A month without any entries, what happened?

Well, I was really just lazy to be completely honest. I even uploaded these fotos already last week and wanted to add a short summary of the last 4 weeks – never happened tho :o) …So finally I’m stuck on a 6-7 hours bus ride again, so I have the time necessary to let you know what happened within the month of february here in Mexico.

I assume that the last entry ended just before the week of our internal workshop. That week, I was allowed to present our (or better my) project of developing a co2e-balance (the e means equivalents and stands for all greenhouse-gases measured in co2, for a more detailed explanation how that works please use the internet) tool for our international activities. So what it is supposed to do is help us determine our co2-footprint on the one side and calculate savings attributed to our projects on the other side.

You can break down your impacts in a rather direct fashion by only looking at (in our case) installed systems of renewable energy. Of course you consider the whole life-cycle when looking at those systems as the production also emits a relatively high amount of co2e in the process.

However, impact of a project is not always that obvious and easy to determine. What does that mean? It means that even though we are currently working on our crédito verde project only with one single partner (maybe one and a half, but our 2nd partner is pretty reluctant still) we have an impact on co2-reduction far higher than what you would expect initially.

As we are also working with many banks that are not yet offering a product related to green microfinancing we are establishing a sound financial structure and environment, particularly in rural areas. The better off a region is in terms of financial access and the more the people know about what the merits and risks of obtaining a credits are, the more likely it becomes that these people start to consider other possibilities in terms of saving money. The advantage of a solarthermal water heating system is that you not only reduce your carbon footprint but you also save a whole lot of money over the course of the expected lifespan of 20 years as you can save up to 75% of your gas-consumption (I might have mentioned that before, but don’t mind if I mention it again 😛 ).

Long story short: The establishing of a sound financial system will have impacts on the future installations of RE-systems and therefore we can indirectly take that into our positive account. How to measure these effects is really complex tho and at this point we are trying to work together with partners from different areas to weigh our possibilities.

I decided to write blog entries with specific topics in the future, e.g. typical food and drinks or cultures that lived within the boundaries of todays Mexico. The reason for that is simple: I hope that people start to think about Mexico as a viable travel destination. Before I left I was really impressed and shocked almost what people linked to my temporary home: drugs, safety-issues, unstable political systems, corruption, robbery, etc. Don’t get me wrong, all these things are concerns when looking at the broad picture. But really nothing of all that affects your life as long as you stay out of the respective circles. I’m not saying you will never become victim of a guy trying to steal your stuff (I haven’t so far even tho I sometimes neglect safety measures) but that can happen in Germany as well. Of course Mexico is a huge center in terms of narco-trafficing – but again, as long as you don’t intentionally get in their way you should be fine.

And my god, the country is so beautiful. Mexican people have such a great open mindset and welcome you with hospitality and happiness that once you made the decision to come here you rather end up staying here. It is also insanely rich of cultural heritages and beautiful landscapes, ranging from desert to pure and vivid jungle sceneries – not to mention that in almost all directions you find beautiful beaches (including the caribbean sea). Of course I’m not mentioning that all for no reason. I want you to come here and enjoy all these aspects the country has to offer. For the german „Schwaben“ (a region in Germany known to be sensible to prices) the benefits of a really favorable exchange rate of euros to mexican pesos should say it all.

So from now on, every week on Sunday (I’ll try to have it uploaded by sunday evening central european time) I’ll publish an entry about specific themes and my mexican life here linked to it.

Next weeks first topic will be Oaxaca. It’s a mexican state but also give’s it’s name to the state’s capital. We’ve been there on a business trip and I decided to stay one day longer to get to know the area (even tho I’ve been there already before 4 years ago).

Meanwhile I’m still stuck in the bus and enjoying the beautifulness of the countries landscapes. Currently I have a great view on the traffic jam ahead of us and our slow progress allows a closer look on the industry in these areas =). I was going to travel on the nightbus yesterday but for some really bad feelings about the idea I decided not to travel over night. I was really tired and the prospect of having a full day in Guadalajara while being super exhausted was not too appealing to me. We are approaching a sign saying „Slow down your speed“. I wonder how that is even possible when you are barely moving already :). Tomorrow I’ll work together with our project partners on a detailed flow of processes. That’s also a really nice aspect of my work here that I’m basically in charge of my own topics and therefore I’m able to approach things how I’d like them to be.

That’s it for now. I will add some fotos that I took in the last 4 weeks since my last entry. A part of them were taken on my day trip to Coyoacan, a suburb of mexico-city where I stumbled right into a traditional dance by descendants of the aztec cultur („mexica“ called originally, thats also the origin of todays name Mexico; Tenochtitlan was the capital of that time and located where you find Mexico City nowadays). Really impressive stuff.

I also decided to start a new foto project that hopefully allows me to share my conversations with interesting and fascinating people I’m having along my way. I’m not sure yet whether I’ll try to create a similar page like my good friend Elina (check out her awesome collection of fotos at www.kamaaina-photography.com please, really worth a visit) or if I’ll include a section in here.

I’ll keep you posted.

Thanks to everyone who responded to my shoutout and shared something about their life. Feel free to leave a comment if you have something on your mind or would like me to write an entry about a specific topic you are interested in.

I’m gonna listen to Sportfreunde Stiller now. =P

Take care and see you soon,

Simon

(again forgot the battery for my camera, this time I would not have had that much time to take pictures anyway^^)

Some pictures.

Back with some more news about my life in Mexico

Aaand here we go again:

In the last entry I stopped without telling you the main project that I will be working on in the next 3 months (at least, we will see).
So how am I spending the majority of my precious time? To begin with, I would like that everybody reminds himself what I explained to you in my last entry about the refinancing of credit funds via cooperative banks (so-called “Savings and Credit Cooperatives”, they call them cajas here) to finance the members of the latter who live in rural areas of Mexico. Sounds already far too complicated right? But it is a pretty straightforward concept.

In this week I’m participating in a workshop over these projects and a got to meet a lot of interesting people that are working on the same goal in Mexico, El Salvador and Nicaragua. Just yesterday we went out with some of the participants and I gotta admit that when they drink beer and start talking super fast and without context about their colleagues I’m still having troubles understanding spanish but that was like an ultimate test of your language skills.

