Tales about Mountains and Numbers

First Impression from Santa Barbara

2009-06-20T08:37:00.001+02:00

I think you had to wait long enough to get the first non-Facebook pictures from my new home, Santa Barbara. So here's a short report from overseas on my first impressions, small and big adventures from my new home located on a narrow strip between the Santa Ynez mountains and the Pacific ocean.

First of all, it is a great place with an unbeatable climate that combines both the mountains and the sea...

... and additionally a small picturesque, colonial, and a little provincial town:

Even though I arrived late in the middle of the night, I was warmly welcome by my landlady/roommate Lynn in my new house. Since Lynn is an artist, everything, even though simple, was very chique, such as the kitchen.

On my first weekend in SB, Karl, Fritz, and Jordan took me out to Gibraltar and showed me the local sandstone walls.

I guess, after this first impression, that I ended up at the right place! Besides the probably best university (in control), SB additionally offers the mountains, the sea, and rocks all at once :)

My very first investment (on my first day) was a mountain bike and so I ended up using the public bus systems exactly once and never ever again.

Of course, the mountain bike paid off immediately, not only when cycling to university and for everyday life. As you may know, SB is renown to be one of the best biking spots all over North America (add year-round perfect weather and at least 1000m of relative altitude gain), and so I started to discover trails

and climbing spots all over town and the surrounding mountains. Among the various boulder opportunities, were artificial rock such as this one including the nurses :),

but also really picturesque, scenic, and high-quality boulder areas, such as Lizzard's Mouth! To be honest, the rock quality and quantity can by far not mess with Fontainebleau, Ticino, Magic Wood etc., but the view is definitely unbeatable!

And of course, there are also lots of fun problems with tiny crimps

big jugs in steep terrain,

and slopery top-outs.

I quickly made friends with some other climbers I met, such as Mary

and Rob, with whom I have tried this particular problem multiple times.

Besides lots of fun, high, and scary top-out boulders, Lizzard's Mouth also offers some fun and juggy traverses, of course always with picture-perfect view!

Unfortunately, my finger tips weren't used to such grainy sand stone after my long South America travel. Consequently, I came home as follows, everyday:

But luckily, there's "utterly smooth" and my hands quickly got used to tender rock embracements :D

For those of you less interested in the local bouldering and climbing scene, I attached some pics of Santa Barbara downtown, the most expensive real estate market of North America.

I guess you can understand why people so much like to build their mansions here. Some pics from the SB street life, the touristy main street

a concrete Skateboard park next to the ocean,

and the famous and even more toursity Santa Barbara pier, home of the artists, gourmets and tourists :)

While talking about gourmet food, you know everything in the U.S. comes in little bigger portions, right? So once, Lynn brought me "a piece" of salmon home of the size of my MacBook.. . well somebody's gotta cook and eat it :D

By the way, the main reason why I am here is, of course(!), my PhD at the University of Santa Barbara, within the world's probably best group on control and dynamical systems. I am here in great group led by Francesco, which is mostly working on motion coordination, autonomous agent systems, and network control. After little less than two months now, I have a great connection with all the other students and we have a fun time in the lab. By the way, here's my place in the "motion café". Do you recognize the Mate tea, the climbing harness, and the bike?

So that's where I spend most of my time during the day, and afterward I usually go for a short bouldering session into nearby (by bike 45 minutes uphill) Skofield park. Do you see how sweaty my back is from the ride ;)

Whenever, I don't spend my time doing research or climbing, I try to go on road trips. No, you will here now nothing about climbing (all of the climbing trips come in a separate post), but about an excursion to Death Valley.

With me were Dimi, Giuseppe, and Ruggero, who I knew from the university. We arrived late in the evening and camped high above death valley that night, because our next day brought us up to the high mountains surrounding the valley.

Starting from dry and clear forest, we pleasantly strolled (or hiked) along a ridge

until we encountered the first snow high above the Death Valley! Yep, zoom a little into the pic below and you will see the salt flats (with zero rain all year long) roughly 3.500m below us. What a spectcular contrast!

Finally, after endlessly traversing ridge, we made it to Telescope Peak. And again, what a fantastic contrast, especially if you consider the enormous elevation difference of the snow covered peak to the bottom of Death Valley!

Here you can see Ruggero fighting up the last steep meters throughthe slushy snow, eventually we all made it ;)

The mandatory picture break took a little longer since Dimi is a hobby photographer as well as a computer vision researcher:

A little bit exhausted, hungry, and sunburned we started our quick descent which brought us from 3.400m in the snow to

-100m in the sand !

Death Valley, located way below sea level and surrounded by mountains that are up to 3.500m high. Can you imagine how hot it is down there? To be honest, it felt really good after the cold and windy hike, even though our heads hurt from the elevation difference.

Mother nature provided us a spectacular sun set at the end of a fun day full of extremes.

The next day I got up and had a sand grain in my eye, which decided to stay there for seven hours. Damn! But I still enjoyed the day, which started with the opposite perspective as the day before - deep down in salt flats of Death Valley looking up to Telescope Peak.

Since, I have just been to Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia, this was not really impressive, but alright - once again in a salt flat :)

What else is there to do deep down in the hottest point of North America?

Well, there is some hiking through gorges shaped by yearly floods (seriously, even if you don't believe it),

of course you can take pictures of really colorful contrasts,

look for the few existing wild life in the valley,

and there is some scenic driving - America's favorite sport :)

As you see, this was a rather touristy day and it ended where most road trips in the South West end, in the In&Out in Barstow :) Do you remember, Tom, Andi, and Hansi? Eventually, I got also that sand grain out of my eye that killed my day. A final picture from the closest point to hell, where the ground cracks up to release the incredible heat from within:

Back in Santa Barbara ealy in the morning (just take a look at my hair and you will see). I am once again high up on the mountains and above the morning fog from the ocean.

What I am doing here? Bouldering some laps, correct!

I still didn't tell you why my favourite bouldering area is called Lizzard's Mouth, right? Well, obviously there are lots of these little climbing mutants, but the main reason is

simply a giant lizzard's mouth, which offers optimal climbing terrain and a picturesque background for photos.

Here I am on the longest undercling traverse ever - the fun Meille traverse low above the ground.

And there's still a lot more to be discovered in pocket wonderland!!!

As you see, studying in Santa Barbara is a little bit like being in an outdoor paradise. There's just one thing disturbing the idyll...

and that is the occasional wildfire looming on the mountains and threatening the town. This picture is taken from the local newspaper. At the beginning the fire was quite smallish and seemed harmless, but the local "sundowner" winds fanned it more'n'more. I thought it was pretty scary, even though most other people did take it as one of the usual summer fires.

That's what it looked like from university:

But luckily, Arnold organized fire trucks from all over the state, and, with the help of the "June gloom" (morning fog), the firefights managed to get the fire under control.

Eventually, they extinguished it sooner or later. However, a good part of Santa Barbara's hiking, climbing, and biking terrain is burned now and we have to see how long it takes mother nature to regrow it again.

Let's change the topic. One weekend, we went to L.A. to the Dogers baseball game:

Honestly, if there is no home run, then baseball is a pretty boring game, especially, if it takes 12 innings. So we left a little earlier from the stadium, enjoyed the view of downtown L.A.,

and went to Sandra's favorite Libanese restaurant in Santa Monica. Mmmm, yummy!

What else do we do here in Santa Barbara besides studying (in fact that is 90% of the time) and rock climbing? As you may well know, my university here got voted "hottest university of the U.S." by some well-known billboard magazine. So there are college parties going on all the time and everywhere! Occasionally there are also grad student parties, such as the one here:

So honestly, what is better than a keg'n'pool party in sunny Southern California?

Nothing, right? And people just went crazy. At a later time point, some people even jumped off naked(!) of the roof.

Too bad, I don't remember all the details from the evening... but it was kind of fun, for sure! I also discovered my brother's all time favorite game here, Bing ;)

Looks like lot of fun, right? And somebody even gives all these guys a doctor title :)

As promised (a long time ago), Hansi showed up to visit me, or rather, he picked me up to work with him in Magic Mountain, Santa Clarita.

What did we do there? Well driving around the Batmobile in Sixflags...

and setting up a pipe and some other structures for a summer show there.

It was fun to meet Hansi again, and to do some physical work again (no, not the same as exercise). I mean, somebody gave me a diploma in Mechanical Engineering ;)

Finally the pipe was all set (pay attention to the roller coaster in the background)!

And so I and Hansi got our well-deserved Hofbräu beer after work :)

Speaking of German beer, I found a little Bavarian island between Santa Barbara and Santa Ynez. Right behind the bouldering areas, there's the cold springs tavern,

which feels a little bit like being home in a Bavarian hut!

Well, a little bit ;)

So after you saw now many climbing, partying, hiking, and travelling pictures, you may ask yourself: "Isn't this guy living at the ocean?" Yes, indeed I am, but so far I always avoided the ocean, except for running at the beach. But when Oliver offered me a little cruise with his Catamaran, I could not resist but join him. So that was my first contact with the sea...

Other than that, I rather stick to research, climbing, and cycling in my little academic paradise!

So, I hope this short blog gave you a fairly good impression of what I am doing here. The next post will be about some climbing excursions to the local Californian rocks!

So stay tuned!

¡Nos vemos!

Flo

A Short Intermezzo at Home

2009-04-13T08:32:00.009+02:00

"Home is wherever I am" is a famous saying. Well, if we take that literally, then my home is pretty mobile. Maybe that's why I especially enjoyed these twelve days back at "home" in Bad Tölz and together with Katrin.

It feels strange coming home from a long tourist trip in foreign countries, only to find yourself among tourists again. This time though, they came to visit my beautiful Bavaria and I was the local ;)

So what have I been up to these twelve days at home? Well, first of all I went to Frankfurt in order to get my VISA for the USA. Don't ask, it was completely pointless to show up there personally. However, on the way back from Frankfurt I stopped in Stuttgart for three nights and met some old friends and visited some memory-laden places all over town. During an afternoon slacking session in Schlosspark Katrin and I even convinced Adrian to get a slackline himself.

After this too short stop in Stuggi we went where the fun was, that is, Spring in the Northern Alps with all its blissful and advantegeous sides, such as Spring ski tours in my home mountains!

Here you can see Katrin and my dad after the first descent at Schönalmjoch. Do you see the beautiful face in the back that we skied down?

Awesome, isn't it? Katrin thinks so, too. At least in the moment before entering steep three runs with crusted snow...

Here is a memorable and beautiful picture right before the drop-in. Does some local recognize the mountains in the back?

Shame on you guys, this was simply Risser Falk with its gorgeous bowl. The next day took us to a mountain a little further East high above the Achensee. Another gorgeous picture of Katrin approaching the final summt ridge. In the back of the next pic you see the notorious Guffertkar, so we are at...?

At the Unnütz, right ;) And Franz is luckily with us. I think I have never been ski-touring in the backcountry with him before. So we had lots of fun. Here he is on the final steps up the ridge towards the summit.

And oh my "gosh", was it beautiful up there! Btw, never trust anybody usin' the words "gosh" or "jeez", haha. No seriously, it felt like 20ºC high above the Achensee, the view was magnificient, and an awesome downhill was awaiting us.

Don't you belive me?

Believe me now, it was virgini slushy Spring snow :) Back in town, we relaxed and got some Mate tea to get awake again.

Mate tea below and on the line :D

I think Argentina made me dependent on Mate... we even had it for dinner besides vine ;)

After two or three days of skiing and climbing we felt ready for a day off. In fct, we planned to go to Kochel for climbing, however, due to a lack of motivatin we rather headed further West towards one of our (almost) world wonders - Neuschwanstein.

And gosh (haha) is it beautiful there. The entire landscape around the castle is just st up like a huge fairytale-like stage in order to present the castle.

You wonder why I speak like this, although I have been there dozens of times? Well, if you directly come home from places, such as Cuzco, Machu Picchu, Tiwanaku,... etc., then you start to realize how beautiful and amazing all the touristy sights in front of your door are.

So there's a reason why all this Japanese, American, foreign European and Swabian tourists come here and take hundreds of pictures of the castle from the inside

and the outside.

I guess it must just be an awesome setting, spot, and architecture that Kig Ludwig II. picked here... a huge fairytale-like stage! Where's Cindarella, by the way?

Enough sentimentalities and rhapsodizing talking now. Let us leave Neuschwanstein

and get back to where the real deal happens, the Dammkar and the Viererkar high above Mittenwald.

Doesn't the Viererkar look absolutely gorgeous and adoring? This 200m wide bowl bounded by hundred meter high vertical lime ston faces. From this pespective you don't even fully appreciate how steep it gets from the top. Here is a pic made down from the summit. I guess the drop-in had roughly an inclination of 47º-50º or so. It obviously gets wider and flatter the further you get down.

In order to fully appreciate this beautiful run, I show you another pic made latter that day from the adjacent Dammkar (on the other side of the upper pic). Isn't it just WOW? You gotta do it!

So what does it look like at the top before you drop in?

It looks like a hell lot of fun I would say :)

After skiing down the Viererkar we ascended the Dammkar to complete our >2.200m day.

Some last looks back the last perfect run and up it goes towards the next one.

Eventually, we sooner or later made it up there and finally enjoyed a new perspective to the backside of all these limestone towers.

Needless to say that the entire downhill run was _____ (you may fill in the missing word).

Since we didn't want to go skiing again the next day, we made it up to Ross'n'Buchstein (my spelling), our local climbing paradise. The downside was the approach through waist deep snow.

The rock up there was nice and warm though and offered, of course, absolutely fantastic climbing on the limestone faces

and the needle. The view while climbing was priceless, snow-covered peaks and blue sky as far as we could see.

Okay, I promise this will the last ski tour story, you have to read. Not because I get tired of writing, no simply because I was running out of time and had to fly to the US. Since I wanted to go skiing anyways, hang out with Katrin, Quirin, and Franz, we simply combined and hiked up the Guffert bowl that you have already seen from the oposite side on another pic further up.

As you can see, Quirin had his board with him, while Franz was coming with Skis, although he had no ski crampons... too bad on a icy morning slope.

By the way, Franz is just hiking up the last steep meters towards the summit's south face, where we took a break before descending down again.

And that's what the face looks like from further below - an impressive ski tour, isn't it?

Once again a matchlessly beautiful scenery... I know I am boring you ;)

So let's get straight to the descend. As you can see the first meters appear to be pretty steep and icy, but Kat is (still) smiling. They weren't that bad anyways, only spectacular.

So let's get the ball rollin', boys!

A fun ascent waited for us, that I better describe in motion picture, that in words. So what follows is a short clip of this and other downhills during that week.

Looks like fun, right? Only our skiing skills in the slushy and/or sun-crusted snow could be a little improved. Luckily, we had exactly the right teacher with us ;)

So in summary, I had a fun and super-cool time at home with Kat, my family, and with all my friends. I guess, it'll take some time until I see Bad Tölz or snow or both of it again.

