Welcome to my Around the world travel blog.
In February 2009 I quit my job and started traveling. I planned my trip through Russia and Mongolia, and I had my ticket Ulan Bator to Beijing. That would be the first three weeks of my travels, with the rest to decide on the way.
After 16 month I returned home having traveled: Russia, Mongolia, China, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, Thailand, Indonesia, USA, Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, Dutch Antilles, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia.
Some of the things I did? I crossed an ice field on foot in Siberia(Russia), rode on horseback over Mongolian steppe, walked the great wall of China, sailed a 1000 miles on sea to uninhabited islands in Indonesia, rode a motorbike through Colombia, saw a river flow of lava in Hawaii, swam with whale sharks in Australia, played around with sea lions on Galapagos Islands, and cannot finish the list of great experiences.. it goes on and on.
Although I’m happily back home now, I do plan to travel again. This time on motorbike. I will write about that here: http://iridetheworld.wordpress.com
“Adventure is a path. Real adventure – self-determined, self-motivated, often risky – forces you to have firsthand encounters with the world. The world the way it is, not the way you imagine it. Your body will collide with the earth and you will bear witness. In this way you will be compelled to grapple with the limitless kindness and bottomless cruelty of humankind – and perhaps realize that you yourself are capable of both. This will change you. Nothing will ever again be black-and-white.” – Mark Jenkins
“To awaken quite alone in a strange town is one of the pleasantest sensations in the world.” – Freya Stark
After bargaining hard we spend our dollars on a 10 min taxi ride bringing us exactly 2 bocks from the railway station. (damn scams..! ) Many hotels in Uyuni claim to have hot water but I already heard this often is not the case. So when I booked in first checked that one. The hotel (sry forgot the name) was quite nice with enough blankets to keep me warm. The next day I went on a tour on the salt flats. The most amazing photo’s you see from this place is when there’s a layer of water on the saltflats and unfortunately this wasn’t the case when I was there. Still it was an amazing sight and with a lot of others we (me and some American girls) took some nice trick photo’s playing around with a box of pringels and so.. others prepared better and brought all kind of toys to make nice photo’s. The busride back I took a budget bus between locals. There was a separate compartment for the driver and so I hadn’t noticed the driver being totally drunk. When the engine started the police arrested the busdriver for drunk driving to the disapproval of most of the passengers. I happily waited for another hour for another bus driver to drive the bus back to La paz. In the morning I booked back into the party hostel I enjoyed before. This time I shared my room with an English girl and 3 English guys who spend most their time in bars. They started off with cocaine in the morning. (8.30h!) I must say I wasn’t too pleased with that, especially because my next flight would be to Miami so a sniff of powder on my bag would definitely delay my travels there. For the rest the party hostel was fun. Then when I needed to go to the airport I thought for safety reasons I better not go to the street to get a taxi so asked the people at the hostel to arrange one for me. The ride in daytime is about 30 pesos and the hostel receptionist told me it would be more at night, 50 pesos. I didn’t care too much so agreed and when the taxi arrived this A**hole driver says to me (after putting my bag in the car) the price would be 70 pesos. 
I told him 50 would have to do and basically told him not be rip me off cause I already gave him a good deal. He insisted on ripping me off and I got out of the car. It didnt take longer than a minute for another taxi to arrive and I waived it down, shouted airport 30 pesos, and in return he said 40. The driver of my taxi got VERY angry with that driver, took of his jacket and waiving his arms and shouting at the other taxi driver that now already was next to his car. The other driver without hesitation head-butt my taxi driver. He hit the ground, stood up, and with his face covered in blood quickly walked to the taxi searched the dashboard and that’s where I walked to a safe distance for I was pretty sure he was searching for a gun or at least a hunting knife. (taxi driver in La Paz, Bolivia at night just outside the city centre) this seemed very possible. Other driver raced off with the car and I returned to see my taxi driver with a tissue on his forehead crying/swearing… Usually I would still walk off, but I had already tried to open the trunk (without succes) and my bag was still in there. So I tried my luck and friendly asked the driver:”how about 50 pesos… ” He nodded and drove me to the airport without saying a word. Then I flew via Miami back to Curacao to end my travel in the sun. I had about 9 days in Curacao to spend with Femke and Dennis (a colleague from work in a former life….). It was very good to see him again after so long and we spend 3 days diving the reefs of Curacao, driving around the island, relaxing in the sun and get up to date with all that had happened in the Netherlands. And then after 16 month I took that flight to Amsterdam. I felt strange…. happy to be back home, happy to see family and friends, happy to have a refrigerator and a nice bed for myself, but already sad that the trip was over. For me landing in the Netherlands was very strange. From the sky it looks like a sim city build country. Every piece of land is cultivated and everything seems so perfect in place. Quite boring actually… I immediately knew adventure and travel would pull me away from the Netherlands again… and it will. 
