Last days of Argentina, and the start of Bolivia

Hola!

20 hours by bus can be fun, if you have the right bus assistent named Mariano on it. He served us some lousy food, but some funny jokes, and made it all worth while. We finally arrived Salta, and after walking from one full hostel to another, we finally found a simple, cheap, but nice one. We desided to share rooms to get to know new people, and ended up in a dorm with Andres from Colombia, and Lio from France. Salta was a nice town, however, we didnt make to much out of it. We took a cable car up to a small mountain with a good view over the town, and went out for drinks with our new friends. And of course made them a real backpacker dinner at the hostel. After 2 days here, we hopped on a bus further north, to Jujuy.

In Jujuy we met Walter, a guy from Argentina, that could speak Norwegian! Not often that happens. He had worked as an artist in Kristiansand in Norway for almost 4 years, and his Norwegian was quite good. He invited us for after-work drinks with his friends where they all worked, a skater/biker/surfer/tattoo and piercing shop. So we went to the shop after hours, and had a couple of beers with them, before we all moved on to a nice bar, where we drank some more beers on the roof terrasse. Meeting the locals is always cool, since as a backpacker you often just meet and hang out with other backpackers. Marthe struggled a bit since her Spanish isnt exactly fluent, and our new friends didnt know English to well. But with hand gestures, drawings, and improvising, you can communicate with anyone! Tina is excited to get to use her Spanish skills again, but can notice that its been a while since she went to a Spanish speaking country.

In Jujuy we signed up for an excursion, but because of the low season, it turned out it was only the two of us, and a driver. He took us for a whole day to the sorrounding areas of the town. Its famous for many villages, like Humahuaca, and Purmamarca, in the mountains sorrounding the town, ancient Inca fortresses, and multicoloured (7 to be exact) mountains. Beautiful! Well spent 200 pesos each.

The next day we hopped on the bus (again), and drove to La Quiaca, and Villazon, the border of Argentina, and Bolivia. We expected it to be a hastle to go across, but everything went smoothly, and after half an hour, we were in Bolivia. Its easy to be Norwegian abroad. We drove 2 more hours, watching beautiful scenery, to the town of Tupiza. Today we have been horsebackriding for 5 hours, with a guide called Louis, he was 16, and had worked with the horses from the age of 13! It was a wonderful trip, and we both felt excellent about moving away from the streets, and into the wilderness again, if only for one day. We visited sights like Puerto el Diablo, said to be the gates to the devils house. The horseback riding took its toll, and after a couple of hours relaxing and looking at pictures in our hostel, we are now writing our blog, before going out for dinner at the Alamo.

Tomorrow we are going on a 4 day trip, ending in Uyuni, the largest salt pan in the world. We will be going with two english girls, and to be honest, we are quite excited to hang out with girls again! We will write again sometime after the trip.

Hasta Luego! :)

Buenos Aires!

We have now been in Buenos Aires for 5 days, living with Christine Schwaz, a friend from Florø who is studying spanish here! Even though we haven`t seen as much as we maybe hoped for (the two first days we had jetlag), we discovered that Buenos Aires is a beautiful city with a rich culturelife.



 

Here are some pictures from the friday, we had a bbq party at their roof terrasse, and met a lot of people there, quite a nice crowd of people, most from Scandinavia, and some from Argentina. 

From the balcony where Christine lives we see people bbq`ing and playing football in the streets.  We have been to La Boca to see the famouse coloured houses and sat down to eat some real Argentin meat.

Us at La Boca :)

Today we are traveling further up north. After 20 hours on the bus our destination is a town called Salta. After this we don't really have a plan on what to do, so we will basically do whatever we want, traveling through Bolivia and Peru for 3 weeks. So whatever happens, we will write about it next time. :)

Hasta Luego!

Hi everyone!

Here it comes, the update on the last half of our Safari. Our tour from our last update has brought us from Spitskop to Johannesburg, the final destination. On our way we have discovered true harmony in so many of the beautiful camp sites, and calm, peaceful people that we meet there. Some of the places (if you would like to google) was Spitskop bush camp, Etosha National Park  and Ngepi camp in Namibia, Maun desert camp and Okavango Delta in Botswana, and of course Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe.