Unfortunately, it'll also take an undetermined amount of time till I and Kat meet again. We do not know where and when. The balance act over the Atlantic is far and not too easy.

However, with all our common memories in mind, I am sure that it'll all be fine until we meet next time!

To be pefectly honest, after this amazing time at home, I do not want to leave, not even to such a fantastic place as my next "home" - Santa Barbara in California. I am sure I will miss lots of people, things, and epecially my home mountains that showed themselves from their most beutiful side while I was at home.

Anyways, I decided to take the challenge somewhere else and I will do it. Frankly, I have to admit that Santa Barbara isn't that much of a bad place either.

Let's keep it short, Servus Bayern!

Flo

Nazca to Lima, Peru

2009-03-31T01:42:00.011+02:00

The last blog entry you saw was in Machu Picchu, right. Now why the h*** am I, the "monkey" in the dessert now?

Well, since we are short on time (four more days in Peru), we got out of the Cuzco highlands pretty quickly. Namely, we took the tourist train from Aguascalientes to Urubamba, where a tax driver awaited us. This guy should then bring us as fast as possible to the Cuzco bus terminal from where we catch our bus to Nazca. Well, as usual the train was late and the driver was forced to go a "little faster" through the villages of the sacred valley in order to make it in time. Luckily, we had el conductor mas rapido del mundo and made it in time and alive :D

Nazca

Next day we woke up roughly 2.500m lower and in a totally different climate, the dessert of Nazca. Besides having the highest sand dune in the world (Cerro Blanco with a relative height of 1.200m!)

Nazca is famous for the world-known Nazca lines, giant geometric formations and animal drawings in the sand. By giant I mean that you can only see them from a plane. And so we hired a little Chessna ;)

Nobody knows how and why the Nazca culture created these up to 200m huge geoglyphs in the sand. Just imagine these geoglyphs were made 2.000 years ago with nearly perfect precision - how and why?

We had fun on-board observing the lines, although my stomach was revolting a little due to inhomogenity of the air we were flying through. Luckily, I had no breakfast.

Of the various motifs we saw this is my favorite one, "the astronaut." No it wasn't constructed a posteriori by some drunken kids, it has really been created 2.000 years ago. Makes you think about Däniken's theories.

Finally, we made it back to the ground. Since there's not a whole lot to do in Nazca (and I was strating to be fed up by traveling), we just chilled at the airport's pool,

had luch, and quickly hopped on the next bus which brought us to Ica, a small town three hours further North. Still in the misty jungle yesterday, and now lok at today's sunset in the Peruvian dessert.

Ica and Huachachina

The reason why we came to Ica, "Peru's garden", were not the various tropical fruits and the vine grown there, but a little oasis surrounded by dunes - Huachachina.

It is beautiful isn't it? Exactly how would draw an oasis, a small lake lake surrounded by 50m-100m high dunes. This was the perfect place for us to recover from the high mountain chill and to get some last sun before flying back to Germany.

Well, we didn't only relax there. The first thing I we did when we got up was climbing on top of the dunes and that is pretty exhausting, believe me. Two steps uphill and step sliding back down through the hot(!) sand. So you have actually achieved a little something by checking out the beach ;)

Do you see this pretty little fellow that I found we I came back down from the dunes:

No it didn't attack me ;)

Since chilling lazily in the sun isn't our cup of tea, we decided to rent a cab and go on a tour through the local vineyards. As if this wasn't cool anyways, we were additionally in the right time for the harvest season, and so Mum got to pound in the fresh grapes - good for your veins , apparently, and a lot of fun, too!

The cab driver got some local tropical fruits for us that I have never seen. Looks like large green beans filled with cotton, and tastes like banana. Its name was ...?

Here is a picture from the first small vinery that we visited. As you can see, they still use cloak amphorae to store their product:

And their product was, exceptionally not regular vine, but Pisco, a brandy and Peru's national drink. The grapes were just harvested and various sorts of Pisco have already been distillated. Of course, I had to try them all :D

See that's were the Pisco comes from, straight from the distillery. Methanol and Ethanol are here simply separated by taste and color... attention, dangerous!

To be fair, I have to admit that the skull is there for religious reasons and to honor the deads. Next, we went to another Pisco distillery, where they had an interesting museum in their garage with all kinds of freaky things, such as a model ship made of human bones, various Inka skulls and artefacts, stuffed animals etc. Mum especially liked the crocodile:

Another distillery and a vinery later, we were kind of drunk

but still had to move on to our next stop, Lima. More drunk than sober we got on the next bus...

Lima

Welcome to Santa Monica ... hmmm, Lima, right?

If you just see one of the osh suburbs with its modern coast line you could indeed think that you are somewhere in the L.A. area. Even the languages are the same - Castellano and English. No seriously there are also parts of Lima that you would expect as a traveller. I am a little bored from describing colonial architecture, churches, and museums, so just take a look at yourself at one street leading to the Plaza de Armas.

Still Lima is totally different than the rest of Peru, just as different as New York City is from Guatemala. I wonder how the people of Cuzco get along with this huge discrepancy in money, lifestyle, and all the non-Quechuan people. This difference just helps us to easier accustom to Western Civilization again, right Mum?

This picture was taken after a shopping spree, all the beach clothing she wears is new :) But we didn't just go shopping, or actually, I din't at all. I rather checked some parks on the waterfront, such as the Parque d'Amor which could be on-to-one in Barcelona, at least from the Gaudi-like mosaic benches.

But as you can see I am fed up with the travelling and lost the motivation to explore museums and visit churches. Am I ready to end my travels and go home? Probably. Our tour through colonial Lima was definitely as short as possible and

we rather went down to the beach :)

Since we only had 1.5 days anyways until our flight leaves, we just enjoyed ourselves, had some drinks in street bars

and fine'n'exquisite dinner in the evening.

Every trip comes to end and this time I and also my Mum weren't sad about it but looked forward to go home again. And so we left Lima, South America, and my little adventure came to an end.

Now there should be some concluding lines coming, wrapping up my trip, pointing out the highlights, crying for left-back friends and memories. Maybe I will write those lines one day, but not now. It has been a wonderful 2.5 months here in South America and I have countless unforgettable memories. I am not looking backward in tristesse but forward to go back home to all my beloved friends, family members, and, of course, Katrin!

Adios South America and thanks for all that I was allowed to see, touch, smell, taste, feel and experience there.

And now I am back home ;)

And tomorrow I will see Katrin again!!!

The Salkantay Inka Trail to Machu Picchu, Peru

2009-03-27T00:58:00.013+01:00

Once again, we got up early... 4am, way too early for my taste. We were picked up by a cab together with Washin, our guide for the next days, and Cayetano, our prospective cocinero (cook). Climbing over a high pass the cab brought us out of busy Cuzco to Mollapata, which was the start of the our, the Salkantay Inka trail. The mist shifted apart early in the morning and granted us a view on Nevado Salkantay, the mountain we will be hiking around for the next days.

We started our hike in the little village of Mollapata, where Mum got to try some local bio-lipstick ;) By the way, the kind of touristy lookin' person on the picture is Washin, our guide...

The cowboy on the lower picture is Cayetano, our cook for the next days. Aren't we a nice team?

At the beginning we were in subtropical valleys at a low elevation of about 2.500m,

but thanks to the steep trails we quickly gained altitude.

Unfortunately, or should I better say "as expected", our guide wasn't half as fit as we are and so we were forced to take a break once in a while.

We even had a little fight with our guide, because he wanted to camp on green meadows way below Salkantay pass but we were eager to move on. Finally, I convinced him (by bribing him with beer) to a little higher up towards the white mountains you see in the pic below.

Since the view cleared up in the evening, nobody regretted going higher up, where we had an amazing view of Salkantay's sheer South face. Impressive definitely! Too bad I will not make it to Huaraz this trip to see the beautiful Alpamayo ;(

But our perspective wasn't bad either, especially when you just get out of your tent with two beer, right mum?

Definitely, one of my favourite pictures!

Cayetano prepared a really good dinner for us spiced with herbs that he found along the track. We were awakened at six in the next morning with a yummy Coca matesito, had breakfast, and hiked up towards Salkantay pass.

The pass is depending at which map and which sign (c.f. pic) look at between 4.400m and 4.800m high. Since we were well adapted to the altitude from Bolivia, it didn't matter too much. We stopped up there for some minutes to praise Panchapapa (Father mountain god in Quechua), sacrifice some Coca leaves, and just soak up the scenery.

While descending the weather turned bad, really bad. In fact, we felt like in a tropical shower in the middle of the jungle. Unfortunately, the tropical shower was quite chilly at this elevation... okay it was really cold, I admit it.

After walking downhill in the pouring rain for three hours we stumbled over a small local village. As it turned out, Cayetano's cousin lived there and we were invited in one of their houses t warm up over the open fire.

Unfortunately, I just took one picture in there. I should have taken more but it just didn't feel right to me. It was very interesting to be at an original Quechua family's place cutt off from any contact to the modern world and observe their local customs, such as guinea pigs all over the place...

As we descended further down into the tropical valleys the weather got better, the sky cleared up, and we had a picture perfect view of Nevado Salkantay again.

This picture reminds me a little of my treks in Nepal. You are yourself in the valley in dense jungle and look up to the glazier shining high above you in the sun, impressive and truly wonderful. It just doesn't fit together, the jungle and the glacier, but the mighty rivers rushing in the background tell you that it is real. You want to see it in motion picture, together with our next day's bridge?

In the next morning we crossed the river,

took a look back at the incredible scenery offered by Salkanty,

and descended into a tropical gorge, always following th melting water through the jungle.

Wahsin, slow as usual, led us through the jungle

passing incredibly beautiful waterfalls,

crossing the thunderous creeks beneath them,

until we finally made it back to civilization. Luckily, there were banana plantations everywhere (they are growing 17 different species of bananas there!) and I could stuff myself :)

We hiked out the valley until we got to a place called Playa (seriously) around lunch time. There I played football with the local kids and Mum had fun with the newborn dogs:

While Cayetano was preparing lunch, I stole his knife for some "Crocodile Dundee" posing:

Since we were going to spend the night in Playa and had nothing to do for the rest of the day, we decided to walk the 20km to the next town, Santa Teresa, where really nice hot springs should be located. Washin was too exhausted from the morning hike and decided to stay and take a nap. So we took off alone and made our way through banana

and coffee plantations.

Although the hike was long and it was hot'n'humid, it felt like walking through a paradise-like botanical garden, a garden full of bananas and coffee!

Eventually, we made it to Santa Teresa and its hot springs. And, damn, it was worth the long hike. I hav never been to such beautiful natural pools, anywhere!

Steep vertical hills in the background, jungle in the valley and snowcapped mountains above, what do you want more? Well, some hot springs to revitalize your muscles ;) By the way, for the way back to Playa I organized a driver.

The next morning we hiked up along an old Inka trail to Llactapata. The trail consisted of stairs exclusively, which led through dense vegetation.

Bushwhacking in a hot'n'humid environment!

Pretty soon the vegetation changed from subtropical rain forest to a cloud forest. You don't know what a cloud forest is, well imagine a rain forest with moss everywhere and with slightly lower temperature... or just look at the picture:

Do you have the impression? It looks like a fairytale forest, taken directly from lord of the rings.

As we crossed the Llactapata pass, we saw a quite famous mountain ridge at the other side the valley. Do you now that place?

Shall I help you and zoom a little bit into the picture?

It is one of our new seven world wonders - Machu Picchu! But more about that later, it's on the next day's schedule anyways. We descended down into the valley again and left the cloud forests, which means that we entered the domain of sun (=no clouds) again

and together with it the tropical vegetation - purple bananas, yummy :)

Back down in the hot(!) valley we crossed another mighty river

walked by one of the most impressive waterfalls I have ever seen (although it's the drainage of a water reservoir),

and hiked along the railway (together with Cayetan becaus Washin needed a break)

until we finally arrived at Aguascalientes, the base camp for Machu Picchu and one of the most frequnted places of all of South America. From here on everything changed completely, from the peaceful solitude of the Peruvian mountains to South America's number one toursit destination with 3.500 visitors a day.

We did what we were used to do, that is, get up early at 4am, and hike up to Machu Picchu for sunrise. Instead of a sunrise clouds were greeting us, but the mist made the setting just more spectacular and mysterious.

And would this classic picture anyways look like without the mist?

As you see, I have Machu Picchu as a little bit a subject of irony. I mean after having been to so many outstanding and spectacular places on my trip, you come to this so-called "New World Wonder", are charged an incredible amount of 44$ to enter (= 44 meals), and additionally you have to share the place with 3.500 other tourists. But believe it or not, Mach Picchu is still more than simply impressive, it is just WOW! I mean look at the upper picture again, can you top this setting with sheer faces on all sides, dense green jungle, and the mist?

In fact, if the same spot wasn't located in such a humid climate and thus all the vertical mountains (in fact granite spires) wouldn't be covered with dense vegetation, then this would be a supreme climbing destination, don't you think so? Well, let's go back to Machu Picchu.

Our trek included a guided tour through the site. Don't worry, I won't flood you now with information. First of all, because the facts aren't that impressive, and second because it's online anyways.

What makes Machu Picchu so spectacular to me is besides the setting also the way how the Incas understood to embedd their own architecture into the vegetation and the exisiting stone formations, as if the buildings were grown...

Concernig the tour of the site, it's always what make of it, right?

Right, the llama would say so, too.

In fact, I think the llamas were put up there simply to give the tourists better picture motifs... probably true. Although can you take any bad pics of this spot? I don't think so.

Besides the main site there are also other sights to see around Mach Picchu. You just need to invest 10 minutes of hiking along scenic trails constructed right at the edge of a cliff.

One such sight is a trail itself, the so-called "Inka bridge." Zoom into the lower picture, do you see how the Incas exploited the ridge in the face to construct a way? Do you see their bridge construction where the ridge is broken off for some meters? Incredible how they must have "walked" in the middle of a 500m granite face...

At the end of the day I also climbed up the scenic hill of Wayna Picchu (the famous rock behind he ruins). The climb involved a little ferrata which was jammed by Japanese tourists and led more or less right up a vertical face. On the top other ruins were awaiting me. Just a spectacular site. Here is another picture of the main ruin complex taken from Wayna Picchu.

Unfortunately, it started raining then and so we hiked back to town, where the train was waiting to bring us back to Cuzco. In short, the five Salkantay Inka trek was a "pleasant" hike through a breathtakingly beautiful scenery and ended with a real highlight. Even though parts of the trek were really touristy, a lot of unforgettable pictures are burned into our minds now!

¡Nos vemos!

