Photos

After a quick chat around a beer at Bookfest, a book trade show in Bucharest, my friend asked me if I would like to join him in a quick tour in the Danube Delta leaving in two days. I made up my mind on the spot and on a Tuesday morning we left around 7:15 am to Tulcea.

Last time I was in the Danube Delta probably 30 years ago. It was laid back like the entire country in those years but this was an attraction because it meant also far from the propaganda and the stupidity of a regime that was smothering everything around it. Boats were rare so you had to plan well in advance and the accommodation of choice was in local houses where you were offered also beside a bed, lunch and dinner. Hotels were rare but enough at the number of tourists that were coming there, all were relatively well maintained with basic restaurants that were serving mainly fish, the staple food of the Danube Delta.

20 years after Romania’s switch to a democratic society I was really curious to see what happened in the Delta. Around Bucharest the signs of a prosperous society are obvious. New office buildings, malls, cafes, restaurants and villas for the nouveau riches, luxury cars driven through potholed roads by all sort of dubious characters, casinos at every corner and sex shops on the main boulevard. Leaving Bucharest you start driving on the newly built Sun Highway but soon you exit and continue through the countryside, realizing that not too much has changed. Same villages, with the same houses with the same water pump on the street inhabited by Turks or tatars. In Tulcea sign of the new economy are flagged by the rumors that the new hotels on the promenade are built and owned by a rich ex-waiter from the local ex-Communist party center who is now an important businessman of the town.

It looks like the Delta is a major tourist attraction but there are no large tour groups to be seen, neither the small group and independents. Just locals moving back and fro inside the Delta. The boats going to Sulina, the free port at the Black Sea, are now running often and, as the rumors go, are owned by some known football players. We were supposed to leave Bucharest earlier and catch a fast boat at 11:00 am but that boat and the following one were canceled and we boarded a 1:30 pm boat that for $15 brought us in one hour and 15 minutes to Sulina with a stop on the way at Crisan.

Our guide is waiting for us in Sulina harbor. He is welcoming us and together with my friend they go to buy food for the trip. I am left by the boat to guard the cameras, the videos and tripods, etc. and meanwhile I get the first assessment of the town with its pretty promenade and some new buildings interlaced with old style local architecture.

My friend returns victorious telling me that we will be fine because they bought wine and also they were able to buy fish. “What the hell is he talking about? Fish? This is the staple food here. What does he expect to buy? Veal? Of course he bought fish….It is the Danube Delta”

We load everything in the boat, the same boat as 30 years ago that sports, like most of the boats on the water a Johnson engine. After spending two days in the Delta I sadly remarked to our guide that the only obvious change that happened in the last 20 years of “prosperity and democracy” were the boat engines, the Vostok being replaced by Johnson to underline the new geopolitical environment.

We leave Sulina on a large canal. The Delta is still beautiful. After about 20 minutes we start riding on small canals, surrounded by water lilies. Our guide cuts the engine and it is quiet; only the wind swishing through the marshes and the occasional wing flopping of the birds passing by. We take pictures and shoot videos. It is paradise.

My cell phone rings. It is my wife. She is in Long Island Rail Road going to Manhattan. Her daily commute. I describe her my commute. She laughs. She is surrounded by people who are either on computers or on cell phone with bluetooth headphones attached to their ears trying to be completely disconnected of their environment. Two worlds apart. In the Delta we are fully connected to the nature, connected with the canals with saw grass, marshes, birds, and the swish of the wind. Or are we? Maybe we just wish to be…

It is great for tourists coming here to relax and enjoy pristine nature but life is as hard as it used to be in the past. In locals’ opinion nothing was done in the last 20 years. Politicians show up only before election to garner votes, make some unfulfilled promises and go away not coming back till the next election. People are fed up and are nostalgic of the time of the Communism when the Party secretary under pressure from the center was forced to deliver at least the minimum. Listening to these people I could not but fully agree with them and their predicament. Many left the area if they could. They work in towns outside the Delta or if they can, go and work any job in Spain or Italy. When they are laid off they return and live off their unemployment benefits or social security in the village being the richest men in the entire region. We met one of them nicknamed the “Spaniard”. He was driving an 18-wheeler in Spain till the economic downturn came and he was laid off and now enjoys the benefits of the European Socialism in the Delta. The village has nothing except a church and a store that duplicates as pub so all day you see the benches in front of it full of men drinking beer. I try to take some pictures and shoot some video but they refused saying that I may be a spy trying to sneak out secrets. However the secrets are gossiped by everybody and all are more than eager to share them with us. And the most important secrets are related to ownership of the Delta land and waters that was parceled by politicians in their own interest in the last 20 years. The Communist government hotels, the only in the area, were given almost for free to a rich ex-Securitate businessman from Bucharest in cahoots with Social Democracy Party politicians. The hotels are in disrepair, the windows are broken and the doors are shut with plywood like in the abandoned buildings in Harlem. Probably they are preserved for a future when the Danube Delta will be a major tourist destination for large tourist groups but at the pace of present development, I doubt that their current owner will live to see that day. Latter we go to a fish hatchery basin, completely dried out and full of grass.  Without asking we find out that is owned by one of the pillar politician in the same Social Democratic party but because he cannot show so much wealth the place is owned on paper by a local politician and operated by a French guy married to the daughter of a Securitate colonel. These are typical byzantine connection of a country that was not yet able to find its pace.

But we are not here for an investigation, less me who I have just vague clues who these new owners are. Everything else is pristine beauty. Alone in the forest, around marshes, with deers running in the sunrise, and pack of wild horses running loose the Danube Delta is an amazing place to contemplate the nature. We walk the village street, poke in people’s gardens and start conversations. Women tender the gardens fetching water from the well and telling us about their children departed to the city or far away to Europe. Men take the goats to the field and tell us stories about their past better life. Nobody complains. There are just facts of life. In the golden light of the sunset the atmosphere is magic.

In the evening our host found us a place to sleep at a local relative and we sit around a table completely covered by the fish bought in Sulina prepared with mashed garlic, mujdei as is called in Romanian. The wine, chilled in the well, is well received by all of us. The dinner is a tradition here and is self served with lots of wine and talks. Now I understood why they were grateful in finding fish in Sulina. In the Danube Delta does not exist fish anymore! It sounds like an oxymoron but is a fact caused by extensive poaching. Naively I asked if they used extensively the net with leads at its end that catches everything when is thrown. They laugh and say that the poaching is done way more sophisticated, with electrodes, sold cheaply in Ukraine, just across the water. You just put them in the water, start the current and the fish of the entire area come up dead at the surface. It is an outrage but is hard to catch the poachers as long as they are connected with the local mafias and politicians. Now I start to connect the dots. Several days before I met at a dinner a woman who had a contact that could be called at any hour of day or night and in half an hour can bring any quantity of FRESH fish or fish product you imagine to your door. She said that his contact has connection with the Russian mafia that through its Romanian counterparts and obvious, the local politicians, have full control of the supply. The incredible direct result of the poaching is that the locals go on the lakes outside of the Delta to fish or to BUY fish. So the next day when we saw the only fisherman who was throwing the net we had to direct him how to sit for the camera not to show, the obvious, that the net was empty with just several small fish in it. In the good old days, funny but during the Communist times, after dinner the entire left over fish was thrown back in the Danube and a new fish would be collected for lunch the following morning. But not during the democracy; all the left over fish was saved and eaten the next day for lunch.

Next morning at sunrise after a quick breakfast with strong Greek coffee we are taken to the forest where we will spend about 4-5 hours to take pictures and look for a plant that my friend has to photograph. Just to be there is a treat in itself. You can get lost in the dunes but eventually you can find your way back. Around 10 am, the heat is overwhelming but our guide comes to pick us up and we enter a Romanian jeep full of horse flies that luckily do not attack us and go to see the wild horses. More pictures and video and after a break at home we start riding back to Sulina on the Mosora Gulf covered completely with water plants and birds sitting on their eggs in the nests on the water. Before reaching Sulina we stop at a pelican colony that fly away, picture perfect, against the setting sun and to Sulina’s old lighthouse, extremely picturesque in the sunset with birds flying lazily in front of it.

In the city, we walk a little the old streets still aligned with the old merchant houses and try to imagine the hustle and bustle of the this city during the free port time before the communist take over. The houses still preserve a style characteristic for the Balkans similar with houses built in Turkey or Greece. We book a room for the night in a tiny local hotel overlooking the Danube and the promenade and for dinner we go to the main restaurant of the promenade, that has a name but everybody calls it by the name of a local who owns it. During dinner we try to figure out how much to pay our guide, because in Romania everything is based on: “you pay just how much you would like to pay”, but this does not mean that the expectations are low at all, it only leaves the higher level of negotiations open for business. Coming from the settled prices of New York I am always at a loss in such a situation so I leave the decision to my friend.

Before going to sleep I stay on the balcony admiring the slow flow of the Danube and remember that I have to call my wife. She just got off from a cab at Newark International airport where she will board a plane bound to Bucharest to meet me the next day. The two worlds apart are somehow coming closer. In the night I have the feeling that somebody entered our room over the balcony. Maybe it was just a bad dream like many things that happen in Romania.

With the easiness of English language spoken by absolutely everybody, I think that they study it since kindergarten, and the pleasant atmosphere offered by the locals, Scandinavia makes a great destination.

Any person that loves nature would find Norway magic. The combination of snow capped peaks on top of the mountains, crystal clear fjords surrounded by steep peaks inviting you for kayak expeditions, blue glaciers that plunge ice boulders to the bottom of white water lakes, thundering waterfalls with crystal clear water or pleasant paths into the woods make this country the number one destination in Europe for outdoor activities. But it is way more than that what catches the interest. Old stave churches from the 11th century using old Scandinavian techniques using very tall trees stripped of the branches and the bark and left with the roots in the ground for years to dry straight. Fantastic museum that document the history of the Vikings and their discoveries. Everywhere you go people travel. By bike, hitch hiking, cars and mainly with campers they roam the country in a frugal way, the country being full of camping places that rent small huts people living a simple life closer to nature. The country looks and for sure is clean enticing you drink the water from the mountains streams or the lakes.

Sweden is a pleasant destination its cities being a treasure trove of location worth exploring. Stockholm location, on the bay makes it very attractive during a sunny day and the boat rides in the harbor are a pleasure. Goteborg, also a harbor has its own attractions.

A recent survey found out that people of Denmark are the happiest people in the world. If I would not have known this result I should have been completely puzzled because out of the woods of Scandinavia you see when you get to Copenhagen an entire city that smiles. People are nice and helpful and they always try to make your stay pleasant, even by encouraging you that they think that the rain will stop in the afternoon and the sun will shine again. The city is extremely pleasant full of large squares that look to be made for people and not for vehicle. Tables are everywhere, with small stalls serving mainly Danish beer enjoyed by hundreds, tourists and locals, in a sunny day. All the streets have bike lanes and you feel that the real movement inside the city happens on these bike lanes. Hordes of Danes ride the bikes dressed casually, in suits or very stylish going to a fancy dinner sometimes in high heels on bikes. The clubs are pumping live music and the restaurants are full in the late hours, people enjoying the long hours of sun and heat of the summer. All this and many other makes Copenhagen the most pleasant capital of Scandinavia. Everything looks green in this country, with the Environmental Agency Building in Copenhagen being covered with a metal grid on which are planted vertically flowers that cover the entire façade. Occasionally you see small electric cars plugged over night in street outlets that lit blue in the dark hours.

Taking a trip during the long summer days is tough because you do not want to go to sleep. Every night we went to sleep around 12-1 am getting up with an alarm at 6-7 am. Why bother to sleep when you have such a great light….

The flight was departing to Frankfurt at 10 am, so we walked up at 6:30, packed and left to the train station, 10 minutes walk away from the hotel. We did not board the train before we stopped for a to-go breakfast at Andersen Bakery in Tivoli that had great cakes but average espresso, if you have to judge by Italian standards. The train got us in 15 minutes to the new and beautifully designed Copenhagen airport and reluctantly we left this great city.

We landed in Frankfurt where we had a 5 hour layover to New York so we got an RT ticket to go into the city. For E14.50 you get a RT ticket for a group of 5 people, (E9.50 one adult RT). Quite a deal! And the trains runs every 15 German minutes and it takes 15 minutes to reach Frankfurt Hauptbanhof, the main train station. From the front of the station it starts KaiserStrasse, the main pedestrian street that goes through the financial district with the glass skyscrapers of the German banks headquarters that got the nickname of Mainhattan. We continued to Kaiser Place and further down all the way to the Dom, the walk taking less than an hour. We visited the Dom and the Old Square with its old houses and we rushed back to the train station to get to the airport. S-Bahn 8 and 9 bring you to the Flughafen in 15 minutes with only three stops.

In the morning the rain was not over and we started our last 100 km drive to Copenhagen on wet roads. Before we left we booked hotel on the Internet and when we drove into the city it happened that we drove right past the hotel near the train station. At $114/night CABINN City Hotel looked like a bargain but the rooms were so small that a cell in the jail would be more comfortable. At first I thought that I got a wrong room but it turned out that all were the same so we left the luggage and got out because you could not move inside. This is a hostel, good for sleep ONLY. But on Booking.com you could not figure out especially when you have to book quickly and move along.

I left to the airport to drop the car that was rented till today, fill up and parked exactly in the spot from where I picked it up. The drop-off is as easy as the pick up, just park the car, go the desk and drop the key. No questions asked. From the airport there are trains into the city every 15 minutes and the ride takes 15 minutes for DK34.50. Kids under 12 ride free.

I returned at the hotel and started the tour into the city, stopping first at the CityHall and continuing under heavily cloudy skies to Christianborg Palace. There the rain started heavily and we got inside to visit the ruins of the two previous palaces destroyed in fires. The current palace is the third building and was built with the lessons from the previous two fires that engulfed and destroyed the structures. We returned to the City Hall for a view of the entire city from its tower, DK20, and when I got on top the weather started to improve and all afternoon was sunny. From the tower I walked to the new library, the Black Diamond building. Together with new theater building and the new opera house on the opposite shore represent remarkable works of modern architecture that give the city another touch of its magical youthful atmosphere. Further we continued to Christiansen Harbor with the new houses on the canal and the exquisite steeple of the Christian Church and to the new harbor of Nyhaven, with its picture perfect houses that align the canal and the boats that carry everybody for DK 30-40 on various tours, same route, on Denmark’s capital canals. I hopped in a boat for an one hour tour that takes you to the most important sites by the canals with detailed explanations about the history of the city. Here I found out that because the water was bad in the city in the past centuries the royals advised people to drink beer and the Danes say that this is the reason they had such a great kingdom and they ended up with the smallest country…. After the ride I returned to City Hall through various streets aligned with beautiful houses typical for the city. The city is way denser in old houses than any other Scandinavian city and it is CHARMING. It is by far the most alive and interesting city in Scandinavia, a young city where bikers abound, terraces are everywhere and people enjoy sitting in the sun having a beer. People are nice and always smiling and you are not surprised after this entire tour of Scandinavia to see that the rating of “the happiest people in the world” went to the people of Denmark. From the City Hall we walked on Storegat, the main pedestrian street full of artist and entertainers, back to Nyhaven that was basking in a great evening light and we had dinner on the canals and a well-deserved Tuborg beer. After that we walked to the Little Mermaid….who has left to China and is replaced by a large screen that displays a direct web feed that shows how the Copenhagen’s emblem is doing in Shanghai World Exhibition. Walking back to the city we stopped again for ice cream and another beer in Nyhaven before reluctantly going to sleep in this very alive city.

After a good sleep and a delicious breakfast we pursued the drive that we stopped last night on good highways for less than 3 hours through Helsingborg and Helsinger and we crossed the causeway/bridge/tunnel to Denmark ($40-45). From there we started to drive another 3 hours to reach Billund, the home of Legoland, an American style amusement park. There are 158 km to Ostende on 4-lane highway and from there about another hour to Billund. Ostende is located in the second of the Denmark’s island connected by a causeway and bridge to the main island, where the toll is another $40 or equivalent.

We arrived after such a long drive with stops only for gas at Legoland where the entrance is around $45-50 for an adult with a very small discount for children under 12. Legoland is a typical amusement park, with rides located in themed areas, like Legorado, Pirate area, castles or Egyptian temples but what is the most fascinating part of the park, and unique is the Miniland, an area where parts of known world city destinations are created using millions of pieces of Lego. Copenhagen’s Nyhaven, Airport, etc., Bergen, Norway’s fjord and stave church, Amsterdam and Holland’s mills, Beverly Hills’ movie studios, Cape Canaveral, Tokyo district with a Buddha watching Mount Fuji, Acropolis, Wat Phrae Kau, Washington’s Capitol and many other. All these models have lots of trains, cars, buses, boats that move by computer control awing adults and kids alike. The rides are OK but they are more or less what you find in any other park.

In spite of coming late it was enough time to do several rides and see the Miniland and at around 5:00pm, right when we were in line to get inside the “Temple” a storm that was looming for a while started viciously with heavy rain and strong winds and in no time everybody was running for cover. The rain was going on and stopped all the activities including the Miniland where all the computers failed with lots of errors and the techs were hovering around the sets to restart the systems. We did several other rides that were covered and after a visit to the fascinating Lego store and to some other souvenir stores we left around 8:45 pm back to Copenhagen. But the rain was not over and followed us the entire way, at times so heavy that you could not see anything in front and lightning can be seen towards the city. Because of the weather we tried to stop on the way in several hotels and at the third attempt we succeeded and booked a room (DK875) one hour away from the capital.

Great day to walk in Stockholm. Sunny and a little too warm but it is in the North and is bearable. Walked from the hotel Alexandra to Gamla Stan in 15 minutes and right away bought some hop-on hop-off boat tickets to be used all day ($15) that shorten the distances. Stockholm’s center is not large but we did not have too much time so any help was great. The boats, all run the same route, go around the harbor and stop to the major attractions in the city. The tickets, like many other items, but not everything, can be paid in US$, this being valid all over Scandinavia. However almost everywhere credit cards are accepted.

The first stop was at the Royal Palace, that I gave a miss for an inside visit and I just took a quick peek at the portrait of the princess and her new gym trainer hubby. She is the oldest and will inherit the crown and their disco wedding happened just a month ago in the castle.

The boat takes you to the National Theater and to the Royal Sightings before stopping at Vasa Museum, where is located the boat that sank just after she left the harbor in 1627. The king himself designed the boat and supervised the project. He decided to load the ship with large number of cannons a show off of his power. When the investigation was supposed to be started the king did not show up in court so nobody was found guilty for the failure of the project. The boat stayed underwater for 300 years and was taken out in 1961, being originally kept under water sprays till this new museum was opened. The museum is really impressive because the boat was rescued with all the objects that were just loaded on it for a sail that never happened. Just another hop away from the museum is Skeepholmen island where it used to be stationed the Swedish Navy. Now a quite place, the island has a small castle on it and the Museum of Contemporary Arts and Museum of Architecture. You can continue to the Open Air Folk Museum and the amusement park if you have time but I preferred the boat ride all the way to the Royal Sightings where the beautiful residential buildings from the 19^th centuries command great views over the harbor with apartments that run way over 1 million US$. We returned to the Dramatic Theater and further towards the Royal Palace and in Gamla Stan for a last pictures of the narrow streets and we had to rush to the hotel to pick up the luggage and the car and start driving towards Copenhagen, a 6.5 hours on more than 600 km highway. We would have gotten very close to Denmark  but it was the night of the World Cup final so we stop on the way to a Rasta Restaurant a little out of Linkoping and watched the first triumph of Spain in the World Cup in a extra time in a match where they outplayed the very dangerous and powerful team of the Netherlands. The extra time delayed our schedule and we slept in a Scandic hotel in Jonkoping. The hotels in Sweden, like over the entire Scandinavia are very neat. Clean, looking like new and designed very nicely are a pleasure to stay in them and enjoy the plentiful morning buffet breakfast. Except in Norway, the hotel prices are reasonable being relatively more expensive than their American versions but offering way more and of a considerable higher quality. In general everything what you buy/rent in Scandinavia and Northern Europe is of a remarkable quality and implicitly at a slightly higher price.  As far as I could see it does not exist the notion of a dingy place. The places are always good and the budget ones give you the option to strip items alike the sheets, linen, towels or breakfast for a lower price.

Lillehammer was more or less developed around the 1994 Olympics. Its main street was empty at the early hours of the morning but anyway we could not spend too much time because we had such a long way to go so we left around 9:30 am for a 600 km/8 hours ride to Stockholm. After a quick stop at the border that is represented by a road in the woods where the locals are walking their dogs where we got the shopping taxes refunded we crossed in Sweden where we found the roads being larger and in a way better than the small and narrow Norwegian roads. The road from the border to Karlstadt is more or a less a highway, with parts that are interrupted but even then the lane is very large with shoulder and good pavement. Around Karlstadt we stopped for lunch at a beach place. The sun starved Swedes were swarming to the beach that was on the shore of the sea, or a fjord going to it. Played with pigeons, took some pictures and left for Stockholm. The highway continued and you could drive with over 120 km/h an improvement after the 60km/h we had to drive in Norway. The pattern of the highway was new to me, 2 lanes on one way combined with one lane of the other that changed at every several km. It was actually a 3 lanes highway!!!! The drawback is that at one point it was an accident on the one lane section and police had to detour the traffic on the incoming lanes.

But the best thing of the drive, otherwise a boring one through a not so great landscape, was admiring a parade of old cars drove with enjoyment by the Swedes. On the entire drive, hours after hours, you could see 2-3 old cars every 5 minutes. There were hundreds of Buick, Chrysler, Volvo, Opel and Oldsmobiles sometimes painted in pink, red, white or green caring behind them an antique camper. Most of them were convertible drove in a glorious sunny day. Sometimes the drivers, women or men, were dressed in matching dresses and suits inclusing the hair do of the 1950, 60s and 70s. Without that parade the 8, that was actually 10, hour drive would have been boring.

We arrived in Stockholm around 7:30 pm and we started to look for the hotel address and after many investigations we were able to find Alexandra Hotel. A working GPS would have been great….. Unfortunately we found out that the Internet was down at the hotel but the good news was that we could park the car on the street over the weekend. Parking in Stockholm’s secondary areas is about SK15/hour, about $2. Not too bad like all the prices in Sweden that are way lower than in Norway.

We took the car and parked close to Gamla Stan, the island that has on it the old town, and we walked and took pictures in the sunset light, watching occasionally glimpses of the small final game in the World Cup between Germany and Uruguay.

After we got a pretty good idea of the city layout we were able to have dinner. We were billed SK30 for water, plain tap water with ice and asking about this the Polish waiter told us that nothing is free anymore in Sweden and started to complain about the very low level of life here with working people having to pay for African immigrants that bring their entire families and do not want to work and live on welfare… Food in school is mediocre; medicine is expensive; hospitals are not good, etc. Nobody is happy…..

Glorious morning. We had a great breakfast served at the table and we left back towards Geiranger and further toward Sweden. We stopped several times on the way for pictures and we took this time the new road from Stryn to Geiranger through the tunnels, not so nice but extremely fast. Around noon we were in Geiranger and after a short stop and a quick lunch admiring an oyster catcher sitting on eggs annoyed by the surrounding tourists, we left toward Ornesvingen, the Eagles’ bend, on a road that climbs from the side of the fjord. The view from Ornesvingen viewing platform is fantastic and we caught also Hurtigruten coming to drop her passengers in Geiranger. We continued to the top of the mountain and we stopped on great sites on the way on Trollstiegen plateau. Waterfalls and snow capped peaks surrounds you all over. The road is supposed to take 2.5 hours but with so many stops we were able to leave the last stop on the Trollstiegen pass around 5pm. Here the National Tourists Bureau built a spectacular platform over the steep valley and right near a thundering waterfall. It is a great view that should not be missed. From there the road is going down the spectacular plateau landscape being replaced by forest and you drive through villages at low speed. It is quite boring. We stopped in Otta where we had a large pizza for dinner in the only open place except a burger place and where three small dressings that were casually offered were charged Nk60. Normally in the US all these are free…..We arrived in Lillehammer around 11pm after another 2 hour drive on a road that is marked as a highway but is just a larger road and finally after several tries we got a room in Birkenbeineren Hotel right by the ski jump site of the 1994 Olympics.

Norway is expensive. This statement is a norm and you hear it from many. But to understand the real situation you have to come and visit, the most expensive country in Europe, where what strikes you the most is not what exactly you have to pay but the lack of choices. After you visit for a while you understand that the real issue in the country is not the business climate but the Socialist government that taxes everybody so high that businesses run obviously at a very low margin.