In our “green” project (called “Credito Verde”) we are working together with these cajas to provide cheap credits to their members to supply their households. We put our focus on solar thermal installations that have the potential to provide them with hot water subsidizing the usage of gas to a degree of almost 60%. That means that we are not only reducing the CO2-emissions but we can also contribute to the independence of the credit applicant at the same time.
The challenges we are facing are that many people here are reluctant to invest in future benefits at a present cost/investment. The offered credits come with quite fair conditions and already taking them into account an investment reaches it’s break-even-point (where the investment paid itself off).
On our trip to Guadalajara we wanted to make sure that the caja and their stuff are well-prepared for the “selling” of these credits and the renewable energy installations respectively. We also visited a potential Mexican reseller of these systems and convinced him (or agreed with him) to work together in the future. The weekend was pretty successful as all involved parties now have a clear idea of the projects goal and how to take the firsts steps.

Since my weekends so far have been pretty busy and packed (most of the time also with work tasks) so far I was not able to explore my temporary city of home. But the Saturday of the Guadalajara weekend I heard about a music festival themed “Mexican Indie”. So thinking that it sounds like something I might enjoy I decided to go there by myself and have a look. It turned out that Mexican Indie is a lot different from what I’ve expected what doesn’t mean that I didn’t like it. Also my Airbnb host turned out to be one of the artists performing there and I was able to get to know her and her roommate better. Later that evening I met up with Katharina from the DGRV office and her Mexican friends in a so-called “Biergarten” (german for beergarden where you go and drink beers/eat rustic food). Cool Night.

From Sunday to Friday my eyes were killing me (guess the smog took its toll) and everyday I was just super tired. Good thing that work tasks were rather easy to fulfill and days passed by quickly. I was really super annoyed with the situation caused by my eyes until my colleague recommended me to try eyedrops that clean and relax them. After buying and applying them my problems stopped and so far I’m still feeling good.

The weekend I decided to visit my brother and his wife Ilse in Puebla (nearby, 2 hours by bus). After seeing prices for hostels I decided to look for hosts via couchsurfing. And I gotta say: Mexicans are really welcoming hosts. Not only my host Mauricio (that hosted up to 6 people at the same time, not for the first time as he said) but also the persons I contacted have been really friendly.
It was also really nice to get to see my brother and Ilse for the first time after almost 2 years (or at least? I can’t even remember the last time that I’ve seen him before that weekend). So the Saturday we started off with a visit to the commercial part of the City where we went to eat the traditional dish of Puebla and probably all Mexico: Mole Poblano. Its really hard to describe and my brother was also barely able to do it, but Mole is made from chilis, nuts/seeds and Mexican chocolate. Sounds weird, but its reaaaallyyy good. The spent the evening playing pool in a cool bar before heading back to catch up on some sleep.
On Sunday I started my sightseeing tour through the city center and took my camera with me of course. Just as I was about to take the first picture I recognized that I forgot my battery in the charger.. Really? That was just stupid. You have that big camera and you are not able to use it cause you were to stupid to think of the battery.. Nice one. That’s also the reason why I didn’t take too many pictures, however I took some videos with my phone that I want to edit to a movie about the country afterwards.

The whole weekend was a little busier than usual I think because this weeks Monday was a holiday. Anyways, I went to most of the touristic places, including the cathedral and a really interesting museum about the Mexican revolution of 1910 by the Serdán Family. The Rosario Chapel in the church of Santo Domingo is really impressive as it is covered with gold and provides unforgettable impressions.  With a couchsurfing companion, Christoph and Ilse we also went to Cholula, a former important city that hosts also a ruin of the long passed culture, that at some point was taken by Spaniards. Since the latter didn’t like the spiritual atmosphere of the site they decided to found a new city, today’s Puebla, and build as many churches as possible. I thought that the Monday would be pretty busy traffic-wise so I decided to get back to Mexico City rather early, so I left the city at 4 and arrived back at home at around 7.

I’m still not fact that I forgot my camera but I hope I learned my lesson from that.

As I mentioned above this week is rather relaxed as it’s one day less of work and the remaining days we are hosting a workshop.
Also I got told that I’m the chosen one to move into a really cool apartment (the one I’m currently still living in is just too far away from my work and not too big) so I will move the 15^th of February.

Well, that’s already it from my part. I would be happy if people decided to let me know what is happening in their respective life’s. I’m really busy these weeks and sometimes I just forget the most important things in life. So send me messages or arrange skype dates with me, show some love =).

Take care and hear from you soon,

Simon

Start of a new chapter

Soo. Long time no text. Thats due to the fact that in Germany nothing really special was happening for the past couple of months since I got back from my semester abroad in Peru. That beautiful country. Dayum! Today I’m writing this entry in a bus to Morelia in the state of Michoacan in Mexico.

Mexico.

Cool. Tequila, Huey! Yeah, it was time to go abroad again. After more than 9 months in Germany I felt that it was time to seek another adventure. In a country I already knew from my travel 4 years ago and that my brother was already living in for around 9 years. Of course it was not only the prospect of travelling yet again that made me leave to postpone my graduation yet again. The internship I’m allowed to do here in the capital (they call it Distrito Federal, short „DF“) just sounded too good to pass on it.

SO what am I actually doing here? Before I left many people asked me what I would actually do in the internship. Back then I used to reply that I wasn’t too sure about the exact idea of the project but that it basically had something to do with financial inclusion and micro credits and that another younger side project would be in the area of the financing renewable energys and their efficient use in Mexico.

„currently watching a stupid romance in spanish that is actually pretty stupid. just by looking at it without even knowing the spanish language Im pretty sure you’d get the idea of the film.. Uagh, not cool. good thing its over now“

So, what is it that we are working on? A huge part of the project is really what I thought it would be. Financial inclusion means that as many people should have access to the financial markets. What that means for us is mainly the access to credits through something called micro credits. Micro credits are loans that are provided to receivers that normally tend to have a difficult time finding a credit elsewhere at a fair interest. The project is financed by the german BMZ (Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development)and can be seen as a measure to fight and reduce poverty. How does that work now? So for example, the past Thursday I’ve been to Oaxaca with one of my new colleagues, Carina. Our task was to simply check if credits where used for the purpose they were once claimed for. Why are we doing this? Cause the DGRV has a fund together with the cooperative bank ACREIMEX in Oaxaca that provides micro credits to groups of 5 people at very low and fair interest rates. How is that possible? Well, the idea is that, as already mentioned, people not only have access to credits but also that they are not being abused by financial institutions. That is an important fact as many banks offer so called „micro credits“, but charge interest rates that are beyond reasonable and fair. So what we did was not only checking the right usage of those credits but also the efficiency of the process of distributing them by our partner bank. The offered conditions by ACREIMEX are so fair cause the fund is partly financed by the DGRV through the BMZ as mentioned above already.

