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| ...New Zealand Yesterday, we got to lake Taupo, and we did the craziest thing we did so far : a tandem sky dive jump!!! we weren't really scared before we took off on the plane (well ...). But then, it was terrible. I almost cried on the plane, I was so scared. I couldn't breathe. then I saw soren jumping, I saw his face when he had his legs hanging out. And there I was even more scared. Then he disappeared. I was the last one to jump, I just looked outside and thought : no, I am not going to do that. no way. But then the instructor told me : slide slowly to the door, hang your legs outside. Smile to the camera. Cross your arms, put your head back on my shoulders. and then .... OH - MY- GOD. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!! That's what I fell inside, but in fact not a single sound came out of my mouth. the first few seconds, I felt my stomach in my throat, but then I started to relax and realised I was flying...at 200km/h!!! Oh my god, what a feeling, I even forgot about a parachute when it opened I was surprised. Then suddenly everything slowed down and it was so beautiful, the sun in my face, the landscape, and me hanging in the air....I can't believe I just jumped out of a plane!!! then we landed and I met soren again and we started talking and talking and talking. Wow! one of the best thing I have ever felt. Today, when I think about it, I still feel the adrenalin going trough my veins. Tomorrow we head to Auckland, in 2 days we will be in south america. New zealand has been fabulous. SOUTH AMERICA Sucre, Bolivia 24.06.03 Hi guys, it seems to me I didn't write for ages, New zealand seems already like an old memory to me, but it's just because so many things happen when you travel. Soeren and I flew into Chile somewhere around the end of may, and a new adventure started in a new world... We stayed in Santiago for a couple a days, the time to adapt to the new time frame, and we went out one night and met a very nice couple, Patricia and Arturo who showed us the city, it was so nice, then they invited us in their parents' home to have a cup of coffee, we talked a lot and it is so hard for them because they want to go travelling as well but to get to the same amount of money, they have to save for years, I hope they will realize their dream one day... After that Soeren and I decided to separate, because we wanted to have different experiences, see different countries, and because we had been travelling together for 6 months, we also felt both confident to wander alone for a while. So from now on, if you want news from Soren, you will either have to write emails to him, or be able to read german... At the moment, he is in Buenos Aires, taking spanish courses and he seems to enjoy it a lot, his plans are to go up north to the Iguazu falls, at the border of Argentina, paraguay and Brazil and then he will go to Rio de Janeiro. For my part I started by a bus journey of 18h north of CHile, to a town called Antofagasta. I had such a hard time there because from one day to the other I had nobody to talk to, there were no other tourist in the hostel and I couldn't speak a word of spanish. I thought I was gonna start speaking alone...But finally things changed and I met the son of the owner who showed me a bit a guitar, and later on I met a friend of the family, who is also a guitarist and he was so nice to me, he gave me a lot of materials to learn guitar, two old tapes of his of famous Chilean guitarists, a picture of him with the Che gevara in the background and he gave me his address so I should send him a tape of me playing guitar when I get better at it. He was also practising a kind of medecine based on body energies and after he had put all the energies into place, he gave me a stone to protect me on my travels alone. After that, I left Antofagasta and went to San pedro de Atacama, a town in the middle of the desert (who among you, except Jurgen, knew there was a desert in chile?), and it was so beautiful. You know this feeling, before you go travelling, you can't help imagining how it would look like? Well this place just fitted perfectly with my imagination and it was such a great feeling... I also met very nice people there and so from talking to nobody I started laughing out loud all the time. We visited a couple of places, the geysers, and la Valle de la luna an incredible landscape made entirely and naturally of salt. then I decided to go to Bolivia, so I took that train from Calama to Uyuni. The distance was a bit less than 400km but it took us 24h hours to get there! On the train, it was crazy, it wasn't even a train, there were only two wagons... who contained the equivalent of 5! God I wasn't proud the first night squeezed between boxes, women and their babies, and I couldn't breathe because of the altitude... but it was so worth it, I met many nice people on that train, so we had a really good time. there were 2 argentinians, both mountain guides, who were going to cross the Salar de Uyuni walking (I will tell about it later), 3 chileans travelling together and paying their trip making and selling handcrafts on the markets, an australian couple, and an english guy I had met earlier on. We laughed a lot, playing the same music over and over again and drinking wine... We stopped at the border, in a middle of nowhere just beside a beautiful volcano, and there we had time to look at it because the locomotive left us and came back (only, it could have been worse)10 hours later! Yes, so then, Fede and Diego, the 2 argentinians, proposed me to drink some Mate with them. The mate is more or less a tea, drunk from a bombilla, a kind a wooden cup, with the help of a special straw (that actually looks like a spoon with holes) to filter the tea, do you follow me until then ? it s hard to describe... It s a custom from Argentina. So they fill up the bombilla with mate, and add just a little bit of water, and the first person drinks it. Then, they add another bit a water and another person drinks it, and so on. everybody shares the same bombilla one after the other until the mate is completely infused, while talking about life, it is very social and until now, it s my favourite custom from all of which I have participated. So there we were, in the middle of nowhere, drinking mate and contemplating our 2 wagons - train, with a huge volcano in the background, the sun warming our faces...It was a great feeling... at the same moment, the 3 chileans were drinking pisco (alcohol from chile I think) with the custom officer! can you believe it? And finally, when we thought we were condamned to stay in that place for ever, the locomotive arrived, and we continued our way to Bolivia. We arrived in Uyuni, and I stayed around there for a week. Fede and diego got prepared for their crazy trip through the salar. |