In Etosha National Park we saw many wildlife animals, such as Zebra, Giraffe, Elephant, Lion, Springbok, and last but definetly not least, Timon and Pumba! We were also on a real safari trip with a guide named Andy that took us by foot looking for rhinos. We learned about footprints and Tina even touched the poop to feel that it was fresh, and that we were on right track. A real bushlady!

In the Okavango delta we went by Makoro, a traditonal canoe with a guy standing in the back, pushing us with a stick. Cool!  On our way we saw hippos and an elephant. That night we made dinner outside, with a proper thunderstorm upon us. It was raining really hard and the lightening in the horizon lit up the whole sky. Amazing! 

We stayed at Victoria Falls for two days, and had time to do our own thing. We went tandem on a gorge swing, 70 meter free fall! What a rush! Shitscary though.. Then we went to look at the falls itself. The magnitude and the power of it struck us, as we thought it was raining because of all the water splashing up on us from the falls. In the evening the whole group had a party with two other drifter groups which was at the lodge as well. The pool at the lodge was well used the whole evening.. ;)

Our last night camping was quite dramatic for Marthe. Tina was sleeping in the truck, and Marthe slept outside with the two other norwegian girls, Katja and Cathrine + the guide Karel. During the night Marthe woke up and had to use the toilet. Katja was also awake and had to go, and was on her way out of her mosquito net as we heard something growl. Marthe had heard a baboon being chased and killed earlier that night, so she woke the guide up, right as the animal growled again. Karel jumped up, and started stressing as we understood it was a leopard quite close to where we were sleeping. We were all scared shitless, and was talking loudly to try to get the leopard to go away, before we quietly got ourselves into the truck and slept there for the remaining 2 hours before sunrise and our long drive to Jo'burg.

Now we are at the Drifters lodge in Jo'burg, just relaxing in our room as the rain is pouring down outside. We went to a huge shopping centre earlier today, and got lost as we were trying to find our way out of there. So tonight we are just gonna relax and get ready for South America! Flying to Buenos Aires tomorrow, and we are staying with a girl from Florø, Christine Schwarz for a couple of days. So our next update will be from somewhere along the way in South America! :)

Cheers

Safari - The real Africa



Climbing Table Mountain!



We have now been on the Safari for 10 days. Even with 14 days still left we have already experienced so much cool and exciting things. We have been camping in the middle of nowhere in Namaqualand, surrounded by nothing but ants and beautiful nature. We crossed the border into Namibia and stayed at Felix Unite, an amazing camp next to the Orange River which we spent a whole day canooing down with our riverguide Donovan, only 21 years old, and already so mature and experienced.

People down here is so far from the people in Norway, we meet so many people our age, that we think is alot older just from the way they behave. We have walked along the Fish River Canyon, the second largest in the world, 27 Km wide and 160 km long. What a sight! After that the plan was to head for the Namib desert to Drifters desert camp, but our truck broke down early in the day, so we had to spend the whole day and night far from anything you can call cvilization. It was not that fun when some of us got stomachproblems without proper toilet, shower or springwater. But we kept our mood up! The next day Sean from the desert camp came and drove us to his camp that was 5 bumpy hours away. Our guide Karel had to stay behind with the truck to wait for the mechanic. Drifters desert camp was nothing like we expected with its mountains in black and red from the sand, and a panorama view so amazing it felt like heaven.

Our lodge even had a small pool to cool down from the 45 degrees boiling hot sun. We stayed here for 2 nights and had a couple of safari drives with Sean around the camp to look at the nature and the animals. Karel came back with the truck after a night alone where we stranded. After he had got a good night of sleep we were back on the road. Sossusvlei, the largest sanddunes in the world, was next stop. We climbed up one of them and had an amazing view over it all. Now we are in Swakopmund, a town known for it's extreme sports and adventures, with the Atlantic Ocean to one side, and sandy desert on the other. Yesterday we went duneboarding, which was a bit harder then snowboarding, with the heavy sand, but a really fun thing to try out. In the afternoon we went skydiving. That is the most extreme and coolest thing we have ever done. The guides was pretty cool and relaxed also, so we had a really good time with them as well as the skydiving itself. What an adrenalin rush! :D Today we're leaving Swakopmund towards Spitskop and new adventures.

Bilder

Her kommer bildene fra sist innlegg :)

 Lais fra Brasil og Marthe paa terassen paa hostelet vaart!

