Asia-Europe 2012

Tierra del Fuego

The last 1500km were VERY boring. A lonely freeway and the endless pampas. Nothing else.

Since this route is very popular among bikers and other adventure travelers, on every gas station, restaurant or hotel there is one (or more) window(s) reserved for stickers. I forgot to print stickers, so I guess we’ll have to come back later to affix some 🙂

After spending one night in Rio Gallegos we crossed the border to Chile. From there we took the ferry over the Magellan strait and we stepped on Tierra del Fuego. Nothing new: more pampas! After some 200km we crossed again to Argentina (and we spent one more night there, in the customs building) and the landscape began to change: mountains, lakes and forests. At sunset we were finally in Ushuaia, the world’s Southern most city in the world, on 9th of May 2010, after 109 days and 22.500km!

929 tdf 930 tdf 931 tdf 932 tdf 933 tdf 935 tdf 936 tdf

Tags: watercraft

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May 12, 2010|15 argentina|Post Comment »

Lake Titicaca

Once in Puno, we booked a tour of the Lake Titicaca. First we went to visit one of the artificial floating islands inhabited by the Uros, direct descendants of an ancient indian tribe. After a short stay, we continued to Taquile, another island some 2 hours away from the first. As you can see from the last picture, the indians living nowadays pay less attention to details, compared to their ancestors 🙂
669 isla 670 isla 671 isla 674 isla 675 isla 676 isla 678 isla 679 isla 680 isla 681 isla 677 isla

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April 26, 2010|12 peru|Post Comment »

The Kuna village

There were hundreds of small islands on our way. Usually after 5PM the catamaran was anchored close to one of them and we were able to swim to the shore. Most islands were uninhabited and less than 100m wide, with only few palm trees and birds. Some were habited by the kunas and one even had an air strip and officers that stamped our passports. 373 kuna 374 kuna 375 kuna

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March 11, 2010|09 panama|Post Comment »

Fritz the Cat

Fritz the Cat was our ride out of Carti. A 15m catamaran capable of sleeping up to 15 people (or so) sailing under the Austrian flag having Herr Fritz, from Austria, as the capitan and chef. Beside him, onboard there was Luis, the Colombian sailor and a former tiger trainer at circus, Siegfried, from Germany, Tulay, a Turkish lady also from Germany (both were capitan’s friend), and two other paying customers (at a rate of US$395 per person and US$395 per bike with all meals, coffee, tea and water included for 5 days): Gerolamo, an Italian actor living now in Berlin and Hitay, a Turkish webmaster. So, after struggling for one month to understand Spanish I had to start it all over since the most spoken language onboard was German. Everybody was a fan of traveling and stories about Cambodia, Venezuela, Spain, Cuba, South Africa and even Antarctica never stopped from being told. It felt like everyone was enjoying a non-stop vacation! 363 cat 364 cat 365 cat 366 cat 367 cat 368 cat 369 cat 370 cat 372 cat

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|10 colombia, 09 panama|Post Comment »

The Kuna Taxi

Seeing the dock, I was expecting some sort of Ro-Ro feature but no, we had to muscle Palomina (the bike’s name, after the horse in Guatemala) in the boat. The trip to the catamaran cost us US$25 and it took less than 10 minutes. Imagine the effort with the directions being shouted in English, German, Spanish, Kuna and Romanian. 355 kuna taxi 356 kuna 357 kuna 358 kuna 359 kuna 360 kuna 361 kuna 362 kuna