Florian

Cuzco and Around, Peru

2009-03-23T00:52:00.008+01:00

Early at 4.00 am we arrive in the so-called cultural and touristical center of South America, in Cuzco, Peru. The carricating and provocing "so-called" properties are definitely true, nowhere else I have seen such a ense concetation of pre and post-columbian sights and sites. And of course, they are all bustling with tourists. Tourists and offers for them are literally everywhere. You cannot escape them... it's indeed annoying... "¿Soy turisto, pues quieres mi plata?". You see that I am a little bit annoyed by touristy Peru, when comared to Bolivia, but nevertheless the setting and architecture of Cuczo is indeed breath-taking, just take a look at the main square, the Plaza de Armas:

Cuzco was the former capital of the Inka empire and pretty much all of colonial Cuzco is constructed on top of older pre-columbian (<-> Inka <-> Quechua) sites, such as the Convento de Santo Domenico which was constructed on the "former temple of th sun":

It's partially classical baroque architecture done by the monks back then

but the fundaments are still the famous and well-known Inka walls.

I guess most of you have read various (conspiracy) theories about the ancient Inkas and their stunning architecture. Just to sum it up briefly, the Inkas were able to construct walls of stones up to 150 t and cut those razor sharp, such that there is not even a marginal gap in the walls. Today one would process stones like these with a diamant saw or a laser cutter, but how did they do it back then?

No idea? Me neither, and the scientific world does not give a satisfying answer for these remarkable craft skills of the Inkas. Well, all of Cuzco's center is built on ancient Inka walls, all narrow little streets

and even the local Scotiabank! Yes my Canadian fellows, zoom into the lower picure and look out for the Scotiabank logo. The pic is really taken inside a Scotiabank ;)

You may even find such sophisticated stones as the famous twelve-angled one... Yes, the good oll' Inkas were exaggerating a little sometimes :)

Do you know Mana's famous sng of the "Muelle de San Blas"? Well, this is my mum enjoyin' café cn leche at the San Blas square. I have no idea if this neighbourhood of Cuzco is really related to the song but it is indeed picturesque...

On our scnd day n Cuzc we hiked up to the ruins f Saqusaywaman (pronounced almost like "sexy nwman") high above the city. On the next pic you can see the nice contrast between the Christian statue (on the left), the ancient Inka ruins, and metroplotian Cuzco.

Although the ruins were more or less only walls and terraces, there was lots to discover, such as arches constructed with megaltiths,

picturesque gateways (perfect for chimney climbing)

or just the impressive masonry of the Inkas, of course with megaliths! Yes, you hold your breath when you see this!

Since my mother somehow attracts alternative medicine mans all around the world, we also met a Shaman up there (dressed incognito) who recognized us by our "aura" and gave us a free tour through the ruins with a Shaman interpretation and all the non-toursit and non-catholic sights, really interesting!

Later the day we had enough of visiting churches and ruins and so we, or more precisely my Mum, went on a shopping spree through Cuzco's markets and bought "some" handcrafts :)

After these two days in Cuzco we were fed up with the masses of tourists and decided to move on a five day pilgrimage to Mach Picchu, the Salkantay Inka Trail. Don't get me wrong, Cuzco is a wonderful place, but it was just too busy, too touristy, and too urban... we just have to escape from South America's cultural center into the mountains. Our five day trek/hike/pilgrimage will bring us through a wonderful scenery directly to one of the new seven world wonders, Machu Picchu. Stay posted for that!

All the best from the Inka's captial!

Florian

Lago Titicaca, Bolivia & Peru

2009-03-20T23:29:00.010+01:00

On our last day in La Paz we got up early and coincidently met up with Anja and Eliza again. Then we took a bus out of the "colloseum" of La Paz towards Lago Titicaca. The place where we spent our first night was called Copacabana and ressembled its famous duplicate in Brazil a little. The main difference was of course the huge crystal clear sweet water lake located at an elevation of 4000 m.

We strolled through the pleasant village and hiked up the local monte calvario for the sunset.

I have never seen equally many sunsets and sunrises as during this trip. My Mum told me a nice quote by a famous politician: "If I could live my life again, I would spend more time playing with children, get up for every sunrise, and stay awake for every sunset."

Somehow each of the sunsets of my trip was just picture perfect, also this one. But how can there be a anything else than a beautiful sunset when you have this scenery?

After witnessing this incredible sunset and after making our way back to the valley in the darkness

we went for some local Lago Titicaca trucha, the best trout of my life, together with a fine bottle of Casillero del Diablo's cabernet sauvignon, aged two years in oak :)

The next day we left the best hostal I ever slept in this trip

and got on small boats which brought us to the Isla del Sol. There's no need to translate this name, I guess. The Isla del Sol is in the Inca's belief the birthplace of mankind and is also one of the natural highlights of Bolivia...

So it's not hard to imagine that the Isla del Sol is an equally beautiful and spiritual place, a rocky island with sparse vegetation in the middle of a deep blue lake and the white mountains in the Cordillera Real in the background.

We took a basic hostel in the north of the island, located on a narrow tongue of land with sandy beaches at both sides (do not forget the elevation of 4000 m!). Then we left the small town (about 20 houses) and started to hike along the island.

If you didn't know that we are in the middle of a huge sweet water lake at 4000 m, you would think we're on some Aegean island, right?

We stumbled over some ancient Inca ruins, where we were more or less completely alone, besides some llamas and donkeys.

What a marvellous place: the blue lake, the rocky island, the white mountains, and the ruinas!

Actually this is a really spiritual and meditative spot, but, with all my left-over activity, I couldn't stand still and just had to perform some monkey activities in the ruins :) Zoom in!

My mother, on the other hand, really enjoyed the calmness, the clean air, and the mystic aura of the Isla del Sol:

But we also passed some nice sand stone boulders, where I could empty my tank of overflowing energy. But I have to admit that I have never climbed at such a scenic place:

We continued hiking through this beautiful scenery and met nothing but donkeys and llamas, right Mum?

Either I got overwhelmed by the beauty and spirituality of the Isla del Sol or I just had a sunstroke...

but I definitley needed something to drink, such as a clod beer ;)

In the late evening, we hiked back to our little fishing village and enjoyed the amazing scenery of the Isla del Sol in the last sunrays high above the Lago Titicaca.

If I could express the special atmosphere of the Isla del Sol in one picture, soaked with spirituality, thrilled by the beautiful nature of the place, and filled by the friendly people... all in one picture, then it would be this one:

Magnify the picture and let it affect you. Don't you wanna be there, right now?

Unfortunately, we had to leave this beautiful place the next day. We cruised back to Copacabana and got on a bus that brought us to the Peruian side of Lago Titicaca.

We got off the bus in Puno, Peru. As usual, the first thing to do when entering a new village is to hike on the local mountain and enjoy the view from there. And, as you can imagine, there is no bad view at Lago Titicaca:

We had half a day in Puno, which we spent by walking around town, enjoying the Andean-Baroque architecture,

discovering funny condor monuments,

and going out for fine Peruian food, especially palta (avocado).

What is there much to say? We had three amazing days at Lago Titicaca and are now ready the enter the Quechuan culture (heirs of the Inca) of Peru. Our next stop is Cuzco, the ancient Inca capital. I expect it to be amazing and bustling with Western tourists. We definitely will not be the only the only gringos as guests in a mentally and physically unspoilt environment, as at Lago Titicaca.

But we will see...

¡Adios muchachos!

Flo

La Paz and Around, Bolivia

2009-03-17T02:22:00.018+01:00

¡Hola y bienvenidos a La Paz!

I have been to many cities all over the world, but none of them had a setting as spectacular as La Paz, don't you think so?

Basically, La Paz is a big hueco (hole) in the 4.100m high Altiplano. Thus the city spans from 4.300m down to 3.100m and is surrounded by the mountains of the Cordillera Real whose peaks reach heights over 6.400m. Let me show you this spectacular setting in motion picture:

Can a capital city be possibly situated any more spectacular?- I don't think so. So whereever you are in La Paz you have these amazing views of the houses "glued" to the walls surrounding the city and the high snow capped mountains above... Awesome!

Let me give you a short impression of the historic center of the town. It consists many picturesque steep streets leading down to the center of the "big hole". Of course, you always have to add the amazing background ;)

From time to time the narrow streets open up to beautiful colonial plazas wtih cathedrals and palaces, which perfectly fit into the scenery outside

and also look amazing inside!

When you stroll around town and enter picturesque colonial courtyards you will discover many things, such as the Musoe de Coca (magnify the pic below)

or, as usual, coloful markets. You have already seen lots of pics of Bolivian markets, so let me skip the fruit, meat, and vegetables and go to a special market in La Paz, the "witchcraft market." here you can buy lots of mystical things originating from the ancient Aymaran culture, such as llama foetus (brings good luck and fortune for house builders)

or stuffed llamas and condors, Anaconda skin, tiger and leopard coats etc. A real freakshow!

The markets of La Paz are endless and so I took the opportunity to visit a small electronics market where I got incredibly cheap spare parts for my camera. Just look at the different items they sell there... you don't wanna know where they come from, respectively where they are stolen from.

I really got lost in the markets , ate lots of unknown food, and strolled around for hours until it got dark and I had to find my way out of the markets and back to the hostel.

The hostel that I took for the first night included a micro brewery and so I had fun party night in La Paz. The next day I got up early, changed my hostel to a more comfortable hotel ('ause my mother arrived that day), and got a nice empanadas breakfast (here they are called salteñnas) fresh from the oven.

During the day I strolled around town, discovered different neighbourhoods,

crossed gorges marking the bottom of the "big hole",

and took nice pictures capturing the moments of playing kids

and playing adults, always with the incredible scenery in the background!

In the afternoon, I took a small collectivo to the outskirts of town situated at 2500m, from where I had a completely different perspective on La Paz (magnify the picture below):

My destination was a beautiful and touristic landscape called Valle de la Luna, another one. One of the first things I saw when I arrived there was the Bolivian military! Do you see the sniper below aiming for a headshot?

No just kidding, this is a Japanese tourist :D

The Valle de la Luna is a small valley made of spectacular sedimentary rock formations with cactii and colorful rocky mountains in the background:

I strolled around through this scenic and beautifuk place, which as actually not that spectacular after having seen similar landscapes in Cachi, San Pedro de Atacama, Uyuni, Tupiza, .... However, a Bolivian indio playing flute on top of one of the eroded rocks made the difference and added a special atmosphere to the place:

Of course, as a tourist in Bolivia I cannot resist the national drug, the coca, and decided to get a real "Coca-Cola":

The effects were... hmmm... let's call them intersting ;)

No honestly, besides the bitter taste (quite good actually), there were no effects at all. After the Valle de la Luna I strolled around the nearby town of Mallasa which looked a little bit like my hometown, and indeed I found the Hotel Oberland there

and the same leisure activities as at home, such as watching the local Sunday afternoon soccer game and drinking beer ;)

So another day full of discoveries in La Paz ended in a beautiful sunset high above the city:

Since the sun just touches one side of the "big whole", you may find a nice sunset there and complete darkness on the other side, an intersting sunset. See yourself:

So this was my second day alone in the capital of Bolivia, and it was a grat day. But honestly I am kind of tired and exhausted hiking around the steep streets of La Paz's neighbourhoods...

But I wasn't allowed to go to bed or to go out for partying that night... Instead I went to the airport and 1.00 am and picked up my mother who made after a 30 hour journey finally to La Paz.

Welcome to Bolivia, Mum! Let us start the day with some salteñas, there will be a lot to see this day :)

On the first day my Mum arrived we took a tour to Tiwanaku, the so-called mother of all pre-Columbian cultures, such as the Maya, Atztecas, or the Incas. Our tour led us out of La Paz through the poor (almost slum-like) suburb El Alto, which was despite its poverty an interesting place.

Unfortunately, or luckily, this day all public transport in El Alto was striking and there were lots of road barriers and even some burning cars. So our little tourist bus was forced to drive endless loops through El Alto, through fields, and even river beds to find a way out of town.

We were not the only ones who tried o sneak through the road barriers. As you can see lots of vehicles got stuck or even "grounded" when attempting to cross small riverbeds instead of the blocked bridges. So actually, the strike was a really spectacular experience!

Finally, we made it out of town and drove through fertile fields (at 4000m) to Tiwanaku, always with the scenic Cordillera Real in the background:

I don't want to bore you with all the facts that we learnt about the city of Tiwanaku and its inhabitants. You can read it all at Wikipedia, if you want to ;) Just some nice pictures from the ruins...

This spectacular historic gate is the place that the current president (Evo Morales), the first indigenuous president of any South American country, chose for his inauguration:

The tour to Tiwanaku was really interesting and amazing, but after 12 hours also a little exhausting.

So it was no wonder that I fell asleep on the way back to La Paz...

... but as soon as we reached the "big hole" in the sunset with the following beautiful and spectacular view, I was immediately awake again. Is there any more spectacular setting of any capital in the world?

The next day we got up early because we wanted to cycle "the most dangerous road of the world down." This road has the most accidents per meter world-wide and winds its way down from 4700 m to 1100 m along a spectacular scenery with waterfalls and cliffs every meter. So you literally cycle down from the glacier zone to the tropical jungle. The ride up to la cumbre, the starting point, took an hour from La Paz.

Once we were up there, at 4700m, we got really fancy and modern downhill bikes, protection all over, and rain suits.

To be honest, I felt a little over-equipped. But all the gear, especially the downhill bikes, promised a lot of fun... So let the ride begin!

The first 35 km (of 86 km in total) were the boring part, a curvy but paved road. Nevertheless, reaching a speed of more than 70 km/h and with various slow trucks on the road, it was fun, too.

Then we made a turn to the actual camino de muerte, which was a narrow gravel road leading along steep cliffs on the left-hand side (with a vertical 400 m drop!), through waterfalls and dense vegetation.

As you can see, the road itself wasn't too dangerous if you're a little used to mountain biking.

The scenery, however, was spectacular, right Mum?

Fortunately, one of our two guides was a former BMX pro. He did all kinds of spectacular jumps (next to a 400 m drop) and he went down really really fast! Besides two Australians I was the only one to keep up with him, and so I had the downhill of my life, both in terms of speed, spectacular setting of the road, and of course the surrounding scenery!

We were a fast and homogeneous group of eight riders plus two guides and pretty much overtook anybody else. Simply the rid of our life:

Thus we had time for a long lunch break right above a spectacular cliff.

After some Coca-Cola, coca leaves, and sandwiches we got ready for the jungle part of our ride! Don't I look really dangerous?

I stayed a minute on a turn higher up and took pictures of our group cycling through waterfalls. As you can see this is a no-slip-track, once slipping away you dive all the way down to the valley ;)

One of our guides also took a lot of pictures and movies of us riding through riverbeds and waterfalls always along the cliff...

How do you like that now?

Finally, after 3600 m of downhill cycling we made it to the tropical valley.

And guess what expected us there

besides llamas?

Right, some cold beer

and a pool!

We stayed down there in the tropical yungas for two or three hours, among coca plantations and monkeys, and had a great time. Can you imagine that our day started almost in the snow? It took us three hours, 30 g of coca leaves and 2 liters of beer to get back to La Paz. One the way up we also took some scenic pics of our downhill along the camino de muerte. Not a bad ride, right?

So to make it short my/our stay in La Paz was great, right Mum?