1 fra Brasil, 1 sveitser, 2 nederlendere og 2 norske :)

Dinna trudde vi at hadde sett sine bedre daga, men den holder tydeligvis paa a miste babypelsen!

Pingvinkos :)

kooosa oss i Sola!

Marthe, meg og vaar nye bestevenn Martin fra Sveits! :)

Bono! U2 var siiiinnsjukt bra!

Cape Town: The City Of Blinding Lights

Da var det tid for første blogginnlegg etter starten på turen. Vi har vært i Cape Town i 5 dager nå, men det føles ut som vi har vært vekke fra kulden i mange uker allerede. Starten på turen kunne ikke vært bedre, har blitt kjent med mange folk allerede. Vi sjekket inn på Afrique du Sud, der vi har bodd på rom med en jente fra Brasil, utrolig søt og hyggelig jente som heite Lais. Hun har vært her en god stund nå, og fått mange venner som vi også har blitt kjent med. Fredags kveld var vi også på U2 konsert, legendarisk! Sto helt framme ved scenen ilag med de andre fra Florø som er her nede, + Martin, fra Sveits, som vi møtte gjennom Lais.

Har kjørt fra Cape Town til Simons Town, som er ca 1 time utenfor byen, og har en pingvinkoloni på ett svaberg. Ble masse bra bilder. Vi kjørte dit ilag med 2 tyskere vi har møtt, som hadde leiebil. Måtte ta toget tilbake til CT for å rekke konserten, noe vi ikke tenkte særlig over, før vi kom på ett stappfullt tog, nesten uten seter, som de eneste hvite menneskene. Vi ble så nedstirret at vi ikke turte å snakke med hverandre en gang. Men det endret seg etterhvert, da vi tilbudte setene våre til noen afrikanske damer som sto. De takket nei, men Marthe sa hun kunne få sitte på fanget hennes, og det gjorde hun. Da skrattlo hun, klemte Marthe og sa "You see, black and white..." Lørdag møtte vi gruppen vi skal på safari med, vi er 11 personer til sammen, der 7 av oss er fra Skandinavia.. Resten av gjengen er noen tyskere (selvfølgelig) og 1 mann fra Canada. Med dem dro vi på vinsmaking litt utenfor Cape Town, og fikk smake på skikkelig geitost som de også produserte der, (fikk hilse på geita til og med). Her møtte vi også på Florøfolkene, så vi har visst fått ett aldri så lite Florø i Afrika også. Nå kan vi skryte av det i steden for Bergen. Mandag begynner vi på turen opp til Namibia, så dere hører nok ikke fra oss før vi kommer oss til Johannesburg i Mars. Ellers er livet som backpackere supert, men veldig intimt (for en time siden sto vi i dusjen ilag. :p) og vi gleder oss til alt som kommer, men prøver å leve i øyeblikket :) Gled dere til neste blogginnlegg, da blir det mange historier og fortelle!
Ellers håper vi at alle har det bra heime.

Totsiens fra Cape Town, og de smilende, vinterbleike jentene fra Florø. ;)

Ps. Vi har prøvd å laste opp bilder på bloggen fra konserten, pingvinane osv, men internett tilgangen her er ganske dårlig. Så de kommer senere :)

5 dager til avreise!

Hei!

Nå begynner vi å bli ganske reiselystne her vi sitter. Vi er hos Tina for å få på plass de siste detaljene før avreise. Har booket hostel i Cape Town, Afrique du Sud Youth hostel, der vi skal bo de 4 første nettene i Afrika. Det ligger ikke langt vekke fra Cape Town Stadium, der vi skal på U2-konsert fredag 18. februar! Woohoo! Noe det ikke går så bra med, er pakkingen. Utrolig vanskelig å føle at man skal skvise livet sitt ned i en 75 liter sekk for 4,5 mnd på tur. Klare er vi derimot på at livene våre ikke skal henge med oss på turen, vi skal nyte hvert sekund, og lukte, smake, se, og føle på det som er!
Tina har laget ett fantastisk verdenskart som grovt viser stoppene på turen vår, slik at dere kan følge litt med på den geografiske delen etter hvert som dere leser ;)

Vi gleder oss til neste innlegg skal inn, for da sitter vi nemlig i Afrika :D

På gjensyn, eller Totsiens, som de sier på Afrikaans!