We saw that most credits are used for what they ve been claimed for but of course exceptions exists and in my opinion that process of handling these cases still lacks some effective measures.

So after a last day at work before the weekend finally arrived (we had to my surprise a full german lunch with Brezeln and White Sausage with sweet Mustard that actually is considered a classical breakfast :D) I got back home and was finally allowed to sleep. The next day I was almost joining my colleague Katharina on a trip to Xochimilcho where you apparently go to party on floating boats. As was not really motivated to spend my first day free of duties to get drunk and start partying at 2 o’clock I decided to stay in DF and take some pictures (not too successful tho).

In the evening I still went out and joined a new friend of mine (super crazy) and her friends to her place and to a bar afterwards. It was nice to hang out with people and to try all the beers that mexico has to offer (even tho I had a erdinger weißbier in the bar, besides mezcal and tequila of course). Sunday it was time to check the Zocalo (main plaza of a city are called like that here) and watched with my roomie Ivan and his friend Moy later that day the NFL game.

This week was really busy. It all started with a kick off presentation for a cuban delegation who traveled to Mexico to get to know the mexican system of cooperatives. And who was travelling with them all the time? Yea, me. Not only being there but organizing the whole thing. At the start it was really weird as all of them are at least 30 years older than me. But after the first hesitant interactions we started to get along with each other and it was actually really funny most of the time (getting up early the whole week was pretty hard tho but whatever).

Our first stop was Tula, a city where also a (famous?) archaelogical site is located that we couldnt visit due to a packed schedule. We went on to visit 2 big cooperatives (in german that means Genossenschaft btw), the Cruz Azul (producing cement, HUGE. the high management welcomed us and partly accompanied us; impressive) and the Pascual (famous for their drinks like the brand BOING).

The same day we continued to travel to the mexican state of michoacan where we stayed at the state’s capital „Morelia“. A beautiful city I must say. And you hardly see any tourists cause the state is considered really unstable regarding security and stuff. But I must say I really enjoyed my stay here. We also stayed 2 nights with some free time to explore the city and get to know some of the nice people living here. The last night in Morelia I visited a museum and by the time I wanted to live they had everything set up for a concert in the middle of the building’s courtyard.

On my last day with the cuban delegation we visited another cooperation (not as big) in the region of Tierra Caliente of Michoacan, apparently a couple of years ago „famous“ for narcotic trafficking. It was a really cool experience where we got to see the rice fields and the peoples idea of making business.

I don’t wanna make this post any longer as it already is. So I’m gonna wait with sharing my experiences of the last 2-3 days where I’ve been to Guadalajara for a different project (the one I actually applied for in the first place) and to a cool music festival back in DF.

Currently I’m watching NFL with my roomie Ivan and gonna try to upload some of the pictures that I took so far here in Mexico. It is just really frightening to go out with your big camera to take pictures as all the people tell you it’s not really a good idea ^^.

Take care and see you soon!

Simon

Back to Life, Back to Reality!

„What the fuck? Why did Simon not post anything the last 3 months? I was so loyal to his blog, his awesome entries and god! These Photos made me so jealous and travel there myself!!!“ #saidnooneever

Well, I have to admit: I was getting a lil tired to write entry blogs with my phone. I’m sure I mentioned that I didn’t bring my laptop on the trip through Colombia, Ecuador and the north of Peru as I was to afraid to lose it. Still, I managed to publish some entries with my phone, but photos had to wait til I would get back to my laptop. Now, I’m already sitting in my room in Germany/Munich. It really feels like nothing changed. The same awesome roommates, neighbors, familiar language, daily life… etc. Many people probably know what I’m talking about. It’s different. Especially if you have been traveling for almost 4 months without any major stops you are kind of used to move to an awesome place almost every day, meet new people and enjoy life to the fullest. Once you arrive at that airport you know already that your life will all of a sudden change. Have you tried to prepare yourself for that event? Of course. You tried at least. Did it work for me? Of course. NOOT!

I decided to continue writing my blog ‚cause I want people to travel more. Why? ‚cause traveling is da shit. Seriously. „So Simon. Please tell us more about why you are so into traveling and why you recommend each one of us to explore the world“ Well, it would be easy to give an answer in a sentence. Something basic like „Cause you see a lot of different places, cultures, people etc. For some people it’s a different approach. Getting to party with a lot of different people, in different cities, bars; drinking a different beer than you are used to, going to a different club maybe after.“ Many people would already get it and any word beyond that would basically be unnecessary.  I also think it depends on the person you would ask. But here is my answer: I think being able to travel this beautiful planet should be considered as a gift. You never know how much time you have still left in this life. You wake up in a different environment. You hardly know anyone. Maybe you are traveling alone, with a friend. I hardly saw people traveling with more than 3 people. and I probably wouldn’t recommend it. So you are wondering what will happen today, what people you will meet, what they will tell you about their life, their perspectives and their feelings. Maybe they give you a hint and you might start the next day to travel there.
It’s all a mystery! And thats probably the most exciting part I love most about traveling with a backpack. Without any plans, obligations and with the desire to explore this world. Broaden your horizon (I know that sounds just so stupid, but I honestly think that’s what I’m ultimately striving for): make new friends for a lifetime, learn a different language, culture. Talk to people. Learn about their habits, their problems and struggles in life. Everything. Notice how everything is just so not like home. Please don’t forget, that people who are traveling for a long time are also missing their family, their friends and just being at home.
And still. Instead of flying home I was considering changing my flight to continue in Australia. I was looking to earn some money there, live a couple of months in Melbourne and keep enjoying this life. my life. So why care about others?
In the end I decided not to do it. Why? ‚cause not doing it now doesn’t mean I might not end up in Australia soon. or somewhere else. I’m now 25 years old. I don’t consider myself old. I’m far from being old. I’ve actually never felt that young and alive while I was traveling. People showed me that worrying about your future is not the best way to approach your life.