But we are also looking forward to escape the urban and smoggy part of Bolivia and move into the beautiful and spiritual highlands close to the Peruian border, the Lago Liticaca (Aymaran for "puma rock lake")

So expect some more adventures of me and my Mum ;)

Nos vemos!

Florian

Altiplano Sur y Central, Bolivia

2009-03-13T22:21:00.010+01:00

Tupiza

Instead of following to classic traveller's route from Uyuni to Potosí, I decided that the small town of Tupiza might be worth a two day side trip. So I got up early (at 5.00 am) and took the bus to Tupiza.

Tupiza is a small city, or larger village, close to the Argentinian border and lies in a colorful subtropical valley. The city is surrounded by rocks and hills of all colors which gives an amazing scenery.

Besides its wonderful surrounding which invites you to hike, cycle, and ride through the mountains, the city itself has a beautiful colonial core

and interesting and authentic neighbourhoods, where you can experience the originial Bolivian lifestyle.

Let me once again skip pictures of colorful markets and indigenuous people, because you will still see a lot of them in this post. Instead, let me point out the colorful nature surrounding Tupiza. I spent half a day hiking into the Valle de Los Machos near the village. The entrance to the valley is marked by two disc-shaped rocks called El Puerto del Diablo:

So make a good guess what the first thing is I do when seeing such rocks ;)

¡Hola!

Within the valley I found all kind of weird rock formations, such as really high pillars made of fragile sedimentary rock. At the end of the valley a read canyon, El Cañon de los Incas, awaited me and I hiked along it following a stream.

For those of you who have already been to the Westerrn states of the U.S., Tupiza's surrounding nature can be compared to places in Utah, such as Bryce Canyon or Arches National Park, just set into Boliva's yungas (subtropical valleys). A really nice place for hiking and taking spectacular pics...

So thumbs up for Tupiza and its colorful nature!

At my last day, I ascended this little but rocky hill below with some guys from California and New Zealand. Indeed, the kiwi guy was a mathematician and we had lots of interesting discussion about my little autonomouis robots... somewhere in the Bolivia's Southern Altiplano :)

Tupiza was a wonderful stop of my trip and a huge difference to my past days at the Salar de Uyuni. But it was only a short stop on the way to the colonial cities of Potosí and Sucre. So ¡Adios, Tupiza! and let's get on the way towards Potosí...

Sucre

Yes, you read right! Actually I went to Potosí, but Anja was staying in Sucre at that time. So once I arrived at Potosí, I directly took the next bus to Sucre and postponed Potosí...

Sucre is a wonderful colonial citty and all the houses in its center are painted balzingly white - beautiful!

Sucre was once the capital of Bolivia and still is the "representative" capital besides La Paz. So you can find official buildings, such as the justice palace there,

and street parades are held frequently:

So Sucre is a picture perfect colonial city. Besides its architecture Sucre also offers a variety of colorful markets,

street and market musicians,

and lies in lush green valleys. Of course I had to hike up some of the hills around Sucre and check out the local sand stone blocks for climbing... Okay, no more climbing pictures for this post, I promise. just enjoy the view of white Sucre situated in green valleys:

I had a beautiful colonial hotel in the middle of town. Guess how much a single room in this hostal with private bath, T.V. etc. costs in Bolivia?

And? It is just 5€, no more! Besides the fact that Bolivia is really beautiful it is also incredibly cheap for travelling :)

I spent the first day walking around town, visiting museums, such as the Casa de Libertad,

and enjoyed the harmonic combination of white Sucre and its surrounding green nature. But one of the main reasons why I was in Sucre, was because I wanted to meet Anja there. Her sister Eliza spent a year volunteering in Sucre and so it was no coincidence that we could all meet up there. While I was waiting for Anja at the corner of my hostal, I saw the probably most perfect rainbow ever, don't you think so?

Beautiful isn't it? I had a couple of these rainbows the following days...

Finally, Anja showed up and we had lots of stories to tell each other while we strolled around in Sucre's center, went out for dinner and drinks.

The days in Sucre all passed by, such as this one and I had a wonderful and relaxing time there. Usually, my day started with the best breakfast I ever had in South America (for only 1,50€)

and then I met Anja and Eliza in the nearby Mercado Central (central market), where we had such fancy things as a Vitaminico (Beer, raw egg, various squeezed fruits, and herbs). That's what you look like before you drink this strange cocktail for the first time :)

Eliza obviously really the town well and showed us around in Sucre's colorful markets, such as the Mercado Campesino (farmer's market)

or the Mercado Negro (black market).

If you have already travelled with me, you know much I enjoy strolling through local markets and enjoy the taste, the smell, and the view of the local products, right kat and Franz?

Well, not always... but it is still interesting!

One of the products that I really start to enjoy here in Bolivia are the coca leaves:

By now I can even tell you the difference of coca coming from Cochacamba or the yungas. And yes, chewing coca leaves or using them for tea is legal here, thanks to Evo Morales. About 92% of all men and 81% of all women in Boliva chew coca leaves everyday. So as a tourist you cannot keep away from it and its bittersweet flavour...

Thanks to Anja and Eliza's company I had wonderful time in Sucre although there was physical activity or any stunning sights involved... just a good place to relax and hang out.

Eliza who stayed a year here was about to leave Sucre for good and of course lots of last minute things to organize. So Anja and I got a collectivo to Potosí and left Eliza behind.

Potosí

When we arrived in Potosí coming from green and warm Sucre, I couldn't trust my eyes - snow awaited us there:

Well no wonder, Potosí is situated at an elevation of above 4000m. But still, snow in the summer, so close to the equator? As it turned out the snow was just a remain of a really intense hail storm...

The reason for Potsí's existence, and also the reason for our visit is the mountain Cerro Rico dominating the city from every viewpoint. Cerro Rico once contained and incredible amount of silver and other minerals and was exploited by the Spanish conquistadores. There are uncountable many mines leading into Cerro Rico's interior. More than a million indigenuous people and African slaves died in the attempt to drive the mines deeper into the mountain and exploit more'n'more silver. That's why Potosí is also referred to as the "mouth of hell". On the contrary it has once been the largest and richest city of the world (!) and the Spanish's "captial of money"... Unfortunately, pretty much all the silver is exploited by now and the local miners have to work for a minimal salary while looking for other (partially toxic) minerals under medieval working conditions. So Potosí is still the "mouth of hell".

We spent our first evening in Potosí by strolling around town in the sunset,

admiring how the local people deal with the harsh climate,

visiting some of the more than 60 churches dominating the towns former richness,

and witnessing another parade and street party.

But the main reason why we were in Potosí was of course a visit to the mines of Cerro Rico and witness how the miners work under harsh and unhealthy conditions, just as 500 years ago. Of course, part of the money we paid for the tour to visit the workers in the mines was directed to them and their families. So they are happy to meet tourists underground and show them the mines. We were professionally equipped by former miners with protective clothing

and headlamps. So we looked like miners ourselves and were ready to enter the "mouth of hell."

But before we went to the local miners' market and bought some presents for them, such as dynamite, coca leaves (it is estimated that miners consume the equivalent of 450 kg gold per day in coca leaves), and liquor with 96% alcohol! Seriously, zoom into the lower picture and look at the bottle...

Our next stop before we entered the mines was a factory where the minerals are separated with the most ancient methods possible:

Finally, we entered the mines and worked our way crawling through narrow tunnels.

In a larger cave, the miners worshipped their god of the underworld. They are deeply catholic people, and so they believe in god in the sky and in the devil underground:

We worked our way down deeper into the mines climbing through narrow and slippery tunnels

and could seriously feel the lack of oxygen. The life expectancy of the miners is below 40 years due to all the toxic gases in the mines... We climbed down a ladder to the deepest section of the mine,

where we met some miners working with a hammer trying desperately to gain 30 cm a day!

You may think that people working in such harsh and unhealthy conditions are really desperate and sad. But in fact the miners are happy people who really love their live underground! We had some funny conversations with them. Probably the 96% liquor that we drank together helped, always one sip for Panchamama (mother earth in Quechuah) and the other one for us. So believe it or not, although their work is as bad and as unhealthy as possible, the miners really have fun and love their job!

Back overground we watched our guides set up some dynamite explosives:

You have 4 minutes, so hurry up for the picture :)

After our intese mining experience we thorougly wahed our hands to get rid of the sulfur and aspestos remains. We spent the remaining day strolling around Potosí's former money press, the casa de moneda,

where we found an ancient mule-powered silver press:

Fortunately, the weather cleared up in the afternoon and Potosí showed its best side. It is actually a beautiful place when the sun is out, and furthermore the local people seem to have accepted their fate and are apparently happy, don't you think so?

Here mine and Anja's travels split again. While she's going to Uyuni together with Elisa, I am going North to La Paz, where I will meet up with my mother. I am really looking forward to La Paz since it is supposed to be one of the most impressive cities all over the world. Furthermore, I am of course looking forward to meet my mum there.

So far Bolivia was one of the best parts of my travels and I really fell in love with the country and its people. Let's see how the journey continues...

Hasta pronto in subterreno!

Flo

Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia

2009-03-07T15:30:00.011+01:00

Are you ready for Bolivia?

Are you ready to dive deeply into Salvador Dali's paintings and eventually never get out of it again? Are you ready to witness the weirdest scenery ever? Well, then have fun reading this post and enjoy the pictures, the landscape is just out of this world!

Day 1: San Pedro to Laguna Colorada

Jack and me got up early in San Pedro de Atacama and bought some lat water and food supplies before we got on a minibus which brought us up to the Bolivian border at 4300m. Compared to the Atacama dessert it was freezingly cold up there in the morning.

After we passed the Bolivian customs we jumped on a 4WD vehicle that waited for us at the border. We booked this trip in San Pedro and it should bring us in three days to Uyuni in Bolivia crossing one of the most spectacular sceneries on earth. On our 4WD was besides us two also Maria and Helena from Norway, Rene from Germany, Christian from Spain, and our driver Edgar from Bolivia. Immediately we were joking, laughing, and giggling in all languages. So our group fitted together and the journey promised to be lots of fun.

Our first stop shortly after the border were two lagunas, laguna blanca and laguna verde. The scenery was really bizarre: the laguna blanca (white lake) with crystal clear water at 4300m, some 6000m high volcanoes all around, and lots of flamingos in the laguna.

Yes, you heard right, flamingos are up there. You will see lots of them later, so I will skip them now and put your focus on this wonderful atmosphere high up there at the laguna blanca - truly meditative, bizarre, and beautiful:

Just a kilometer away was the languna verde (green lake), which gained its color due to the high mineral concentration. In fact, the concentration of minerals is so high that the laguna's shores are covered by thick salt crusts and there are no birds nesting there. Another spectacularly beautiful place, greenish water, white salt shores, brown and snow capped volcanoes, and blue skies... the day was just three hours old, so what was there still to come?

A lot was still waiting for us! Our way led us through colorful mountains, which could have been taken out of Salvador Dali's paintings

and we even crossed some 5000m high passes! See how our road winds up through the "painting", incredible isn't it?

Take a second look and magnify the following weird picture. the landscape is indeed called "el desserto de Dali" - Dali's dessert. Do you see all the weird rock formations in the colorful background? Incredible, bizarre, and stunningly beautiful! Makes me go upside down :)

The next highlight were some hot springs right at the border of a salt lake, one of the nicest swims I ever had. Additionally, there is a funny story accompanying this picture: When we arrived there was a group of Germans and Austrians in the hot springs and, as usual in Germany, they were all naked and didn't were any swim suits. Of course, I and Rene immediately followed them and jumped in naked. However, all the other non-Germans were to shy and stayed away from the hot springs. As we sooner or later left the springs, the other people dared to get into the water, of course with pants :) Christian (from Mallorca) made fun me because of this German attitude for the entire trip...

Shortly after the hot springs our journey led us to some geysers and hot mud pools. Believe me the smell was terrible, like rotten eggs, but the scenery was taken directly from Mars:

I mean literally from Mars! Crazy isn't it? All these grey mud pools geysers, and one single orange pool... as bizarre as it can get:

Bolivia is a pretty unregulated country and so we could walk and jump around through the geysers and mud pools. Fortunately, no one was hit by the boiling water or fell into the bubbling mud.

What a weird scenery awaited us during the day? And all of this between 4500m and 5000m altitude. And it was still early afternoon, so what was there more to come? We passed some more colorful mountains, lagunas, and volcanoes... and descended down to 4350m for lunch near the laguna colorada.

Unfortunately, it was getting cloudy and so our driver Edgar decided to stop here and give us the afternoon off. I spent the time hiking through some salt flats with Rene and Christian. But sooner or later they were also affected by the altitude just as all the others... all the others except me, somehow I wasn't tired at all. I took the small golden-brown dog from our cabin with me and hiked with him along a gorge of sand and salt rocks.

I think we were a pretty cute couple, don't you think so?

So what is there obviously to do for me in a rocky gorge? Right, bouldering! And what does bouldering at almost 5000m feel like? Actually not too bad if the salt rock wasn't that fragile :)

I was out there until I got late. Together with my small friend I witnessed another spectacularly colorful sunset. Just imagine all these colorful mountains, a pink'n'purple sky, and a thunderstorm far away on the backside of some volcanoes marking the border to Chile. I think there is an American youth culture word to describe this perfectly - AWESOME!

So this was my first day in Salvador Dali's world and it was filled with highlights from early morning until sunset. Later at night I drank a bottle of vino tinto with Rene, Edgar, and Christian. Thanks to this, the altitude, and the memories of this wonderful day I had a perfect sleep.

Day 2: Laguna colorada to San Juan

We got up early at six to have crystal clear skies, which adds the light blue color to the painting we were driving through. We said goodbye to our cute little dog and took off to the nearby laguna colorada (colorful lake).

And what awaited us there was just... I am missing the words to describe the beauty of this place, so see yourself. Clear blue skies, volcanoes defining the horizon, a red laguna (due to algae) with white salt shores, and crazy reflections!

It looked like somebody painted a black'n'white photography with the completely wrong colors. just bizarre and beautiful... but the landscape was just the background to white llamas at the shores

and pink flamingos in the water!

Incredible isn't it?

Take a look at this stunningly beautiful nature and fauna in motion picture:

Have you ever seen something similar? No me neither... just incredibly bizarre and beautiful, taken directly out of Salvador Dali's mind. There were also some darker llamas and when you catch the right angle these two llamas amandes look like a yin-yan sign :)

I stayed at the shore between the llamas and the flamingos for quite some time until I hiked once around the laguna where Edgar and the others were waiting for me with the 4WD.

Of course, there were also numerous spectacular views on the way around the laguna, such as an "all colors in one pic" scenery

or close-up pictures with the flamingos and some salt island which looked like an iceberg floating through a red sea.

All of us were completely stunned by this scenery, a highlight for each of our travels, right guys?

We continued our way which led us deeper intoDali's painting and we stopped at a nice and scenic rock formation called arbol de piedra - the stone tree.

Another magnificent sight, weird stone formations directly embedded into a colorful painting.