Finding a hotel to accommodate 3-4 people is possible but the cost incurred can be high. First, if you want to book over Internet not too many hotels have listed a room a 3-4 people. Then when you get one you realize that beside the regular price, very high already, they might add NK250 per person so the least expensive rooms goes for around NK1000-1200 or $200 for a basic room in a basic hotel. Sometimes for this you get breakfast but not all sheets and towels that are charged extra. A top hotel like Raddison charges in a city like Bergen NK1600 same price as similar ones in any small town/resort. This taxation system compresses the price scale towards the higher prices leaving almost no room for low and medium priced hotels. The American version of cheap motel does not exist. Even if it might look like a motel, inside it is clean looking brand new with impeccable sheets. But this system scales down the offer, in any resort being only 2-3 hotels, all are extremely clean and well maintained.

The food is a worse problem if you do not plan in advance. The restaurants outside of the main cities close relatively early and their prices are steep. Like in the Oslo’s restaurants any dish is around $50 and in some of them you may get a fixed menu for this price or higher. The result is that in most of them you may see old families eating out and with such a high tag even in Akker Brigge in Oslo the number of occupied tables is limited and only once a night. The youth are in the bar across the street and in most of the restaurant’s terraces in Oslo, that are absolutely packed that you could not find a chair, everybody has just a beer on the table and ABSOLUTELY no food. In small towns in the fjords the food options might be limited to only one pizza parlor and one hotel with restaurant that closes the kitchen at 8-9pm, so if you missed your 7pm dinner the Arab’s pizza parlor is the only option. Any soft drink is about NK25 and a beer is around NK50.

Banks exists in some towns but you have to investigate thoroughly to be able to find it and when you find it the exchange rate is taxed that you get 10-15% less than the expected rate. Because of lack of available banks we ran out of NK many times and we had to negotiate a rate, surprisingly slightly better than in a bank, to pay for food or even the hotel in US$.

The roads are free but occasionally it comes up a toll road where the toll is so high like the one toward Fraeling where for 34km you have to pay NK180,  coming to $1/km

Anything you visit is around NK50-70/person. For families kids pay half so it comes to NK160-180. And this is for absolutely any place you have to see inside, be a museum, a church, etc. But after you pay this entry you get interesting extra fees. You go to museum OUTSIDE of the city and after you pay NK160 the entry fee you find out that the parking should be paid also, NK10/hour and sometimes is a fee for the museum toilet.

Transportation is highly expensive with any ferry crossing being around NK120, $20 and you need a number of crossings. The tickets prices for buses and trains, as we heard from other travelers, are very high also but surprisingly the plane tickets are reasonable. The Flam train is NK340 RT and the bus ticket for inner city in Bergen is NK25. The gas is slightly more than $2/liter. The parking is expensive in large cities that is expected but at rate of $10/hour on street parking in Oslo it comes to be more expensive than NYC.

The prices are as they are. You pay and you forget but what shocks you the most is that these are fees and prices that the locals are paying on a regular basis and they have to deal with the lack of options similar in a way with a way of life that was happening 20 years ago in Eastern Europe. Knowing that the government is a coalition of parties with the Socialists in the middle is no surprise. People are quite unhappy as we found out. The life was affordable till about 1985 when the prices started to skyrocket and it became really unaffordable after 2000. The Socialist government policies makes unemployment compensation higher than the pensions and elderly people suffers of neglect and lack of care. With the higher taxes and steep local costs I just mentioned, you really wonder how much these people have to earn in order to afford living in this country. As I just found out last night all the people working in the hotel are paid flat NK125/hour ($20/hour). Businesses do not make a good profit but just get by. Of course we assumed that everything else is taken care of like medicine, but a retired person mentioned that they have to pay NK2800 from their own pocket in order to qualify for medicine to be paid from government programs.

Norway is an enchanting country. Everything that surrounds you is breathtaking keeping you awake till late into the night; high mountains with steep cliffs that look like falling over you, glaciers hanged in the sky, waterfalls pouring down from everywhere surrounding you with their majesty and sound, a nature that exults power and freshness. And the summer light helps you. Even if you do not cross the Artic Circle the light is enough at midnight to be able to read. Till around 10:30 – 11:30pm is light like during the day so you do not want to go to sleep. The entire tour we walked or drove every evening till 10:30 – 11pm and got a hotel around 11pm usually being the last people to check in. The next morning we rushed to get up to start all over again so we had in general around 5-6 hours of sleep per night. And you still feel that you miss so much. Wherever you drive or walk is so beautiful that you feel that you don’t have to hand pick routes to enjoy the day just go where your eyes carry you. No matter how much ground you covered you have the feeling that you barely scratched the surface and determines you even more to return.

After an early breakfast we parked the car at the harbor and we got on the 9:30 am cruise on the Geiranger Fjord, a 1.5 hour trip every two hours. The boat ride is spectacular, the UNESCO listed Geiranger Fjord being a very narrow with steep climbing cliffs. During the ride back people were getting off and going for hikes or were picked up from hikes but I did not investigate to see how this can be arranged. This cruise is one of the best in Norway’s fjord and should not be missed.

When we returned after some phone calls and shopping in the harbor and many pictures from vantage points, we checked out the very nice hotel room and we drove all the way to Dalsniba, a 1500 meter mountain peak with fantastic views over the fjord and the surrounding mountains. The peak is covered in snow and when the sun goes in the clouds it is chilly. We spent there way too much time and we continued on the way to Grotli from where we turn right on the old Styrn route, Strynefjell, a narrow one lane road not properly maintained that goes deep inside a plateau valley in a moonlike landscape. Tourist buses use the road coming from Styrn and you have to stop and go on the side or drive back to an area where they can pass you. Fortunately they drive in flocks and after they passed the entire road was ours with some occasionally cars coming from Styrn. the road is one of the most spectacular roads we drove in Norway. After about an hour we reached Stryn summer ski resort but that looked closed. I read that you can ski here till late in the summer and seeing the amount of snow still left in the middle of July was no surprise. The road improves from the resort till it meets the new road from Grotli to Styrn. On the we stopped and had lunch in a bucolic valley surrounded by waterfalls, wild rivers and snowed capped peaks. This road is a treat not matter that is not easy to navigate on its first portion. From Styrn, the main town in Nordfjord, we drove to the closest glacier, Kendelsbreen, where we got info regarding the glacier walks in the local restaurant where the guides were eating. The glacier walks start at 10 am and is a whole day affair ending around 5pm with about 3 hours on the ice. Unfortunately our schedule could not afford this so we decided to have dinner on the terrace with a view of the lake and glacier in front. After dinner we drove to Briksdalebreen, the second glacier where we started the hike toward the glacier around 8:30 pm. It takes about 40 minutes to hike to the glacier. During the day there is a trolley that for NK100 takes you there also. After admiring the glacier and watching an avalanche of ice coming down, we backtracked our route reaching the base hotel around 11pm where we were able to catch the manager right when he was closing to go to sleep, got a room and slept over night in Briksdal and the base of the glacier.

The plan was to wake up early and drive to Flam, one hour, and get the train ride from Flam to Myrtle, 45 minutes one way, NK850/family ticket. The train comes every 80 minutes but when we reached Flam in a constant drizzle we found a huge cruise boat and all the trains being sold out till afternoon. A little disappointed we decided to leave and drove all the way to Songdal and Lom to get to Geiranger Fjord. Looking on the map more attentively we realized that we did not plan right the roads and we drove the same roads several times. We could have been more efficient but when you rush because of lack of time you always miss something. We drove this time through the long Laerdal tunnel, 24.5km that has places to stop inside lit with colored lights, got on the same ferry as before and arrived in Songdal, 3 hours from Voss, and started to drive to Hasflo to go to Urnes Stave Church. The church is on the other side of the fjord so we boarded a ferry, NK142, and after a short haul we got on the other side and drove up. Inside the church was a wedding so we waited to finish and after that we had the chance to listen to a remarkable presentation about the Vikings, their customs and knowledge and the way they built these churches. The church is one of the best we visited in Norway and it is worth a detour to see it and to listen to the presentation. We continued on a extremely beautiful road right on the shore of the fjord to Skjolde where the roads combines and we drove over the mountain pass to Lom on another picturesque road. The landscape around the 1500 m pass is desolate. Snow, drizzle, wind and some fog forced you to get quickly in the car after you take a shot. But when we descended from the top of the mountain the weather was balmy in Lom, the driest place in Norway and people were enjoying the sun at the cafes in town. We visited the Stave Church and we had dinner, again relatively mediocre food but as the waiter said: ”The food is very expensive” .

From Lom to Geiranger is about 90km, 2 hours tops but the road is so nice again that it took us almost double to cross it with so many stops for pictures. In Grotli we stopped and watched a little the Spain goal in the match against Germany and we continued in the magnificent landscape of the mountains surrounding Geiranger, crossing the deserted plateau. After a stop at the motel at 1039 meters in Djupvasshytta we drove directly in town around 11pm, booked a room in Union Hotel and got the information about the daily cruises in the fjord for the following day.

“How much does the room cost in your hotel?”

“NK800 without bathroom in the room and NK900 with bathroom. Do you need sheets and towels?”

“Well, obviously…”

“ In this case is an extra NK70/person”

This was in Bergen, the second largest city in Norway and we picked this hotel because it had parking. On the door it was a sign that you have to pay for parking but nobody bothered. This was a youth hostel but the youth age was very relative. After the breakfast we packed, left the luggage in the car and after we waited for the drenching rain to stop took a bus for NK25 into the city, kids riding free. Bergen is a very nice city. An old city part of the famous Hanseatic League was a major trading port in the 15-17^th century and latter. The German merchants came and set shops in Bryggen, the old part of town where the league was securing for them a sort of monopoly in fish trading. In a deeply religious country the fish was an important food eaten mainly during the lent. The high prices commanded by fish made the merchants rich and the houses they built in the harbor, UNESCO protected, are even today centers for businesses companies with offices on their upper floors. We visited the city center with its beautiful buildings around Johanes Kirche and Bryggen with its old houses in the highly animated harbor where ships were helping to recover another ship that sunk that morning. New technology, old ways. The fish market was in full swing and we had an eye on it for lunch/dinner like all the other tourists. Beside fish of all form, there are lots of souvenir places, cheese, salami, jam, fruit and vegetable, etc. all sold at quite steep prices. We walked in Bryggen that is a charm of the place. The old buildings have pulleys that were and still are used to carry merchandise on the top floors balconies that hang over the tiny alleys. From there we took a short walk and got in the Floihban, a train on steep tracks that was bringing people on top of the hill from where the view over Bergen is astounding.

Not too much time was left so we walked down and went to visit the Hanseatic Museum, located in the first house in Bryggen, a UNESCO protected building. The museum has the original layout of a merchant house during the league, with the floors where the merchant and his family was living and the floors for apprentices, a desired position that was placing the person on the track to become a merchant and a member of the League having him set for life.

The visit was followed by dinner in the fish market where the food was average but expensive. After a little more walk in Bryggen I took a bus, got to the hotel, picked up the car and picked up everybody from the city and drove all the way to Voss, one hour, to the same B&B we got info the night before. Before going to sleep I had to do a Skype to NYC not to get too detached from work…..

The rain showers in the forecast proved correct and in the morning the sky was full of clouds and rain on the ground. We packed and left to Gaupke, 12 km away where we had breakfast in a mall, all the real coffee places being closed before 10 am. The rain was going on and off alternating with sun, making it even more difficult to figure out what to do. We drove all the way to Luster, another 24 km where we started to drive back and took the way to Jostedal Glacier from Gaupke. At 487km2  Jostedal is the largest glacier in continental Europe. The rain proved more acute in Jostedal, especially in the glacier proximity, and we could not do a climb/hike so we decided to leave toward Bergen with a stop in Songdal for food  and gas, and from there to Kaupangen to board the ferry to Gudvagen. We were not decided to take the ferry, 3 times a day only, but we arrived right when the ferry was boarding so we drove on  it (NK960) and sailing through the fjords we got in 2.5 hours to Gudvagen navigating in occasional showers with sun through the magnificent Naeroyfjord, one of the narrowest and most beautiful in Norway. From Gudvagen there are 120 km to Bergen and we drove another hour a beautiful road with waterfalls, the one in Tivden being a real treat, to Voss where we ate at another pizza/pasta place held by Arabs, the last food available before Bergen. Unfortunately if you arrive after 7pm it is no more pasta or anything else available, just pizza that becomes a drag after a while….At the exit from Voss we stopped at a B&B from where we called and made a reservation in Bergen in a hotel recommended by the locals, Bergen Montana and we drove a little more than one hour through many tunnels to get to Bergen where after several tries we were able to locate the hotel and crashed for the night, again after 1am.

After a good sleep in the quietude of the mountains and a great breakfast in the hotel we left and stopped to visit the Stave Church in Gol. The entrance to all these churches is around NK 70-90 and for families it goes to about NK170-190. The stave churches’ structure is made out of long poles that have a sculpted face on top, representing probably a heathen god. The tall poles are called Stave and give the interior a lofty aspect bringing your view towards the sky. Close to the church was a museum with the Norse legends and gods and a tomb of a Norseman warrior. We had an interesting discussion about life and prices in Norway with the lady that was hosting the place and it turned out that people are rather dissatisfied, not to say angry, with the government and what they get back for the taxes and the prices they pay.

From there we left towards the Songsfjord, the most famous fjord of Norway, trying to take advantage of the sunny day followed in the forecast by some rainy ones. The roads proved to be excellent, well paved and well maintained in spite of the waterfalls that are pouring around their sides. And in spite of the surrounding peaks and fjords there are few hairpins or sharp curves and no matter that there are no four lane roads the traffic is smooth with speeds around 80kmh. We stopped on the way to admire great waterfalls and fantastic landscape. Close to the fjord we stopped and visited the Stave Church in Borgun, one of the oldest in the country, dating from 1160. The church is covered with tar in order to be preserved and is one of the best in Norway. Same NK 160 ticket and the surprise is that the toilet access was at …NK5/person. Norwegian way…..

Leaving towards the fjord, after some tunnels the road ended in a ferry and we crossed (NK 115) getting in 15 minutes to Songden, the largest town and in a way the heart of Sognefjord. Here we got some information and a map about the fjord and after checking some places to sleep and eat we drove toward Faerling, where close to it there are two glaciers, Boyabreen and Sulphebreen. The road toward the town is marked as a toll road without saying how much is the toll and only when you finished the 34 km drive you get to pay the equivalent of $30. …And you have to pay again the toll at your return to Songden. Quite an entry fee. We visited the glaciers. In Bovabreen it is a lake at the glacier’s base and you cannot reach its base but in Sulphebreen you are able to go to its margin and walk on ice. We rteturned to Songdal and continued towards Luster stopping in Hasflo at a guesthouse. But being Sunday night everything was getting closed early so after several tries around Hasflo we drove back to back Songdal (12km) and ate in the still opened pizzeria held by some Arabs and returned towards midnight to Hasflo. We have to thank the long Scandinavian day light that gives you a lot of flexibility. In Hasflo the night never sets in, the evening light holding over the town after midnight. The disadvantage is that you end up staying very late and going to bed every night around 12-1am. The guesthouse we stayed was the best deal we had in the entire stay in Norway with a very cozy two bedroom apartment for NK800. But you have to find it….

The next morning I got my camera, packed and went outside to park the car in an area the receptionist recommended. Everything around the center of the city is extremely expensive and very strict, with parking cars being seen so often. I drove about 5 minutes away, close to Anker Hotel and I found the free parking on the street in a very quiet area. I walked back to the hotel and picked up everybody and went to eat to the same place where we ate dinner the night before, close to the hotel. The pizza/ bar places are way less expensive than the regular restaurants but the prices are in any case higher than US or Euro zone. I went to a 7Eleven that abounds in Norway and I purchased some bread rolls. They do accept any kind of currency but they cannot tell you at what exchange rate. It is kind of weird and it ended up costing $6 for 3 small rolls of bread!!!

The breakfast was good and the cappuccino was great. After breakfast I wanted to go and see how I can change money at the only open place the Forex bureau in the train station. This is a big rip off . I did not do the exchange because it was a long line but latter on I did it and the rate was so bad and he commission so high that for $50 I got about NK250 no matter that the official rate is 6.67….Walking back I started to look for an AC adapter. In New York costs around $1 and can be found relatively easily. Here it was a trip and when I found a specialized store it was NK299, about $50!!! They told me that it exists another version that is only NK99 and after several tries I found a store that had it and I bought it happily not without pointing out that is expensive. And the salesman confirmed: “Norway is a very expensive country”. It was the first time I heard the statement done by a local and I kept hearing after that on and on.

I walked and shot video in Karl Johanes gate, the main pedestrian area in Oslo going all the way to the STOSSEL the royal palace and at 12 pm I was at the RatHuis to get to visit the place where the Nobel Foundation offers the Nobel Prize for Peace, awarded this year to President Obama. The halls are impressive, made out of material from Norway and completely painted with frescos done by Norwegian artists.
Impressive is the large hall on the first floor where the ceremony is held.

Across is a pavilion dedicated to the prize that now housed an exhibit with Obama and another about the South Africa. From there after another very quick tour on the Aker Drygge we went to national gallery that has a great collection of Norwegian artists, having in the middle a hall dedicated to Munch, that has also the “The Scream” plus many other interesting paintings. Jumping from one to another I went to get the car and after a short stop at the hotel to pick up the luggage we drove to Bygodf , a very close suburb of Oslo that has an amazing collection of museums. Short time, long list so we decided for the seafaric museums. So we visited the Vikings Museum, a museum that contains three Vikings ships and a number of carts and other artifacts found in Ostenxxx. The next museum visited in a hurry was the one about Kon Tiki and the expeditions of Thor Heyerdhal. This one it is a very inspiring for anybody who has a relative sense of adventure. Both Kon Tiki and Ra are in the museum. Right before we left we were able also to pick inside the museum that houses Fram the ship used by Nansen to go to the North Pole.

It was already 6pm but this does not mean late in Norway because you have at least 5 good hours of light in front so we started to drive towards Bergen on very nice roads in a great mountain landscape through dense forests planning to stop on the way after about three hours. The road from Oslo to Bergen takes about 6 hours and we split it is two at Gol, a summer and winter resort, where we were able to get a room at a Best Western Hotel for the promotional price of NK1200. Food is an issue if you want to eat latter. Because of the driving many times we were forced to eat around 9-10 pm and almost everything is closed. But luckily we found some Turks with a Pizza/pasta place open. We noticed latter on that not only they have the lower cost food in a country where restaurants are prohibitively expensive for the regular guy but also these immigrants are the only guys open till 10-11 pm.

In Scandinavia the hotel’s breakfast is extremely good. Generous, diversified and delicious is something to look forward for. Beside everything that was offered I was able for the first time to have a really great machine made cappuccino. I did not believe that something like this exits, at least not in the US. We considered taking a tram to go in the city center but because we did not have any Swedish money we decided to drive into the city to Heden Parking recommended by the hotel’s receptionist. The parking  can paid by credit card and no matter that the parking machines in Heden were supposed to take American Express they somehow could not read any credit card so I was stuck on keep trying. Meanwhile my hopeless tries were noticed by some Swedes around and a lady decided that she wants to pay for my 4 hours of parking, about $3-4, and all my thanks and prays of giving her in exchange US$ were refused.  She said: “You are a tourist and we like tourists”. I was wondering when something like that happened last time in France, for example…..

Goteborg’s center is not large and can be managed in several hours. The old part of the city is around a square located right on the shore of the canals and the harbor that is spectacular especially on a sunny day like the one we had. Unfortunately we did not have time to visit any museum, the Haselblat one being my number ONE priority. After a tour in the old town, a stop at a women beach volleyball match on a court in front of the opera  and a walk in  the harbor we were able to get on top of the harbor’s red building to get a view of the entire city and after a short stop at the mall to eat we headed back to the car and to a 3 hour drive to Oslo.

But after we drove for about one hour we got on a single lane road and we realized that the three Scandinavian capitals are not connected by finished highways. Luckily the highway hiatus was not so long and we crossed at one point the border with NORWAY that has also a toll, not being clear that is for the bridge we crossed or for the border, 24SK. But all the highways are free…..

In Oslo we reached easily the hotel, that we reserved several days before by sort of accident. Because I could not cancel it I was stuck with it and it was not a great choice. At the time I thought that the price being high I should be safe but I missed a big point: This reservation was done in Norway, the most expensive country in Europe. A budget hotel in Norway that has three bed is close or slightly over $200…..And this was just the beginning of experiencing the high cost of living in this country.We parked ourselves at the Budget Inn 2 blocks away from the Central Station and we parked the car on the street, after 18:00 pm being free. However during the day any public parking is about $10/hour if you don’t take the deal of NK240 for the day.

Trying to change some money I ended in the railway station where all the offices were closed but they had ATM. I got to one of these and expecting to work in the regular way I entered all the requested info and I asked to get $1000 in local currency. The menu was very confusing having all sorts of currencies except NK so I chose US$ and ….this is what I got, 20 crisp $50 bills. What the heck I would do now because no machine was offering NK? Cursing I got out of the train station looking for a bank but nothing was open. The exchange rate was about $1=NOR 6.62 but, as we were able to find out the following day, if you exchange money at the Forex with the low rate they offer plus their commission it may come close to $1=NK5!!!!!!

Aker Drygge is the heart of the nightlife in Oslo. Built on a shipyard area in the 1980 is a modern stretch of apartments buildings on the shore aligned also with a beautiful promenade, bars and restaurants. The music is pumped from the lava bar where youngsters lay down on pillows sipping over priced drinks, Norwegian style. All over you can enjoy the fantastic sense of Scandinavian design and architecture, with ergonomical benches and small water canals and fountains that wind through the passage. Small pedestrian bridges over larger canals lit in the night and a statue of Sri Chimnoy with a flame mirroring the flames of the disco bars. We walked the promenade and enjoyed its scent of summer; you can tell that these people enjoy being out in the summer after so many hours of darkness and cold. They enjoy it so much that even in drizzle they drive their convertibles with the top off. All people from Scandinavia exult this enjoyment like no others. We watched the end of the World  Cup game between Uruguay and Ghana that put in the semifinals after so many years the Diego Forlan’s team. The atmosphere was very pleasant and the late light made us stay till around 12pm when finally it looked darker. On my way back to the hotel looking for parking rates for the next day I have to fend off an African prostitute that abound in the downtown.

At the hotel I noticed to my utmost surprise that the European AC adapter was missing and I did not have a spare to charge my batteries. After we spent some time investigating it turned out that it was left in Goteborg. It was no big deal except that we could not use any other adapter except that one, the outlets in hotel being grounded and needing a special adapter .After all sorts of tries I found a solution to a unique outlet in the reception area that could take an adapter I had and I left the camera over night there hoping to find it, and I did.

It is a surprise the fast processing of the car rental in Denmark. I had the reservation already and the girl was able to find it on the Copenhagen Airport and after several clicks in the computer I got a slip with the building, floor and place where my car was. No sales pitches of why I should get extra insurance, no signing in 3-5 places on a contract that you never read and no warning that the tank is full. You have to figure out yourself how to get your car but it was very fast, all being done with a Danish smile. It took us a while to locate the parking garage but finally we got to the little VW Polo. Right away we smelled trouble figuring out that the luggage would not fit in the trunk and, worse, the GPS that I brought for the trip was missing the pin for the contact, so after several, “I cannot believe” searches we had to return to the old fashion way of looking things on the map. The extra luggage was shoved on the back bench in spite of the kids’ protests complaining of lack of space.

From the Copenhagen Airport is a very short drive to the new tunnel-bridge that connects, since 2005, Denmark to Sweden. It is a long tunnel followed by a modern arched bridge that has a steep toll of about $40-45 that is paid on the Swedish side where surprisingly exists also a manned border control that just waved us through. We drove about 3 hours to Goteborg on a very nice and quite empty highway that looks occasionally very American in construction. Without the GPS we fumble for directions using the maps on the phones and after we arrived to a different location of the hotel, we finally reached the hotel where we had the reservation and we got a free slot in the garage, a bonus in Scandinavian cities. The hotels are very well kept but the prices are higher than what is expected in Europe not to mention USA. What I found different is that when you make reservations on the Internet, all the hotels list the price for the room for a double occupancy even if you select 3 or more people, kids, etc. but in the end you will see charges that are quite different from where you started.