Okay, that was a lot of „blabla“. Even I have to admit that. But most things that I just mentioned are really important to me and I would like people to experience the same awesome shit that I was allowed to. What I’d like to do next is not continuing to recuperate what happened to me since I left Lima. Instead, I’m trying to give an overview over the countries I’ve been to: Colombia, Ecuador and of course my beloved Peru.

Now it’s already been more or less 3 months since my last entry. And you know what? It’s been not even my fault. Some ridiculous luck I had with this fucking electronical devices, it was not even funny anymore. It all started with my iPod. That cute little green thing. Full with awesome music. Music I love and that normally gets me through each day, be it an awesome day (I had a couple of them!) or shitty days (can’t remember I had such a day.. 😀 ). It was always there for me. In my pockets. So after that friend passed away, I was reliant on my phone to substitute my Ipod. Too bad it could not meet my expectations cause I did not transfer any music to it, but I still perma used it for youtube when wifi was available. „I would survive like that“ I said to myself. And you know what? It worked out. Anna, the girl I travelled with, had an Ipod and even something to connect two headphones. SO AWESOME. and her music taste is not even that bad. I decided that it could be worse. FUCK!

Some days after we climbed the fucking Cotopaxi Volcano (5897m) my phone decided to stop working and rather reboot ‚til eternity. Fair enough I thought. If someone would have brought me to that cold peak without almost any oxygen I probably would have decided that I need a change in my life, too. I’m just not sure if I would have been that quick in my decision.. But hey, I still had myself! The sad part about that was that I lost all my notes (yes, that can be important), photos, videos. Basically everything. I have to admit I was so naive to think that the data can’t get lost nowadays. There had to be some kind of sd card chip in my phone. And i was sure that was not damaged or anything. So why worry? Fuck you thats why.

Ok, so as I said I will try to make some entries about the countries I’ve been to. I will always add some photos accordingly. Stay tuned and see you soon!

Bye Bye Hein

Alright, so I’m currently sitting on the top of a Leuchtturm and wait for the sun to show up.. There s really not that much to do in Guayaquil, so I decided to write some more lines for my blog.

Manizales (Hein, Anna, Max)

So this should be the last stop of the squad Hein, Anna, Max and myself.
In Cali we booked a pretty damn expensive Hostal and arrived pretty late in the night. So the initial plan of going straight to the top of the volcano the next day was revised and we rather had a relaxed, but still pretty nice day in Manizales (at the time the Carnival just started there, so lots of activities).
We went to Bed early cause the next day started already at 4 to climb up to around 4800meters of the mountain Santa Isabel (not all the way to the top tho).

The landscape was awesome. The climb for me was alright, it is really exhausting tho and the Glacier was not too special if you have seen something like that before;). What I have to mention is the insane ride that got us to the starting point of the trek and back to Manizales. It takes around 5 (!!!!!!) hours one way. And let me tell you: the road is not paved at all and just makes it horrible to drive upon. In the car/jeep I was also rather squeezed and bumped my head several time severely so I still had headaches the next days. I know I’m complaining a lot in the last lines, but it was just not comperable to anything I had experienced before. The way to get there was okay, as I was just pretty excited and enjoyed the beautiful landscapes. Also I got to stand on the back of the jeep, which was pretty amazing too.
but the way back. I got sick, my head exploded and my legs couldn’t find any space. It was really bad.

A guy (I took a photo, cause at that moment I decided to dedicate a special place in my room to him haha) passed in a SUV and thank god could take some of us with him. God, the rest of the way I couldn’t stop smiling. It not only went way faster, you could almost not feel anything of the rough road. So I recovered pretty fast and could not believe how lucky we were.
Unfortunately, we had dinner on the way, so he dropped us of there and afterwards we had to squeeze again.
After a little while we arrived to the Hostal tho and I was so dead, I slept at 8.

Meanwhile in Guayaquil. I’m still waiting for the sun. It’s already 5.30pm, but clouds are passing by and it looks like I might be lucky (earworm I’m up all night to get lucky).. by the way. A girl just sat on the lap of a boy and tried to pull out some of his nose hairs. true love right there ladies and gentlemen.
Also I took some more selfies, cause I just love how you can see my arm all the way up, including the bracelet I got from Anna.

But back to Manizales. The next day was rather chilled again. We went with a cable car to the bus terminal, bought tickets for the next day to Medellin and to a little village. Nothing to special though, so we decided to use the rest of the afternoon to go see (for me another) coffee farm. It was pretty informative, but again in Spanish which was pretty annoying for Hein and Max. But I think we translates most parts so they could more or less follow and in the end also paid less after some bargaining (we also got a really awesome cake extra, the guy was pretty nice!).

After a visit to a nice Italian restaurant we decided to go home instead of partying (we are all not really young hoppers anymore, I think I’m even the youngest of the squad haha). But it was a good idea in the end. We were all still tired from the last days and some of us got even a little sick.

So after some emotional goodbye scenes Hein and I were on our way to Medellin, Anna to pansylvania oder so ^^ and Max to Bogotá. When he left he was 100 %sure that his flight would be the same day. Too bad the same guy, that already missed two flights recently, managed it this time at least to arrive one day too early.. classic Max.

Medellín (Hein y moi)

Last stop for Heinrich’s trip through Colombia. We prebooked a pretty nice Hostal and went out with some Colombians only couple of hours after we got there (they come to our Hostal every Tuesday for the free salsa classes). We had a pretty fun night, and Hein later that night a pretty huge huge burger from the street (basically only consisted of meat haha).

The next day we participated on a free tour around the city and learned a lot about the history of Medellin and the country. Pablo is a really awesome guy and is able to entertain a group of people for the whole 4 hour („free“) tour. The rest of the day we tried to go with the cable car to a park on a hill but only made it to one stop before our actual destination cause they wouldn’t let anymore people up there.. That night we only had some beers and checked out the party area of Medellin „El Poblado“ where also most hostals are located. We didn’t stay too long tho cause we wanted to go to Guatape the next day.

So we arrived in Guatape at around 11 after a 2 hour bus ride and were stunned by the huge rock you find there (La piedra or La Peñal, forgot it) and the nice lake that surrounds the whole area.
We first walked around the village that is famous for its „Zocalo’s“, paintings on each houses that make the village pretty beautiful through all the different colors.