So now make a good guess what was the first thing I did there after taking the obligatory pictures? Right bouldering, and believe me the rock was solid, pocketed, and fantastic to climb!

No wonder, just on the backside of the mountains is the notorious Valle de las Rocas, one of South America's primary climbing destinations. Unfortunately, I couldn't convince the others do to go their for a climbing day... so i stayed in the arbol de piedra formations as long as possible and enjoyed the rock and the scenery:

Sooner or later the other guys wanted leave and so we left this magnificent spot behind us. Fortunately, I have a friend there waiting for me to come back :)

We passed some other lagunas, colorful mountains and volcanoes, weird rocks, llamas and flamingos, ... and eventually just got exhausted by all the impressions of this day, the second day in Dali's painting!

Towards the end of the day we crossed a huge salt lake

and arrived in San Juan, where we slep in the Hotel de Sal. You can translate this name literally, the entire building was made out of salt bricks and cactus wood. As if nature wasn't crazy enough...

A thunder storm rolled over the salt flats and the llamas were fleeing towards the soccer field.

This day was just too much for us, the weird colors tortured our minds, and all the impressions of the day just overwhelmed us. So what was there else to do than sit at a salt bar and have some drinks, think about the right colors nature should have, and look forward to another day which brings us to the highlight of the trip, the Salar de Uyuni.

Day 3: San Juan to Uyuni

Our third day begun just as the other one ended, with lots of llamas:

Our journey in the morning led us through a fertile valley

to some cactii covered hills at border of the Salar de Uyuni, the biggest and highest salt flat in the world.

And then we entered the salar. Currently there is rain season and thus parts of the salar, which is a perfectly flat plain, were covered by an inch of water - a perfect mirror creating crazy reflections! Let's drive through the mirror and enter Alice's wonderland:

We were all stunned by driving through this weird scenery,where you could not anymore distinguish between sky and ground, heaven and earth. As we reached a non-flooded part of the salar, we got out and stood on a solid 6m salt crust. A white flat plain up the blue sky which was again defined by snow capped volcanoes:

Incredible!

Have you ever seen something like this, have you ever stood in such a weird scenery? You can't imagine how bizarre it is, and how picturesque at the same time... Dali's weird mind :)

Of course, this place offers amazing opportunities to capture some funny pictures

which later turn out just as the following one:

There is an entire Norwegian Facebook group dedicated to about 30 of these pictures... we simply had fun taking pics!

So, I think you literally got the picture. This place is out of the world and we were happy to be there!

After a long picture stop we continued our journey over the salt flat, which is of the size of a German federal state. So we had lots of time to enjoy it!

We made another parada de photo (a picture stop), where there was an inch of water over the salt. Make a good guess, are the following two pictures of me

and our two Bolivianos upside down or the right way? Crazy reflections...

Our mind was tortured by all of these crazy impressions of this and the last days, so it was time to leave Dali's painting and get back to reality!

We passed by some people extracting the salt from the salar

and reached solid ground again. More or less solid, the houses were still built of salt and the scenery didn't seem entirely real and correct.

Maybe we were still a little gaga from the last days :)

We got out of our 4WD in Uyuni, strolled around town, and had some beer back in reality.

Uyuni is actually a pretty boring place and there is not much to do, except for one thing - the train cemetery, which is just a huge dump site for old trains... or a tourist attraction., whatever you want to call it. So we followed the train line out of town (into a thunderstorm)

and got to train cemetery in best weather. Honestly, the cemetery was not that bad, in fact, it was kind of beautiful in its own way.

Especially, our British guy Jack couldn't stop to tell the stories how the British Empire constructed the South American railway lines :)

Okay, it was a little interesting, but nothing compared to the experiences and impressions of the last days...

We went back to town, had some food and drinks together, and had to say goodbye to each other late at night. We a bunch of wonderful days together in Salvador Dali's painting, but now we split up and pursue our individual travels.

All the best guys, suerte, and keep our fun time in mind we had in this brain-winding three days...

So back to me: I think I just had another highlight of my travels, lots of unforgettable memories and impressions, and a really good start into Bolivia!

Don't you think so, too?

I have roughly 10 more days until I meet my Mum in La Paz, Bolivia's capital. Ten more days to experience this wonderful country which has not appeared yet on the international travellers' map. I hope you have tortured your mind reading this post and looking at the pics equally as I did, and I hope you had just as much fun!

Stay posted for Bolivia!

Florian

San Pedro de Atacama, Chile

2009-03-03T16:16:00.010+01:00

Early in the morning I took a bus in Salta which brought me over the 4400m high Paso Jama to San Pedro de Atacama in Chile. The scenery during the bus ride was spectacular: colorful mountains (red, green, grey, and brown rocks at once), salt lakes, and volcanoes. Since you will see a lot of these things in this and the probably also the following posts, let me skip the wonderful pictures and descend from the pass and it's impressive volcanoes

down to San Pedro de Atacama, a picturesque oasis in the dry and hot Atacama dessert surrounded by snowcapped 6000m high volcanoes:

San Pedro de Atacama is just a spectacular place which seems to be out of this world. Not only the surrounding scenery is incredible, also the town itself is charming. Narrow and picturesque streets, blinding white adobe houses, a nice main plaza

a beautiful church with white adobe walls and a roof made of cactii,

and a colorful handcrafts market.

To make it short, San Pedro de Atacama is truly a small paradise in the Atacama dessert, a wonderful place. Unfortunately, I was not only the only one to discover this. There are quite many tourists strolling through the streets of San Pedro. However, if you stay off the main track you will discover wonderful views, such as the following one:

I met lots of travellers in the bus and, once we arrived, we also met a Chilean guy who owns sort of a hostel. So altogether we took over his entire house with 12 people. Our Chilean friend (sorry, I forgot his name) was a former bodyguard and so we had lots of fun practicing martial arts in his backyard.

As usual, we had a truly epic asado together with some locals and lots of beer and vine. A great first evening in beautiful San Pedro de Atacama.

The next day I got up early (without a hangover), strolled through the streets of San Pedro, and rented a bike - a really good one with disc brakes, suspension, and all the equipment you need to have fun.

Together with some friends from the hostel I cycled through the Valle de Muerte (death valley), a bizarre landscape of sand dunes, narrow gorges, sand and salt rocks (seriously!). On the pic below you can see Kathy, Nick, Jack, and Michelle cycling through this crazy scenery.

Oh yeah, and the best of it were the sandboards that we took with us :) A group of travelling buddies, sandboards, and mountainbikes... what more do you need for a perfect day in the Atacama dessert?

We made it to the end of the valley, where some pretty high sand dunes awaited us. Seems like fun, right Jack?

And it was fun although sandboarding is not as easy as I expected, not related to snowboarding at all... Well, goin' straight down wasn't hard ;)

Here Nick, our Utah local, shows how it's being done. Yeah!

After we were exhausted from hiking up the sand dunes we left the Valle de Muerte and headed North and hiked up a hill high above a fertile valley - the dessert was just on the backside of these rocks.

We found some old Inca ruins there. We strolled through the remains of an apparently larger village and had a nice view on the Atacma dessert, the oasis of San Pedro, and the volcanoes in the background.

On the backside of the hill with all the ruins we found the following mystical arch and some stone carvings. I guess at least the arch doesn't date back to the Incas, right?

We followed the narrow gorge behind the arch and entered a large cave system which has apparently a couple of kilometers of tunnels. From now on it was getting narrow and I was the only one who brought a torch...

But luckily we had five cameras with flash lights illuminating the narrow tunnels of the cave, right Kathy and Michelle?

We had a fun time in the cave until lots of boulders blocked our way, the tunnels were getting narrower, and the climbing inside the cave harder. So we decided to head back into the blazing sunlight of the Atacama dessert.

The others decided to head back to the hostel, take a shower, and regenerate from the long exhausting day. I thought that the time is till sufficient for some biking and exploring the area. So I crossed a range of salt mountains, the Cordillera de Sal, and took the road leading to Calama. How much fun cycling in the Atacama dessert is, you can't imagine it :)

I returned to the top of the Cordillera de Sal just in the right time to see the sunset high above the bizzare Valle de la Luna (moon valley), whose weird salt ridges indeed look like I imagine the moon:

Every travel guide book says that a sunset above the Valle de la Luna is one of the best views of all of Chile - it's right. Another sunset of the category "unimaginable beautiful"!

I stayed on top of the Cordillera del Sal until the last sun light faded away from the Valle de la Luna and the volcanoes marking the boarder to Argentina and Bolivia.

I had to cycle back to San Pedro in the darkness but this sunset was truly worth it. Back in San Pedro I met my friends and we went out for a delicious dinner with superb Chilean Cabernet Sauvignon. A great way to complete a fantastic day :)

I could have stayed another three or four days in San Pedro cyling through the Atacama dessert and it's beautiful landscape, but I was somehow attracted by the wild, beautiful, and undeveloped country on the backside of the volcanoes - Bolivia. Apparently the Salar de Uyuni, the biggest and highest salt flat in the world, should be one of the highlights of Latin America. That's why I and Jack decided to leave Chile behind us and take off on a three day offroad trip to Bolivia. This trip will lead us through the most spectacular scenery I have ever seen.

I hope you are all looking forward to the next post!

Florian

Salta and Around, Argentina

2009-03-02T21:00:00.025+01:00

Hello and welcome to F.L.O.-TV!

This time we are broadcasting live and direct from hot and humid Salta in Nortwestern Argentina!

After being sick of the party life in Mendoza, I got on the next overnight bus heading North, which hopefully brings me back to my beloved mountains. Well, the first scenery I saw when I woke up on the bus was the following: Yungas (subtropical jungle) and farmland in the valleys and snowcovered 6000 m high mountains at the horizon. Yeah, looks very promising!

I got off the bus in Salta, a picturesque colonial town which reminds of the famous towns in the sierra in Mexico. The main difference is that it is not located in a high altitude dessert, but in a subtropical valley.

Let me show you around town: Fine colonial buildings from outside

and inside,

during the day

and at night:

Those of you who have already been to Central America (probably with me) will be reminded of beautiful places such as Zacatecas, Guanajato, Oaxaca, San Christobal De Las Casas, or Antigua. You can also find the colorful markets here that make the mentioned places so charming:

There's great food at the markets, such as empandas, humitas, tamales, etc. The first night in Salta I joined a BBQ which organized by my hostel staff. Let me just give you the facts: lomo (finest filtes) as much as you can eat, 2 bread, and one salad per person for roughly five Euros. Isn't that crazy, I mean not only this incredible cheap steaks (in Germany I would have paid 100 Euros for the all the meat I ate) but also the meat to non-meat ratio in the BBQ. I will miss Argentina ;(

Besides being a stunningly beautiful colonial town, Salta also offers spectacular nature right out of town. Together with a Canadian couple I hired a small car and a local guide that showed us the way to a town called Cachi and also all the highlights on the way. When you leave Salta's valley, you quickly end up in narrow subtropical gorges, the yungas.

Then the road climbs a little, the valley opens up, and the scenery gets a little arider.

As usual when you get higher up, condors are circling above your head. I took the opportunity to ask our guide (Esteban) what condors are really capable of doing. I heard so many rumours about condors killing people, horses etc. Fact is that condors can easily kill and carry away little goats and sheeps, but Esteban has never heard of children being attacked by a condor...

At the following picture you can see me standing high above the valley (at 3300 m) and also the road leading up there. Isn't it a charming place? Another sweet mountain bike route ;)

The following picture is taken inside a small road chapel. Do you see the cigarettes? No, it's not litter! Back in the days the natives always started ceremonies with tobacco and they still do it today, just a little different ;)

The road climbed higher up to the altiplano, a dessert-like environment inhabited by guanacos, llamas, and wild donkeys. When hiking around there you should be especially careful with the donkeys, they apparently kill more people than snakes do... it doesn't seem to be a very heroic death to be killed by a donkey :) As you can see, the scenery is spectacular up there: dry dessert, rocks in all colors, and high snow-capped mountains in the background.

Just the drive itself was a lot of fun, since Esteban brought his Argentinian reggae collection :) It almost felt like being on a road trip with friends. Check out our reggae mobile cruising through the altiplano:

The vegetation up there, if there is any, is dominated by cardones - cactus-like plants. Although cardones look like cacti, they are in fact not sponges (as the latter) but related to trees.

Cardones do not grow as in the typical wild west movies, where there is a single cardon or cactus standing at the horizon. There are in fact entire forests of them. I took some time walking around the Parque Nacional Los Cardones, have a look at the loco scenery:

What a freaky scenery with the cardones and the snow-capped 6000 m high Cachi Mountains in the background, isn't it? If you examine the next picture thoroughly you will find exactly four "West Coast Signs", where are they? If you want a hint, then zoom to my hands ;)

We moved on and found quite nice shots near the road, such as llama warnings

and of course magnificient sceneries:

Finally we arrived at Cachi, a small but beautiful town whose name means "salt" in Quechua (the ancient Inca languaga). In Cachi, all the old colonial houses around the main plaza are painted in white or in pastel colors, which sets the town in perfect harmony and accord with its surrounding and the blue skies.

What can you find in Cachi? Lots of artwork, handcrafts, stones carved by the Incas etc. Quick question: what was the Incas' favourite animal? For the answer take a look at the stone carving:

A llama, isn't it? Or what do you say, oll' pal?

To make it short, Cachi is a beautiful small Andean town set against picturesque mountains. A perfect place to hang out and enjoy the harmony of architecture and nature.

And of course to enjoy Cachi's famous local product - chilli:

There is also some hiking around Salta's yungas down in the valley. But believe me it is tropically hot and humid down there:

I hiked up Salta's local mountain, Cerro San Bernardo. Take a close look at the next picture, can you see the spiders everywhere?

No? Well, then you might need another closer picture. Can you see them now?

These spiders are literally everywhere and almost reach the size of my hand. Spooky isn't it? Apparently there are also some really dangerous snakes around here. Luckily, I didn't meet any of them ;)

I just stayed a short time in Salta since the place I actually want to go is on the Chilean side of the mountains - the Atacama dessert. Nevertheless, Salta was a cool and relaxing stop on my route, where I found a picturesque city in an even more beautiful surrounding.

Since my last post I somehow like to finish my posts with a small pig. I don't know why, I it was next to the road and it was kind of cute ;)

Stay posted and ¡Hasta luego, muchachos!

Flo

Mendoza and Around, Argentina

2009-02-26T20:59:00.001+01:00

On a long and exciting bus trip I left wind-blown Patagonia behind me. The bus trip involved the usual spectacular sunsets, but also some day-time highlights, such as spectacular accidents besides the road:

I was heading for the notorious city of Mendoza, which I already gave some premature praise and props in my last post. Well, the rumours turned out to be true: Mendoza is hot (in every meaning)!

You can imagine Mendoza as a little green oasis in the dessert,

located directly under Americas' (note the spelling) highest mountain, the Aconcagua (6962 m).