And so I moved on to Peru. Got there by bus from Guayaquil. Writing about it… It seems like ages ago. Back in Curacao I met the sweetest girl, Femke, and she flew over from Curacao to Peru to see what backpacking really is about.:-) When she arrived we stayed in Lima for just 2 days before we went on a trip recommended by the friendly hostel owners from HQ villa in Peru. (cool place!) From Lima we took an early bus to Nazca. We arrived to the small town at 16.00h. We raced to the small local airport and got in a small 6 person air plain taking us over the Nazca sites in 35 minutes, the last flight of the day. The Nazca lines, according to some made by aliens, where nice to see and the flight over the site was roller coaster worthy. Although it might have been a better idea to read about it first, for all we knew it looked like it could have been made just a year ago as a tourist trap. Maybe we should have stayed here for the night but we decided to take a night bus to Arequipa. Arequipa is a very nice old town and has close to it the Colca canyon. We took a day tour to the canyon departing 02.30h in the morning…. (so again no sleep) 
The canyon was nice and amazing where the Condors flying around. Very cool. Not spotting from a big distance as I would have expected, they came over so close you could hear the sound of the wind on their massive wings. The trip there brought us to an altitude of as high as 4900m. This was very cold and altitude sickness was pretty much inevitable, but on a day trip doable. The next day we took an other night bus, this to Cuzco. (again no sleep) Cuzco, as one of the highest cities in the world, lies at 3300m. Upon arrival we were both pretty much dead already. We both got fever and diarrhea, probably worsened by the altitude sickness, nice…. welcome to backpacking, ahum. In Cuzco we met with two friends of Femke and together with them booked a guided 4 day tour. Because of this we only had one day to get better and unfortunately we didn’t. We drugged ourselves with medicine through the first day which was worse for Femke than for me. Must have been the altitude sickness again because we were brought to an altitude of 4800m or so. At that altitude we started a massive downhill on a mountain bike. Me eating coca leaves and Femke drugged and having smelled pure alcohol (according to the driver good for altitude sickness) we started the ATB trip. Quite surprisingly it got to be a very nice trip. When we got lower Femke felt better and better and the roads and views were amazing. Also being on bicycle for hours without the need to pedal was nice. The second day we had to hike from 0700h to 1700h with about 2,5h pause in total. 28 kilometer according to my GPS, but with some steep climbs and just a hard day walking/hiking. Day 3 was hiking again. We were told we could take a taxi if needed, but when the need arose we were told that would only help us as much as 1 hour of walking. And so another day of hard hiking while not feeling to well needed to be done. 
The last day we explored the ancient Inca city Machu Picchu. We also climbed up the mountain behind it, Wayna Picchu, to have a nice overview over the site. (only 400 persons a day are allowed to do this, so come very early if you want to do this on a MP trip) The MP ruins are very nice, although not decorated as for example Asian ruins. The beauty of the place is for a part the history of it and the absolute remote place on a mountain where the ruins are located. Just sitting there is already amazing. The mountains are so beautiful, the river flowing very low beneath, its all very impressive. Peru is a nice traveling country with a lot to offer. I didn’t know so much about it but it surprised me and I recommend it for sure as a traveling destination. The buildings made by the Spanish are beautiful. The food is good, the clothes worn by people living remote are as in guide books, the lamas, other animals, mountains… I really liked it. After the tour Femke went back to Curacao and I stayed in Cuzco for 2 more days. I did some (very mild) white water rafting on the first day, and on mothers day, the 9th of May, I picked up my mother from Cuzco airport. She was in Peru for research and of course we met up. We spend the better part of the day at the a bar/restaurant at the Plaza de Armas, and after dinner it was time for me to get on the bus to La Paz, Bolivia.
I saw many of them on land and a few under water. Cool was swimming with sea lions and penguins…. YES Penguins… they live here because of cold ocean currents and I could luckily swim in nice and warm water with them. But the sea lions were the best! They are very playful. While snorkeling I would free dive several meters down with a few of them around me. On the beach they lie and crawl around like crippled puppies, but when you enter the water with them you enter their domain. It´s so cool to see them make a salto, spins, blow bubbles (breath out under water) and other stuff. And they look at you and interact. I wish I could take one home. One was following me around at a beach and I really think she wanted to be adopted. The land trips were also nice as the different islands have different soil types and animals to see. There are especially many different birds to spot. In total we where 10 on the cruise, a nice group. I shared my cabin with a Danish man who has as hobby: photography… Feels like I´m always lucky on the right moments. 
The rock itself is an impressive pinnacle rising up more than 100m high and under the surface goes a very long way down. (def more than 50m) On the dive we saw maybe 20 reef sharks, 7 or 8 eagle rays, more than 10 turtles and then, lucky as I was swimming up the front, a +- 3 meter big hammerhead shark came from the mist under us as close as 4 – 5 meter away. He was not as interested in us as we (or I) in it and left within seconds. Only one of the divemasters and I saw the animal. For some reasons big sharks always leave the scene immediately on my dives. Maybe my blue eyes scare them??! 
The divemasters on the trip were real cowboys. They didn’t check anything, took customers into deco dives (deep long dives!) without briefing them or give out a dive computer. They also took off to the surface without letting us know, I wouldn’t be surprised if they ran out of air. A couple of us with own computers stayed at depth and finished our dive according to our computers. After having seen everything I hoped for at Galapagos I chilled out for two days with a couple of surfers and then got a flight to Guayaquil, Ecuador. Upon arrival finding a last minute flight to Lima failed. (read: was still to expensive $450) Now I’m in a hotel waiting for a bus that will bring me in 26 hours to Lima, Peru tomorrow. ($70) Hopefully I can do some more cool stuff as the end of my round the world trip comes closer and closer. I plan to go back home the end of May.