We were also rather lucky with the weather. Later we took a trip on a speedboat around the lake that we shared with a Colombian family to save money. It was pretty much fun, they wanted to take a lot of photos with us(we also with them tho haha). We got to see Pablo Escobar villa and just enjoyed the surroundings. The driver also explained some things about the energy production there, as it accounts to 30% of Colombias total production. I really need to read more about that topic!

Before we left back to Medellin we climbed all 7xx stairs to the top of the rock and enjoyed the nice view over Guatape and the lake. Really nice in combination with the sun set.
That night our Hostal hosted an international language exchange, but we were so hungry that we decided to just go for some food and be ready for the next night, that would only be Heinrich’s last one in Colombia.

Before it was time for some party, we decided to go paragliding over Medellin. What an experience! You drive up all the way up a surrounding hill/mountain from where you run of a cliff and just fly! Of course not alone, you basically don’t have to do anything. But it’s so awesome. Even though it’s quite pricy (still okay tho if you ask me) I would recommend doing it. It’s just very impressive seeing the city from that perspective. A really good idea of Hein who really wanted to do that all the way during his trip in Colombia ;).

On our way back we a
stopped in the botanic garden and the museo de antioquia, Medellin’s main museum with many different collection’s, including Botero (who is from Medellin), before we got ourselves ready for the upcoming party night.

Our Hostal decided to have a karaoke night and lots of people were attracted by that idea. So after some singing and drinking, we decided to head to El Poblado to look for a nice club. We were joined by a Colombian/Argentinian girl Paola and another German. Since Paola was living in Medellin, I thought she might know a place, but I was not that overwhelmed by her choice (high entrance fee, expensive drinks, weird music..;)). That doesn’t mean we didn’t have fun though.

In fact, some things happened are almost to good to be true. I’m pretty sure I’m not allowed to include it here, but damn, what a night ;)..

So, the next day was dedicated to full recovery. Hein left me in the evening and I gotta admit that I was sad to travel alone from there on. We had a great time together and I’m happy that he decided to join me for most of by travels through Colombia.
Hein sometimes was annoyed by his non existing Spanish knowledge, but he plans on taking classes this year to come back to this beautiful continent after he graduated from university! I’m curious how that works out for him.

I’m currently lying in my bed in Guayaquil, still full of the dinner I just had. Tallarin Camaron, means shrimps with thin noodles and vegetables. Pretty tasty and too much for me too eat (rather cheap, too).

So again a rather long text. But even if you don’t wanna read everything, I’m glad you found your way to this blog. I don’t follow a script, I just write down what comes to my mind. Also, I’m not only doing this to inform people like you reading this blog right now. I also want to be able to look at my journey through this continent in 10,20 or more years from today to connect my thoughts with all the pictures.

Anyhow. In two days Anna and I are going to the Galapagos. We found pretty cheap flights and we will look for a cheap, but good cruise (5days should be good) once we are there.
Wish us luck!

Hope you are all doing great and don’t miss me too much, I’m sure I miss you too! But we will see each other again. Somewhere. Sometime. Somehow!

Simon.

Que chimba!

Hey Party people !

Currently I’m on a Bus to Montañita in Ecuador. That’s already pretty damn in the south of the country. But I joined two Peruvian girls for the trip and meet two of my lovely roommates their. That will be great!

Palomino (Hein, Benji, Anna y Max)

Okay. So here we go again. Back in the Past II. So we arrived in Santa Marta way too late for Benji’s strict schedule. He only had one more day and wanted to see Parque Tayrona, which is a nice natural park pretty close to Santa Marta. We knew approximately how long it would take us to get to a sleeping place and decided to go to Palomino.
Palomino is another city on the Caribbean coast and was supposed to be also nice for surfing.

The time we’ve been there was a bit unfortunate cause the sea was really rough and it would have been more than suicidal to go in the water under these conditions.
So we relaxed on the beach and decided to go back to Santa Marta for Benji’s last night and got prepared for our trip to Tayrona the next day as a team of only 4 :(.

Parque Tayrona (Hein, Max y Anita):

The next day we started our way to the park. In order to get to a place where you can rent hammocks you first have to hike through nice rainforest and often pass locations with beautiful views over the coast and really nice beaches.

After we thought we might never reach our destination due to the consistent lack of hints along the way we finally made it. So „lunch“ and then into the water was the plan, but we only could enjoy some more minutes inside cause the Colombians are pretty strict when it comes to rules. And  at a certain time of the day it is forbidden to go into the water or simply climb up a pretty safe rock (forbidden all day long haha)
– for your own safety of course.
We spent the night playing a really nice dutch game that Max taught us and went the bed early to be ready for the next day.

I woke up early to try to see the sunrise. Unfortunately I was unlucky with the weather and the only thing I saw was two people practicing Yoga and a lot of clouds in the sky. Never mind.

We spent the day walking from beach to beach and enjoying ourselves until it was time to get back to Santa Marta.
And that’s when it got interesting.
So it was already around 4 pm. We asked a security guy how to get to the main street. He said we can do the hike in 3 hours if we are fast, so we should rather wait for the next day as it gets dark here pretty early. After some discussions we decided to start the trek today and just walk a little faster.. When we reached the sign that tells you that the trek starts here it recommends to not start hiking after 1pm. By the time we were standing in front of it we had passed 4..

But why wait, let’s just walk a little faster. even faster than if it would only take you 3 hours.
And really. It took us easily 3 hours to get to the main street. God was I soaked in sweat.. The last path(quite a long last path tho haha) we had to use artificial lights, cellphones and head torches. But we made it. and everybody was alright. The next time I would do it in a different way,I guess.
In Santa Marta we rewarded ourselves with the best Pizza I had in South America so far. And it was a Greek Restaurant.. :D.
The next day we chilled instead of going to Minka for the last day on the Caribbean coast and decided just to go to Barranquilla to catch our flight to Cali the next day in the morning..

Even though we didn’t even stay 12 hours in the city, a lot of things happened there.
But I’m running out of Battery, so that is postponed to the next entry!;)

Or not. I decided not to publish the last note and instead waiting for my eagerness to continue my blog.
I’m currently sitting now in Guayaquil and arrived here yesterday night from Montañita, from where I finally managed to leave after 9 days.

But back to Barranquilla. We arrived late in our Hostal and just killed the time drinking some beers and having pizza.
We had our flight pretty early (at 6am)and decided to wake up accordingly around 4. but not only we woke up.