To say that Mendoza is an oasis is probably a little understatement. In fact, you feel like being in a huge forest or a park area in the entire city:

Well, not just Mendoza itself is located in a hot and dry climate, but it is also renown for hot women, which I quickly found out on an excursion to the Aconcagua National Park:

Believe me or not, but surrounded by all these pretty Latinas my Castellano suddenly worked out really well and fluent ;) I spent a day in Mendoza strolling around town, eating fine food, recreating from climbing, and partying with other travellers at night. Actually, I wanted to go up to Acongua's base camp for some hiking and camping. But everybody I met told me that I will only find a pure volcanic stone dessert up there and, unless I am interested in climbing the mountain itself, there's not a lot to do. So I decided to go for an organized round trip through the local mountains, which also brought me to Aconcagua:

Together with other hung over and bleary-eyed travellers I got on a minibus (way too early) which brought us via a curvy road (362 curves) up to high altitude. Of course, we had several scenic stops and I just couldn't resist the thought of descending with a bike...

Finally, we climbed the first Andes cordillera at 3500 m and had a spectacular view on various 6000 m high peaks of the main Andes range including Aconcagua. The road stayed up high and led us to the main mountain range in a desert-like environment:

We followed the road that leads to Valparaiso and Santiago (Chile) passing through bizzare stone desserts shining in all colors. The sky was steel blue and 6000 m high volcanoes with glaciers blazing in the sun defined the horizon:

We stopped at a small hut for lunch which was surrounded by a picturesque Dolomite-like scenery, that is, steep faces and towers made of volcanic rock. Well, you definitely cannot mess with such a scenery:

The only non-volcanic stone I found was at the famous Puente del Inca which you may call a 2000 year old spa for the Incas:

Sooner or later that day, we also made it to Aconcagua and hiked an hour towards the base camp. Although, Aconcagua is Americas' highest mountain, it seems, compared to the impressive granite monoliths of Patagonia, just like a huge brick of black volcanic rock with gravel and ice slopes. So from a climber's Aconcagua is not that impressive, even its notorious South face isn't, but we should give it credit for being the highest:

After this long day which we mostly spent in the bus we were really tired. Blame it on last night's party or on the extreme altitude differences. For me and Alister (from New Zealand) the party turned out to be a little quieter that night because we wanted to enjoy another highlight of the Mendocina region the next day: a tour through the local vineyards, where most of the famous Argentinian Cabernet and Malbec is coming from:

So we took a bus out to the vine region of Maipu, rented two cruising bikes, and cycled from vineyard to vineyard.

At the wineries a sign "Bienbebidos" welcomes you,

you can tour through the vineries outdoors,

and through the vine cellars indoors.

Of course, you are provided all kinds of explanations to become a real vine connaisceur

and have some degustacions.

In short, you are having lots of fun and get pretty drunk after only a few vineyards. Luckily, you can take some typical Argentinian steak breaks that help you from getting completely drunk ;)

And so what is like to cycle through paradise?

I guess you can imagine that we had lots of fun, although we literally got more and more of a tunnel vision ;)

In the end the police brought us home (with a motor cycle escort)...

What the f***?

No, it wasn't that bad. Alister just had a flat tire and we tried to hitch hike back with our bikes. The first car to stop was simply a police officer on a motor bike who then called one of his colleagues.

So you see, I got somehow away from the "great wild" and into the usual traveller's party life. It was fun for three days, but now I am sick of it and want to escape into the mountains again.

My next stop is Salta at the Argentinian-Chilean-Bolivian border. Let's see what expects me there.

Nos vemos,

Flo

Bariloche and Around, Argentinia

2009-02-20T15:00:00.019+01:00

I took a 30 hour bus from El Calafate to Bariloche. Yes, you read right, 30 hours in a bus. But it wasn't boring at all. I met lots of people in the bus, we had a lot of vine on board and so the entire bus ride was just a long party :) The landscape during the entire ride didn't change a lot, i.e. yellow-borwnish step only, some white sheep and some pink flamingos. The place were I was heading to, the area around Bariloche and the Parque Nacional Nahuel Huapi, is commonly referred to as the "Argentinian Switzerand". And indeed, as soon as we got close to Bariloche, the landscape changed from the desert-like steppe to forest-covered mountains and lakes. It looked just like at home. Bariloche itself indeed looks like a town taken from either Switzerland, Austria, or Bavaria, and it is just as touristy.

Did you get the picture yet? The main products of Bariloche are chocolate and cheese and there are numerous people here speaking German with an Alpine accent... so it feels a little like being home. An old German guy I met on the us told me that there are lots of old Nazis around here who fled after WWII. Right across the boarder to Chile, in the so-called "Chilean Switzerland", you can find all the communists, such as Honecker, who escaped after the fall of the Berlin wall. So fate somehow wants it that the old left and right Germans still face each other here...

Bariloche is a pleasant town but, as you can imagine, I wanted to do something else than eating chocalte fondue ;) So I rented a bike and spent a day cycling around the Parque Nacional Nahuel Huapi, a lake district. The picture bew shows me at one of the probably most photographed locations all over Argentina, a viewpoint above the famous Hotel LLao LLao.

As you can see, this area resembles a little bit Algonquin Park in Ontario doesn't it. I cyled arount through this lake district the entire day. Sometimes, I also locked my bike somewhere and went hikng through the dense and misty rain forests, which could have been taken from Vancouver Island.

Don't think it was all like in Canada! There were high mountains with steep granite faces all around. I even discovered a mountain cemetery, where some former Swiss-Argentinian Olympic skiers were burried.

You definitely couldn't oversee the Swiss heritage in this place. Take a closer look at the sign in the lower picture... Heidi :)

The upper picture was taken from Colonia Suiza, an entire Swiss village. This is by the way Argentina's most famous spa and golf resort, Hotel Llao Llao. Lovely, isn't it lovely and cheesy?

I cycled all day around lakes, through forests, and over mountains... a great first day in Bariloche.

Achim gave me a hint, that I should stay in a hostel located at the top floor of the only skyscraper in town. The hostel was great, the view was picturous, ...

... and especially the party in the hostel was a lot of fun! Probably thanks to the free beer ... :) The next day I was a little hung over, packed my stuff, and hiked up into the mountains around Bariloche, because there was supposed to be some great rock climbing up there. At the beginning, I hiked with some people I met at the bus stop and we discovered a scenery from the "Lord of the Rings" movie:

But sooner or later I got off the track, as usual, crossed some gravel slopes and hiked and climbed for some hours along a spectacular ridge.

Wow, what a scenery! Lots of granite rock around me, endless brown gravel slopes, dense rain forests and blue lakes below me, and condors circling above me.

Yeah, I am back in the mountains!

I hiked almost the entire day and had best weather. After some time I finally descended to Rifugio Frey, the playground of the climbers in Bariloche!

Loco, isn't it? Dozens of granite towers looming above a small blue laguna. Hell yeah! There were about 30 climbers up there from all over the world and I quickly found some partners, such as Anne, a student from Innsbruck:

While I was up there the Rifugio Frey turned 52 and the climbers had a fun party goin' on. I stayed up there for two and a half days climbing, bouldering, and partying in the rifugio. Unfortunately the weather turned bad on the third day - snow and rain. Am I still at the boundary to Patagonia here? So I decided to descend through misty highlands

and dense rain forests

back into the valley to Lago Guittierrez, where I dried my soaking wet tent.

By now, I got to know many climbers and also moved into the loal climber's hostel La Bolsa, where they even had an indoor bouldering wall :)

As usual among climbers, we had a great party goin' on there and I got to know lots of new people. Among these was Dani from Zuerich, Switzerland. The next day I took off with Dani to spend some days climbing in Argentina's number one sports climbing destination: Valle Encantado which loosely speaking means the magic or the charming valley. We took a bus that dropped us off in the middle of nowhere and we pitched our tents high above a wide river on some lava rocks:

As you can see in the back of the upper picture, Valle Encantado is a pure volcanic climbing area with lots of old volcanic slots, lava chimneys and lava tongues to climb on. A truely picturesque scenery which deserves the name magic valley:

The only problem was that we had to cross this 40m wide river to get to these wonderful crags. Luckily there were a few climbers who brought small inflatable boats. Unfortunately the boats were always on the wrong side, so we had to swim one way. I never had such an adventurous approach to a climbing area, but it was truly worth it!

Here you can see one of the awesome 40m super endurance lines almost right above the river. This nice climb (see the climber?) was called Carpe Diem and was 7a+. Although I almost didn't climb for the last seven weeks or so, I was able to onsight this nice line and many equally hard and beautiful climbs.

So somehow, I must have lost sufficiently much weight on my trip to make up for the insufficient climbing practice. ¡Que bueno! Here you see another nice route called Divina ConMedias (7b), notice the play of words, which I could also easily climb. ¿Loco, verdad?

So I was all happy in the magic valley, stayed there for four days together with Dani, went swimming and climbing, and met lots of new people - climbers from all around the world. Here you can see Miguel, a Basque badass, onsighting Divina Conmedia in the last sunlight.

Unfortunately, wee sooner or later had to say adios to Valle Encantado although we could have stayed there for ever :( But we both wanted to move on in our travelling plans. I am sure I will be back one day to this truely magic valley!

So we said goodbye to our new friends, such as Molly, Vera, and Laurenzo, who probaly still hang out under their carpet until the day they run out of either chalk or food supplies :)

I had wonderful ten days in and around Bariloche and almost didn't want to move further on. But there is somebody wainting for me in La Paz at the sixteenth. So I gotta be back one day!

My next stop is Mendoza, the so-called most beautiful city of Argentina right under Aconcugua (America's highest mountain), home to the famous Argentinian wine, and, if I may believe the rumours, the hottest latinas outside of Copacabana! It promises to be good, doesn't it? I will find out and let you know ;)

Hasta pronto!

Flo

El Chalten, Argentina

2009-02-14T01:01:00.021+01:00

I had a delicious steak and red wine dinner in El Calafate together with some international friends: Roen from Johannesburg, Katrin from London, and Kathy from Toronto. Unfortunately, I had to get up way too early again to catch the first bus bringing me to El Chalten, South America's mecca for mountaineering. I slept the first two hours of the bus ride, but when I opened my eyes I saw the following scenery for which it was worth getting up early:

The Fitz Roy massive high over the Patagonian steppe, wow! How lucky was I to see that when arriving. I have heard of people who spent three weeks in El Chalten and didn't even see the mountains once. And I was lucky enough to see it on the first day! On the other side of the bus you could see the gigantic Glaciar Viedma dropping into Lago Viedma. What a contrast, the white glacier coming from the continental icefield, the deep blue lake, and the yellow-brownish pampa. I guess I had some fun days ahead of me in El Chalten!

The mountains were qickly hiding again in the clouds. It was sunny and windy down in El Chalten. I got some supplies from a small market and hiked up to Fitz Roy's base camp where a snow storm waited for me. Yes, you read right. Just 2.5 hours away from warm and sunny El Chalten I was in the middle of a snow storm... Patagonian weather! So I quickly pitched my tent and hiked back down again to some boulders that I spotted on the way up.

I met some other guys from the base camp there and we had a fun bouldering session. To be honest, El Chalten would also be a superb sports climbing and bouldering destination besides its impressive mountains. Since it was getting late, I packed my stuff and hiked back up to the base camp while my eyes were following the condors circling high above me. And guess what I saw, once I made it out of the trees? Right, a blue sky and the entire Fitz Roy range:

Wow, Patagonian wheather is really crazy! I was deeply impressed by this majestic mountain range. Of course, I could now spend hours talking about all the different climbing routes leading up Fitz Roy and the corresponding technical difficulties. But let us leave that aside and just look at this enormous and beautiful granite monolith. At least, I spent hours looking at it. Unfortunately, I wasn't as lucky the next days and never had such great views of the mountains again.

Normally you would see the equally impressive Cerro Torre in the background of the upper picture, but it was constantly hiding for the next four days and I could just guess how tall it could possibly be. I link a picture here for you:

Now isn't that a good reason to come back again one day? It's a pity that it was storming, raining , and snowing the next days. So is that what another day in paradise looks like?

I went out anyways and hiked and climbed in "semi-optimal" conditions. Believe me, I really had fun although I start to be fed up with the Patagonian wheather...

But I brought at least one really great memory home from El Chalten and that was definitely worth the trip.

But now I am somehow looking for better wheather conditions and leave the Patagonian climate. Stay posted on my whereabouts!

Ciao,

Flo

El Calafate, Argentina

2009-02-10T00:22:00.010+01:00

Hey there, guys. I am back in Argentina. I took a late bus from Puerto Natales, crossed the Chilean-Argentinian boarder and had a wonderful sunset in the Argentinian pampa.

If you zoom into the upper picture, you can even see the Torres del Paine at the horizon. The bus then dropped me in El Calafate at midnight. El Calafate is a town that completely devoted itself to tourism. It can best be described as follows: take a small alpine town like Zermatt, or its Canadian equivalent Banff, with a lot of pricy moutaineering stores and trekkig agencies in wooden houses on the main avenue. Now you have the picture, voilá:

The only difference to the mentioned towns is that El Calafate is not directly located in the mountains but in the steppe right at beautiful Lago Argentino.

The main reason for me to take a stop at El Calafate was one of Argentinia's natural wonders, Glaciar Perito Moreno:

Perito Moreno is a huge glacier coming from the Campo Hielo Sur and flows into the Lago Argentino. "Flow" is probably the wrong word. Perito Moreno has a 5km wide and 50m-60m high vertical front from which seracs fall thunderously into the lake. And the best of it, you can stand right in front of it and withness the spectacle.

Just that you get the idea how huge the glacier actually is:

As a climber you normally associate seracs and hanging glaciers with great and uncalculable danger, but here the falling seracs were just a magnificient show for the speactators. I must confess that Perito Moreno is a pretty touristy place, but I just cannot leave it aside when I am passing by anyways. And since the wheather was quite lousy the time I was there, I was lucky enough to have it all for myself :)

Tomorrow I will leave for El Chalten and hopefully catch a look at famous Fitz Roy and Cerro Torre.

Luego compadres,

Flo

Torres del Paine, Chile

2009-02-08T18:31:00.023+01:00

"Nothing prepares you for the spectacular beauty of the Parque Nacional Torres del Paine" said my guidebook. Since I have already been to a lot of national parks and mountains all around the world which have the attribute "most beautiful" assigned to them, I thought nothing could easily overwhelm me... but honestly, the Torres del Paine Park was way more impressive than I expected and than anything I have ever seen.

After a 16 hour bus ride from Ushaia I arrived at Puerto Natales late at night, only to take off again at 7am to a five day trekking tour through the National Park Torres del Paine. My trek, the circuito, involved 170km of hiking through mountains and swamps, crossing windy passes and cold mountain creeks, lots of elevation, and dramatic sceneries around every corner... in short, it was a lot of fun!