Copenhagen

Norway

Sweden

Denmark

Frankfurt, Germany

Photos
India is not a trip. It is an experience. Everything here is pushing your senses. To say that “I did India” and have in mind a tourist trip where you see the sites and nothing else is impossible. The Indian life enters your skin, your body, in your breath like nowhere else in the world. India is a place like no other on the beaten, or even unbeaten, path. In no other place in the world you live symbiotic, like it or not, with your travel destination. India is wearing you out like no other destination. As I noticed first time in Bangkok 15 years ago you could tell in a crowd who was the guy coming from India after a long stay. They look different, tired, weary, exhausted but in an internal way. In India all the travelers I spoke with said the same thing. This does not mean a bit that they hate it, They are coming every year and stay for quite long hauls, traveling from North to South, coming and going to Sri Lanka, Nepal, etc, but always spending the large part of the time here. They were before and will come again next year but they face the reality that the experience is tougher than in any other parts of the world. A lot of them stay in ashrams for a while taking yoga classes. Here life is different , easier sometimes than the one “on the road” but it has the stricter requirements of the secluded life. Some are forgetting themselves in Goa, Andaman islands, Shimla, Manali, etc. but no matter where they go and stay, they will always be awed and horrified in the same time. For travelers less exposed to the sheer reality, maybe first time here, who started with a long stay plan, time drags along. They know that they will not extend their stay so they take it easy and stay as comfy as possible thinking about the time when they will be back in their own country. Because India is the only country where you are not regretting that the vacation is over and you are looking forward to return to your country where, after a short while, you will start again dreaming to return here, to India.

Photos
The driver was waiting in the station since 7 am but he was not so surprised by the delay. This is India and the time is passing. It was not too much time left so we drove directly to the large mosque in Delhi, Jama Masjid, that I could not see last time because of a festival. After haggling with the guy at the gate about the camera I convinced him to let me in after I paid the Rs 200 for it and entered the mosque, where surprisingly you can shoot anything you like, people being quite friendly. I climbed the minaret that was packed to the point that you could not stand on top, that is anyway tiny but filled with people some of them waiting on the steps to get their turn. From the top you can see a bird eye view over the entire Delhi. Red Fort was closed on Monday and after a very quick look in the Muslim Bazaar I got to India Gate, a photo opportunity for many Indians and up to the Government buildings that are up on the avenue. New Delhi is a far cry from the crowded Old Delhi. With large boulevards guarded by trees it has a very nice an airy atmosphere. The traffic is not congested, there are hawkers and it is a pleasure to drive and walk in the area. Here are the residences of many officials, the embassies, the government buildings, etc. We drove to Conaught Place, a place that last time we were able just to see in the night, that was under major renovation, all the buildings being supposed to be repainted and the result the entire area was a building site. In India noting is done in chunks but everything all at once. So now because they want to revamp the city for the Commonwealth Games the entire city was in construction. In Conaught Place I did some shopping amazed by the great colors and fabrics of the materials brought from an entire subcontinent to be marketed here where the prices are probably higher. Time is always short, so going from shop to shop I was coming very close for my departure time to NYC and we rushed to the airport in a relatively decent traffic. The security in the airports is at least as tight as in the Hindu temples that I visited so after I told them that my luggage stayed with the driver all day they apologized but had to open everything. They did it in a very diligent way, taking their time that I thought I could not do the check-in but eventually everything went thorough and I got in the plane 5 minutes before they closed the doors ready for a 14 h 40 minutes flight to Newark, NJ in which I was able to sleep about 8 of them finally out of the heat, bugs, pressure, touts, smells, dirt, etc.

Photos
India is an experience. Everything here is pushing your senses.

The sunrise was beautiful, somewhere around 6:15 am but I was up earlier to get it when it comes up. In spite of everything it is a pleasure to be on the ghat bin the morning and see the pujas, the offers to the Ganga, the prayers, the candles, the fumigating sticks, and many, many, many flowers. They will become the garbage that clogs everything eaten by the cows latter on but its morning beauty is uplifting. I was trying to get some shots with people praying but it is very hard to know who will do what and I had to move from ghat to ghat just to notice that behind me there were interesting things happening. Finally, when the sun was too high to be nice anymore I left to explore the smaller lanes and alleys towards the Golden Temple. The most famous temple in Varanasi is Vishvanath Temple. The current terrorist situation in India calls for extreme measures so nothing is allowed in the temple except the offers. So I went to the hotel around 10:30 am to pack, free the room, charge a little more the batteries from camera and iPhone and left the entire baggage, except passport and money at the hotel and took the way of the Temple. The temple is hidden in some alley behind the main ghat, together with the mosque built by Auzerghab and its proximity is flagged by the long lines of pilgrims caring offers followed a very heavy presence of police and military that checks you in order to let you enter the compound. They body check you but very seriously, not like in the airports. Two guys, one after the other body checked me and have in mind that there are thousands of pilgrims coming here……I was allowed to get inside the enclosure , the temple being inside beside another barrier of police. Theoretically only the Hindus are allowed inside the temple but being India, and people being nice in general, the foreigners are allowed if they fill up their passport, address in a log. I did the process, I left my sandals and got inside after another body check, the third one. All the beautiful and old stuff cannot be filmed/photographed and this temple is really very interesting. The architecture is kind of generic but is covered in gold and silver and the hordes of pilgrim make a great show. But it is true that if they let people use the cameras would be a complete traffic jam inside with so many pilgrims so they ask you to keep moving. When I got out I was up for a surprise finding out my sandals missing. Somebody “confused” my sandals with their slippers and the first thing I thought was of C who would be the happiest person to find out that my sandals are gone. I suspect that she made some arrangements with the Indian mob to hijack them. They were a relic of the past,  sandals that traveled the entire Asia, and they looked like this, as a result they were banned from the house and spent last winter on the deck. The missing sandals was not a big deal at all, especially at the end of the trip, and being in India not even the fact that I had to walk barefoot on the streets. You have to do it no matter what because in temples and their compounds, that are as clean as the streets, you are forced to do it. Obviously, if you had to walk like this in any other city you may be concerned about the broken glass, nails, rusted metal, lit cigarettes and many other, but in that moment I realized that these kind of things do not exist on the Indian streets and alleys. There is NO industrial garbage because everything is collected and reused, the only things that rusts in the sun are the carcasses of mangled  trucks that cannot be cut into pieces by the nearby locals in order to be reused. But the main problem is to walk barefoot at 12:00 pm when is blistering hot so I had to plan my trip to the hotel in the shade and only the last 100 meters would be in the sun. It was also the option to look for some flip-flops but I could not locate a store. On the way I stopped for a break at the German Bakery, made with tables like in Morocco where people lay down on pillows being full only with foreigners and I got a banana chocolate pancake, my brunch. Varanasi is full of foreigners of all kinds and countries. From the guys lost in India who are living here for long time and are dressed in hippie clothes, to the ones who are migrating between Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bangkok, to the more uptight young couples who will never come again -you could tell easily-, to the older couples coming in a trip after they worked all their life in demanding jobs to put the kids out of college. All of them are roaming the ghats and the main streets with red faces heat stroke, wasted and like in a trance, tired of all the aggression that surrounds and with which many are not used. The older they are the more disgusted their faces look…I got very quickly at the hotel, got my sneakers and left right away to explore again the area around the temple. I got in some narrow lanes but all of them communicate, cross and merge coming to main roads. At one point I saw a funerary ceremony going to the burning ghat. The dead is completely covered, like a mummy and covered in shinny orange, the color of the monks. It is carried by 4 fast moving guys and are followed by a whole procession dressed in white, the color of death, that has to move very fast to keep up with the guys in front. They will go to the burning ghat where the dead will be deepened in Ganga after being put in position on the funerary pyre that will burn for about 3 hours. After more walks I went to the Dom’s house, the leader of the untouchables, these being the people that perform the funerary and are allowed to touch the dead. The Brahmins and all the other castes consider this unclean but this stratification comes with advantages and job security. Only some dalits are allowed to do this job, other are allowed to clean the streets, to sweep the compounds, etc. Coming back toward my hotel I stopped to take some shots from the shi-shi roof top restaurant I ate the previous night, “The Dolphin” and latter to buy another CD with Krisha Das. But is hot and I took a stop to eat something, a honey nut, totally dry, cake and get some Internet time. In the afternoon I am leaving to Delhi with Poorva Express that leaves Benares at 18:46pm arriving Delhi tomorrow morning so I would leave at 5:00 pm for the train station. This may be the last posting till I get in New York, where I already have meetings all next week. I think that is still better in India.

I got back at the hotel close to 4:30 pm and found an entire assortments of foreigners in the lobby waiting to leave somewhere. In India you are constantly on the go waiting for all means of transportation. I left at 5:00 pm with a couple from Montreal who was going to Kolkata and got a cyclo and went to the train station. The best resource for travel in Varanasi is the tourist office from the station. Helpful and very articulate in English they are always pointing you in the right direction. Also they give you a free map of the city that is really great. I finally carried my luggage on the platform just to find out that the train, Poorva Express, was 30 minutes delayed. No big deal, I said, but after 30 minutes it became one hour, and after one hour the station master said that it will come right away: “10-20 minutes is here”. And he was right, the train came and with a little more than an hour delay left to Delhi. The carriages definitely saw better times. Relatively clean, they have in AC2, 4 berth separated by curtains from the corridor in which there were two more berth one on top of the other. So the passing corridor was narrow being not so easy to carry your luggage. But it was AC and it worked. I got a berth by the window on the lower side in the corridor and I got myself in the sleeping bag refusing the sheets offered latter by the conductor. This proved a good move, especially when I noticed in the morning the tones of gray the sheets had and to no surprise because when the conductor came back to gather them, he very neatly pack them ready to be reused. Not too many laundry people around and no Ganga….The express was supposed to stop 4 times till Delhi and he did his stops till morning when with the delay he got before I expected an arrival time at around 8:30 am but the moment the sun came up, maybe the heat made it change its mood and it got lazy and slow to the point that it stopped for an hour and everything went downhill from it. It started and stopped continuous in every tiny station that I ended up to know more than I needed about these places, meanwhile train after train passing it and gloriously we entered the New Delhi station at 1:00 pm with 6 hours delay.

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Between life and death, shit and flower petals, exalted devotion and total indifference , Varanasi is opening its eyes on the Ganga. The city is fascinating but the contrasts make it difficult to be understood and accepted. The morning sunrise that bath the ghats in a pink light has something godly in it. You cannot stop watching and the morning boat ride becomes a daily repeated  experience that you don’t want to miss. The sun is blessing you and all around and the city that is the oldest and the most holly city in India, a city with no match, a city older than history. People come here to die but not like in Florida!!! They come here because if they die in a specific perimeter, that covers the entire city, they are blessed and cleansed for a new life. So one of the major business in the city are the two burning ghats, Manikarnike and Harishchandra, that work 24 hours a day, the pyres could be seen from far away with the associated smell of the santal wood. The puja is performed daily and the night aarthi ceremony is beautiful, with flowers and lit candles left to float on the Ganga, an offer to the river that gives life to everybody. Everything is magic….if you see it on my video!!!  But when you walk the small alleys you are assaulted by any kind of imaginable smell, by the dung and shit that paves every street, by the men who are peeing in the street, by the toilets oriented to the street for easier use, by the cows who are all over and you have to be careful not be blessed if their purgation time is near, by the flies who are all over aggregating to the street delicacies that I mention before, by the motor bikes that abound, by an incessant and extremely load noise, by the hordes of people that never stop to come and go, by the mad traffic, by the dead animals that are in garbage, by the piles of garbage that is everywhere and mounts at corners, by the occasional corpses that you are be able to accidentally find (!!!), by the touts who are continuously trying to sell you anything that forces you to act like they do not exists or maybe give them just a slight sign of the hand, by the constant question, the number one in Varansi: “Hallo, boat?” that can change to opium, hash, ganja, coke, massage, water, juice, hair cut, silk, see my shop, money, rupees, boat, boat, boat, boat, boat, boat, boat, boat etc. The begging is prevalent in India. The beggars are a continuous flow that comes to you. Old men and women barely standing, small and older kids or even adult men and women, women with kids all beg for money. The small kids make some gestures that they would like to show their private parts for you to take a picture and pay them. I brushed them away not wanting to know more, too affected by their poverty. If they see you with the camera they ask for photos in order to be paid no matter that in India many are asking for photos just to have their picture taken and knowing that they cannot get it back. But the begging never stops and you, the traveler, are the main target because it is some hope that you will give something.  Most are emaciated, hungry, barely walking, crippled and really in need of help, some were mutilated since they were kids and introduced to this begging business that makes lots of cash for their owners. Modern old slavery. The bottom line is that at he end the day you are wasted and enjoy just to sit and watch the Ganga that flows slowly and lazy, like the Indian life.

I walked again at 5:30 am after a good sleep being bothered only by an army of dogs who were loudly barking and I went on the ghats to be bathed by the morning sun, that I can see from my terrace. I shot for about 2 hours till the sun came up and the light was too bright, lots of prayers at the river and people bathing. The Indians are coming at 6:00 am and bath in the river, ritual followed by regular bath with soap. At one point I got a boat for Rs 50 and cross on the other side of the river where many people were bathing and the view over the city and the ghats in the pink light of the morning was amazing. People were praying and bathing, children were frolicking and just 20 meters in the river a large dead furry animal, I think, was happily floating working in a last moment its karma cleansing for a better rebirth. And of course beside the dead animals, all the ashes and unburnt body parts or even entire corpses are thrown into the river. But Ganga is holy and it has the power to cleanse everything , so people bath, wash their teeth, wash their hair every morning in the river, close to the burning ghats.

I crossed back to the city side and went for my banana crepe breakfast and masala tea and I bumped in Traude who was having her breakfast. We continued where we left it yesterday and went latter to post some post cards with stamps from the post office. Today my plans were to cover all the ghats, in spite of the still 42C, so I left towards the south and saw all the ghats, and started to lose myself in the new side of the city where I saw some great temples. Durga Temple is a really beautiful old temple but unfortunately no pictures were allowed inside the temple. On the way I stopped in a hotel to ask direction and the manager asked to stay for a while and cool off. In general you enter a place and you see several men who are sitting. They told me that in the summer they do not do anything during the day because of the heat. But in the same time you cannot ignore the fact that they could swipe and clean the inside place to look better but nobody apparently cares. I saw a great sign that said: “Restaurant Apsara, we are less dirty”.

I got a cyclo with a driver who did not know even how to count in English  and after having lots of conferences I was able to get to the temples I wanted to see and to the hotel for the quick shower. From the hotel I left towards the North ghats where I had to pick up some stuff from the some guys with whom I did some shopping the previous day. We had an entire discussion about the burning ghats, with the amount of wood that is needed to burn a person, recommended 360kg at Rs 25/kg,  and so for. Coming back I got more pictures and watched kids playing cricket on the ghats. Sometimes a foreigner is invited to try to bat and the result, or the total lack of it, command roars of laughter. At one point I gave in and got a boat, a constant offer, and I crossed again on the other side in front of the burning ghats and shot the entire city in the hours just before dark with another great light on it and the fires of the ghats going in full swing, 12 at a time. Here I had an unexpected surprise. Shooting some kids who were flying kites, the number 1 pass time in traditional India, I came closer that something that looked weird. I did not have my glasses so I came closer to figure out what it was just to find myself in front of a corpse, headless, mutilated and probaly partially burnt. Again this is India. At least in New Jersey they use cement and they do a very “clean job” before the “ablution” in Hudson. I crossed back and I stopped at the aarthi from a different vantage point, other altercation with touts that are like bothering flies and you cannot get rid of them and I got after another shower, a good dinner of Navratan Korma. I was able not to get sick in this trip. I respected the famous Indian dictum: “If you cannot peel it, boil it or fry it forget about it” so I was always careful with food and I did not drink even a drop of alcohol. I found it funny that in Orcha and Khajuraho and here is Varanasi, beside the whole assortments of drugs that were constantly offered by the dealers, they have on their menu … beer. There are some wine and beer stores as I understood but they were not easy to find.  I still am looking for some CDs but these guys are tougher than the ones in Rishikesh and I kind of bought all that I needed but this did not stop me to stay and listened for 30 minutes a selection of great Indian music. My last night in Varanasi.

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At 5:30 am I woke up, or even earlier if I could sleep, because at 6:00 am the boatman came to bring me for a sunrise tour on the Ganges, the most popular trip in Benares. I gave the guy from the hotel Rs 100, that I am sure that was his commission,  and I was supposed to give the boatman another Rs 100 for the tour. The boat ride is splendid, with the sun lighting over the ghats and the entire Benares waking up to life. It takes you for about 2 hours  around the to the center ghats, between the two burning ghats where the dead are cremated round the clock. The boatman told me that everybody is cremated except the swamis, the babies, the pregnant women and the people who dies bitten by cobras, the animal of Lord Shiva, to die like this being considered a blessing. Unfortunately it is a strong restriction to take any kind of pictures around the burning ghats and you have to go far away and zoom in if you really care about it. So I got a scolding latter on when some guy saw me shooting from afar, and no matter that there were no details he explained me that is better not to do it. In front of a number of the ghats there are professional washers who are doing the laundry. The process is by soaping, wetting the clothing in the Ganges and after that hitting the laundry on some stones. When the process is finished all the laundry is dried out by exposing it in the sun on the ghats’ steps and on any existing usable surface. So from here we get our sheets and towels in the hotels, I guess, and that is the reason that their white is having all sorts of tones in it… Walking back to the hotel I met Vasu, an Indian photographer that I chat with in Haridwar. It was an interesting coincidence to bump into each other. After the boat tour I went to see what is going on with my room “upgrade” and apparently nothing was available, but he asked me to still wait and see. I went to have breakfast of a banana pancake at Monalisa, the German Bakery, where I got in a conversation with Traude from Vienna, who quit her job working for the government to find the sense of life outside office work. She was also in shock traveling in India for quite a while. A lot of people decided to come and travel in India after quitting their job at different stages in life. To travel in India is very cheap and you can stay here forever with $20/day or even less if you push it. But the shock is still there….

I did not have the entire day for chatting and I had no clue what is happening with my new room so I made some investigations for other hotels and when returning to the hotel the manager told me that they still don’t have anything, I paid , took my bags and left to Sita Hotel where the “deluxe” room is slightly better but 4 times more expensive…..And it has AC. The problem is that the nice hotels in Varanasi are not on Ganges but in posh green areas, slightly far from the river. But you want to stay on the river and as a result you pay roughly the same price for a way worse room than if you stay close to Radisson and the rest. But the advantage of having a room on the ghats, that I used a lot, is that after a short walk on the ghats in 42C you come to the room and take a shower and at least you feel less muck on you.

Tauder showed me a great map of Varanasi, that is offered for free, a rare thing in India, at the train station so I took a cyclo, got there and talk with a very nice man who was so helpful. Latter I heard that he is mentioned even in Lonely Planet as a great resource. He also pointed me to the Government approved stores with fixed prices in silk, a store that is very close to the rail station. This detour transformed my day in a shopping day, going from one store to another and latter to another one and finishing all the shopping around 5:00 pm, a good thing because it is finished and done.Another good thing was that it kept me indoors for the peak of the heat. On the way I moved with cyclos, a sort of full size three wheeler bike, driven by some wallahs who are making a terrible effort but at least are kept employed. During this shopping spree I crossed in a totally different part of town. Green, quiet and secluded it felt more like an American suburb than a short walk from the madness of Varanasi’s center. I could not believe that something like this exists In Benares. There were only villas and, as I understood, a lot of military were living there. When we returned at one point this quietude is brusquely ended when you literally cross a street and you enter the regular mayhem of the Indian city. But it is like a magic line that you accidentally cross. It is not gradual. I came and dropped everything to the hotel in my palatine  room with a broken mirror and bugs in the sink, deluxe otherwise , and I left to shoot on the ghats, going again towards the burning ghats. At the burning ghats some touts, that Varanasi is full of, asked me if I would like to shoot some pictures. I told them no way and to get lost but they insisted saying that they can get approval from the owner of the ghat, that is BS because they would pocket the money and go. After they figured out that I have to shoot video they said that is free to shoot but how about I donate money for the poor people to have wood to be burned!!! These creeps were shameless and like all these type of creatures they were asking exorbitant amounts starting to make a grid of how much footage can I get for the wood I would buy to burn corpses!!!! Quickly they made a chart like in a post footage house…. When I flatly refused they were insulted and asked me to leave. It is against the spirit of the ceremony to take pictures of such an event in consideration for the families that congregate there.  I went to the puja where I got some better shots and latter had dinner on the roof of one of the nice and more expansive places in Varanasi, Dolphin restaurant, from where you can see the entire city and the Ganga that is slow and lazy like a summer day. When I got at the hotel I notice that I had a sleep partner, a gecko that was running the walls and ceiling looking for insects to eat. And with so many insects around he was a chubby guy.

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It is hot In India. It is the first time when I am now off season and I understand what means this heat. It kills your energy, man and beast, to the point that you don’t want to move. It is so hot that you drink bottle after bottle of water and never see a bathroom in the entire day and you drink more than half a bottle in one sip and you are constantly thirsty, your lips are dry and if you do not drink water for an hour you feel an organic sickness in your body that makes you leave anything you do and run for a bottle of cold water, the best medicine in this climate. And if you cannot get some at that moment you will drink even the warm water left over in your bottle, only water to be. The dogs are sleeping in the middle of the street such a deep sleep that last night in Bodh Gaya, a guy was moving his cyclo was going to run over a sleeping dog. In the last moment he carefully avoided the dog, its back wheel just touching the dog’s tail, but the dog did not move a muscle and continued to sleep. Maybe he was in deep meditation. Or maybe he was dead because I saw several dogs and cats dead in the streets and thrown in the garbage in the middle of the street. It is so hot that you cannot walk, barefoot obviously, in any temple outside, so you can visit only areas that have shade or dirt, because the marble or the stone is incinerating your feet. It does not matter that you got a new T shirt, it will be soaked in no time. It is so hot that you cannot eat during the day. You may feel a little hunger but the only thing you dream of is another bottle of cold water or a Fanta. Somebody said that this is summer temperature, 42-43C, for the month of April but other said that it can be even hotter in May and June that are the summer vacation months for schools. To see dead animals decomposing is quite regular but some American guys were completely shocked to see a dead man in the street in Rishikesh covered in flies and people passing obliviously near the body with not a second view. But this is India where survival is key and people do not see the wholeness from the parts.

We left in the morning at 6:00 am from Bodh Gaya with no looking back. It was very nice but we have to move. Today is my last car day in India, except the ride in Delhi, and I don’t regret a bit. It is hard to cover these long distances without a car if you are here for a short time. We drove on the highway in the early morning and we were able to reach Varanasi with no incidents around 11:00 am but we continued through Varanasi to Sarnath that is just about 10 km away that took us about an hour.

Sarnath is the place where is located the deer park where Lord Buddha had the first sermon, or how it is called the DharmaChakra, the Wheel of Law set in motion. He meditated and had his sermon in this park that used to be full of monasteries around 500AD but meanwhile went in disrepair and it was renovated recently. It contains an archeological area where it used to be a shrine, many monasteries and a huge unfinished stupa built by Emperor Ashoka. Also it exists a new temple on the place where Buddha taught the first sermon and near by a bodhi tree that grew from a sapling from the one in Bodh Gaya. I visited all of these and tried to sit a little under the Bodh tree but, like yesterday in Bodh Gaya, was so hot and unpleasant that I gave up soon. When I returned to the car I stopped at the museum and to a tanka store, where after not too much negotiations I got two Tibetan beautiful tankas from a very educated and pleasant guy.