Outside of the Hostal the electricity cables some how caught fire and literally exploded, lightning up the whole street and leaving the whole neighborhood watching.
I don’t know if there are pictures, but I’ve never seen quite like that before. I just hope the impacted people had soon electricity again.

Cali (Hein, Anna, Max)

We arrived in Cali pretty early and got taken to our prebooked Hostal (the airport is pretty far off to be honest, around an hour away from the center).
In the Hostal we met a lot of really nice people. There is eg Klara (Fall), a funny German girl, and Alma, a teacher from Denmark that is currently taking time off to travel and explore south america and Australia.
The first night we went out to the last event of the Cali carneval (it appeared to me that there was always a city that had some kind of Carnival going on) and had a pretty fun night.

The next day was already the 31 and therefore the last day of the year 2014. how time has flied in these last couple of months. I can’t really believe that we have already reached February, seems everything is going to fast at this point.

After some more exploring of the city we started preparing for the big party.
I was expecting food rather early than that late – we didn’t get a single bite to eat before 12 pm. Also, we stayed in the Hostal until at least 3am before we took a taxi to a nightclub location. It was a pretty good night, and on Facebook you can see that we got home pretty early/late and had some trouble staying awake ;).

The exact same day, we decided to go see a waterfall. It was pretty ridiculous how that developed. As we were enough people to fill to taxis, we decided to meet at the waterfall.
We didn’t expect that it would take us thaaat long nor that there would be that many people there (due to vacation probably).
After at least 2 hours(probably more) we arrived at the waterfall and waited for the rest to arrive. However, they never did. we thought it took them too long and they decided to go home. So in the late afternoon we tried to get a taxi to take us back to the city. I asked 10million people what to do, without any success. There was a line as long as the Nil to get on a bus – I would probably still wait today for my spot on a bus.

So what to do? In the end we decided to walk down to the main street (pretty far tho) and prepared for a rather late arrival. Only after maybe 5 minutes walking I heard a voice shouting my name. totally confused I didn’t really expect to see someone I know.
But it was Heinrich who went with the other taxi to the waterfall earlier. Turned out they went to a different waterfall and meet a Colombian family there who waa taking them down to the main street. Wow, so we all squeezed into their car/rather mini van (so lucky they had such a huge car) and they took all of us to the next McDonalds where we fast ate (have to add here I didn’t B) )and later took a cab to get finally to the hostal and made our own pizza(Klara fall dass die gut war 😉 ).
before we left Cali we climbed up in the biggest midday heat to the so-called tres Cruces (three crosses) before we took a bus to Manizales, Heinrich’s last stop before the ending of his journey in Medellin.

But I will continue riding on Colombia in my next entry. I will take a selfie now with this Simon Bolivar guy and continue to explore the city a little bit.

Take care
Simon

New Entry

Okay.

so after a couple of weeks of traveling, I’m finally willing to make the effort to write a new entry to my blog.
I’m currently stuck in the smallest mini man ever with 22 people. yes, 22 people. some kids are close to puking (as I write this the head of the little boy next to me is covered in a phatic bag, safety first) whereas a cute little girl was not able to hold it back anymore. that smell.
but I can’t blame them, I remember school trips where I had the same feeling. and the roads were not nearly as tough. In the front row, two people enjoy as much space as almost the rest of us haha..
yuhu! just as I was wiring the last sentence, our driver decided that he is hungry now. I used the break to ask the boy sitting in the most spacious room if we could change, so now I’m sitting rather comfortable;).

So the journey began already more than a month ago. I thought my flight would be on the 13th of December. I was so sure, I even told Benji (good friend of Lima) that date after he asked me for it (he later booked his flight for that date too..). just roughly one day before I recognized that the actual date was one day later. Pretty stupid,I already organized a little get together, but that was postponed to the next day.

Salento (with Benji)

So the 14th I arrived in Bogotá at night, meet up with Benji and left the city maybe 2 hours later to Armenia. We were talking with a nice lady while waiting for the bus. Unfortunately, she only mentioned right before we left that it is going to be really really cold during the drive.. of course she couldn’t let us know a little earlier when we still had our big bags.. it was so cold, it was a really bad overnight bus trip (Benji just took the window seat without asking, that Belgian manner.. classic!).
we were so glad to arrive in Armenia between 5 and 6 and tried our first colombian (for me) coffee in the coffee region (for both of us). just a little later we took our first mini van to Salento. why the first? cause we only made it out of the bus station. after the checkpoint there is a little tiny hill – too much for our bus :D. so we changed the bus and drove through incredible landscape to Salento.
The first morning in Salento we spent just walking around the city, soaking up the nice village vibe – just happy to escape the bigger city’s for some time.
In the afternoon we decided to walk ourselves to a coffee farm and participate in a tour. after we wanted to go home, we were surprised by super mega heavy rain and luckily could stop in a familys house\terrace. so we played at least two hours a weird Colombian game. Unfortunately I don’t remember the name, but I will research on that.
in the evening we played the first time the Colombian game tejo. A really weird game, where the goal is to throw a stone pretty accurately on a metallic ring covered with gun powder plates, surrounded by mood. it sounds super strange, but that’s just because it really is;)

so the next day, we went to the valle de cocora, a hike in a protected area close to Salento. You find awesome landscape here, including the wax palms, the world s biggest palm. hiking here was super fun. we also met a couple(he Colombian, speaks pretty good german, she german) along the way and spent the rest of the day with them. the highlight tho was the ride back on the back of these old jeeps that are typical especially for that area. with all the surroundings an unforgettable experience.
Our last day in the area was pretty relaxed. we decided to go to another small village close to Salento, Filandia. The most exciting part was actually to get there, as we had to change the bus and it was raining as shit. but we managed it and arrived in Filandia. after walking around we tried to get to a mirador, but it was closed. apparently the found some old things there while renovating the site, so the immediately closed it. by the time we’ve been there, they weren’t sure what would happen with the tower..
Back in Salento, the first part of the trip already came to an end. We left the village to go to Armenia, where Benji continued his journey to Medellin and I went back to Bogotá to pick up Hein the following day.