Day 1:

After taking several buses I arrived at the entry to the park, which was bustling with people taking family pictures, riding horses, and strolling around. The French guys called it "se randonner", which says everything, doesn't it? Since that was totally not what I was looking for, so I took off into the mountains following a valley

which led me directly to the famous Torres del Paine.

I thought I have climbed some and have certainly seen a lot of impressive towers, such as the Tre Cime in Italy, for example, but the Torres were just huuuuge and the closer you get the higher they are. Mighty winds were howling around these vertical towers. How harsh the climbing conditions may be up there - freezingly cold and stormy as hell. Luckily, I sat down at the shiny green glacier laguna underneath the towers, enjoyed the view and the warm sun, and exchanged mountain wisdoms with some other Austrian guys.

After that I pitched my tent underneath a boulder filed near the torres and took off to explore a beautiful side valley, the Valle del Silencio. With me was Tim, an Australian pharmacist from Alice Springs, the middle of nowhere.

Together we spent the afternoon jumping through the rivers, climbing little boulders and trees, and enjoying stunningly beautiful mountains, glaciers, and waterfalls.

For those of you who are not aware of it, I want to point out that you currently have 17 hours of daylight down in Southern Chile. So the evening was long and went by with slacklining and singing in the camp, and some climbing in the boulder field below the Torres, which were brightly illuminated even long after the darkness has already arrived in the valley.

Day 2:

Good morning Patagonia! The pampa was greeting me up in the mountains with a pink sunrise, but this was not the most spectacular view...

Incredibly high above me somebody lit some orange torches, what an amazing view! Since the Torres are the highest mountains on the East side of the Paine massive, they provided me the most beautiful sunrise I have ever (!) seen! Seriously, I considered staying another night there, only to witness this spectacular sunrise again from laguna underneath the Torres.

I hiked back down the valley passing some magnificient glaciers

and the corresponding milky blue glacier lagunas from where I could see the neighboruing mountain ranges... just a stunning view around every corner.

High above me the majestic condors were circling... Actually they were not flying but more gliding with the Patagonian winds.

Based on a tip from from Wolfgang, who has just been here a coupled of weeks ago, I set off to climb up to the base of the impressive Cuernos del Paine, huge granite mountains with peaks made off sedimentary rock formed by the wind.

The Cuernos not just looked incredibly impressive, but they were also enormous faces. I tried to get to the base of one climb and the wall just got taller... I never arrived there. One day, I have to come back and check the climbing routes on these cathedrals of granite! Since there was no real official path leading up to where I was, I was completely alone and enjoyed the view on teh Cuernos, the backside of the Torres, the milky blue and emerald green glacier lagunas, the yellow and brownish pampa and the mighty glaciers and icefields dominating the horizon... but see yourself:

What an awesome scenery, isn't it? I could have spent endless time up there, but I had to move on and descended down to the lakes from where the Cuernos looked even more impressive.

I hiked for another 10km along the shore of the laguna and Punta Bariloche and Paine Grande appeared around the corner together with their mirror images in the lake.

Finally, after a long day I reached my camp directly underneath the impressive glacier of the Paine Grande. This day I hiked with a 50 year old Russian guy who was strong as hell and always told me about his last North pole expedition. Well, hed had to be strong since he carried a good old quality Russian steel tent and also all his other Russian gear could not be called high performance and light weight equipment :)

After we arrived at the campsite, I stayed awake a little longer to see the sunset. I wasn't disappointed, the glacier peaks high above the lake,

the Cuernos, and

the Paine Grande fought for the most beautiful sunset.

And so another day filled with highlights and dramatic sceneries came to an end. I was looking forward to the next one!

Day 3:

I got some more sleep than usual and missed the sunrise the next day. Nevertheless, I planned a big program that day. I had a quick breakfast (apple and chocolate), left my tent in the basecamp, and hiked up the Valley Frances, where "climber's paradise" waited for me.

Voilá, don't you like it? The Dolomite's Rosengarten is nothing compared to that, which makes me go upside down... WOWOW!!!

Luckily, the clouds were higher than all the surrounding towers, so had an awesome view on all these towers... let me show you the pleasure and joy my climber's heart felt in a short clip.

On the hike up, I also met Dave a Yosemite local who spent three weeks up here climbing twelve of the surrounding towers. I had a fun bouldering and slacklining session with him... "See you in Yosemite next year!"

What a great place this was, but I had to move on. So I walked out of the mountains and along the milky Lago Pehohe. From there I could see the Cuernos from some distance now. Wow, how impressive and how stunningly beautiful! In fact, I even hiked halfway around Lago Peohe (in the wrong direction) to appreciate this scenery even better (see picture at the end of this post). This was one of the looks everybody knows from various calenders and travelling and climbing books, but in reality it is even more breathtaking!

Around 7pm (after having appreciated the scenery long enough), I decided to hike another 3-4 hours crossing a small pass to the Gray glacier. On the way, I saw light blue icebergs drifting by in Lago Grey. From time to time I heard some thunderous sounds which I related to giant seracs (=chunks of glacier) breaking off into the lake and which later form the icebergs passing by. So far I couldn't see the glacier since I was still below the pass.

But then I had one of this "eternal and divine" moments you randomly have. Right when I was on top of the pass, the clouds faded away and opened the scenery for the last sunrays. And here it was, the gigantic Glaciar Gray breaking into the lake. At the horizon you could see more glaciers coming from the Campo Hielo Sur, the largest continental ice mass on Earth. I stayed sitting there on sunny meadows observing this scenery in the last sunlight. What a truly great moment that I will never forget!

Actually I wanted to see the sunset, but the cold and strong icewinds from the Campo Hielo Sur sooner or later fought me away. So I hiked another 1-2 hours in the darkness and pitched my tent right next to the glacier, only separated from it by a little rocky hill, which gave me shelter from the icewinds. And so another awesome day with countless memories and impressions passed by. And there's more to come!

Day 4:

After all these fantastic days, can it be any better? - Yes it can. I got up early again for sunrise, packed my stuff and hiked over some rocks to my breakfast place:

Nice to wake up like this and see the glacier right in front of you isn't it? Additionally, I was all alone up to some seracs breaking off thunderously which later landed as stranded goods - icebergs. Good morning!

I hiked along the glacier for about four hours or so. Don't even think I came close to its end... Here's a close-up shot from me over its seracs. Yes, I know I need to shave and I also need a shower... just two more days ;)

And here's one shot showing me a little higher above the glacier, just to show you what the word "endless" means - it's beautiful, isn't it? But wait, it get's way better!

I climbed higher and higher above the glacier through a dense and moisty forest. Slowly the clouds faded away and gave me stunning views of the Glaciar Grey, the Campo Hielo Sur, and some mountains in the icefield. WOW!!! And it will get even better!

By the time I reached the pass approximately 1000m above the glacier, the view opened up completely and in another "eternal and divine" moment I was allowed to see this dramatic scenery.

And that was literally breathtaking! I climbed a little higher and made a short movie for you guys to appreciate this beautiful moment:

Muchissimo, isn't it?

I sat up there on the pass for an hour or so just looking at the beautiful scenery with the dense green forest below me, the light blue sky above me, and the icefield in between! But I still had another 7 hours of hiking or so waiting for me this day and so I slowly started the descent passing by some other glaciers, where I got fresh water.

Oh yes, to all children reading this: Do not stand under seracs!

After walking down some gravel slopes and crossing an endless swamp I found myself again in the dense forest and looked back to some glaciers. Where else in the world can you witness such extreme differences within some hours of hiking?

The sun was setting and it was all so peacefully in the forest. I couldn't imagine that right behind this beautiful mountains is nothing but endless ice and storms all year round.

It was getting dark and I switched my headlamp on for another 30 minutes of hiking down to some green meadows below the mountains, where I wanted to pitch my tent. But what did I see 10 minutes before I reached my destination - another two mighty glaciers dropping into Lago Dickson and the Campo Hielo Sur behind.

Truly another great scenery, but I started to ask myself whether a new ice age has begun... meanwhile I was sweating and mosquitos were teasing me. So I pitched my tent next to the lake after a long day filled with unforgetable memories.

Day 5:

I had four wonderful and intense days of hiking through and around the Torres del Paine massive, and today I was completing my circle around the massive. During these last four days I passed through more or less all climate zones. Today I walked out into the yellow and brownish pampa always following the milky blue rivers fed by the mighty glaciers behind me.

The hike itself was beautiful and passing through dense woods, swamps with mosquitos, and along some nice lakes. I found a lonely and forgotten estancia, where I had a fun slackline session with some guys from Portland, Oregon. The strong wind was always blowing from behing and literally pushed me out into the pampa.

That day I met lots of guanacos (related to lamas) and always followed the rivers which brought me back to a gravel road from where I hitchhiked to Laguna Amarga and waited for a bus.

On the way out the sky cleared up completely and I had some nice views on the glaciers and towers that I circumcircled, including the Torres del Paine themselves. What a great time I had in these 5 days! I will never forget the Torres in the sunrise, the Cuernos above Lago Peohe, the towers of Valley Frances, the Glaciar Grey in the last sunlight, the view on the Campo Hielo Sur from high above, ...

Sooner or later the bus came and we drove back into civilisation. Behind me I could see the dusty road leaving the Torres del Paine back in the sunset.

The next day I was back in Puerto Natales and desperately needed a shower and a tenedor libre (all you can eat) restaurant :)

The Circuito de Torres del Paine has been a spectacularly beautiful trekking tour. As I already said in the beginning of this post, the five days in the Torres del Paine Parque easily overtrumped any other tour at any other place I have been to. My pictures are mightier than my words, so let the following five pictures speak for the wonderful time I had during these five days.

Sunrise at the Torres del Paine

Valle Frances - climber's paradise

The Cuernos del Paine over Lago Peohe

Glaciar and Lago Grey

Glaciar Grey and Campo Hielo Sur

Without words - sin palabras!

Flo

Ushaia, Tierra del Fuego

2009-02-01T11:56:00.000+01:00

Bienvenidos al fin del mundo!

¡Hola! I am here in Ushaia in Tierra del Fuego the southernmost town of the world and the gate to Antarctica. It is also called el fin del mundo (the end of the world). Actually I wanted to leave after two days, but now I am still here after five days. I just couldn´t resist the stunning beauty of this wild country (and the bus schedules).

Let me show you around town: As you can see in the upper picture, Ushaia is located right at the Beagle Channel (the sailor's better option to Cape Horn) and is surrounded by glaciers, fjords, wild mountains, swamps, and of course the sea. That makes Ushaia a popular spot for cruises, icebreakers, and ...

... Antarctica expeditions. If you magnify the pic below you see the so-called Antarctica office, where you have to pass if you want to go the icy continent.

There´s also a lively Gaucho culture here, as you can see in the picture below where little Gauchas and Gauchos are dancing in the harbour.

So Ushaia is a great place to hang out, but that is not the reason why I am here. Although you can spend endless time just starring at the beautiful nature, ...

... I rather enjoy it myself and hike and climb up the stunningly beautiful mountains of Ushaia and its surrounding valleys!

Luckily, there are 20 hours of daylight. So even if you leave for a late climb at 8pm (as in the upper picture) you can still make it up to a near summit and halfway down in daylight ;)

On the approach to the mountains you mostly have to pass dense forests and sticky swamps, but isn't that exactly what you imagine when you think of Tierra del Fuego?

The locals say that in Ushaia you can have all four seaons in one day, and it's true. Hot sun followed by icy Antarctica winds, snowfalls, rain, and thunderstorm ... and hot sun again. the only thing that remains constant is strong wind blowing from the West.

Normally, I get up early and take a bus, a cab, or a collectivo out of town to some remote valley. After hours of hiking on and off the track, I usually arrive at some glacier. Now isn't that a beautiful scenery?

The glaciers here do not obey the same rules as the mountain climber is used from the northern hemisphere. Besides the confusing fact that you can find them on the South faces of the mountains, they also go down to 500m above sea level (and sometimes even lower). Moreover, there are no thousand meters of elevation between the tree line and the glacier as in the Northern hemisphere, but you can find the glaciers almost touching the dense rain forests. A truly fascinating region!

The green pile of something in the picture above is no moss-covered rock, but a plant that grows in layers which build up a thermal insulation for the roots -- life adapted to the extreme conditions here. In the picture below, you can see me five minutes later in front of some beaver dams. Now note the difference in the weather!

But back to what I am doing here. I look for easy rock ridges and gravel gullies leading up to the summit in between the glaciers. And then I simply climb them :) In the picture below you see me having a great time while climbing to the summit and shouting against the wind.

The only drawback is that I mostly have a six hour return hike to Ushaia. Once I make it to some street or dirt track, I try to hitchhike and usually get picked up quickly by the friendly locals. This way I also improve my Castellano while hiking through the mountains.

I also went on a sailing trip through the Beagle Channel!

Due to severe weather conditions we didn't make it to Cape Horn... No seriously, that was never planned ;)

The picture below shows the port of Ushaia which we just left heading for some islands in the rough Beagle Channel.

Our goal were some islands bustling with Comorans, sea lions, penguins etc. We also landed on Argentina's southernmost island and hiked around looking for remnants of the Yamanas. The Yamanas are the natives of the Beagle Channel and lived in this rough climate for 7000 years, completely naked! Can you believe that? They were extinct by diseases that the Europeans brought here 150 years ago. It was fascinating to hear about their survival techniques... naked in the Beagle Channel !?! Can you imagine a naked human hunting sea lions in the next picture?

I also spent 24 hours in the nearby national park hiking along a fjord and through swamps.

And guess what I found somewhere off the track? Yes, boulders and walls to climb on ... of course! But the fascinating thing about that was that I found tick marks and remnants of chalk and shoe rubber on the rocks! So somebody was already bouldering here before me... in the middle of nowhere. The climbing revolution is taking over the planet ;)

Before I left on my trip to South America, I had the challenge to pack my backpack with everything I need for cities, glaciers, rocks, sea, and desert ... a tent, a matress, a sleeping bag, guidebooks and maps ... and enough food for overnight trips. So see what I am carrying around:

Well, it's okay for dayhikes along the fjords, but I have to figure out something for the mountains... Anyways, I have a truly great time here at the end of civilisation. Tomorrow I will leave for Chile and the Torres del Paine national park. This will be really awesome if I am not to unlucky with the weather. I am looking forward to that!

But let me conclude this post with two great pictures which symbolize Tierra del Fuego for me:

Sticky swamps, dense rain forests, glaciers, and wild mountains together with the antarctic sea and its wildlife!

Now don't you also want to come to el fin del mundo?

Nos vemos!

Florian

Buenos Aires, Argentina

2009-01-28T12:44:00.018+01:00

Welcome to Buenos Aires!

Let me introduce you to the magnificient city of Buenos Aires: Imagine some mediterranen city, such as Florence or Sevilla, and bring it to South America, together with its fine architecture and charming atmosphere.

Let us break and demolish everything a little and repair it again. Now do exactly this multiple times and paint everything colorfully in the end.

Now add some flowers and some North American flavour in the form of skyscrapers

and chaotic traffic on vast avenues.