We left around 3:00 pm sarnath to visit BHU, Benares Hindu University and Birla temple that was inside. It is inside the city but quite far from the center, a green campus with multiple buildings. From there the driver called a mobile number I had from a guest house on the Ganges, Leela, and the owner came to pick me up from a specific point in town. I packed the stuff from the car trunk and gave the luggage to some boys from the hotel who came to help, I tipped the driver, not knowing how much would be the correct and he asked for Rs 2000. It is much or little I have no clue. I got to Leela, walking on an alley that a number of cows called home and the amount of dung was dangerous in the night.  In the hotel I found out a dismal room with balcony to the Ganges but a kind of a prison cell with a fan on the ceiling. I regretted the choice but no other rooms were available and I had to give it a try for one night. The differences in hotel rooms can be night and day for prices 3-10 times higher. Actually when I asked the manager for the room price and he told me that the room is Rs 350 I knew that something is wrong. I left in the city, shooting a little on the ghats in the evening light and getting for the Puja with aarthi, that here happens as usual on the Ganges but it is more sparse than in other places. The music is not so good like in Haridwar but the show is impressive. Puja finished at 8pm and I went for the dinner, the only meal of the day because of the heat. At dinner I met two nice guys from Sweden, Madeline and Simon, who were traveling to India since September with some pauses in Bangkok. After 6 months in India they were still in shock with the country, a reaction you can see in many travelers. As Madeline put it, it was no difference when they came from Stockholm to India and latter when they came from Bangkok. The shock was identical. And I know exactly what she meant, it is  a dual shock and most of the travelers feel this way. As a matter of fact if you enter Monalisa Cafe, full of foreigners and German cookies, you see on their faces the toll the trip is putting on them. I remember in 1994 on Koh Sarn Road in Bangkok, a totally different place than today, you could pick out from a crowd of travelers the ones who came from India after a longer stay…..We had a great conversation with the Swedes but this delayed my schedule and after the nightly phones I was kicked out from the Internet because of late hour and all stores were closing. So I went to the hotel, where to add insult to injury the power was off, and a limited battery power was on, and all I could get from a boy who was sleeping on the floor at the “reception”, in Hindi(!), was ” power off”. I was upset that I could not charge the batteries so I got into the tiny, prison type shower and when I was in the middle of the process the whole power, battery included turned off and I was left to sing in the dark. During my stumbling process to find a towel the power came fully on and it stayed all night, a night when I could not sleep too well because of the heat in my cell in which the small fan on the ceiling did not make a difference.

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Based on the quest I did the day before the road to Bodh Gaya is a good one, a 4 lane road and it takes about 5 hours including the exit from the city. We left at 6 am and on the way out I met Anin, the tuk-tuk driver who will wait for me when I get back. We tried to get to the ghats on the Ganga in the morning but it was no access even if we drove all the way out of the city. But this was good because we came closer to the highway on a short cut route and we were able to join the traffic that was moving well. But at one point the entire traffic stalled and it was not clear at all what happened. As usual you can see lots of accidents, trucks smashed or tipped, trucks parked on the first lane for km that make the road not a highway anymore, or even worse carcasses of trucks that are stored on the highway . I saw too many of these to think that the stalled traffic can be caused by an accident. I took a lot of pictures of these accidents that are disconcerting at least when you move in a car and you can see how the car might look after such an encounter. You don’t stand a chance!  Even when you drive on a four lane road, these truck move OK but some of them are quite erratic and you have to be careful with them. For example, they can veer and cut you off, when you already started to pass them because they decided to pass themselves the vehicle in front. Of course this happens with no signaling from anybody. After they finish the pass, for the first time I see the use of the signals: they signal you to pass them!!!! After a long wait during which some faster cars took one of the lanes on the opposite sense, it turned out that it was nothing like an accident but a whole convoy of trucks that were driving on one of our lanes. The direct result is that some of our traffic moved to drive on the opposite sense, transforming the 4 lane highway in 2 roads of two lanes each!!!! I saw before trucks coming occasionally but not an entire convoy of 10-20 trucks. Soon after that we entered Bihar, an area famous for its mob and bandits. There are two types of them working together: the real professional ones and ….the politicians. The drive went fine with no incident. The driver fixed the car the previous day and it was no more clunking. We arrived around 12 pm in Bodh Gaya, that is 22 km off the main road.

Bodh Gaya is a small village but having a very important place in Buddhism because here, under a Bodhi tree, Buddha attained enlightenment after a long meditation. The temple and the tree are not the original, the original temple built by Ashoka being demolished, rebuilt latter and modified repeatedly and the tree died but another grew from its leaves and currently is a very sumptuous tree on the spot. No matter of all these the place is very pleasant but quite hot when you have to walk barefoot on the marble temple that burns your feet. Beside that famous temple whose architecture was copied in many others in India and SE Asia, the village has a lot to see and is very interesting. Because the place has such an important place in the history of Buddhism, all the countries that are Buddhist settled here one Maha Bodhi teple or monastery in the style of the country/culture. So you walk the village’s alleys and you find full fledge temples or monasteries that are typical for Thailand, Wat Thai Maha Bodhi, a monastery from Bhutan, a Vietnamese Monastery, a Nepalese temple, a Sikhim temple, a Chinese Temple, 2-3 Tibetan temples for each Tibetan Buddhist sect, a Japanese temple with its own Daibutsu, a copy in stone of the famous statue in Kamakura. It is like you are hoping from one country to another in South-SE Asia and you are on the same street. To visit all of them take some time and I feel that I am constantly running out of time and this is because of this daily driving. But I remember from last time in India that this is the norm here if you come on short intervals. Meanwhile I was able to have lunch of Paner, a rare occurrence, and purchased some Tibetan music prayer flags, etc. dinner of crepe of banana and chocolate, a very non-Indian dish and and the daily internet and phone. Talking with some guys who were asking me if I returned by train to Benares I found out that the train does not run because the Maoists just blew up the rail track between Varansi and Bodh Gaya somewhere….It happens everywhere but mainly in the eastern part of India now. Tomorrow we will start the return , Bodh Gaya being the furthest point in the trip, and drive back to Varanasi and stop in Sarnath, the place where Buddha had his first sermon in the deer park.

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Distances don’t mean anything for the Indian road. It is just an approximation for people who want precision on paper. What matter is the knowledge of the road and the word of mouth. I woke up after a great sleep on bird songs, actually it was a cacophony of birds’ songs that I even recorded, and I got in the car to Allahabad at 6:00 am. The road in the morning is empty and it is pleasantly cool. It is a pleasure to cruise this way in the Indian landscape, a timeless one. Villages are waking up, people were going to the temple for Navrati, cows were already roaming. We drove on a perfect road 2-3 hours and I shared my breakfast of daily oranges with the driver thinking that such a long drive day can turn in a shorter one. The official numbers of hours for this length of road is between 9-10 hours to 10-12. Around 10:30 am we had only 75 km left to Allahabad. What is 75km in US. Just a drive to buy bread….But here is India and anything can happen. And it happened the road becoming very bad. But bad means a lot of things. It can be just rough, or very rough or like the one we were driving on that was looking like it was bombed and craters were all over. The driver had to stop the car to figure out how to pass. And it went like this for 10 km driven with 10km/hour. Of course we wanted to get info of what to expect further down. And , optimistic as they are, the guys we asked said that is fine. And it was fine for 4-5 km and became bad again in the same manner. It went like this for about 30 km and even more and at one point it disappeared completely under heavy construction. Here we took by mistake the motorbike track that proved just too narrow 1-2 inches at a specific pass, so the car had to be pushed by volunteers to fit between two mounds of dirt. Meanwhile one car shock got broken and it started to clunck and the driver wanted to fix it in a TATA shop at the entrance of Allahabad, but it was supposed to take too long and I told him that is no need because you can run like this and the only drawback is it may make noise. Been there done that! On the road we saw, as usual in India, a lot of accidents involving trucks, that my driver repeated what I knew: they happen during the night when the drivers drinks, use dope and drive in the same time. Allahabad was not exactly on the way but very close but I wanted to go there and see the Sangam, the confluence between Ganga and Yamuna and, by tradition, the Sarasvati underground and mental river, a very important place for Hinduism and the place that hosted Maha Kumbha Mela from three years ago. We got in the city around 1pm, after 7 hours drive and start driving towards the Sangam just to find there, on the positive side a full fledge celebration for Navrati, the festival that will end tomorrow but on the negative side a dust storm with hot wind that made visibility terrible and made me and camera caked in dust. It was very bad and unpleasant and I could not stop thinking what if this dust storm would have happened in Haridwar when we were already caked in dust in the tents. In any case the whole thing cut a little my desire to go in Allahabad in three years for the Kumbha Mela.

We left quickly after less than an hour and we drove on one of the “very good road”, a four lane road, to Varanasi with no events, just a clunk here and there from the busted shock. We arrived in Varanasi around 5 pm, after about 11 hours if we put the hour spent in Allahabad, and got to Hotel Surya with its beautiful interior courtyard that proved to be very nice but quite far from the ghats. I took a quick shower and got in a tuk-tuk, letting the driver to go and fix the car. The traffic in Varanasi is like taken from a movie. It is so busy and jammed that it is a show in itself. It is different than in Vietnam being very diverse in vehicles, animals and people but on the same magnitude. I got at the Ghats on the Gang and after a walk by the river I stopped for dinner at the shi-shi Lotus Lounge with pillows on the floor overlooking the Ganga and with splurging prices of $3/dish, comparing with the $1-2 that is the norm, for the SOHO type Shahi Paneer. Tomorrow we are driving to Bodh Gaya, returning to Varanasi for the last days of the trip. After dinner I started to scout for a hotel on the ghats that I may use after our return to Varanasi and I settle for Leela, being to late and dark to find others. The better hotels, like the one I stay in, Surya, are far from the city, about 4 km, but I needed to find a hotel on the Ganga for convenience. In the evening, walking to Internet, I did some research in guesthouses but one was full and cheap the other one was expensive and not so sure that it was empty. I have to call tomorrow and see. It was an interesting incident with the tuk-tuk driver. We discussed for a RT price from the hotel to town for Rs 100. He did not want to accept money when I left into the town because he wanted to be sure to get the RT. So I made the arrangements for him to pick me up at 10 pm and I was wondering how he will find me. But when I was walking back to the appointment place, the Mazda Cinema, he was on the street waiting and he got his fare and a little extra because he took a longer road. Another interesting thing I found beside tons of CD stores with lots of good music, it was a German bakery selling chocolate cookies, brownies and espresso. Quite different from Jeere Rice and nan!

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I asked the driver to leave at 6:00 am but we postponed the process till 6:30 am and we drove for a quick visit to the river where people were doing their morning wash. The scene was extremely beautiful in sunrise, the villagers coming to bath in the river with the background of the Royal Chatris, the royal tombs. Beautiful and peaceful scene in the sunrise. I tried to be quick and after several shots we left to visit Laxminarayan temple that I did not have time to visit the previous day. The temple, located on top of a hill, is a perfect site for sunrise and there were two foreigners there enjoying the view. Unfortunately the temple was closed and was supposed to open at 10 am. I could not wait so long so after several photos we hit the road to Khajuraho around 7:15am.The road proved to be very good and empty at the morning hours. This is one of the reason why I prefer to leave early besides getting some more day light. I asked the driver to buy some oranges and bananas and this was the “moving” breakfast of the day, a breakfast that I enjoyed everyday on the road. Everything went great for about 60-90 minutes till we got in Uttar Pradesh and the road disappeared, or it became the famous one lane of disintegrating asphalt that is not wide enough for a truck. But it changed several times from disastrous to dramatic, to OK, to good and in 3 hours exactly we reached Khajuraho. The place is a village that was put on the map by its famous intensly carved temples that have on them some scenes from Kama Sutra, a tribute to Shakti. The driver knew a place to stay and I got a room for Rs 1000, the standard price, at Hotel Suria. The room is OK with AC, hot water and a beautiful garden in the back. I left right after that at 11:30 am to visit the temples that are distributed in three groups, the most important being right in the village and named the Western Group. The security guys did not let me take the tripod inside but they let me for a small fee, Rs 25,  to get my camera. The temples, built around 1000AD are impressive beyond words. They represent the peak of temple building mania in India. The decoration is so elaborate that no tiny piece of their surface is left untouched. Gods, apsaras, demons, armies, animals, elephants, camels and people in erotic scene are sharing the outside and inside of the these temples. The main attraction are the erotic scene from Kama Sutra represented on the walls, a manifestation of Shakti. The temples are known as the “love temples” because of these scenes but these scenes represent only 10% from the entire decoration. Obviously they do not differ drastically and after spending a lot of time at the first 2-3 temples to see all the details and scenes, you start going faster and spend less and less time.  I was able to see the main 5 temples in the complex till about 3:00 pm and went to the hotel to have lunch mainly because it is very hot, 42C I guess. You drink easily many liters of water without going ever to the bathroom a similar thing that we experienced in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings in 1995. After the very good biriani lunch I left with the driver to see the temples from the Eastern and Southern complexes. Less interesting and less decorated are more interesting for their landscape, the outskirts of the village with fields full of water buffaloes, pigs, chickens, etc. There the most interesting complex is the one formed by the Jain Temples. Inside it was an exhibit with Jain photos and some Jain renunciates who were parading naked caring only their small broom in the compound to the surprise of the European visitors who were visiting in hordes. Large tourist groups are a norm here, Khajuraho being a major tour destination, one of the top destination in India. After a last stop at sunset at the single temple of the Southern Group, I finished the visit and after a dinner of eggplants with butter nan on one of the many top floor restaurants I went to the internet. Further I intended to spend some time in the many stores but unfortunately the place is full of touts who are quite annoying. Two of them got around to parade with me at some stores to make they coveted commission. I had a great discussion with an art dealer who was specialized in very old stuff that was interesting but quite expensive. Latter I went and purchased some wedding Ladakh jewelries from a shop on the main road and went to sleep preparing for an early wake up call for the long drive day to Varanasi.

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After the breakfast at the hotel the driver came at 7:00 am to pick me up and showed me a place with lots of huge Jain statues sculpted in the rock. He brought me to a terrace that has 26 huge statues plus  other temples that on Sunday were used as an extension on the Jain temple from the bottom of the hill and people went there for puja. The scene was impressive beyond words. This is India. When you think that you saw everything the surprises pour over you like nowhere else. No guide book talks about these statues, at least as I could tell,  because they are for worship probably. There were way more impressive than the ones I saw the day before. I stayed there more than 2 hours and when I left I visited the Jain temple, filmed inside and was accosted by a big boss who took me in his office, put a garland around my neck and gave me a portrait of one of the Tirtankaras. English was not an option as a language so I knew only that it was a sign of appreciation for my interest. I left him a business card and asked him to check my website and to look for pictures of his statues latter in April. From there I went back to the Fort where I visited again my Sikh friends from the previous night who recognized me and were happy to pose and latter I went to visit two more temples from the fort’s complex that I could not visit yesterday, the last one Telika Mandir being a very tall structure with Dravidian influences rare to be seen in Northern India. After that we hit the road to Orcha, 122 km that is supposed to take 3 hours and it did. The road is in construction and it comes and goes. The pavement changes from the old “lace pavement” one narrow lane that in India can fit 2-3 vehicles, to a modern finished lane wide for two trucks. But because is in construction it constantly changes from one, to two lanes, to no lanes, to dirt. We arrived in Orcha around 2:30pm and went directly to Hotel Ganpati, parked myself and left the driver to be. The village is small and picturesque with an amazing palace complex dated from the 16th century augmented in time by many rulers. It is relatively well preserved, but in the Indian way. There are few countries who can boast such a richness of monument and most of these monuments were left in complete neglect just to be partially saved latter. I went and visited the palace complex, its main two palaces, and many other palaces , the place where they kept the elephants and the camels. It was an entire challenge with the filming part because they did not allow the tripod, neither the video camera without a very steep fee but in end I brought both and I was able to shoot everywhere in the palace compound. Towards the end I spend some time in a tiny white temple from where I could hear the entire day the Navrati readings. On the roof of the palace I met a young couple from Brazil who asked me latter in the conversation to give them a lift the next day to Khajuraho. I told them that I will speak with the driver, and I did, but they did not show up latter to find me and coincidentally I bumped into them in the Golden Temple in Varanasi several days latter. I finished the visit around 5:30 pm and went on top of the tallest structure, Chaturbhuj Temple, a Hindu temple from where you could see the entire village, the eagles’ nests, and the love birds from the domes. I got there grace to a boy who had the key and was very happy to get a tip for such an unusual visit. I spent the sunset there on the roof on top of the village admiring the eagles flying in the sunset coming to feed their small ones. I went directly for dinner of curry with cashews, phone and Internet. But the first Internet try was not good because it was on dial up, so I went into the bazaar full of artifacts and very aggressive touts and to the Rama Temple for the Navrati Puja. The temple was, like all others, under high security so you have to leave everything at its entrance, including all the leather objects you may have on you. Inside the Navrati puja was in full swing, more or less like in other temples, with lots of bells and singing.

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In the morning I said good bye to Emil and Lydia.  My good friends pointed me toward this Kumbha Mela and it was a dream come true to come with them. We had a great time, it was an a great trip and we had a fantastic experience together. So I have to send all my thanks to them for this magic event we were part.

The driver was waiting and I left with the idea to get to a bank and change more money but after 30 minutes ride through Delhi, the bank from a big hotel did not change traveler checks so I gave up. Luckily I was not low on Rs. We started the drive to Gwalior, about 300 km from Delhi. The road is hailed as a “very good road” through Agra and another 100 km further to Gwalior. When you go on an Indian road you have to be very cautious about the statements because implications are multiple. First I heard from various sources that the road to Gwalior may take, 5 hours, 6, hours or 7-8 hours. I discarded the most optimistic and the most pessimistic and I ended up with the 6 hours. But we left at 7:00 am and arrived in Gwalior at 4:30 pm, it is true with a 45 minutes stop in Sikandra. The statement with the “very good road” is correct…. if the road were not have been in India. And this is not because of any technical problems. The road is build well with a large divider in the center, with some sort of barriers at the margins, not like an American highway but technically good. If you have a good road here it slightly helps but this only means that is more space to fill on the road from all directions, so the traffic is moving still slow, maybe a touch better than on the old roads. As I said it is hard to imagine the traffic in India and how these roads are. The traffic is going in all directions on our 2-lane-one-way in spite of the large and famous sign that says: “Please do not drive in the wrong direction”. Absolutely everything imaginable can exist on the road: cars moving in both directions, mopeds, tuk-tuks, ganesh, an older vehicle for people, cows, goats, pigs, dogs that literally sleep on the streets and the drivers are swerving between them to avoid killing them but they do not flinch, stopped trucks in the second lanes that are repaired on the spot with assistance from the side, parked vehicles for km on the first lane, huge loads on minuscule tractors, people, kids playing, occasional cooking, etc. The list remains opened and it will be completed latter with things that our limited western mind cannot imagine. As a result with all this flurry of activity the road is strangled and constantly you have to press the brakes to avoid something. Besides, the Indian people have a tendency to fill up spaces. If you are in the crowd the occasionally empty spaces in front of you will filled little by little till everything becomes a mass that moves and a whole. The result is that the pressure is tremendous in such crowds and I am not surprised about the occasional stampede with many death because when you are in such a crowd, and I was there more than once, you feel very uncomfortable thinking only about this pushing and shoving. Similar, they act similarly in traffic. If it exist a space in a traffic jam I bet anything that it will be filled in no time till everything becomes like a very packed sardine can and the traffic jam becomes even more difficult to solve, nobody being able to move. This is part of the aggressiveness you feel in India. It is not from the people who are in general extremely nice but from the crowds, the traffic, the dry and hot climate, the mosquitoes, ants, animals, beggars, etc. makes it to be  a little more than a simple walk in the woods type of experience. The “very good road” have another issues. The trucks are hogging the second lane no matter if they travel fast, slow or stall. So all the passing are done on the first lane, the low speed lane. If it happen that a car/truck/bus driving on the second lane would make space to be passed on its lane, they will never change lane, and obviously nobody signals here, but they will just make enough space for you to squeeze with one wheel out of the pavement on its second lane and the moment you passed they will get back in position. It is exactly like somebody sitting in a doorway blocking the way and barely moving to let somebody else jump in. The traffic was moving slow and I was dozing in the heat of the car where the AC could not keep track with the 38C outside. I did not sleep long enough in the night and I kept going in short dreams and Agra was not closer. Till one moment when the driver woke me up telling that we reached Sikandra. That activated me and I decided to go for a walk in Akbar’s tomb that I visited 12 years ago. The place is beautiful and I felt that it have been renovated meanwhile. We stopped there for about 45 minutes and left around 1:15 pm to Gwalior. The”very good road” stops in Agra and you drive through the city, a hard experience in India, but it continues the moment you leave the city. Eventually without any other stories we arrived at 4:00 pm in Gwalior and around 4:30 pm at the entrance of its famous fort. I started to do my tour with an inspection of the famous Jain statues sculpted in the fort’ s base rock. They were destroyed by one of the kings but recently some of them have been renovated. Absolutely impressive, they represent Tirtankaras that stand like the famous Buddha from Bamyan destroyed by the Talibans. I continued the tour inside the fort, getting a ticket for the me and one for the camera, something new in India. Also the tripod is not allowed and If I have to use I have to be careful, not that anything is really enforced here. The fort is nice especially in the golden hour of the day. Ruined in most part, has several interesting palaces that were preserved. The main one, Man Singh Palace, has two underground floors used for bath and latter as a dungeon. I spend there all the hours till sunset and after that, meeting a local boy, I went also to visit the Gurudawa Sikh temple. The Sikhs were extremely friendly and happy that I came to visit their temple. They put a bandana on my head and made me walk through water basin to cleanse myself they gave me the green light to shoot anything I like, and I did not to disappoint them. After I shot inside the temple they invited me for prasad, so I ate with them on the floor, see how the women were making chapati and how they were cooking, etc. And they invited me again to visit them the next morning for a better light….. After the visit we drove inside the town and looked for a hotel. I chose Grand Regency that looked great in the lobby and even on the floors with wireless Internet but inside the room the bath, clean thou, was probably last redone when the Brits left…. They changed my room to be able get internet connection on my iPhone inside the room and it helped not to run to an Intenet cafe. But this was latter on when I returned because, now with the hotel booked, I went to the highly recommended sound and light show at the fort that proved a big flop. I don’t like these things but this was nothing special except a long history of the place that had its own merit. The drive into the city is another interesting story. It is not simply driving but just a way of being. First there are no lights to lit the  very crowded streets. So the only thing that you see are the incoming cars’ lights in the dark. At one point you start seeing one light to the left of your car and another set of lights to the right and it looks that cars will move around you on both sides.The funny part is when the cow they tried to avoid just start coming out of the dark right in front of your car. In the city some roads were in construction,pavement was done as we drove on it and the entire traffic somehow was going there also, just where ever it was possible, on the new pavement, on the old one, on the sidewalk or the lack of it. But nobody even flinches. The drivers are experienced and this is the norm. I guess if they would drive on an American Highway they would get asleep…. I returned to the hotel, did my email on the iPhone and got a call from home in the room before going to sleep.

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The morning of the last day in the Himalayas, even at its bottom hills, was dedicated to Rishikesh so I started in the morning with a tuk-tuk ride, or whatever they call it in India and got to Lakshman Jhula, the second pedestrian bridge in the town. The views from the road are astounding. Close to main road there were some interesting Shiva temples, from whose terraces the views were even better. Ganga by itself starts in the Himalayas but its final structure, after it collected its main effluents, is beginning here in Rishikesh.
This part of the city is the place where are located the ashrams. It is way more westernized, all the stores catering mainly for travelers. The town itself is way south and has not resemblance with the meditation atmosphere of its northern sector. I crossed the bridge and visited a temple that stands right on Ganga’s shore that is built with many floors and has inside rooms with statues dedicated to all the main Gods and consorts. Each room has three statues. You have to walk around the perimeter of the building in order to ascend the next floor and this is a ….loooong building.
But the views from the top are astounding, well worth the effort. In the Indian temple you have to walk barefoot, and ideally with no socks. The exit of the temple turned out to be in the other side of the building, so I found myself walking barefoot in a market area surrounded by cows, motorbike and stalls to get to the shoe stall and recuperate my sandals. It was quite of an experience, and the first of the day. Getting down I started to inspect the stores in that area. The two main shopping areas are around this bridge and a larger one around Raj Jhula, the other bridge.
Unfortunately, the stores were closed at that hour so I rushed back to get a tuk-tuk and go back to the hotel to join with my friends and go together in several places. On the way I had another experience, an “Indian incident” when I felt on my foot and sandal something soft, warm and mushy and I realized that I stepped in a huge cow dung. I was at a loss contemplating my options, not being in this situation ever, but amused in the same time by the ridiculous of my puzzlement. After trying to no avail to clean myself on the even dirtier pavement one guy pointed to me the water tap on the street, probably used successfully by many who had such an “unfortunate” incident. I rushed to the hotel where Emil made some surprising arrangement to meet a swami who lived dressed with a loin cloth in the Himalayas for 15 years. Swami Ram Kripalu was accepted as a disciple by his guru under this condition and he did not hesitate to cast away all  his possessions and join his guru in the cave. We took a tuk-tuk and after buying some gifts we started to look for his address. In his small ashram on the shore of the Ganga Swamiji was in a puja that proved to be very interesting. After the puja he received us for a darshan and my friends pointed the connections they had with him through another friend who stayed at his ashram. It was impressive to meet him, mainly by his feats but also for his …long hair that was 1.5 longer than his height. After the darshan we went to eat the prasad offered by the swami at the puja that played as lunch for the day, got a tuk-tuk and with a small stop at the hotel we went to Sivananda Ashram, me first followed by my friends. Unfortunately we came latter than 12pm and all the halls , including the library and the Sivananda’s tomb were closed but Bhajan Hall was open and that one was the one we were looking for being then  most important. There, since the death of Swami Sivananada, it is continuously recited a matra, the place being energetically charged accordingly. I stayed for a while listening to the matra and inspecting the place, decorated with pictures of gods, prophets including Jesus, Mary and swamis. It was already very late and we originally planned to leave at 12pm. In the end after all sorts of delays we finally left at 1:30 pm and we stopped for almost one hour in Kankhal, several kms outside of Rishikesh at a temple dedicated to Daksha Mahadev and the 10 manifestations of the Godess. The three temples were impressive, especially the one for the godess with the wall covered in mirrors. More intereting was a tree that was used as a Shiva temple, surrounded by lingams and nandi bulls, whose branches were covered in the strings sold at the temple to adorn this kinnd of trees. There were three trees in one that symbolizes the three manifestation of the relevated God, Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. Around the tree were lots of people but the funniest was a swami that started to film us with his cellphone, instead of us filming him… The majority of the swamis, if not all,  carry cellphones and take pictures with them. After a short stop on the Ganga’s canals near the temple we left because it was already 2:30 pm and we had a very long road ahead. But the road proved to be OK, the 7 hours promised between Delhi to Rishikesh were now exact almost to the minute getting in Ashwani beautiful place at 9:30 pm. On the road we stopped in the same beautiful Chetal Grand to eat, surrounded by flowers buckets and the entire road was a debate about hinduism, swamis, sidhis, yoga, meditation without a dull moment, the ideas flowing continuously. The only thing worth mentioning from the road was one man who was doing parikrama on the road’s asphalt in prostrations going to Kumba Mela. A real act of devotion! In Delhi, Ashwani came to meet us and after a quick tea we made the arrangements and the payments for the second part of the trip that I will do solo based on a schedule that was more clear now than when I arrived in India. I asked for the driver to leave at 7:00 am. During this time I was fighting with the Internet that worked so well last time but it was as dead now.