Meanwhile on my trip to Pasto. The Landscape we’re going through is a „Augenschmaus“, orgasm for your eyes. the driver thinks otherwise and accelerates, even in the curves. chewing his gum. like a boss.
kids finally found their way to sleep. what an adventurous trip. I’m trying to relax as well, listening to the same chill out mix the third time already. not sure if it works..
ah,and one more thing. the Colombians make such a great effort to ensure security. almost everywhere you go. just now we passed a huge military car that is providing security along the road. for sure not the first one we passed.

Bogotá (with Hein)

The next day I picked Hein up from the airport. We spent 4 nights in Bogotá, but I won’t go into too much detail. We participated in a free city tour and learned a lot about Bogotá and Colombia in general. We explored the historical center during the day. in the night we always stayed in our hostel, cause we were kind of scared to walk around in our part of the city. La Candelaria attracts most of the tourists as you find the main sights here, but that means that most criminals also know where to look for valuables.. Unfortunately we didn’t try to go out, but we heard so many bad things (one even got mugged the first day we’ve been to Bogotá).
We also did a day tour to the salt cathedral. it’s impressive, but takes way too much effort to get to;).
Our initial plan has been to go to a national park close by. We decided us against it, cause the weather was really unstable each day and the hike was said to be challenging. So we rather focused on Bogotá and rather relaxed stuff for the beginning of Hein s time in Colombia. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to see the Museo del Oro (Goldmuseum). completely my fault, sorry Hein.

Cartagena (Hein, Benji, Anna and Maaax)

We we’re so happy to leave the first cultural part of our trip behind us and arrived in Cartagena to meet up with Benji again. We already booked our stay in Mama Waldys Hostal in advance cause we expected it to be quite busy around Christmas (we were right).
The hostel was nice, but not overwhelming.
But damn, was it hot here. In Bogotá it got quite chilly each night, in Cartagena you sweat all day long, probably 365 days a year. After arriving late to Cartagena, we had an awesome street burger (a German girl called it the best burger in south america. but that’s a little bit too much) and some beers (okay, I didn’t. but hey, at least it worked out that I got rid of my cold at some point during the trip) and met up with Anna and Max. Anna is German and is/was working voluntarily in Colombia since September and Max, her dutch Boyfriend, was visiting her.
It was the beginning of the new travel squad. We had such a great time in Cartagena together, that the couple decided to delay their departure to Santa Marta to celebrate Christmas with us together.
And DAMN. We had a party. I’m so glad they stayed, it was one of the best parties in my life. We went to the Media Luna Hostal (super famous for legendary parties) after a predrink/BBQ at our Hostal. Just awesome!
Some of us partied to hard for their age tho and so they left part of their valued stuff behind in Cartagena as we continued rather early to get to Santa Marta, all together with a huge hangover.

I will quit here and try to work on the next entry on the way to Ecuador or maybe already in the country. Exciting!

As always I hope every single one of you is enjoying his life. If I look at the date I can’t believe that I’m already traveling more than a month. 2 1\2 to go =]

Simóóóóóón

Gracias Lima, me voy!

Buenas Tardes Chicos,

what can I say? It’s already time to leave Lima. Today is Thursday, my flight will be on Saturday in the Morning. I will have a stopover in Quito, before I continue to Bogotá where I will arrive in the evening. In Bogotá, the plan is to wait for Benji who will arrive 4 or 5 hours later.. Thats all for what we’ve planned for now. I will see how I like it and decide from there how long I stay in Colombia. The plan is to stay in Colombia as long as I want to and after travel through Ecuador and the North of Peru back to Lima.

I consider Lima a place where I feel home now. I had such a great time here, especially with my roommates and the people I met here. I would like to take them with me back to Germany. All of them! I hope they are all aware that next year I will expect every single one of them to the Oktoberfest in Munich. Or even earlier, todo es posible!
OH MY GOD. What the actual fuck. there is some stupid test flight over my head. okay, I’m also kinda glad to leave this place. Not only the polluted air is really annoying, but on top of that there are a lot of differences to for example Munich, where I live in Germany. I don’t really know what the think to do something like that during the day, but they better have a good explanation for that. But back to topic.
I will try to figure out some points that are really different to Europe and I will start with the most annoying one:

1. Their sense of time

Or also called the „Hora Cabana or „Hora Peruana“. If you are used to punctuality and assigning time a certain degree of importance, Peru (or maybe even Latin America) is not the right place for you. They just don’t care sometimes. For example, you arranged something and invite peruvians to it, make sure to tell them the time – 1 hour – they might show up in time. I mean, in Germany and during my studies I was kind of always 10 minutes late, I called it my own time. I was really reliable. But it’s different her. One of my professors told me that even for weddings this holds true. Thats why he even did some research to make sure he is always there when the actual celebrations are happening, and nothing more.

2. Patience in Peru is a virtue

Thats probably my favorite part. Perú is really nothing for people with little or no patience. Peruvians never feel any hurry or rush! It is considered normal that you wait maybe 30 minutes in a supermarket line even though there is just one person there. If the person has no authority, he or she has no choice but calling someone to help her out at least once per customer. Oh my god, how annoying that can be sometimes. Especially in rush hours, when there are 15 cashiers but all of them are occupied with 2 or 3 customers – equals a waiting time of maybe 1 hour. I’m serious. You quickly adapt by trying to do your grocery shopping tours outside the rush hours, but sometimes you can’t avoid the mob. Upon my arrival in Germany I will probably be unable to cope with the speed of the cashiers there, cause they are like 100 times faster. 100 sounds a little off maybe, but 50 times faster might even be more accurate as most of you might expect.

However, in Perú you learn to be patient. And as indicated by the headline, patience is a virtue. It’s not only that you wait for cashiers to get their stuff done. Sometimes Buses don’t leave in time but rather 2 hours later, people only show up with an hour delay or just bureaucratic things as a visa (right Sarah?). Even though it’s super annoying sometimes, I think I see things more relaxed sometimes. I used to be annoyed by tiny things really fast and couldn’t help it. I think that changed quite a lot.

3. Sleeping all over the place

That is just a fun fact. Peruvians are the Masters in taking naps. That is due to the fact that they work probably more hours a day than a typical european, making it necessary to catch up with sleep. They do it really efficiently. Haha. Doesn’t matter if its a bus, taxi or just some gras spots next to a construction site, there s a good chance you spot people taking a time off their work. I love it! I admire it!