Of course, it's not all colonial buildings mixed with modern architecture, but also everything in between that makes Latin America so charming.

Now you know what the city looks like. let us fill it with life and atmosphere. As further ingredients, we add some beautiful women (and men) dancing tango argentino in the streets,

colorful and little chaotic street markets,

the crazy Boca Juniors footbal fans,

deeply faithful people (and the corresponding cathedrals and cemeteries),

and even more tango in the street cafes.

Now you have the picture set. That´s Buenos Aires, that´s where I currently am! What I am doing here? Well, just add some Mate tea to the picure you have in mind, additionally a lot of meat, and some cervezas :) No seriously, since I only spend four days here, I cannot only enjoy the night life and the food. My time in this great city is entirely filled out with sightseeing

and walking around all day to explore Buenos Aires from all different perspectives, for instance, from the pampas,

from the Rio de la Plata (apparently the largest river in the world, but they say the same about the fleuve St. Laurent...),

from some random street corners,

and from the wooden subways:

Buenos Aires is great starting place for my travel. My Castellano is better than I expected, although the pronounciation in the Rio de la Plata region is very strange, for example, "ll" and "y" are both pronounced as "sch" (German pronounciation). But I slowly adapt to it and learn a lot of vocabulary everyday. Let me show you some random street scenes that I discovered here:

Tango in the main shopping mile, the Calle Florida which is more or less the Rambla of Buenos Aires

Street children swimming in a fountain at the Plaza del Congresso

Another way too fancy cemetery for the rich and wealthy

The famous Caminito in La Boca, where Diego Maradonna and some other great soccer players are from... and the current team:

I am having a great time here so far. Tomorrow I will leave for Ushuaia. Thus my focus switches from metropolitian Buenos Aires to my actual goals in South America, the lonely and bizarre mountains of Tierra del Fuego and Patagonia. I am looking forward to that experience and the amazing scenery, but before let me enjoy Buenos Aires for one more day :)

Luego compadres,

Florian

A Tentative Travel Plan

2009-01-22T01:07:00.005+01:00

As most of you know, I am going on a longer road trip to South America. I leave here on Sunday flying directly to Buenos Aires. After a couple of days getting used to Castellano, I directly continue to Ushuaia in tierra del fuego a.k.a. el fin del mundo. My flight back leaves a little further up from Lima, Peru. So there's a lot in between. Here's a tentative travel plan for my road trip, we'll see if I can stick to it.

I plan to share some pictures and stories of traveling experiences here. So if you are interested, visit this page from time to time, I try to keep it updated.

¡Hasta luego!

Florian

Winter Alpinism

2009-01-19T14:03:00.006+01:00

On a sunny and not too cold morning I was waiting to be picked up at the autobahn to Garmisch. With me was a backpack loaded with all kind of stuff promising a fun day - crampons, ice axes, climbing harness, and a rope.

Achim had the idea to do a winter ascent of the Jubiläums ridge that day. The Jubiläums ridge is an 8km long traverse between the Zugspitze and the Alpsitpze, Germany's highest mountains. On the pic below you can see the long ridge and the various small towers waiting for me, Achim , and another Flo.

"Here you leave safety area - alpine dangers" the sign below says. Ahead of us were 6 hours of easy climbing on glazed and icy rock, where the tough sections were luckily protected with a ferrata.

Some impression from the climbing:

At the beginning it was still an easy and exposed hike, but after some time we had to use our ice axes

and climb in icy rock sections, which was especially tough for me since I wasn't used to mixed terrain. However, the other two guys were experienced and felt comfortable climbing with crampons.

But luckily they were also patient and in the end I learned it, too.

On this pic you can see Achim and behind him looming the next tower to be climbed, one of many still to come.

After lots kilometers of climbing more'n'more distance came between us and the Zugspitze...

... and finally we made the entire traverse.

Now we just had to get all the way down from the Alpspitze, as quick as possible because the daylight was fading away.

We just got down the Alpspitze North face via another ferrata as it turned dark. Unfortunately, it took another two or three hours walking all the way down on the ski slopes. Finally, after a long day we got back to civilization and enjoyed pizza and wheat beer ;)

Diploma Party

2009-01-07T14:00:00.009+01:00

So I was talked into this entire diploma party thing, you know, and I had no choice... No honestly, the idea of a welcome, goodbye, and diploma party was proposed to me and I liked it. So I made up the following official party invitation and invited all my close friends and relatives, in a total around 33 people.

Indeed, most of them came, and also some others that I didn't remember inviting... Anyways, we had a great time and, as usual in Bavaria, some beer and wine ;)

But before that some official preparation had to be done, such as organizing a small pub in our town. Luckily, I know Markus quite well who runs one of my favourite bars in Bad Tölz, the Bodega.

I covered the drinking costs and asked everybody to bring some exquisite finger foods. Especially all my aunts were kind of excited of this idea. The drawback was that I and Katrin had to prepare some stuff, too. But with some help of our MacBooks and the internet the fog quickly cleared...

... and we decided to prepare Samosas, which took us four hours or so. So let's get the party started and let me introduce you to some people attending:

My Dad and my friends Franz, Lara, and Adrian

Gertrud, Petra, Tom, Rosi, and Sylvia

uncle Markus and aunt Karin enjoying wheat beer

Petra, me, and Sylvia in a conversation

My cousin Berti, his girlfriend Petra, and my Dad in a discussion

My three litlle bros Domi, Chrissi, and Tom drinking beer

Somehow people liked the idea of fingerfood, at least the buffet was always busy :)

The stuggi connection a.k.a. Katrin and Adrian

The "younger" party guests including me

My parents decided both to give some moving speeches

and I was pleased and clapping.

So we had a good family evening, me, Mom, and Dad, ...

and aunt Annelies and my grandmother.

All my guests enjoyed themselves,

there were some nice conversations going on,

and a lot of drunk people in the end, right?

It's a pity that there's only one diploma in a lifetime, but you always find good reasons for family gatherings :) Oh yes, if somebody is interested in my final bill, here it is:

Skitouring Right Before New Year

2009-01-01T16:50:00.003+01:00

What the hell have we done wrong again? That's what Achim and I asked ourselves standing on a stormy ridge looking at the clouds rolling in from the East? Actually, the weather was supposed to be perfectly stable for the next days in the Swiss-Italian Sesvenna area. After fighting our way along this stormy ridge in waist deep snow, we returned to our cabin and hoped for the better weather the next morning...

As it still wasn't good we decided, after a small argumentation, to leave into the Lechtal area in the Northern Alps. So we descended, got some coffee and made our way to the Arlberg,were we had a perfect bluebird day!

It was truly nice and the only drawback was the three hour hike to our cabin carrying all our gear and all our food. Puuuhhh!

Finally, we arrived at the cabin, dropped our gear, and tried to reach another summit before dusk finally captures us.

It was a still long way to the summit

but finally we reached it and had a wonderful sunset up there. Even the descent was really good although it didn't snow for a couple of weeks. So far nobody dared to go straight down the steep and deep summit slope. Well, we took the slight avalanche risk and had a lot of fun!

But when we arrived at our cabin, I was a little bit sunburned and very exhausted from a long and intense day. In the cabin we met Eddie and Stefan who have been in the area for two days now deflowering virgin "powder" slopes (more or less).

After a fun evening we woke up with another bluebird day! Hell, yeah!

So we got our skis on and followed Eddie's tracks to the first summit.

Another magnificent and immaculate day!

Right underneath the summit, we left our skis

and climbed the last meters to the summit.

Only Achim and Eddi were bold enough to go all the way up, while Stefan and I thought about the technical difficulty of climbing this flake with ski boots - la pierre philosophal :)

The snow quality of the downhill run was better than expected. and ater a short lunch break we ascended another summit.

After this pleasant and lonely day in a beautiful mountain scenery, we skied all the way down into the busy Arlberg valleys.

A great short skitouring weekend is over and New Year's Eve is about to come. Franz organised a little party in his house and we had waaaayyyyy toooooo many drinks and beer, a funny intense night, and a really dizzy start into 2009 ;)

Christmas Holidays Back Home Again

2008-12-30T14:02:00.007+01:00

After we spent the last Christmas holidays in Calgary and in the Rockies, we were looking forward to be home again this year. Since my internship ended in mid December, I had plenty of time to go skiing and snowboarding with friends. I don't wanna show you the routine "such-a-great-bluebird-powder-day" pictures, but rather some stuff around that. For instance, having friends over after boarding in the Zilletal a.k.a. Chiller Valley and making pizza.

Or drying my wet hair under the newly set up lamp and being laughed at by Kat ;(

I guess my friends from Stuttgart know by now who this guy is, right?

I and Katrin also had to prepare our TOEFL and GRE tests with our old Windows computers... I am so relieved this is over now, both the tests and the Windows machines :D

And finally, there was Christmas and everybody was getting ready for it. Especially my Mom was preparing a lot f stuff, such as 3kg of cheese fondue.

But we are hungry bros, right Tom?

Here Tom is apparently worried that Wolfi might steel his share of the fondue!

And after the usual gorgeous and endless eating ceremony, we finally had time for our skew Christmas tree. In fact, Tom "organized" the tree at 6pm on Christmas eve ... ? True story, ask him!

So it was time to open the sometimes amusing presents,

celebrate together with Oma,

and have mastermind discussions with Wolfi.

In the end, I fell asleep in front of the Christmas tree while waiting for Anna and her boyfriend Adam. Well, they showed up the next morning and Adam was truly surprised about his present, a dolphin fairytale.

Last but not least, Mom and Fini also got what they always desired - Aragon, at least on paper :)

It's so good to spend the holidays back at home, now I know it again!

A Sunny Ticino Weekend

2008-11-10T13:58:00.003+01:00

As you have already guessed, I enjoyed my time back in Germany and went to all my home crags with my old friends. We had weekend trips to Austria, Frankenjura, Alsace, Black Forest, Danube Valley, Basel Jura, and the Ticino.

This short blog is about a fun weekend in Ticino. Although it's already late in the season, you can still climb topless in sunny Southern Swizzy a.k.a. Ticino. I met up with Julia, an old friend of mine,

and together we picked up Sibe.

Then we went on a sunny weekend trip to Cresciano and Sobrio!

That weekend I was even able to send a route I tried before I went to Canada. This time Ghandi (7b+) even worked out on the first go!

But as we all know, climbing isn't about grades, but about having a good time with friends. And definitely there's nothing that can top a sunny breakfast at Chironico!

Buon Giorno, Ticino!

Fun Times in Stuggi and Alsace

2008-11-01T13:57:00.007+01:00

What's the best about work in a large company? Free time, right! So starting on Thursday until Monday noon is weekend time and thus time to do whatever, for instance, slacking in Stuttgart downtown with a bottle of beer ;)

Or one could stay the weekend in the cottage of Katrin's parents in Alsace, France. We've been there countless times the last years and I just have good memories of the biking, climbing, and bouldering there. The pic below shows me in my favourite boulder spot Rocher de Laurenzo close to Saverne, just taking off and launching for the lip... such a great place!

Of course, I had to go there again after one year abroad in sandstone-free Canada.

And it was fun again! Crimping, hooking, targeting the final sloper, launching, and catching! So great!

Katrin worked on her bouldering skills in Calgary, remember? If not then consider this link. Anyways, she also had fun manteling les blocs des falaises de grès.

Well, and there are also all the magnificient trails in the Vosges de Nord around Saverne, Lutzelbourg, Phalsbourg, Mamoutier,... always worth a trip. Below is Kat high above the Loire valley mimicing a howling wolve :)

One of the great bike round trips we discovered in the last years connects the ruins of various old castles, such as Chateau de Haut-Barr.

And now comes the amazing and truly outstanding proof to the theory of everything: The ancient dukes and castle-lords of Alsace knew about the power and the magic of π. And here is the proof found in the ruins of Chateau-Barr:

π - this makes me just going nuts and upside down

Yeah, each weekend trip to Alsace was just a wonderful experience, right guys?

But it's also always fun to return to Stuggi, go slacklining in the Schlosspark, visit old friends, and hang out with Katrin!

Here you can see Kat standing in front of her new apartment, what's the house number again?

Especially for slacklinig, Stuttgart is just a great place. I never realized it before, but now it seems to build for slacking:

Oh yes, Katrin is also making progress on the line :)

Not to forget: Not only the Canadians have an Indian Summer but also we in Germany do! Here's a pic of one of my home crags, the Donautal (Danube Valley), or short Däle.

I had a fun weekend there with Achim working on bold and "semi-trad" routes... but that's another story and we were way to frightened to take pictures.

Hasta pronto,

Florian

Internship at the Bodensee

2008-10-15T13:55:00.004+02:00

Who is thus cool guy with his earphones and shades behind the steering wheel?

Make a good guess, it's me driving to my work at the company EADS ASTRIUM.

I just started my industrial internship there in mid August. My work is on attitude and orbit control of three-axes satellites. In particular, in one project I have to come up with actuation algorithms for attitude regulation and attitude manoeuvres using thrusters as only actuators. The other project is about H_infinity control of satellites. Sounds boring for those of you who aren't into cybernetics, right? So let us skip this part, I am not allowed anyways to publish any pictures or confidential information. One of the best parts of my work besides the 35 hour week is the location of the company at the Bodensee (Lake Constance).

We even have our own company beach ;) The Bodensee is renown for its almost mediterranean climate at the Northern side of the Alps. And indeed, you could feel the mediterranean in the summer:

Nice, isn't it? And the best part of the Bodensee is that it's right at the Alps.

I have a cute room in a filthy shared appartment. But my roommates are fun and I only have a 5 minutes bike ride to work. Here you can see me riding through the apple gardens in the morning... another day of satellite control begins.

Since I only have a 35 hour week, I usually work from Monday afternoon to Thursday evening, the rest is free time! And what is there better to do with free time than spending it with Katrin, who just got back from Canada!

It didn't take a lot of effort to infect her with the pleasure of slacklining. So we hiked up a small hill at Bregenz high above the Bodensee

and did some slacklining there.

A really pleasant atmosphere on an Austrian mountain, next to cows, and on the line!

We also went cycling there and passed through the Bavarian island of Lindau. Here you can see the Bavarian Lion ... home sweet home :)

Another trip took us to the region of Appenzell in Switzerland. Appenzell is just as Swiss as it could possible be, but see yourself:

We passed the Arizona bar (not typical Swiss for those who don't know)r ight under the mountain Säntis, where we wanted to do some mountain climbing.

Unfortunately, we missed the right way leading to the summit, but we had a fun afternoon as well. Now isn't that Katrin in a picture card Swiss alpine meadow?

Well, bikers weren't allowed there :(

So in short, the Bodensee is a wonderful place to be, really scenic, and my work is fun, too. But as soon as it got Autumn

such picturesque weather became quite rare and fog was rolling in every day. It feels a little remote down here at the Bodensee because most of my friends are either in Stuttgart, Inssbruck, or Munich. So I will make use of my four day long weekends and visit Katrin and my friends every weekend.