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The wake up call was supposed to be early and after a good breakfast in the hotel’s restaurant, we move as quickly as possible on a road that is mostly in ruin to Vashishta Guha, a cave at 23 km from Rishikesh where meditated Swami Vashishta. The road was in continuous repair. The monsoon kills it every year and is a Sisific work that cannot be dome quick enough to keep it in a repaired condition. On this road it is very heavy traffic being the main road to the Himalayan towns, Baderkhnat, Kedarkhnat, Mala, etc. 23 km does not seems a lot but on the Himalayan road it can take forever and it took us about one hour to get to the cave. The caves are named locally gufas. This gufa is located on the Ganga’s shore and is an amazing meditation place. Vashishta lived, as the story goes, 56000 years and he had a whole adventurous and incidental life. How you count the years is up to you. The swami who was at the cave, Swami Shantananda Puri, whom we visited before in order to get a gist about the cave,  pointed out that the energetic properties of the cave are unique in this area, existing only two more caves like this and it helps your meditation practice a lot as you would do 20 years in your apartment. So we went inside and indeed the atmosphere is unique and after meditating in the cave for close to one hour, we came out not enlightened but at least with a calm unmatched till now in the trip in spite of the Kumbha Mela. Right after I went out I was able to ask permission from  the swami for an interview that I hoped to be something like 5 minutes. Swami Shantananda Puri, who is well versed in English, ended up with a 20 minutes presentation of the cave and his life at the cave with his old master who passed away and continued for about 40 more minutes answering questions and telling stories about everybody’s role in life, their enlightenment that is not in scriptures but in you. It is only the fact that you don’t know how to open the eyes to see the God in you. It was an amazing and comforting experience augmented by the excellent English of the Swami and his amazing sense of humor and joyful approach.  His books are downloadable for free from http://www.scribd.com/group/79503    God bless him!

We left the guha around 2:00pm, way latter than originally planned, and we dropped the driver and the car at the hotel, chat with some other travelers, who were horrified that they saw a corpse in the street and people were obliviously passing by, and went to the town to eat in the same restaurant where I had the banana pancakes last night. After lunch we started walk the town main and only street, full of stores catering for foreigners, internet cafes, travel agents, ayurveda stores, jewelery stores and obviously full of ashrams teaching yoga and meditation, a typical backpacker hang out. We took a rest and watched the aarthie again, a real pleasure and now we are hitting for another banana pancake and lime soda. Here we do not eat Indian food. After dark the stores are enchanting, lots of music stores abound of great CDs with Indian, Tibetan and “New Age” music at a fraction of the price as in the West. Book stores full of spiritual books from great masters and clothing stores do a steep business. In this atmosphere the cows are roaming the main street finding their way among Germans and Americans travelers like in  a promenade. They go back and forth the entire evening like walking an Italian Corso.

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For the last time in Haridwar I was waken up at 4:00 am by the bajan. It stops in the night, probably around midnight and they start again singing around 4-4:30 am. It is a pleasure to listen to it and every morning I was pleasantly awaken and listen to it. They sing from many tents, each with its own amplification so it is not only one but many bajans making a sort of cacophony but in the morning it sounds great. Obviously if you don’t want to sleep….We packed starting at 6:00 am and at 8:00 am, after a short satsnag with Babagi who gave us prasad we had to say goodbye to everybody from the camp and thank them for their hospitality. We left to Rishikesh, that is on the Ganga up stream, about 23 km from Haridwar. James pointed us to a hotel where he stayed and liked a lot called the Great Ganga, and we went directly to it and we could right away take a shower because we were caked in dust and dirt after 5 days in the tent eating and sleeping on the floor, the dust coming in waves under the tent’s flaps. At 12:00 pm the driver picked us up and droves us along the Ganga, that is even faster and cleaner than in Hardiwar, a wild mountain river, to Neelkamp, a temple dedicated to Shiva. The road to the temple, like the road to Rishikesh is sublime. From here we start going into the Himalaya, these being the first hills at its base. The atmosphere changes radically and the road is driven only in Indian Jeeps, Mahindras, that look like from the old times. At the temple there were as usual lots of pilgrims making offers. Lots of incense, candles and flowers adorning Shiva and Nandi, Shiva’s bull. It was a very long line of Indians coming to worship the God but the temple itself is very small but with a very strongly adorned top in all colors. We left the place around 4:45 pm and we drove down in Rishikesh with the plans to go to the aarthi that was in one of the yoga &  meditation ashrams that make the place well known. Unfortunately, the driver who did not know the place, dropped us to a wrong bridge and we had to walk another 30 minutes to get to the destination. Meanwhile we got lost of each other and I reached the aarthi right when it began. Very beautiful and inspiring. Rishikesh is a yoga place so it is full of ashrams that are catering mainly for westerners. There are so many of them that is disconcerting. The singing at the aarthi was done also by a European girl. Lot of the audience was European, to my surprise coming in contrast with  Kumbha Mela where most of the people were Indians. All these aarthi events are with extensive singing, very nice, and lots of fires that is supposed to burn your bad karma, so people touch the fire and put their hands on their faces for cleansing. After the Internet session the dinner was special, after of so many days of eating on the floor on leaves. An Italian restaurant that was serving everything. We are still in India, but also they served crepes, that they called pancakes. So I ate a delicious banana pancake forgetting for a moment about dal, navratan korma, curry, palak paneer, or rice and enjoy some European decadent food. All Indians were watching cricket on TV that is on all channels, or at least it seems like it, and is the only game played by kids on the street. The evening still lasted longer being all involved later on with E&L in a discussion about yoga, meditation, methods, etc. Still we have to discuss more.

Photos.
“The word ‘Kumbha’ means a pot. The name originates from a story in the Puranas (ancient spiritual literature). The story is about an ‘Amrit Kumbha’ which means a pot filled with nectar. According to Skanda Purana (one of the 18 puranas) for the purpose of obtaining nectar that grants immortality a joint effort was made by the Gods and the demons to churn the ocean. They used Mandarachal mountain as a pillar and Vasuki serpent as a rope for the churning. In the process of churning  14 very precious objects arose. These objects were equally shared by the Gods and the demons. At last Dhanvantari (the God of medicine) came up with the pot of nectar. Seeing the pot Indra (the king of the Gods) gave a sign to his son Jayant to get hold of the pot and run away with it so that the demons are deprived of it. As Jayant began running away with the pot a fight between the Gods and the demons began.  The fight lasted for 12 days of the Gods which is equivalent to 12 human years. During the course of the fight the nectar spilled over from the pot and fell at four places Allahabad, Haridwar, Nasik and Ujjain. To prevent the nectar from falling in the hands of the demons Lord Vishnu took a beautiful female form Mohini (one who enchants) and by Her charm and grace enticed the demons and handed over the pot  to the Gods.” From an article wrote by Sri Ved Niketan Ashram

Today is a much more relaxed day because we saw most of the stuff but here the action never ends. So after a quick satsang with Babagi we left to see various camps around our base. We saw some Naga Babas, one of them invited us in their tent and we sat with him. The day before E&L were able to see an Aghori camp, the only one apparently at this Kumbha at least as we could tell. After the short tour we went to sit at Pilot Baba’s camp, a very elaborate production that confirms that spirituality is big business everywhere. Coming to the Haridwar we were surprised to see how many posters with Pilot Baba and Akiko were all over and it was confirmed by the fact the their camps is the largest, full of Russians, where Pilot Baba established and built a temple. They also charge a steep Rs 1300/night in their tents. Pilot Baba’s  history is interesting but you always wonder why you move your real spiritual and yoga experience in this commercial way when you never needed the funds.This is disconcerting if you look at the babas industry in India. The number of camps, each with its own sadhu is impressive and all are competing for believers like the sects in USA. The Indians are the core of the business but there are many Europeans to the English speaking swamis like Pilot Baba, Soham Baba, etc, the last getting the niche of global warming, saving the planet, etc. The result is that lots of Europeans are in his retinue, and he was always surrounded by two Germans in black suits and, obviously-because is hard otherwise- white shirts dirty at their collars and ties, looking like security personnel. Beside he had a guy in fatigue with covered face with a machine gun handy. The way he conducted himself was like a manager giving orders and organizing things left and right.

I left my friends to rest in Pilot Baba’s camp and after another quick forays to take more pictures of Naga Babas and other swamis I left to the city where the ghats were definitely not so crowded like yesterday and afforded great views. Again I went for lunch to the same place, mostly with the same type of food and walked the city with no other events in site.

After the Internet I took the cable car, that I was earlier assured, “Indian way”, that it was stopped because of the holiday…. and I got up a hill where is located Masadevi  temple. The temple is not great but commands great views over the city, over the ghats and the dam. Also is surrounded by black face monkeys that turn to be quite aggressive if you don’t mind your business. Coming back from the temple I was in the bazaar to do some shopping but it was not too much, the city being a major destination for Kumbha Mela, the trade is mainly local oriented. I walked latter to the  the puja in Har Ki Pauri temple but I came quite late and the view was definitely not so good like first time. At these events you have to come at least one hour before it starts to get a good view. But the atmosphere was extremely pleasant and walked enchanted back to the camp. When you walk back you have to cross the long Chandevi bridge and all the camps are on the far side of the bridge but right from the beginning you are welcomed by the bajan that penetrate all the noise from the city like a hum. It is great! At the camp the driver came already with the car and slept in one tent and we had a last chat with James and went to sleep because we planned to leave at 8:00 am and everything had to be packed.

Photos.
Today is one of the the most auspicious days in the entire Kumbha Mela. It is no moon at all and it is a MONDAY. There were two more days like this in the entire 3 months that passed and they are considered as “most auspicious”. Tomorrow, on Tuesday, is another important day but is “rated” only as “auspicious”. We planned the trip to be here on this day and at 2:30 am we walked up together with the entire camp and we started to fast walk to a closer place, only about 30 minutes walk to take a deep in the Ganges. We crossed in dark over some stone erosion barriers and we got to a spot where there were already some other groups. Comparing with all the other nights this night was the warmest, and the temperature was about 12C because you could see your breath in the air. Around 4:00 am we arrived and  everybody undressed and we followed Babagi, who at his eighty-something is better fit and vigorous that all of us put together. We deeped completely, with water over the head, a kind of baptism, and got out but Babagi stayed in the water till all of us were out. But surprisingly it was not cold outside and it was no rush to dry or dress. It was simply pleasant. It is more difficult for the women because they have to go in the water in sari and they have to change after that. We returned to the camp and we noticed, the same as when we left, that the road was full of people on the move. Long lines of people waiting to go to the Ganga and take the bath together with their spiritual leader. The road was full like it were full day. We got back and relax a little. It was only 5:00 am so we had some tea and we assisted when Babagi made his “duna”, his personal fire offer. I was able even to shoot some.

After that I told Lydia that I will go and shoot a little around and started to go around the compound, till I met a guy who pointed me to the places where the Naga Babas are. Going there I realized that everybody was going to the parade in town and I started to run together with a group on Naga Babas. The Nagas are complete renunciates. They do not posses anything, they cover their body in ashes and they live and walk everywhere completely naked. They are highly venerated by the people who touch the ground where they walked. I kind of smeared their steps with my sinned shoes, anchored in the greed of the modern society, running with them and shooting all the time. When we crossed the Ganga I saw that people were already congregated watching all these groups that were supposed to take part in the parade. After several shots I followed Shri Devananda retinue and got on the main drag that was full with floats on tractors representing each baba present and in demand of marketing. I was happily shooting on that street, babas, dressed and naked till they started to move. Here the parade does not happen in a slow pace. People are running so it is quite a show. It took about 1 hour to finish all the floats and after that I watched an amazing exercise in crowd control. To understand what means an Indian crowd you have to have visited once India. No description can match. It is a spiritual dimension that transcended the words. All these events are dangerous because the large amount of people attending. It is happening often to have stampedes and lots of people to be crushed and die, so the amount of police+military police+order people+military+security is so large like I never saw before. And they have ways to deviate people and control the crowds with fencing areas and ropes. I would not want that job and you have to understand that some time are rough.  Usually they are very friendly especially with foreigner but sometime it is nothing to do. But caring my large camera it always helps and they help me pass some “borders” sometime even taking me by the hand and bringing me to the other side. After the parade finished I wanted to come to the Internet , about 300 meters from where I was located, but the amount of effort and waiting was like crossing several real borders with lots of red tape.

After Internet I had my lunch of the same restaurant. Here if you did not get sick in one place you try to stick with the same if you can and it proved successful for three days in a row. The food is exclusively veggie, no type of alcohol being served in Haridwar, a holy city of the Ganges and one of the oldest cities in India. After lunch I went to see what happened at the ghats where was the days when only sadhus bath, so the ghats and the entire temple was closed for sinners. But the people were curious to see the holy men bath and they were peeking under a cover to the chagrin of the policemen who were hushing people from one place just to notice that people were moving back right behind him. This circus lasted for a while and I tried myself the chance and shot some footage under the cover. Meanwhile the sadhus were poring over the bridge, leaving the ghats after the ritual bath on the other bridge, coming and leaving with large banners representing their akaras. I had enough of sneaking under the cover and moved further from the temples, to the river shore further down where it was full of people, no comparison with the previous day. Somebody told me that 4 million people came today to take the ritual bath. All these people were sleeping under the sky, right were I saw them sitting. They came in large parties from their villages, commanded by an elder, having with them only a bag of rice and a small material that they put on the ground to sleep or sit on it. The entire area was covered by them. It was an impressive scene and all were bathing happily in the Ganges, putting offers of candles on the steps of the ghats or sending offers on the river, making it a stream of candles. All this is very beautiful and inspiring in the evening when it looks magnificent. Around 8:00 pm , totally crushed by my backpack that was full with things, included the tripod,  taken by my rushed departure with the Naga Babas,  I started to go to the camp where I found my friends sitting at the sastang with Babagi, who  explained the power of oneness, followed by a quick dinner of leaves on the ground of dal and kir.

Photos
The jet lag woke us up latter than the previous day. We planned to go in the city all of us and show my friends how to get into the temple. However they have been in Haridwar before and know the place relatively well. We plan to leave at 9 am but something gets delayed and I take a walk for an hour around the camp. The place is fascinating. Filled with tents and compounds you have a feeling of a big trade show. Everybody has banners advertising their trade, with “sales people” that want to show you the offer, and “marketing people” that are conducting the prayers. It is mind boggling. I took lots of video/photos of shadus, naga babas (naked babas), prayers with large audiences, in English or Hindi, in large pavilions, sometime huge like ISKRON that is the Hara Krishna International Organization. Shot kids in poor tents that abound by the river bay living in abject poverty. Poverty is endemic in India. You see here poverty like in no other place and this is so obvious mainly because of the incredible number of people. Once C said that her feeling about India is that of a soccer stadium where the gates just opened after the game and people started to go home. But this flow of people will never end. At around 10 am we leave, all 3 of us including a new addition, James a TV Producer from Smoke and Mirrors in London. Is the world small or what! We walk over the ChandiDevi Bridge and we arrive into the city on the Ganges at the ghats. The ghats were full of people bathing , making offers, all holding on heavy chains anchored by the shore, the river being extremely fast and very dangerous. This is Ganga upriver not the one in the plains, around Varanasi, where is slow and dirty. It is extremely fast, green and very clean. We shoot and take picture all 4 of us and decide to take a deep in the Ganga to deal with our karma and our heat. Around 12pm there are 28C. Emil goes first and after that me and James. We take embarrassing pictures of ourselves not to be published in NY Times. When we leave we are witnessing an amazing scene. A young girl was swept away by the river and she swims frantically to keep afloat but she moves with amazing speed. One guy right in front of us fully dressed jumps in the water and catches her and swims with her to the chains. Meanwhile a fast boat comes with fours guys and helps both of them. This is the most “rapid reaction” I could see both from the guy and the boat. The guy who jumped I am sure that had a moment of illumination when he did that. It was nothing calculated just the gut feeling that she has to help her. God bless him!

We left marked by this event and started to walk to the Har Ki Pauri temple. We got again separated from Emil who went into the bazaar and James and I went on the streets. We took lots of pictures from different vantage points in the city and in the temple, with the ghats full of bathers, to the extent that at 2:00pm James finished his card and his battery. India can be unexpected.We went to lunch going for the already proved Navratan Korma and butter nan, hoping not to get sick. After lunch James helped me to do a recording on a bridge and he went to the camp and I stayed and visited the temples inside the temple compound and taking more pictures. Around 5pm I saw that most of the people were seated on the floor and somebody told me that it will be a puja around 6pm. After kicking myself that I did not get a permit to shoot and get on a platform, I did the best out of the situation where I found myself a place to keep the camera steady and get some good view and shot the entire aarthi, that always ends after sunsets with fires put in various places that make the night absolutely spectacular. It was so much to shoot that you needed two cameras. After the aarthi, people are getting in the water that is now blessed by the puja and put candles and offers with candles that flow on Ganga. Everything is so nice that you are speechless.

One thing is sure. To be here it is such a treat and a joy that cannot be matched by any other travel in our sedate, developed world. You breath this joy through each of your pore like a bliss. Maybe is normal because Nirvana is a local product. I feel like V when he gets a new Lego set.

I left after a while because some guys suggested to me to get a permit and showed me where but after I found the place, there it was a total hysteria with Europeans journalists who did not get their permits and they needed it for the next morning shoot. Here you have the “I have to do this or die” attitude of the US/Europeans meeting ” No problem. Let’s talk tomorrow” attitude of the Indians. So I gave up because my chances were extremely slim and I had some other plans. I went to the camp, a long walk after a full day of shoot with more than 60 minutes on tape, being also puzzled by a small defect in my camera, that luckily I was able to figure out the next morning.

At the camp I found out that we will wake up at 2:30 am and we will go and take a deep in the Ganga so we went to sleep around 9:30pm  and we crashed the moment we touch the pillow.

Photos.
At 6:30 am we have the tea with milk served somewhere in the camp and after a little while I leave with Emil to shoot in the area. The camps are on a separate side of the city not so close to the center. Babas, sadhus and  gurus abound. They have posters all over the streets. This is a trade show in self realization. It is a place for the gurus to congregate, meet new disciples and students who are looking for teachers are coming here exactly for this. It is a matching process that may take years but it works. Most of the posters is of Pilot Baba and Akiko who is staying as usually in his camp. We shot some footage and took pictures of some picturesque babas. We returned to the camp where the plans for the day were not so clear of what will happen and we leave again to visit a temple on the hill dedicated to Chan Devi, a manifestation of Parvati. To visit the temple you take a cable car up the hill and on top you walk up to the temple that has a similar security details like the one we saw near Delhi but here you can take the camera with you but NO Photos! But you can take tons of photos out where the people are a show in itself. The atmosphere is interesting, similar with other temples in Asia, and after we do the parikrama we take the cable car down avoiding to be attacked by monkeys that are all over. Before arriving at the camp we meet a Hara Krishna group that have in it one Naga Baba, a naked baba. First that we saw. At the camp we missed a yagna, a public offering of fire, but the event will be repeated on Monday when we plan to attend. We eat all of us on leaves that are thrown away after that and we try to stay in the shade because it started to be hot in spite of the cold in the night. At 3pm we leave all of us into the city and we have a surprise that they do not let us to cross the bridge to Har Ki Pauri temple without passport, and latter it was very hard to convince the guy from the internet to use the service with no passport. A lady stopped us for lack of passport and camera permit. I should have taken a journalist visa for India and take a local permit to shoot. But I am not so worry about it so I started to move around the lady who behaved like a …..and somehow I manage to sneak over her on the bridge when she did not look But my friends stayed behind not having the usage to do this kind of things. So they waved me to go and I walked into an absolutely amazing experience, the Har Ki Pauri temple with its ghats where people were taking ablutions in the Ganges. But the compromise I did was to leave my video camera with Sharmaji who came to help us find the place. I started to scout the area to find various ways to get inside and get my friends with me. I returned at the entrance in 10 minutes but I could not find them no matter that I stayed and waited. Latter it turned out that they waited me but they went to get some water in that interval and they returned at the compound being afraid that I got lost in the crowd, a thing that can happen in a festival with 18 million people.

So I walked back to the lady, and when she asked me about the passport I said that I don’t need one and walked by and the gods protected me so she could not say anything… The temple is fascinating and for the first time I faced the rituals and the ablutions. It is a spectacle that it is hard to be described just photographed or recorded. India is by far the best destination for photography and video. If it did not existed should have been invented. The problem here is that you always run in lack of tape, cards and batteries. Any turn of a head brings up a subject. I shoot here about 60 minutes a day of intense subjecting and in Europe about 20 minutes per day. And here you do not know what to skip because you have the feeling that everything is worthwhile to be shot. So I shot the ghats with thousands of people bathing, in spite of the fact that theoretically you cannot shoot but everybody does, till  dark. I made my phone calls and I posted on the Internet to the only Internet Cafe in Haridwar, the place where he could not give me time with no passport.

After the Internet it was already 7:00 pm and I was worried what happened with my friends so I started to go home. The camps are about 30-45 minutes away from the center. It is a large area of compound surrounded by tin foils fences, with tents on dirt. I crossed the bridge and when I was ready to get on our street I was stopped by a car driven by Rajiv with Emil who were looking for me in Haridwar. They were convinced and are still convinced that I was lost. When I got in the camp everybody was so happy to see me like I was coming from dead. They asked me how I got lost and no matter that I explained everybody that I knew exactly where I am and I was busy in town they still did nor believe. Babagi gave me a yellow card to have with me and all the necessary cell phones and told me to be careful and not get lost again and ask police for help….. No comments! So we ate a little and went to sleep in the princely dirt floor tent where I have my sleeping bag caked in dust and dirt, in the music of the kirtan from the adjacent camps.

But the moment we left the posh gated community were we stayed, where the houses and atmosphere are a very pleasant remnant of a different Delhi that we met some years ago, you are thrown into the snarling traffic of the city and you realize that things are again familiar. The traffic is frantic. The cars are brushing one to each other in a way that shocks you that they do not touch. When they stop at a traffic jam they are like sardines cans, so closed packed that people cannot pass between them. And they still do not touch. The roads outside the city are the same that we encountered 12 years ago. I understood that they improved the roads in Rajasthan but in UP is still a log way to go. The traffic stalls and the 200km to Haridwar that we are supposed to drive in 7 hours becomes a reality in time. Yes, the car has AC that I still refuse to use preffering to drive with the window open and my camera outside to shoot in the traffic. The new Toyota Innova hope to have acceleration problems to move us faster, over the standard 40km/h….On the way we stop to a new temple finished in 2005 and here I face the new India after all the terrorist attacks. The security screening at this temple is probably more strict that at the CIA. There are lots of people that are hired in the process, at least 10 I meet on my way to the temple’s inside and after I deposit everything at the check boxes, no cameras, etc. they turned me around because I still have the wired headphone of my iphone. They accepted to have on me just money and passport. But the temple is worth the visit. They are building and decorating an extremely already ornate temple, where the mandir is surrounded by elephants taken from the legends. The rest is completely decorated with intricate motives, no area being left untouched.

