiin. Östersundissa 15 minuutin vaihdon jälkeen hyppäsin ruotsalaiseen junaan joka sitten saapui Tukholmaan klo 3.30. Tuossa junamatkan aikana kävi sellainen pieni haveri, etten onnistunut ostamaan itselleni ruokaa joten Tukholmaan saapuessani oli siinä nälkäkuoleman partaalla. Ruokapaikan löytymistä viivästytti se, että tuohon aikaan Aurinko oli juuri nousemassa ja Tukholma oli äärimmäisen kaunis talojen heijastuessa tyynestä vedestä. Siinä tuli sitten (ehkä osittain sen nälän aiheuttamassa) hurmiossa napsittua muutama kuva ja vasta tämän jälkeen suuntasin etsimään ruokapaikkaa. Suureksi yllätyksekseni tuohon aikaan ei kovin moni ruokapaikka tuntunut olevan auki. Epätoivo alkoi kiristämään otettaan kunnes huomasin lauman humalaisia ruotsalaisia ja tietenkin siellä missä on känniläisiä, on myös terveellistä grillisapuskaa. Lähdin siis selvittämään noiden päihtyneitten svenssonien alkulähdettä ja sen löydyttyä löytyi myös grilli sekä nakit perunamuussilla! Ah sitä onnea!

Joka aamu matkalla töihin mä kuljen helvetin läpi.

Aamuinen Tukholma on nätti paikka.

Tukholmasta matka jatkui Viking linellä Turkuun ja matka sujui yllättävän mukavasti aurinkoisella kannella torkkuen ja kirjaa lukien. Reissun huippukohtiin kuului Suomen pääministerin bongaaminen laivalta! Valokuvia en tästä tapauksesta ottanut vaikka siihen yllytettiinkin sillä myös Matti ansaitsee lomarauhansa. Valokuvia yleisesti tästä reissusta (ja paluumatkasta) on täällä. Matkan gps-logi löytyy täältä vaikkakin siitä puuttuu pätkä Sundsvall-Tukholma.

Turussa tapasin melkein kaikki vanhat tutut (puolet näitten tekstien lukijakunnasta) ja kiersin vanhoja kulmia mukavan nostalgisissa tunnelmissa. Yllätyin itsekkin kun mietin, että siitä on jo vuosi kun muutin pois Turusta. Näin se aika vaan lentää. Ruisrokki sujui ihan kivasti: Bändit oli mukavia, seura hyvää ja säät hellivät. Artisteista etenkin Jose Gonzalez jäi mieleen ja sunnuntai puolestaan loisti ulkomusikaalisilla ansioillaan. Valokuvia tapahtumasta on saatavilla mutta niitä pitää jokaisen pyytää erikseen ja henkilökohtaisesti.

Paluumatka Norjaan hoitui laivalla ja vanhempien autolla. Isukki, Äiti ja Outi tulivat siis käymään täällä Trondheimissä siinä samalla ja aiheuttivat minulle kohtalaisen univelan jota nukuin koko viikonlopun pois. Syötiin porukalla myös hyvät kala-ateriat. Huomenna sitten ohjelmassa paluu arkeen ja Norjan sateisiin.

Avaimet maton alla

2008-06-29T19:16:00.006+02:00

Tällä kertaa teille on luvassa kuvareportaasi! Nimittäin Trondheimin taidemuseon seinällä on iso lakana joka ilmoittaa avaimien olevan ovimaton alla.

Olin jo useamman kerran kulkenut ohitse tuosta, lukenut tekstin ja jatkanut matkaa mutta eilen illalla matkalla leffateatteriin päätin selvittää asiaa hieman tarkemmin. Ovimatto siinä oven edessä nyt ainakin oli. Onko siellä alla ne avaimet sitten?

Yllätys oli suuri, kun maton alta tosiaan löytyi avain!

Seuraava ajatus on tietenkin kokeilla saako sillä avaimella oven auki. Ikävä kyllä avain ei sopinut museon ulko-oven lukkoon ja museokäynti jäi tällä kertaa väliin.

Uusi työ

2008-06-22T20:36:00.007+02:00

Viime tiistaina oli mun ensimmäinen oikea työpäivä. Toimistonkin sijainti muuttui ja nykyään mä sitten kuljen junalla tuonne naapurikaupunkiin Stjørdaliin. Kävelyineen tuo mun työmatkani vie aika tarkalleen tunnin ja sen takia onkin pitänyt aloittaa sängystä nouseminen jo kuudelta. Eka viikko onnistunut ihan mukavasti ja toivottavasti myös tulevaisuudessa. Asiaa on auttanut se, että keittelen kahvit termoskannuun ja juon niitä sitten junamatkan aikana samalla kun katselen vuonomaisemaa. Kivan ensimmäisestä viikosta teki sen, että toisena työpäivänä (keskiviikkona) oli firman kesäjuhlat. Siellä tuli tavattua uusia työkavereita ja vaikuttaakin siltä, että keski-ikä on huomattavan paljon nuorempi kuin tuolla edellisessä konttorissa. Lisäksi ei-norjalaisia on aika reilusti.

Työnkuva ei vielä ole sen tarkemmin selvinnyt. Tai sen verran on tiedossa, että kuulun ryhmään joka pitää huolta Njord-öljykentästä. Ihmisten puheitten ja tän koulutusvuoden perusteella homma lienee kuitenkin kovin soveltavaa ja koostunee pääasiassa tietokoneohjelmien klikkailusta. Lisäksi muutaman sivulauseen perusteella saattaa olla edessä joitakin matkoja tuonne itse lautalle jossain vaiheessa. Yleisesti tuon meidän toimiston työnkuva on tuotannon ylläpito Norjan meren öljykentillä. Tämä on kuulemma se paikka, missä firman rahat tehdään.

Vaikka niitä kuvia lupailin, niin tähän tekstiin en saanut järjestettyä. Syynä blogger.com hyytyily.