4. Everything is way too small and tiny!

Yea, I know. I’m not that little. Still, you should see me sitting in a bus. I’m used to that by now, but I basically block the whole „walkway“. Oh yeah, and people are not shy what soever when it comes to physical contact. Sometimes I love it, sometimes it’s really annoying – for example in the bus I would rather have enough space for my whole body without touching someone else’s whole body haha.

5. Typical Peruvian Food

-Lomo Saltado
Stir fry with beef, tomatoes, onion, potatoes and rice. Yes, they mix potatoes with rice. I like it, but I have to ask every time for them to make it without culantro (coriander en ingles?). I hate that stuff haha.

-Ceviche
This is a popular seafood dish with raw fish, lemon juice, chili peppers, sweet potato, lettuce and corn. I don’t really like it tho, and yes, you can blame me for it. I love fish, but I can’t stand Ceviche. Just accept it! 😀

-Anticuchos
Marinated cow’s heart which is usually served with potato and corn. Too fancy for me, even though its really good. At least I tried it hehe.

-Cuy
That’s the guinea pig. Well, tried it once without knowing that I’m actually eating it. Have to still try it again, but I’m traveling the northern parts of peru plus Machu Picchu/Ayacucho in March, so I don’t worry about missing out on something.

6. The existence of pointless jobs

That’s a good one. Sometimes it’s really ridiculous. Just yesterday we saw people „working“ – meaning that 2 of them were observing the traffic while 1 was really working and 1 was holding something for a reason I don’t really know. Also, if you wish to buy for example an electronic device (e.g. a hair dryer) you go the section in the store, address your wish to an employer, he writes what you want to buy and the price on a paper, you go to the cashier, pay the amount and only after you hand the recipe to the first employer you get what you actually wanted. And now imagine what I wrote earlier about being patient.

 

That’s it for now. I will get ready to get some food now with friends and after we go in a bar and MAYBE (todo es posible, como siempre) to the legendary Help Thursday Night (it would be my last time probably). We will see.

Wait, thats it for now? Probably not right. I probably won’t do any entry at least until christmas, maybe until I’m back in Germany. I won’t take phone nor laptop with me, so I have to see how that obstacle might be fixed. Maybe someone else has an electronic device..

MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR TO EVERYONE

I’m sure that I won’t be able to wish everyone of my beloved family and friends this year what they deserve. At least not personally. But in my thoughts I will think of every single one of you.

Take care and enjoy your life, hope to see you all anytime soon – wherever that might be.

Huancayo and the last weeks in Lima

Wow, how time flies!

I haven’t posted anything the last couple of weeks. So I decided to divide the last entry into two. The first one (the one you are currently reading) will be about my travel to Huancayo and the last weeks in Lima, not too long though). The second one will be about leaving Lima soon and what I learned here, a little bit more detailed.

So just right after I posted my last entry I’ve been to Huancayo with my German roommates. On a friday (Halloween) we took the train that is only doing this ride 5 or 6 times every year (for tourists at least) to go from the Trainstation in the Centro Historico in Lima to the Trainstation in Huancayo. We left Lima at around 7 o’clock and the ride was incredible. We not only passed amazing landscapes, but the way we sometimes had to proceed was really fascinating. So instead of going in a straight manner without any stops, we had to stop several times to change the direction. The challenging conditions that the Andes sometimes pose resulted in turns of the railway that are too sharp to cross them directly, so you have to first pass them and afterwards continue in the other direction. On our way we passed a high mountain region that at around 4800 above sealevel. In that period the whole bus dynamic was really different, as everyone was sitting and just tried to avoid feeling sick (right, John?;)).

After almost 12 hours in the train, we finally arrived at Huancayo. The first night, everyone was feeling a little bit exhausted from the trip. The city is located at 3300 above sealevel itself, so we still had to adjust to that new circumstance. Kevin, who joined us for the trip, had his birthday on that day, so the two of us decided to go for a beer (also cause it was Halloween). Due to Halloween the whole streets had been completely crowded with peruvians wearing costumes and asking for sweets, a really nice experience!

On Saturday, we decided to visit an animal market (I forgo going into detail here) and in the afternoon a nice village close to Huancayo. The village is known for it’s art, especially textile products. After Sarah and the rest of us bought some souvenirs and stuff for our own use we took the bus home and went straight to a viewpoint close to the city – we had such luck with the weather as the sun just showed up as we were driving up the hill. We had dinner in a nice restaurant (the waiter was the worst, though) before we concluded the day making plans for the next day).

The last day, we went to close ruins and had to climb stairs in order to get there. Man, that was exhausting. If you have ever climbed stairs while being at 3500 above sealevel and not yet used to it, you know what I’m talking about. But we were rewarded with a nice view over the whole area. The Huancayo region is surrounded by awesome mountains that I would have loved to climb, but the time didn’t allow me to do it just yet. In the afternoon, we went back to the city and enjoyed the huuuuge sunday market – a place where you can probably buy everything there is in Peru. Incredible! Also, the whole weekend, the people celebrated the „Dia de los Muertos“, day of the deaths, and the whole city was covered with flowers. What a nice view! I know from Mexico that the holiday is really important for the people there, and I got the feeling that here it is not any different. Just in the way it is celebrated. Before I took the bus home at 11 pm in the night, we visited a nice little park a little outside the center and had dinner. The bus ride home was faster than expected and I was able to get a little sleep (ok, just 1 hour, but still!) before I had to go to my class at 10 am in the morning.

Overall, I really loved Huancayo. There are almost no tourists there and people are suuuuper interested in you. I really felt a huge difference between the places like Lima or Arequipa, where people are already more than used to foreigners. Thats why I will include a stopover in Ayacucho (David will probably be there by that time, too) when I travel from Machu Picchu back to Lima to catch my flight to Germany at the end of March. But who knows, that’s the future.

I said I will add something about my last weeks in Lima. I’m too lazy at the moment, but I really just had a great time with my roommates. We did a lot of things together (including a lot of partying as well) and I explored Lima a little more (still missing some minor things tho, but maybe I’ll get to that before I fly home). Also, I was surfing quite a lot – something that I missed out on in the first months here due to the bad weather all the time. But now I’m in love with the sports and probably will look for some awesome spots along the coast in Colombia, Ecuador and Perú. If someone feels like surfing in February, join me!

Shortly after this entry I will add another one about the peruvian way of life and their habits. I’m not sure if I will be able to make any entries while I’m traveling, but I will try to add some pictures of the last weeks before I leave.