After leaving the temple we hop on the highway, or the way the four lane road is named. There are two senses separated with a heavy boundary that cannot be crossed but somehow if the traffic needs to come on our way it will do it. As a result the 2 one way lane is commonly shared with incoming traffic, and the situation is so normal that the horn pressing is done only to your co directionals in traffic. The incoming traffic is just avoided like flies. After an hour of huge traffic jams we leave the 4 lane road to a 2 lane or better said a generous 1.5 lane road, because we veer into the shoulder, sort of shoulder full with bushes, every time an incoming cars comes our way. And we go like this for some hours with 40km/h and when we get an empty stretch, rarely, it goes to up top 90 km/h….I know it is the Toyota. We stop on one of those magnificent car stops and have lunch in a bucolic atmosphere surrounded by flowers and we keep going to Haridwar. When we are getting close, the city traffic is diverted and we get into the city on a detour road. But not exactly into the city because being Kumbha Mela all traffic is blocked and after numerous calls to the camp manager and some luck we figure out how to get into the city and we arrive at the camp around 7:00 pm after we met Rajiv, the camp manager who came with some business into the city. We freshen up,  get our tent, 5 start tent, because we have even electricity and a tap of water in the back in the mud. But this is no big deal because in the camp you have to walk barefoot so it stays in the spirit. We get introduced to some other people in the camp, Vladimir fro Moscow in search of self realization and Rita from Calgary in search of more travels after a sojourn in South Africa and one in Singapore.

Rajiv makes the arrangements and we go and meet Babagi, a close relation of my friends and they introduce me to him. Her is quite of a presence, is very interested to know if everything is taken care of, wants to give me a hook in Varanasi at a monastery and we plan to come back with some gifts after dinner. The dinner is served on the ground, on plates and cups made out of leaves, large leaves, and is a combination of chapati with delicious curry and some potatoes. Everything here is veggy with no eggs and some specific grains. After dinner we visit Babagi again and go to sleep in the sumptuous apartments with the music blasting from the outside speakers playing  the songs of the kirtan and bajan. It tapper off in the night and we have a great sleep till about 4:00 am because of the jet lag.

Just 13 hours and 22 minutes is the direct flight from Newark to Delhi on a new Boeing 777 with Continental. The plane was full and surprisingly with westerners, on the road to look for spiritual awakening in India instead of New Jersey. 12 years ago we were the only westerners in the plane and lots of Indians….The Delhi airport changed and got more modern and slick. In front, the fleet of small Ambassador cars is still there but dwarfed by the new Toyotas and Hondas. The whole city changed. The dark roads where 12 years ago we drove in the middle of the night, not knowing where we are, are lit now on their entirety. Highways are crossing it on top. It was such a change that I thought that I never been in Delhi before but in some forgotten outpost. The Bed and Breakfast, The tree of Life,  we stayed in  is more than impressive. New and beautiful is better than in many places I ever stayed in Asia. Check its reviews at http://www.tripadvisor.com/Hotel_Review-d1631073  In the morning, after a sleepless night because I slept in the plane, I met the owner, Ashwani, who also will provide the car for the trip. Here we go, leaving in a minute to Haridawr to Kumbha Mela.

March 2010

Maha Kumbha Mela in Haridwar

Rishikesh

Gwalior

Orcha

Khajuraho

Allahabad

Bodh Gaya

Sarnath

Varanasi

Delhi

We left the boat at 6:45am and went to the train that brought us to Omonia where we left our luggage in a storage box for E3 and walked to Monastiraki Sqaure. On the way we stopped at a breakfast stand for a last taste of pies, natural juices and frappe and continued to walk through Plaka, by the Roman Agora toward the Acropolis. We got tickets for E12/adult (kids free like everywhere in Greece), and we walked up with hordes of tourists that packed the place in a way not encountered in this trip. The hill was swarming and we visited the entire site in the incessant wind that made hard to set the tripod and shoot stable scenes. All nationalities were there but, like in most of the places we visited in this trip you had the feeling that you hear more East Europeans and Russians than westerners. After the Acropolis we visited the Dionysus Theater that I was never able to visit in the previous visits, some cisterns and a foundry in the same area and went to the Greek agora, Hephaestus temple and the Ceramics Museum. We left the agora we went to the bazaar streets around Monastiraki and I took some shots at the Hadrian Library and the folk museum. Latter I left by myself for a 45 minutes in Plaka shoot but after spending days in the beautiful islands I did not find it so attractive. We returned in Monastiraki, bought train tickets for the airport for E6/pers or E10 for two and walked to Omonia to get the luggage. We got in the train and when we had to change at Sintagma I got out and did a quick shoot in the square. I got back in the train, arrived at the airport where we changed and repacked to check in two backpacks and ate in the end at McDonalds because no other place accepted credit cards. We arrived in Frankfurt with a little delay being waited by a guy from Leonardo Hotel who brought us in 20 minutes to the hotel. We slept well; got a superb breakfast, the best in the entire trip, a German breakfast, and left for the airport with the same guy at 7:00 am and arrived at 7:28 at here we are back to JFK at 10:30am.

We packed and got a receipt and left quickly the car being parked in front on some paid parking spots for which we did not have tickets. We left towards Agios Nicolaos following the road to Kritsa. The village is no big deal, touristy with people having their merchandise hanging on the street in front of the store. Laces, leather shoes, carpets and weavings. We left quickly after a short walk to shoot and stopped outside Agia Panagia. The church is renovated outside and does not have that old look but the frescos inside are amazing. Unfortunately no pictures are allowed and they even follow you inside to be sure that you don’t sneak any. They have also a nice icons shop, a great tradition in Crete. On the way back we stopped at an olive oil mill driven by donkeys, a museum that had an amazing shop on top full of natural products. When we wanted to leave and got in the car to leave, a man called us back and introduced to us Dora the donkey that turns the mill. He showed us the process of making manually the olive oil. Outside was a wine press and the rakki alembic. In the end he refused the entry fee of E1. From there we drove on the beautiful Mirabello coast and all the way to Ierapetra, a city of white houses with a beautiful promenade on the shore of the Libyan Sea and a Venetian fortress. I went to visit and take shots in the citadel with great views over the town. At the info center they advised us to drive to Heraklio on the new road on the coast, the same way as we came, this taking 2 hrs comparing with the one through Lasithi that may take 3 hours. So we drove directly all the way to Knossos following back the Mirabello Coast where we parked right near the ruins, the large empty parking lots speaking volumes about the lack of tourists. At the ticket booth we gave the last Euros, less than the needed amount for the entry fee, and luckily he gave us tickets for one adult and one for student. You rarely can pay by credit card in Greece and this makes life hard when you come with no Euros. Knossos Palace is amazing. Now, at my second visit, I enjoyed it a lot, its reconstruction giving a better understanding of life in the palace. The rebuilding done with cement is imitating wooden beams. We spent almost 3 hours inside the ruins and left around the closing time at 6:30pm at the closing time, and went directly to get money from a nearby bank. At 7:00pm we arrived in front of Motorclub in Heraklio, parked the car and went for a walk, shot some video on a commercial street, went to the Venetian fort and stopped at a restaurant on the shore for a quick dinner of baby smelts and Greek salad. At 8:00pm we took the car and we were driven to the port by the guy from the agency to the ferryboat Festos Palace where we boarded and were assigned the cabin, 5-007. The boat was huge with 9 decks, a pool, Jacuzzi, discothèque, many restaurants, lots of shops and even one cinema. We stayed on the deck watching our boat leave followed by ANEK Lines that had the departure at the same time and followed us parallel the entire night. We slept all the way through Piraeus and we walked up when the boat got in harbor, at 5:30am hanging out longer in the cabin because we knew that the boat stays open till about 8:00 am.

The beautiful morning started with walk on the beach. I asked for a receipt and the owner, Dimitrios, a very spiffy gentleman, came and we followed him to another of his places, a bar on the beach, where he gave me the receipt and a business card with a mobile number. We followed the coast towards Malia where we went directly to visit the ruins of the Minoan palace. E4 entry fee. The palace is Interesting and quite large but not really great. It had some nice large pithos and beautiful walls to walk through. We went to the modern village of Malia for breakfast. We parked the car in the area of the clubs, very kitschy and probably a Zoo at night time, and we had a really great breakfast in a bakery, with cheese pies and spinach, frappe and kefir, etc. We left towards Agios Nicolaos where we arrived around 1:00pm. We strolled on the shore and went to the harbor and asked in the info office what else is worth a visit. Agios Nicolaos is not large but it is pleasant to walk. Outside of the town are the village of Kritsa and the church of Agia Panagia that are worth a visit. We continued the walk on the shore to the public beach and went to the harbor and back into the center of the city and to the central lake where we took lots of beautiful pictures. We left at 5:00pm towards Elounda and continued to Plaka on the Spinalonga peninsula and found out that the last boat to the Spinalonga island leaves at 5pm; E8. We chat with a guy from a restaurant who said that there are very few tourists and mainly few Americans and asked me if this might be related with the looming recession. I told him that is related with the $ exchange rate mainly. He regretted their absence because they are considered very good tourists, paying well and consuming a lot. We left towards the lighthouse at the end of the peninsula but the road was a dirt road so we gave up and continued on the paved one. We saw some nice villages where chickens were roaming the alleys. In other village men were hanging out in the main square for an evening chat. We returned to Plaka for a late swim and we drove back to Elounda, 4.5 km to get a hotel and eat. We stopped at Marin who offered an apartment for E50 after a long show and wait and, as the restaurants in Elounda were not on the shore, we returned to Plaka at Taverna Ostria, right on the pebble beach and had a great dinner of mushroom and fish soup with Ouzo and finished with some Cretan rakki, in a restaurant filled with cats. During the night a Brit came drunk, spoke loudly and left his door opened that banged in the wind all night. The island is a vacation spot for Brits.

Lazy morning with a swim in the pool and a longer breakfast followed by a stay on the beach chairs on the black sand. Gave the phone card to the guy at the hotel. Called Thrifty to tell them that I would like to bring the car around 5:30pm and they agreed with no fuss and no extra charge. It is an American company but still it is operating in Greece…. We left at 10:00am to buy tickets for the boat to Heraklio and to my surprise there were cheaper than the prices quoted the day before. There is only one slow boat in the middle of the night but not every night, and 1-2 fast boats leaving late afternoon, 17 45pm, that take 2 hours. Price is E36, as they repeatedly told us, but they sold the ticket for E24. We left at 11:00am to the Red Beach and took a bath in a super crowded and not so clean sea. From there you are able to take a boat, the only access, and go to white sand beach but we did not do it. We left the crowded beach that is really red from the red stone surrounding the area and stop for a beer and some pies at one of the stands near the beach. These stands that abound in Greece are a blessing with fresh cheese and spinach pies and cold beer, frappe and ice cream at relatively low prices. From there we drove around the end of the island and arrived at the lighthouse, beautiful but very windy. We returned at the hotel and spent some time on the black sand beach where the heavy wind that started in the morning was blowing everything away. The wind was present all the time in the islands and it was a blessing toning down the scorching July sun. The previous day was a windless day and it was almost unbearable hot. But starting this morning the wind began to blow wildly and the sea was extremely choppy, a bad day to go with the small boat to the islands. We left the Blue Palace Bay hotel and drove to Athonis Port on the winding road going down the caldera. We dropped the Matiz that had no AC or no inside lights to the guy from Baltimore who said that for E25 it was OK this way. Used car salesman attitude! This is the price on the entire island but the advantage of getting the car from the harbor is that you don’t have to take another bus to return to the boat. The boat was delayed because of the rough sea. Another boat came, going also to Heraklio, but is hard to know all your options when you buy a ticket. .Many times are more than one boat at the same time and prices vary. I had a Greek coffee whose price jacked up 5 times since I was last time in Greece. I got some info about boats coming back from Heraklio to Piraeus in an agency in the harbor but the price that I got the night before in the agency in Fira could not be found on the charts. A cabin for the night ride is around E65. Finally the boat arrived and left with more than one hour delay and after a smooth ride in spite of the choppy sea we arrived after 2 hours in Heraklio together with a large group of Romanians. After some confusion regarding the location of the boat in reference to the city center and a quick discussion with a cabbie who wanted to drive us to Agios Nicolaos, we got on the main street and we bumped in the first car rental place, MotorClub, where we rented a Hunday for E40 per day, double than prices in Agios Nicolaos, bought tickets for the returned boat to Piraeus, and drove on the coast to Kokini, about 20 minutes out on the coast on a highway that did not look for a while to have any exists. In Kokini we stayed at Marilisa apartments E45. We had dinner at a nearby Greek taverna of fish and wine ending with Cretan rakki that no matter that they say is not strong, it definitely is. I took a pleasant walk on the beach, located one block away from the hotel, before going to bed.

After a quick breakfast preceded by a swim in the pool we left to explore the island. First stop was at a traditional settlement, Megalohori, a village with narrow streets with its stones having the ribs painted in white. It was extremely hot, the first day with less wind that forced us crawling close to the walls hoping to get some shelter in the central church unfortunately closed. Old ladies were peaking from behind the blue gates offering a shy kalimera. The village is small and it took probably 1 hour max to cross it back and forth. From there we continued to Pyrgos, an old fortified village, whose streets are circular ending on top on fortifications. Everything is sparkling white with blue window shades and it looks like is repainted every year. We walked the fascinating labyrinth of streets till the top where is located the castle, a fortification from whose top the views over the islands and over the inside churches are spectacular. At the entrance in the castle was an old man with a donkey who was posing for tourists. He was selling also tomatoes, wine and grapa. After Pyrgos we planned to go to Gonia Episkopia and Vothonas but we took the road to Kamari and went directly to the old citadel of the island, Archea Thira. The mistaken road proved to be a savior because it was already 1 30pm and the archaeological site was closing at 2 30pm. It is no entry fee to the site, though but the gate closes. After you enter Kamari, a resort similar with Perissa, you start climbing on a hair spin road like you won’t believe. It takes about 15 minutes to get on top considering that you stop for incoming traffic, and you park the car and start walking up the hill, getting right away to a 6^th century basilica and continuing on stairs guarded by trees bent by wind to the main complex. The site is well dug and interesting but the best are the view over both sides of the volcano. It takes about 1 hour to visit it at a relaxed pace and at 2 30pm we were escorted out and they locked the gate after us. We descended to Kamari and stopped right away, just outside of the village, at the Gonia Episkopi, an old church founded in the 11^th century by Alex Comenus. The thieves attacked the church and stole all the valuables but the frescos and the remaining icons are still beautiful. After that we drove to Vothonas where we tried to locate some sunken houses but nobody knew exactly what we were talking about so we gave up and we drove all the way to Oia on the coastal road. Oia is very different than Fira. Less people, relatively less stores imprint a more traditional atmosphere. Obviously this is relative, Santorini being the top tourism destination in the Cyclades. It is only one street on top of the crater with some occasional derivations going down. The main street is full of shi-shi restaurants and bars and art stores. The blue domes of the churches stick out of the white of the houses. When you reach the end of the street the view is stupendous. It is not the avalanche of houses from Fira but a smaller and I would say much nicer view welcomes you. If you have time is worth exploring all the alleys that descend and ascend and have on them traditional houses. .Windmills, churches and houses covered with flowers abound. The sunset is a major tourist event in the Greek islands and people congregate in unbelievable numbers to see it. They get their seats one hour in advance and you can watch how the all the places that have sunset view are getting literally packed. People watched a beautiful sunset and in the end the entire crowd applauded ecstatically the beauty the miracle of nature. From there we left to have dinner at “Seagull”, a restaurant overlooking some blue domes of a church and hanging in the caldera. After dinner I had a chat with an Polish artist who was living in Santorini and had his art exposed at one of the galleries. He told me many things about the dynamic of the island, about his buyers, still mostly Americans, and obviously about the prices in Euro that jumped even 7 times since the Drahma was replaced. After the evening ice cream, we did not forget to buy water and a cell phone card for the Romanian guy working in the hotel.

When you are sleeping in a hotel located an eastern side beach would be sacrilegious not to wake up one morning to see the sunrise. I woke up at 5:30 and went to the black sand beach in front and watch a magnificent sunrise. It did not look like one but it ended up being a perfect picture sunrise. Latter on a dive in the pool and a quick breakfast kicked off the day. We left before 9 to Accordo travel where we bought tickets for a day trip to the three other islands in the Santorini volcano caldera after that going quickly to do some shopping at the supermarket and pharmacy. A bus came at 9:00 and picked us up from the agency and dropped us at Athinos port where the boat was waiting outside of the harbor. The harbor was full and the boast could not come to the shore so we waited more than one hour in the reassurance of the guide that this would not shorten our trip. So we passed our time trying to make some international calls but it did not work so easily. Finally some ferries left and the boat came to pick us up and we started to sail to the island in the middle of the caldera. The island that we visited first, Nea Kameni, is a national park with an active volcano in the middle, it was formed between 1570-80 in a completely empty caldera. It came out of the sea and the volcano is still going strong today, being spots in its middle when the sulphur presence can be smelled making the ground around green. If you dig a small hole on top it is so hot that you can obviously boil an egg inside. The entire island is looking like a giant dug it from the lava that flowed many times in recent history. The trip on the island last for about 2 hours, on top the guide giving us a entire presentation about the geological and social history of Santorini. From there the boat took us to the older of the two islands in the middle, Palea Kameni, formed in an eruption at 49AD that has in one of its gulfs hot springs at the shore of the sea. The boat cannot get closer to the shore because of the rocks and you have to swim quite of a distance to the shore where the hot springs are. A nice white chapel is located on the shore near the springs. After about 45 minutes we left to the third stop, the larger island of Tirassia, that closes the circle of Santorini. The island is nice and its shore became recently, because of the tourist boats, full of restaurants in spite of the lack of real beach. One of the restaurants has also a remodeled windmill in operation. From the shore, one of the attractions is to mount on a donkey for E5/pers and climb the hill to the top village that is not interesting but commands beautiful views of the shore. You can also walk up in 15-20 minutes arduous walk. The views are stupendous and they justify the stroll or the donkey ride. The boat stays quite long, almost 2 hours, docked on the island giving you enough time to eat and do the uphill hike. From there the boat goes to Oia and dropped the tourists who want to spend the sunset in Oia, part of an extended trip and returned to Athinos port from where the bus picks you up and brings you back to your hotel. We grabbed the car and went back to Fira, parking in the same top parking, for another night stroll and a well deserved dinner in one of the hanging restaurant at Fanari. Great dinner and great views! We were amazed how you can eat hanging over the caldera.

We left at 8:15am and we continued the tour of the northern part of the island passing through picturesque villages with white houses hanging on the mountain slopes. We stopped in one village, named Apiranthos, and we had our typical Greek breakfast with coffee and pies having a pleasant walk on the village winding narrow streets deserted at that hour of the morning. During the walk we entered an interesting sort of antiques/souvenir store situated in a picturesque square. In the café the lady tried to convince me that the water is good that she drinks it for 23 years, a fact that definitely did not convince me to try it. Picturesque old men were having their coffee with a Greek chat in the silent morning. After breakfast we left the village and stopped in the nearby one where we parked and followed the sign to an 11^th century Byzantine church. The stroll to the church was magnificent, through olive and fruit tree orchards, yellowed by the heat of the mid summer. The whole landscape reminded us of St Remy in Provence. The church is looking like it was taken out of a story, the most beautiful church we saw in Greece in this trip, surrounded by olive trees and covered inside by frescos. We took too many shots of everything around, including the charming road to the church. Naxos is a very green island compared with what we saw before, a green that contrasts very nicely with the white house on the slopes or the white chapels hanging in the top of the hills. At 12 50pm we arrived in Naxos Town, after we passed Halki and we stop for a little while in Potamia. The Blue Star ferry was in the port so we rushed to return the car, got tickets and we boarded the ferry to Santorini. On the way to the ferry I was able to grab some pictures in the harbor, including one with the locals offering domatia and I was scolded by one of them who said that is illegal to shoot video with them and they may call the police. I could not figure out why but I don’t think they were very serious about the incident.
The ferries are here like trams but with a very intense and precise schedule. When you see their huge size you cannot imagine that they can keep such a tight schedule on, sometimes, rough seas and they are almost all the time on schedule this being totally unlikely for the trains in LIRR. It was always like this but now you feel that things are way better buttoned up than before, only the prices went up several times, especially after the Euro replacing the Drahma. But comparing with the Western European prices, I can tell that Greece kept a lot of prices at comparable levels, irrelevant of the complains that we kept hearing from the locals we spoke with. Especially the food, slightly more expensive now than before is not as the far cry level of pricing like in Cote d’Azur or Tuscany. And it’s better and tastier…..Of course, you do not take in consideration the exchange rate of the US$ of US$1.6 to E1.

The boat ride to Santorini took 2 hours and we arrived in Athinos Harbor where we were hijacked by a guy renting cars for Thrifty who was Greek from Baltimore.

Eventually he gave us a Matiz for E25/day that is the going price in the island, acting like he did us a favor, but it was not the case. Probably we could have got a much better car for the money. We went to the nearby agency to get a hotel and after looking at the offers the guy decided to show us several so we followed his car to a place that it was obviously not on our liking and we ended up on Perrisa’s black sand, at Palace Bay Hotel where after some negotiations we got an apartment with breakfast for E110/night. The guy who came to arrange the beds turned out to be Romanian, and working relatively illegally in this transitional period till Romania get all the rights in the EU. Latter on he told us several things about how he got there and how things really are working in this business in Greece. We dropped the luggage and we drove all the way to Fira, the capital of the island, about 30 minutes away from Perissa that is located toward the south-east part of the island. .We arrived in Fira at 5:00pm and we were able to park right in the parking place of the upper town. This was surprising everywhere in Greece and was speaking volumes for the low number of tourists. It was July and we expected that everything would be booked, prices would be in the sky but we could find easily accommodation, restaurants at any hour and parking places wherever we went. In spite that we saw lots of tourists, the Greeks were saying that the number of tourists is low, asking us, like they did in Plaka, Crete, where the Americans are, their number being obviously depleted this season. They thought that the recession kept them home but we argued that we thought that mainly the exchange rate was the main cause of their absence.

We walked in Fira, that it may be spectacular with the restaurants and houses literally hanging in the caldera of the volcano, but it is one of the touristiest places I may have seen. Rows and rows of jewelry store, followed by art stores and many other gadget stores were sharing the main streets with restaurants. We stopped in a travel agency, the Black pelican, to check the schedule and pricing for the boats to Crete and we got conflicting information, but the bottom line is that it is not slow ferry except at 2-4am going to Crete so the main option are 2-3 Flyingcats that leave late in the afternoon. The donkeys caring people down the caldera were strolling in town. From there we tried to find a good vantage point to take some nice sunset shots with the blue domes of the churches in front and we were directed to the nearby village, Fira Stefani situated with Imerovigli, another village, a little north of Fira. So we walked to Fira Stefani where we stopped in front of the blue domed church, admiring a beautiful sunset.
Latter, on our way back to Fira, we stopped on the way at a nice restaurant on the road for dinner and walked back in Fira. The view of the houses and restaurants hanging in the caldera is magical in the night when all the lights are on. Latter we took the car and drove towards Perissa where our hotel was located, where the night life was in full swing at the bars lining the shore.

We arrived in Paros and we were brought by a “domatia” guy in the harbor to a nearby hotel, Vila Stratos, kept by an American from Alabama. She moved here a short while ago, bought the hotel and was enjoying the relaxed atmosphere of the island. We dropped the luggage in the large room that they were renting for E50/night and we left for a stroll in town, where the main features are the port and the old winding streets behind the kastro. The town has an interesting church that looks to be quite old, where we saw a baptism ceremony. Right from the square in front of the church it starts the old town, the main commercial street full of shops and some restaurants that winds all the way till the other part of the harbor. We went back and forth, took lots of shots and enjoyed a perfect sunset, maybe one of the best we saw in Greece. We checked the bus station to see how we can go the next day to the marble quarry and it turned out that it was a bus at 8:00am going right there in 10 minutes, so with this info fresh we went for a Greek dinner of fish with tzatziki, etc. with ouzo and wine. Latter I left for a late stroll and shoot in the port promenade where the restaurants aligning the sea shore where full till late hours in the night and returned way after midnight feeling that I was the first to leave the party. In the islands it does not look that the Greeks are going out less than before. In the morning after a quick taste of Greek coffee and tyropita took the 8:00 am bus to the marble quarries. The ride is about 10 minutes but the “marmaria” is not a big deal. However it offers a very pleasant walk in nature by yourself. The place was famous in antiquity, the Paros marble being used in most of the sculptures of the ancient world, Venus of Milo, being sculpted out of this marble. After one hour stroll that brought us all the way to a sort of power plant, we returned and hitch hiked towards Lefkes, a tiny village specked on the slope of a valley. The hitchhike worked only partially because the guy had to drop us not all the way in Lefkes so we stopped a taxi coming our way and for E5 he dropped us in the village. The village has charming winding streets and small squares that are full of restaurants and cafes that invite you for a taste of spanakopita of the cheese pie, or just to sip a frappe in the shade listening to the cycads. We took lots of footage and pictures and stopped in the middle of the village for a frappe and returned to the bus stop at 11:00 to catch a bus or a taxi that would bring us back to Parikia, the way Paros Town is called. It was almost impossible to get a taxi, all being busy and probably having a taxi stand that we did not know about, so we took the bus at 11:20am that dropped me at the stadium from where I walked to Stratos Villa to take the luggage. However, not being clear where the villa is I kind of lost my way and lost some time but eventually I arrived at the hotel where the goodwill American owner helped me to carry all the luggage to the boat and even found a friend with a motorbike to make the process easier. All things considered we missed the boat that was inching out of the harbor when finally I got on the pier and we found the hard way that the Greek ferries do not have any ticket refund for the missed boats. We checked the ferry schedule and luckily in two hours it was another boat leaving for Naxos, a slow ferry, bought tickets for it and relaxed in a harbor café to rest after the events. Paros is the hub of ferry transportation for the Cyclades and here is the best place to switch boats to directions that are not on the main routes. If you check the ferry schedule here are listed the most boats than you would see in any other harbor. The boat came at 2:30pm and we boarded for the 50 minutes ride to Naxos. We arrived in Naxos and feeling weird I parked myself to a travel agency, whose nice host explained me everything is worth seeing in the island, more info than I was able to grab in my current state. We denied any offer of accommodations and we rented a car for E30, not an easy thing to do at 5pm in the evening where most of the cars are gone, and after we checked the ferry schedule for the next day boat to Santorini, we promised to bring the car at 1:30pm the next day. We drove all the way on the western coast of the island, passing nice gulfs, a white monastery and a ruined castle and we arrived after one hour in Apolonas, a tiny village/resort on the northern tip of the island where we got, after seeing another hotel in town, a charming apartment overlooking a bay in sunrise at Flora’s apartments for E60. Driving in the village needs some skills with its very narrow streets. Right near Apolonas is the statue of a kouros, young Greek that represents the god Dyonisos. We visited it and we settled for a 9pm bath in the sea followed by a Greek dinner at one of the restaurants on the beach owned by the locals that all of them are related to each other as Flora told us latter on.

In the morning we walked up and started to pack at 7:00am. We went for the hot breakfast offered by the hotel and included in the room at 8:00am and we were the first in the dinning room. We called a taxi, a thing that we tried the day before with no luck, but now it worked and we left for the town with our luggage. We bought tickets for Delos for the 10am boat and for Paros for the 2:45 pm boat and we went to the ship for Delos with the luggage to see where we can drop them during our visit in the island. This is not such an easy matter, on Mykonos existing only one luggage dropping place that was closed that Sunday morning, and nobody could help us with an advice. The guys from the boats were very nice, such as Greeks usually are, and they offered to keep the luggage on the boat and move it from one boat to another if we decide to return with another boat, a thing that they did because we returned with the 1:30pm boat. The boat ride to Delos takes 30 minutes. Delos is a unique place, a very powerful and important place of antiquity, where lavishing treasures were deposited and temples were built. A kind of Switzerland of antiquity, it was hosting the tax of the Delian federation, the name of the Cyclades coming from the circle these islands are making around Delos. The place was an important sanctuary to the god Apollo and it was a holy island where neither birth nor death could happen, the pregnant women and the dying people being evacuated as a precaution. The ruins have their romance and the entire island is full of them being extensively excavated but still being lots of places in need of more work. We visited the museum and hiked up on Kynthos Mountain, the highest peak of the island. We returned to the boat after nearly 4 hours of walking among the ruins and we continued to Mykonos where we boarded, after a longer wait caused by some delays, a FlyingCat that brought us to Paros in one hour. Hydrofoils are the new way for hopping between the islands. 17 years ago they did not exist and 8 years ago were very fast boat where you could find a spot to see the sun but they were shaking you senseless and sea sickness could happen easily on them but not on regular ferries. The new hydrofoils, the FlyingCats are very spiffy, completely sealed, moving relatively fast and having the advantage of offering a very smooth ride, comparing with the old hydrofoils. The travel time is not half but the price of the ticket is usually double than on a regular ferry. Inside you feel like in a plane and is no way to get outside, so it becomes just a way to move from one point to another and you cannot enjoy sun bathing on the deck or the sea view like on a regular ferry. A one hour ride to Paros costs E20/person, but sometimes prices vary in ways we could not figure out. Besides it turns out to be more companies that you can find out at the booking offices, so if you are looking for a cheaper ride or for a different hour ferry, you have to check more than the regular Blue Star and Hellenic Seaways offices that are a feature in every harbor.

After breakfast we pondered upon what to do in order to take a boat to Delos (3 times a day, 9,10,11 am, E12 RT/person). We left for the town and the boat but we barely dragged our feet so we arrived in the harbor right when the last boat to Delos was leaving, in spite of the fact that the original plan was to get the 9:00 am boat. So we changed plans and went to get a bus to Piati Gyalos, a beach village close to Paradise. The village, a typical vacation village, is full of vacation rentals, but very picturesque on the blue of the Aegean Sea. Shot video, took pictures and took a bath, hiding from the sun that was quite intense. We had lunch at a restaurant on the beach and took more pictures, walks and dives in the sea. At 5:00 pm we took a bus back into town and we started scouting for a good vantage point for a sunset shoot and walking in areas that we did not cover the night before, getting into churches and squares with fountains like the better known Three Sisters square. We walked down from the bus stop to the windmills and to Little Venice, a strip of houses that are right in the water, getting splashed by the surf when sitting at a bar table close to the water. The best vantage point for sunset found out to be the mills that are on top of the town, old ruined mills, one of them still almost intact and transformed in a Folklore Museum. Took a shot of the sunset in a very serene atmosphere, far away of the hustle and bustle of the main commercial streets of Mykonos town, got back in town, bought some stuff from the market and grabbed a cab, this time waiting in line at the taxi stand and got back to the hotel in 5 minutes where we took a shower and I walked back in town for a stroll by myself. I entered an art gallery and I chatted for half an hour with the British artist/owner about everything in the world, and about Mykonos and how it got this way. Continued the stroll, on the main commercial avenues that after a while make you tired of shops and windows and walked back to the hotel around midnight where I watched the Mykonos night sky from its terrace for a while before going to sleep.

The subway was not so full in the morning and brought us in 25 minute to Piraeus and after getting a frappe, the famous coffee specialty, and some snacks for a quick bite we bought tickets, E29.5/adult, kids half, and boarded the boat that will bring us in 5.5 hours to Mykonos. We are on the boat to Mykonos. Two Blue Star ferries are leaving in the morning, one to Mykonos and one to Santorini. Besides them is a full plethora of fast boats, the Flyingcats, operated by Hellenic Seaways, very slick, but you are completely isolated and sealed inside like in a plane, and obviously far away from a Greek island experience. The boat was packed and we hardly found a seat in the 3 deck boat that was full of vacationers who were talking on the phone continuously; in Greece you don’t loose reception on the mobile phone like you do on LIRR….The boat is full of young people that go to party in Mykonos, mainly Europeans or local Greeks, for whom the Greek islands are similar vacation destinations like the Caribbeans are for Americans. Well, they have the cultural value that is missing in the Atlantic. The young boys and girls are dressed in beach attire and they lay down in chairs to absorb as much sun as they can. Cameras flash, a drink here and there, a Greek coffee with lots of sun surrounded by the blue of the Aegean Sea. The ship stopped in Syros and then in Tinos, the most important place of pilgrimage in the Aegean Sea. Many of the youngsters that were looking that geared for the wild parties of Mykonos, disembarked in Tinos pointing that the appearances are always deceiving. Tinos is close to Mykonos and is on the route of the grand ferries, so it can be easily visited. At 1 pm we arrived in Mykonos where the locals congregated in the harbor to offer accommodation, domatia, at relatively reasonable prices, of E100/night/apartment. I am sure that it can be negotiated down from that. Greece is more expensive now than 8 years ago but is still much cheaper than any other country in Western Europe. It turned out that the only way to get to our hotel was to grab a taxi, a highly prized mode of transportation in the island. There are a total of 31 taxi in the whole island so after we waited for about 30 minutes we asked a guy with a pickup truck to bring us to the hotel, who for a three times higher fare drove us on the 7 minutes winding road up the hill to Thomas Hotel, that we had booked on Octopustravel.com. The hotel is isolated, all the way on top of a hill, but superbly positioned. We dropped the luggage and left on foot to the city, on a combination of roads and paths that bring you right in the harbor in about 20 minutes. The first thing to do in the city is to get info about the boats. In the middle of the harbor that is the heart of Mykonos town. We stopped at Paraportiani Church, the famous church of the island, and walked to the emblematic windmills. We stopped for a first bath in the Aegean, on a beach located in the back of the windmills. On the way we got to sample the town with its multitude of shops of all sorts of kind walking all the way till the end of the town, close also to the windmills from where we hopped in a bus to Paradise Beach, the place of the wild beach parties in the island. The parties were on at Cavo Paradiso, with music and dance all day and the dance floor/tables being full with girls dancing on posts. We shot lots of footage at the parties and after another quick dive into the sea we had dinner in a restaurant on the beach. We took reluctantly the bus back into town where we got a long walk in a town flooded in light that you don’t need a flash to take pictures. All stores were open and the ice creams stores were doing remarkable business. The taxi stand is right in the middle of the city, in its main square, but we did not find out this till the next day, so all our desperate efforts to stop a cab being useless. The car access in town is limited, being guarded by a barrier. We kept trying to stop taxis at the barrier with no luck, till the guard at the barrier offered to give us a lift after 10 minutes when his shift was over. Nice guy, and one of the first incidents of nice encounters with the locals. I was wondering if in France anybody might have given you a lift at 11:00pm. He kept his word and we arrived safely in no time in our beds.

July 2008:The plane we got last night from Bucharest, through Vienna was delayed and we landed at 12:00am, hopped in a cab and arrived at the Aristoteles Hotel in Omonia Square at 1:00am. Athens was empty and, when I told the driver that I was here twice before, darted back that the Greece of today is way different from the Greece of the past because people do not afford going out because of the Euro. This is something that I got used to hear in Europe, everywhere I went but this was out of the blue and it was the first of the many conversations I had with people in the Greece and one of their preferred subject of conversation. He was saying that before people were out almost all week and now barely twice a week. Hard to believe, still.Athens built a new highway for the Olympics in 2004 from the new airport to the city, about 40 Km away that makes the ride into the city a breeze, well late in the night… Taxi cost E45 to center city that includes the tip and an airport and night surcharge. During the night the ride takes 25 minutes. During the day is way faster and relatively cheaper to take the train, that runs from the airport directly in the Athens subway system, It costs about E6/person or E10/couple.
But no matter what you take from the airport, you will continuously see a jungle of concrete ugly buildings. It is hard to say that Athens is a nice city. The hotel was OK for $100/night and went to sleep right away and got up at 5:30am to be sure that we can make the ferries of 7:35am. This was actually the plan in advance, because from Omonia to Piraeus is about 30 minutes by train that leaves right from the square.

Nothing much. Woke Up for sunrise but it was cloudy. Walked in to the city for last glimpses of the Caribbean Sea with sun views and hanged a little again tin the hammock at Tina’s in the Vibe Garden. walked all the way to the airport in at the Southern end of the island, a similar affair but lower key than the one in San Pedro and had a great breakfast in Tropical Hotel, bumping into Hans and Georg who were trying to make the 8:30 boat to Belize City. Bought some souvenirs and went back latter to the hotel, packed and left the place and sat on the dock for one hour looking at the sea. The boat came at 9:50am and we left to Belize City where I jumped right away in a taxi. The taxi to the airport is listed as US$25, another rip off, but I was able to negotiated to $20 and I got there in about 20 minutes, bought more souvenirs and some good rum, and at 12:45 I sadly walked on the tarmac to the US Airways plane going to Charlotte, NC. Back to reality and to a very hectic Tuesday. Dreams don’t last.

The day started with heavy winds that I could hear blowing all night and I realized that it would be far fetched a longer boat trip. It was even a little chilly in the morning when I woke up for sunrise, but eventually the heat of the day took over. I had my waffle breakfast with some papaya juice, at Miramar Hotel, and I kept checking with the agency I talked last night for the snorkeling tour, but they kept postponing the decision to do the tour because of the winds. The tour was supposed to start either at 8:00am to Turneffe or 10:30 am to Hol Chan. At 9:30 am it was obvious that nobody would go out for the Turneffe Atol, and I made up my mind to go for Hol Chan Marine Reserve, a day tour that costs B$85. Unfortunately, because of the bad weather only one agency, Carlos Tours went out and they were fully booked so I decided that I will have just a half day tour, in the Barrier Reef, off the coast of Caye Caulker at 2:00pm. This is a three hour tour and returns at 5:00pm for Bz45. This being said I walked all over Caye Caulker, on the main street and the side streets all the way to the South of the island where is the local airport served by the same companies like in San Pedro. I ate some fruit, check the boat for tomorrow, etc. By midday I went to the north tip of the island, actually to the Split for a bath in the warm Caribbeans waters. Caye Caulker is much longer but in 2001 a hurricane split the island in two. The northern part of the island is inhabited by very few people and is basically no tourism At the split is a great bar held by some Jamaicans called the Lazy Lizard. It was such a pleasure just to stay inside the sea water. With so much time on my hands, latter I went for a lunch of tacos and a beer. At 1:30pm I went for the tour that was already fully booked with three girls from Denmark, a Norwegian guy, an English couple and a guy from New York. The coral is not so great in Caye Caulker Barrier Reef because overfishing and mass tourism in the area, and you can see lots of dead or washed out coral. Probably, people who are keen on snorkeling or diving may not find the tour interesting enough but for me was definitely satisfying. The tour does three stops and last 3 hours. The first stop you swim in a guided tour for about 1 hour, and the guide points out to you various fish, or brings some shells out from the water. It is strenuous for people that are not swimming on a regular basis, and because of this they insisted everybody to use a floater. You swim on top of the coral, in the South Channel, an alley that goes inside the coral reef. It is extremely interesting and you see tons of fish. But the trip itself is strenuous because you have to follow the guide for about one hour and you came from there pretty exhausted. The second stop is at the shark and sting rays alley. The sharks, nurse sharks decided not to show up, but they are present in Hol Chan Marine reserve. But the sting rays came in very large numbers paving the bottom of the sea with their large silhouettes. The fishermen used to come and clean the fish in this alley throwing the rests in the sea, a great lunch for the sting rays, so now they are used to come when they hear the hum of the engine’s boat. So they came, in tens, if not close to one hundred and they were swimming, huge and gentle among our feet, mainly under us. At the beginning was kind of scary for everybody, because the animals are really big, but in time you figure out that they will not touch you with their tail so you start taking it lightly. The guide was able to catch one and to bring it out for everybody to be able to touch their velvety skin. But be aware of their poisonous sting….The third stop was at, what they call, The Coral Garden, and here you basically swim by yourself among corals for about 30 minutes. It is beautiful, except that the under current was very powerful today and demanded hard work in swimming. On the boat the guide was waiting us with fruits and water and at 5:00pm we were at the dock. I jumped in a shower and went to see the sunset that was really nice today. I shot a time lapse of it and I stayed late on the dock watching some kids fishing, losing their baits but persistently and diligently continuing. From there I went directly to the Internet, for the daily ritual of email and postings and I went for dinner to Fran’s grill, right on the beach, for a barracuda steak. At dinner I met some great travelers. Hans and Georg from Munich were traveling for a 4 weeks. Hans, now retired, lived his teenage years in Argentina speaking now Spanish fluently, and latter traveled around the world like a genuine backpacker. I gave him lots of tips because he was going to Guatemala. Also, I met another couple, Emily and Simon, who just graduated from University in England and had an extremely ambitious plan to travel for a number of months if the money will last. They would cover Central America and fly to Ecuador from where they will cover parts of South America ending in Buenos Aires. Good trip! After dinner I did not want to go so quickly to the hotel ,in my last night in Belize and Caribbean and I went walking, eventually ending at the Lazy Lizard, the Jamaican hang out at the Split, where I bumped again into Emily and Simon who were with two traveler partners from Israel. I sit with all four for more chats and the Israelis just came back from the Blue Hole, and they were OK with it but obviously not so content. The trip costs $200/person and for somebody who has the Red Sea in their back door,I think that any other snorkeling experience is not so great. At their recommendation we got a drink of rum, watermelon and lime that the barman never heard about. it was sour but OK, just another experience. Latter, around 11:30pm, I went reluctantly to the hotel.

The Chinese owner from the hotel said that he will open the door at 6:00am so I decided to wake up around 5:45 and get the first available bus. The plan was to go with a company called Sartegna, that drops you at the swing bridge in Belize City. where you get on the boat to Caye Caulker, and you don’t have to walk from the main terminal to the boat. But I saw the Sartegna bus leaving just in front of me and did not want to stop to pick me up. I asked around and it turned out that another company named Cello had a bus leaving at 6:30am directly to the Swing Bridge. I took the bus for B$5 and it brought me in 1.5 hours to the Swing Bridge in Belize City. The boat to Caye Caulker was leaving at 9:00am, I missed the one at 8:00am, so I had time to go for less than an hour in the downtown of Belize City. People , local and tourists mentioned to me that is pointless to visit the city, because it is not too much to see and is dangerous. But this place is really depressing. It is not the question that is nothing to see but, is dire and very weird, the entire city looking like bad parts of NY in the night during the 70s, people hanging out and hustling the newcomers. I walked Albert Street , close to the cathedral and I wanted to shoot some video but it was not too much to shoot even you strive. Also, it was extremely unpleasant to walk with a big camera around your neck. or tripod, and have all the eyes pointing at you. At one point I got hustled by some guys and I decided to split and I came earlier at the boat and left at 9:00 am to Caye Caulker. The boat ride, 45 minutes, is beautiful but not necessarily comfortable, the boat being packed to maximum capacity. In Caye Caulker, I went to Tina’s Backpacker, highly recommended by many travelers, but it did not have private rooms, so I was pointed to go further and after I tried several places I ended up in Miramar Hotel. There I finally found a room with private bathroom, what I was looking for, for $25 a night, but the owner showed me another room without bathroom, B$25, that it was so charming and I decided to take this one. Next I went to the first agency to do some investigations for a snorkeling tour, and the options were so numerous that I had to ponder upon them. They have a tour to Tunerriffe Atol, for Bz140, Hol Chan Marine Bz85 and half days trip for Bz45, and several others but all depend again of how many people they have. It was already passed the 10:30am when the last tour goes , so I decided to go to Caye Ambergris and I caught the 11:20am boat for Bz15 one way and I left to San Pedro. San Pedro and Caye Ambergris, is Madona’s Isla Bonita, a song that you obviously hear walking in the island. It is way more built up that Caye Caulker and is large, but in three hours you can walk and see pretty much of it. I met a couple that lives in Seaview, Fire Island, NY one of my top spots on the planet. There are several nice resorts, like Ramos’s or Victoria. If you want to see Victoria you are better off to get a taxi because is pretty far south. The main road is not so nice as the beach front but it has lots of restaurants and many shops. I walked around for about three hours, shooting the nice palm trees from the beach. It looks like that was no massive hurricane here, because the palm trees look very good and extremely picturesque, way better that I saw in other islands. Walking in the city, I arrived in front of a store with a weird name , Tech Transylvania, It turned out that the owners were Romanians, highly educated, and moved there 4 years ago, from the western part of Romania, leaving a country that is not yet capable to offer enough positions for their University graduates students. Romania is still a first world country that is run by a third world country political class and business elite, whose main preoccupation is to get filthy rich and drive the most expensive cars like in African countries fresh after a new coup . Well, being in San Pedro is not bad at all, but still is a far cry from a European country. I had a long and very pleasant chat with them and I continued my tour of the island. I arrived at the airport, that serves the area on small Cessna planes, that for $70 can bring you directly to the International airport in Belize City. There are two companies operating: Tropic Air and Maya Islands. It is very cool to see this airport, and the very casual atmosphere. No metal detectors, no caring belts, nada. Just hop and go. From there I walked on the beach all the way to Victoria, a long and relatively arduous walk but very pleasant, admiring the palapas that are at the end of the docks and the beautiful views. Victoria is a nice complex, very shishi, with manicured lawns and nice cabanas and bars. Because I walked so far, I missed two boats and I caught a last boat to Caye Caulker that was leaving at 4:30pm. I chat meanwhile with a Canadian that lived there for 12 years, involved in a lot of local businesses, cellphone and used books, apparently all very successful. The atmosphere was great, like summer afternoons in Fire Island. The boat ride is half hour and I arrived in Caye Caulker at 5:00pm , took a shower and jumped to see the sunset. latter I went to have a great dinner of Brazilian Pork at Habaneros and went to search for internet and international phone. I could not get a phone, but probably they exist somewhere, but I was surprise at the cost of the internet, at par with all the other high prices. In Guatemala the internet access is between $0.50-1.25/hour and here, in Caye Caulker was $7-9/hour, and they were charging by the minute if you go for more. I posted partially my story and did my email and went for a walk to both parts of the town. The town is small and if you strive you can walk the entire island in 30 minutes, and the center in less than 15 minutes. At 8:00 pm I went to the agency for the next day trip, and they told me that they may have both Turneffe and the special tour to the reserve, and I should come next morning at 8:00am. I browsed the stalls that are like a night market, and sell beads and jeweleries, paintings and crafts and I went to the Seaside Cabanas, that they rent for $120/night, not bad at all for the peak month of February, where I had some pinacoladas, chatting with some guy from Wisconsin who was leaving the next day back home.

This hotel I stay in Akihito is owned by two Chinese, like several businesses in Orange Walk. The owner proudly showed me last night his farm of 40 acres that he just bought that has in its middle a cenote . There are very few people here in Belize, about 300000 people, just a third of the population that existed in the Maya time. What is funny about this hotel is the fact that it looks that was built by a architect for jails. It is very clean, everything is great but it looks like you are in a cell of a jail, no mater what room you get. Also, like many hotels in Orange Walk has a room near the lobby with slot machines. As a mater of fact there are lots of this type of casinos, here in the city. Hotel and casino, like in Vegas! Last night my room was to the front and was noisy and this morning I changed it. I went for breakfast again to Juanita, because I could not find other restaurants. There are some restaurants but the city is kind of a dive and is hard to find things in it. The breakfast was very good with grapefruit juice and a great omelet. I went after that to Jungle River Tours, the agency that runs the tours to Lamanai and I paid for the tour that I reserved last night. The tour costs US$40, inluding lunch, plus another US$5 the entrance to the site. All the tours in Belize are expensive, the country moving his main source of income from sugar to tourism that is very well fleeced. Finally, at 9:00am a lady came to pick me up, I did not know if it was her supposed to pick me up or somebody else, and brought me to Lamanai Retreat, the place from where the boats leave. The boat was not there and I waited for 10 minutes. It came with three other people inside, two ladies from Canada and one guy, Tony, from Barcelona, with whom I had a long and great conversation all day. Tony has a photo/video production and services company in Barcelona and now, the season being slow, he was traveling for 3 months in Central America. Gilberto, the pilot of the boat took us to see some nature till the other tourists came, and we returned to pick up a large group of 15 people that came from Corazal, for a day trip. It proved that the guys were mostly Russians and not very sociable. We left on the river trip that brings you eventually, after 90 minutes to Lamanai ruins. The river trip was really great, because Gilberto continually stopped and showed us baby crocodiles, mid size crocodiles and even extremely large ones. Also, egrets, the Jesus bird and iguanas hanging in the tree. It was extremely interesting also to see , from afar, the Mennonite community, a group of Germans, similar in clothing, habits and religion with the Amish from the USA, settled here in the 50s , that are still the largest producers of vegetables in the country. Gilberto said that there are of three branches: the very traditional ones that do not use anything modern, no electricity or machinery, etc., the Baptist Mennonites that use electricity only for work but no in homes and some tractors and boats and the progressive ones that came from Ottawa, Canada. They do not serve in military, do not want to vote and till the independence in 1981 they did not pay taxes. They are extremely hard working and they were brought here by the British government and given the best land, and they are respected by people in Belize. They represent 3% of the population and produce more than 60% of the vegetable production in the country. On the street they wear some particular hats and the old ones have beards and they look like coming from old Holland’s paintings.The river where we took the tour is called the New River, but he Maya called it “the river of the foreigners”, a prediction that proved to be true. There are many boats doing the tour that is one of the major attractions in Belize. We also saw people fishing, and a boat came very close to show us the catch, Gilberto being careful because you don’t know if the guys do not hide a gun to rob the travelers, a trick that I heard happening in some other countries. We rode the river that meanders and divides extremely spectacular, for 90 minutes and we arrived in Lamanai site, going directly for lunch. Here I had a pleasant surprise because in all the other tours in Belize, the lunch was a sandwich and if you were lucky a bottle of water, but here they prepared chicken with potatoes, salad and salsa, spicy chips and they had lots of soft drinks kept in the cooler. Lamanai, like all the other sites was very large 4.5 square km but very little was excavated and only three locations were uncovered. It is obviously that here they wait for a sponsorship to go further. The ruins are nice and well done, showing the tradition of the Maya, to demolish or cover the house of the old price/king when he dies and build new one on top, the result being that all the houses are well off the ground accessible by a flight of steps. You could see at the Temple of the Mask, the first location, three levels of steps showing perfectly, and he said that there were probably more underground. Also, it was an impressive head of an Olmec, in situ, but it was not covered in fiber glass like in Caracol. Impressive and huge, it occupies an entire wall. The next temple was also the largest, being the third pre classical building as a height in Belize, 125 ft. The building is impressive and it has three levels accessible by very steep steps. The fun part when we were there was that the howling monkeys started to howl, protesting that another group of monkeys, named patrol, came in their territory. It is funny to see how small they are and what a horrific sound they make, that you think that is a great jaguar around. This was great because in Tikal, they howl only in the morning at sunrise, defining their territory for the day and later on is hard to wake them up. We left at 2:00pm and Gilberto drove very fast and dropped the guys from Corazal for a direct bus and continued with the rest of us and showed us more crocodiles and iguanas. Right before I arrived, a swift move made my sunglasses to break and to fly into the river, an offer to the Maya river of the foreigners. We arrived at 4:00pm and I had a final chat with Tony, about his company and FlyingMonk and drank some great papaya juice till around 5:00pm. He had to catch a bus to Chetumal , Mexico and I wanted to shoot a litle more in Orange Walk, if it is something to be shot, and I went to the church and on some streets, getting lost somewhere on the back streets. I found eventually my way to the hotel and tried to post this blog in the hotel computer that yesterday did not want to collaborate. The trip was OK but the ruins of Lamanai after you saw Copan, Tikal and Caracol are disappointing. However the ride on the river was worth it, being different than Rio Dulce. I went to look for dinner in Caye Caulker Bar and Grill but I found out that it got closed a while ago, so I ended up at Lee’s Chinese restaurant, where I had a lobster ceviche and a beer. There are lots of Chinese restaurants in Orange Walk and when I asked the lady from my hotel, she said that this is a country where is easy to come. The population is very low, lots of land and opportunities. Belize is a very young country, just 26 year old and you can tell it. It has a melange of population, of blacks, Hispanics and many Asians. The language is English but the largest majority. more than 53%, is of Spanish-language descent, that entices you to address people in Spanish and not in English. They speak a very relative English and they speak Creole with less Spanish along the coast. There are blacks looking like in North America, and as a result there are several stores on the main road selling lots of white sneakers. It is a country that tries to base its economy on tourism, so they developed lots of eco-lodges and eco-resorts, but it is not so developed, the roads are terrible and it looks that many thins do not work right. Besides, you have a large black population that, as our guide mentioned today, is waiting for the government subsidies. As a result, the hard working Chinese are prospering, creating successful business and monopolizing, like here in Orange Walk , the restaurant business. The stores are held by several Indians. In spite of all these, the prices are very high, in restaurants and stores, everything being way more expensive than in Guatemala or Mexico, at lower quality levels. The trips are outrageously expensive for a country so poorly developed, being at par with similar trips in the USA or even more. The food is expensive, the prices for Chinese food in the Lee’s being higher or at least equal with prices in NY. And more than anything the country, as I encountered till now, is devoid of the vibrant spirit, Guatemala had. In Guatemala, the Maya culture is everywhere, ancient or contemporary. The women that are weaving, the markets, the village life is authentic and rooted in a tradition that did not fade in time and under various occupations. The Maya-Catholicism, so ingrained in the locals is another one of these traits. Everything in Guatemala is flamboyant and you don’t need tours because, the tours are part of the day to day life when you go to a large market. You have the feeling of a culture that is loomed inside a cocoon and no force can rip it apart. In Belize, is the opposite: The trips are the core of the day. Belize is famous for diving and people come here for this. The prices are outrageous but are OK as long as the services provided are fine. Yes, all the trips are exquisite and extremely informative, well done and professionally crafted, but the experience ends when you are dropped at your hotel. It is missing the immersion in the country’s culture and it looks more like a theme park. No interaction and even if you have it, you have the feeling that this population is here not because it belongs but because it happened to be here. So, if it were to compare, the proportion would be exactly the one from the time I spent in my trip 80-20% between Guatemala and Belize..

The today trip was more than a regular trip, but it was an experience that hardly you can match. After the breakfast at Hanna restaurant and the successful change of money in Belizean $, I finished my blogs and I left from St Ignatio, with all my luggage, with a minibus in the trip. The minibus stopped to a resort to pick up two other persons, and we left for 30 minutes of paved road, followed by another 30-45 minutes of dirt road on a derivation road from Teakettle Village. We arrived at the parking place for this trip and, we got prepared to leave in the hike that would bring us to the cave. I changed the group trying to return earlier because my plan was to catch a bus from the paved road to Belize City and from there another bus to Orange Walk, a city in the North. From the parking place you leave in a hike of about 45 minutes in the tropical forest, seeing all sorts of plants, some friendly and some not, crossing through the river three times and getting wet The dress code is bathing suit with a T shirt and sneakers or tight sandals. After 45 minutes we arrived at the entrance of the cave, and Orlando the guide prepared the helmets and the head lights to get inside. The entrance is done through a 12 feet deep pool that you have to swim across, a very shot swim of less than a minute. Inside the cave stalactites and stalagmites welcome you. This cave was, together with 10 other in the region, the place where the Mayas made human sacrifices and blood letting between 800-900AD, in a very dire period for their empire. The empire was obviously decaying and they tried this last resort to make the Gods have mercy and find a solution for the problems they encountered and that eventually brought their demise. At the entrance is a formation that resembles a Maya king. But what is the most interesting is the fact that you have to walk in this cave on the stream of a subterranean river, and you are most of the time in water to your knees, sometimes to your chest, but most of the time to your waist. We walked and scrambled the stones, and climbed subterranean waterfalls, for about one hour, meanwhile admiring the fantastic formation of limestone that the water shaped. Bats were occasionally wakened up by our foray and we kept walking in line inside the cave. If the water was too deep we could swim in the underground pools. This cave and many others represented for the Maya, the underworlds, or Xibalba. The roots of La Ceiba, their national tree, having the roots in this underworld and the branches holding the sky. After about 45 minutes of walking we took the shoes off and we put just some socks, and got up in the higher level caves where the rituals were practiced. Lots of old jars were scattered all around being marked by the archaeologist not to be touched. Fire pits could be seen where Maya were doing purifications. That could be done in two ways: either with the dripping water from the stalactite that was collected in these jars, a practice that I saw it also in Vietnam, or with smoke that was obtained by burning their own donated blood in ceremonies of blood letting. The blood was latter put on fire using also copal as incense for making smoke that was rising to the Gods for results. This ceremony was conducted by a shaman, a preserver of the Maya civilization. From the beginning of the upper floors you could see jars all over but the more you advanced you realized that there were jars all over. Most of them were broken because after the ceremony that was lasting 6-7 days all the vases were broken. Latter on , we advanced to the cathedral, that represents the 5^th level, pout of the 9 level of the Xibalba, But the counting was done: 4 levels going in, the 5^th and the same 4 levels going out, makes 9. The heaven had 13 levels in Maya tradition. The cathedral was majestic; a huge room full of broken or intact jars all over with remarkable sparky stalactites and columns. At the back of the cathedral was an altar where it was in the middle the symbol of corn that was used in the ceremonies and where the blood letting was done. Latter started to show up the skeletons. First a male, followed by other and finishing in the crypt shaped room of the cave, where it was the woman-shaman that is presumed that performed the rituals. Also, there could be found two skeletons of children, 8 and 12 months old. The archaeologists assume that the regular blood letting did not succeed and they started the sacrifices, to be sacrificed being the highest honor. The name of the cave is given from this space where the woman–shaman body was found. After we saw everything we started to return, getting off from the upper dry area, and after getting the shoes on, starting again the hike in the river back to the entrance where we swim again the pool. The cave has 3.5 miles but old artifacts were found only in the area we visited. In total we hikes in the water and inside about 0.5 miles and the entire tour was about 3 hours inside. The cave was discovered in the 80s and it was heavily searched by archaeologists, existing also a film made by Nat Geo about it. This is the reason that is visit able by people, but I think in no other place in the world you can walk and almost touch so old artifacts that are in situ in a cave. At the base camp, that was the old archaeological camp, we got somehow dry and we ate our lunches included in the trip. After that we started to hike back the 45 minutes walk we did before fording the water three times. At the parking I was moved to another minibus that dropped me at 3:30 at the crossing with the paved road to wait for the bus to Belize City. The bus came in 15 minutes and I got in and arrived in Belize City at 5:50pm for B$4. The Orange Walk bus was right near and I jumped into it and left right away, and it brought me in 1.5 hours for B$5 to Orange Walk. Here I got a room in Hotel Ackiniko, owned by some Chinese, that apparently have lots of businesses in this town and I tried to send an email from their email but it did not work. So I went quickly and I ate at Juanita , a local dive with good food, and tried email and blog again from another place.

I got my breakfast of banana shake and pancakes at Martha’s and I came to the agency at 7:15am, waiting for the bus at 7:30am. I played at the internet a little and I was on my way with a minibus to Caracol, the largest Maya site in Belize, famous for its observatory. There were 3 more people in the minibus, two Canadians from Alberta, Bruce and Jilliane, and a guy, Ed, from Raleigh, NC. The road to Caracol is extremely bad and very long. Because of this there were attacks on the road, form Guatemalan gangs coming over the border, at its nearest point, the road being at 8 miles to the border. And because Guatemala considers Belize part of it and they hate each others is no extradition treaty for criminals. Sergio, the driver and guide, told us many stories about the past attacks that happened about 2 years ago, escaping one of them by just by a hair. As a result the Belize officials took note and now from a security point where we had to stop, we traveled in convoy all the cars together, about 4 of them, followed by a car with two soldiers with guns. The road is beautiful, through pine trees, that unfortunately was attacked by a beetle infestation in 1998 and destroyed 60% of the trees that were standing only with their trunks in the air like after a big fire. After that we traveled more through tropical forest, stopping first in a village San Antonio, close to San Ignation and latter to the security point. Considering the time for picking up the other passengers and with all the stops the entire road took about 3 hours and we entered Caracol’s gate at 10:30am. Louis took us in a tour, explaining about plants and trees, the curative features of some of the plants we saw and about Maya, Caracol and demise of the civilization. Great stories! Caracol was a great center of power that was able to defeat and conquer Tikal and Naranjo around 600AD. It is the largest city in those times, and its population at its peak was probably 150000 people, double than the present population of Belize City. But was astounded us the most where the monumental buildings that do not have a par. There are one of the most impressive monuments I saw, especially Caana translated as the Sky Palace, the main palace, observatory, and administrative building. Caracol, that means snail in Spanish, is uncovered, like all the other sites in Mexico, and its plazas are spectacular. In spite of being the largest site , few mounds were cleaned and it has only 4 plazas to be visited. The most spectacular is the one that contains Caana, one of the most complex buildings, if not the most complex buildings I saw in Maya world. The Sky palace is located in a symmetrical square with buildings on both sides and a mound , partially excavated in front. The next square, that was also the most important is the one containing on one side the Palace of the Wooden lintels facing the famous observatory, the place were the priests were making decisions about the crops and such based on the lunar calendar. We climbed all on them, because here you can and saw many other places, in total about 4 complexes in about 2 hours. At 1:15 pm we were back at the entrance, had the lunch that the guides are bringing and took a stroll inside the museum. At 2:00 pm all the cars had to leave, escorted by the same police car with guns. So you cannot stay latter than 2:00pm. On the way back we stopped in two other locations. The first stop was at a magnificent cave that was formed on Rio Frio. The river passes inside this cave full of stalactites and smelling of bat dung. We stayed there 20 minutes and in ten more minutes we stopped again at the pools formed by Rio On, a flat area in the river where you can bath or just admire the river. We stayed there 45 minutes and we got into the water. At 5:15pm we arrived back to San Ignacio where I came directly here at the Internet provided by Pacz Tours, free with trip purchase and I wrote for 3 hours the past blogs. I bought my ticket for tomorrow trip to the ATM cave, an interesting experience and rated as the best thing that you can do in Belize. I tried to eat something after these long blogs but many of the restaurants were closed so I went again to Serendib, where I got a great spicy dish of shrimps. In the restaurant I bumped into Ed, who is a criminal lawyer in NC, with whom I chat about trips and let him go because he was catching a bus at 6:30 to Belize and latter a boat to Caye Caulker, but we planned to meet in the Caye.

The next morning I was waken up by some Norwegian girls in a nearby room that started to chat loudly, probably after some drinks around 2:00am. The bus came promptly at 3:30am and we were on our way to one of the greatest archaeological site, Tikal. The distance from Flores and Tikal is 62km and it takes the bus around 1 hour to get to the ruins in pitch dark. The sky was full of stars a great view from the top of the Tikal pyramids. There were several buses who came there and a lot of people. The guides carried flash lights on their foreheads and we started after some organization with a number of guides to the top of Templo 4 where we were supposed to wait and, mainly, listen the sounds of the jungle waking up. The walk in the forest was not so easy without flashlight, stumbling occasionally, and hearing howling monkeys that were defining their territory. We started to ascend of the pyramid and at 5:45 am we were all, close to 30-40 people on top of Templo 4 where we listened in silence till about 6:20 am the sounds of the jungle. This was an impressive moment. You could hear the howling monkeys, the birds and some other animals, all in the darkness that started to dispel. Unfortunately, inside the jungle you cannot see a sunrise. You may be barely able to see the next temple in front because of the morning mist. The guide, Louis, gave us some instructions and we started to explore the site at 7:00am. He showed us the howling monkeys, that he make them howl imitating them perfectly, a sound that first you think that is from a jaguar. Animal abound: howling monkeys, spider monkeys, all on top of the canopy of the trees, wild turkeys, toucans, parrots, ocomundi, and lots of other animals. Meanwhile Louis was bringing us to various monuments talking about Tikal that means in the local language “the place of sounds”, its history, its disappearance, etc. What is different in Tikal is that fact that only the temples were cleaned and its surroundings and squares. The rest was left as tropical forest and you walk its paths and admire the vegetation. This gives the site a mysterious air, very different from the naked places like Chichen Itza or Uxmal. But everything comes with a price. The major disadvantage of this is the fact that is not so easy to shoot and take pictures in Tikal. The tour lasted 3 hours till 10 am. Because Tikal is so big and it was so early you don’t have the feeling that it was swamped by tourists. We visited all the important monuments and finished in the Grand Plaza in front of the Temple of Jaguar and the temple of the Mask, the only area that was completely uncovered, plaza included. The place is majestic and what is missed in mystery gains in stupendous views of temple architecture. I climbed on temple of the mask and I shot lots of video and photos here where it was easier that inside the jungle. Tikal was a huge city and I was surprised the next day to find out that Caracol was even bigger. Probably in the peak time the population was way larger than is today on a surface of 237 square kilometers. All these cities and their temples together with their civilization went in demise around 900AD for reasons that are still speculated. Louis gave us each a ticket to stay and go when we please and told us that the first bus to Flores is at 11:00 am, followed by 12:30, 2, 3, 4 and 5pm. I started to walk around and take pictures, climbing inside the side palaces and decided to take the 2:00pm bus. I walked to the Northern complex, P, Q, and R and came back tired and soaked in sweat because it started to be very hot. Drank some juice and decided to go to the bus of 12:30 still undecided if to go so early and leave from such a great place like Tikal. The bus helped me because it left just before my eyes so I returned and I went to see temple 6, Templo de Los Inscriptiones, and another Palacio nearby, the last two things that I could not see in the morning from the ruins. For this you walk inside the tropical forest again and is a delight to look at the abundant vegetation. It is obvious that is no delight when you want to clean an area inside the forest……I picked up the 2:00pm bus, after I came earlier not to miss it again and I arrived at 3:00pm in Flores. I took some quick shots inside the town , grabbed my backpack from the hotel, waved a tuk-tuk who for Q5 brought me to the terminal. The night before I tried to find out how can I get by myself to Belize. There are only two direct buses at 5:00am and 7:30 am to Belize City for $20. Otherwise you can take a bus to Melchoir de Mena , at the border, walk over the border and take a bus till 5:30 pm or a taxi latter on. My minibus left at 3:40 pm and stopped in the market till 4:00pm when he left. He was driving like a maniac with 120km/hour the reason being that half the road closer to the boarder is gravel and there he was slowing down seriously. The next day I found out that this road is prone to armed robbery, a driver I spoke with being robbed 4 times on this road in 20 years, a rate that he thought that was reasonable. The bus dropped many passengers on the way, is the local bus, and arrived at the border at 6:00pm. He showed me where to go and when I got of I was assaulted by money changers, who would change money at the official rate $1=2Belize $, the Belize $ being pegged to the US$. I refuse to change and I walked over the bridge and into the Guatemala immigration office that again asked for the same Q10 with no receipt. I went further to the Belize border where I was greeted in English, Belize being till 1981 the colony of British Honduras. No problems at the border and no money to pay. Outside there were guys with taxis, that have posted rates in US$ and Bez$ and to San Ignatio is US$15 that I negotiated right away for $10 and I left with a Guatemalan guys who did not speak English. He did not have a receipt and he was very nice to go to a store to get one. We chatted about Belize and Guatemala and I found out that many people from Guatemala leave here if they can because you make more money, 1Bz$=Q3.5. We arrived in San Ignation very fast, the distance being 12 miles from the border and I went directly to a travel office to talk about the next day tours. There were no tours for Caracol, the largest Maya site in Belize, and the only option was the famous cave ATM, considered one of the most interesting trips in Belize. I asked also about transportation and it turned out that there are no direct buses from San Ignatio to Orange Walk, and buses from Belmopan to Dagriga that run all days for about 3 hours. I had to ponder over the options so I went to find a hotel, and I looked for Martha’s guesthouse that was full and I got a room across the street at Hi-Et guesthouse where a Canadian named Steve, living there, gave some tips for tours. I took a quick shower and went back in town to check the agencies and after some research I found an agency called Pacz tours, where I am now writing this blog, who told me that they will take me to ATM for $75 but do have Caracol either. I said that is fine but I want to see if I can get to go to Caracol, and I went again for a search and research, and when I came back empty handed they told me that a guy just came to go to Caracol and he was looking for me in town. The deal was done and I paid $80 for the trip for the next day, started to write the blog and went to eat at a Sri Lankan-Belize restaurant that was really very good. I did not want to walk latter on in the city because the trip to Tikal and the whole process to come over the border was extremely tiring. I was in Tikal, walking continuously in heat for 8 hours, and this not taking in consideration that I woke up at 3:00am and I did not have breakfast. Meanwhile I read the guide and seeing the difficulties I have with the transportation in Belize, less efficiently connected comparing with Guatemala, I decided that I will skip going to the South to Dangriga, to visit the Garifuma community, and stay in the North, in San Ignatio for two days, one day in Orange Walk and two days in Caye Caulker. Final decision,,,,that can be appealed.

The drive that I had to arrive by night in Rio Dulce the day before paid off and I was ready to go to the famous trip on the river that starts at 9:30 am, all the way to Livingston. I had my breakfast in the morning, a great fruit juice and some eggs and when I came back to pack a vicious pouring rain started. The sky was cloudy and it looked like I couldn’t go on the boat that is opened and it meant complete drenching. I waited for 15 minutes and talked with the host who told me that this was the way in the last 8-9 days that is called “Februar loco”, Crazy February. I went to Sonny who was also ready for the trip and when we kept pondering about it the rain stopped, so we decided to go and if it rains it rains. I went quickly to the Internet and also very quickly to the boat just to find out that it was leaving at 9:30am instead of 9:00am. I got the ticket RT for US$22 and it turned out that the collective boat was the only option of the day in spite of the fact that they say that exist many other tours. The problem in Guatemala is that many of the advertised tour options are depended on how many people want them and if there are not enough they go the default tour or no tour at all. We left at 9:30am with a very fast boat that was speeding like crazy. We stopped without landing at Castel San Felipe that is just a little upstream of Rio Dulce, old fort, latter prison and now attraction. We went down river and stopped in several interesting places, a coconut place, an island that was full of birds of various colors, egrets and such, and where we could see iguanas on top of the trees, and latter to a water lily pond that was so beautiful that we kept taking lots of photos and footage. The ride was extremely beautiful and you can see fishermen, other boats and lots of birds, pelicans included that fly with or around the boat. I had a great time with Sonny remembering Keith’s stories from the night before. The boat ride is one hour direct, going all the way to Livingston, a town on the coast of the Caribbean that is the only town in Guatemala that does not have road connection, only boats. There are two ports to the Caribbean , the second being Puerto Barrio, that has also road connection. With all the stops he did the ride to Livingston took 2.5 hours and we arrived there at12:00pm. We had time till 2:00 pm and we started to explore the small town, home to a population named Garifuma, black guys from Caribbean, descendants of runaway slaves from St Vincent. They looked very Caribbean, some tall and sturdy and a lot of them spoke English. They have a specific type of music, a sort of funk rock with African influences that unfortunately we could not listen because the bars are closed during the day. I walked with Sonny talking about photography and we arrived in 10 minutes of very slow walk to the other side of town on the beach of the Caribbean. The beached are different from Saint Martin, or such, there are dirty, house are very close to the water, houses of poor people that barely hold to themselves. The sand is black and the water can be OK but being close to the mouth of the river is looking a lot like the river, being slightly muddy and not the green we dreamed about. Sonny decided that he shot enough photos and he went to eat and I went a little more to some side streets where I saw fruit stores, typical of the area, and the music bars, looking slightly Jamaican. I went to have a beer with Sonny and the waiter gave us a tip, to go and see the place where they salt the fish. We found it close to the water, and the view was impressive because on long beds there was ton of fish that was salted and given as food for animals. Interesting and smelly place! It was 2:00pm and we left for the boat, that left not before having a chat with a guy from northern Italy. The boat ride was very rough because the pilot wanted to make it in one hour and go home,l so he was jumping waves and went extremely fast. No stomach issues but it were just rough and sometimes we had to stand because it was too much bouncing. It’s bouncy in here! On the boat Sonny started to talk with two women, from Minnesota. It turned out that they were mother and daughter, Denise and Danielle, Denise coming to Guatemala to visit and see her daughter who studied Spanish in Xela for 6 months. We chat with them all the way and helped them get to the bus station when the boat got in Rio Dulce. The boat arrived at 3:00pm and at the bus station I was told that is a bus primera classe that should come in ten minutes. I wanted to stay longer but the opportunity was too good, so I went to the hotel, said goodbye to Sonny and exchanged cards, and run to the bus stop where the bus already came. Q100 from Rio Dulce to Flores I paid right away and I got a front seat in a very comfy bus, not the regular crammed chicken bus seat. A German family was around me, and in the back Danielle with her mom. At one point the bus has a tire explosion on the back and we had to stop at one point to change the wheel. Considering the conditions of the roads in Guatemala I think that this is very common. But I was very surprised how fast they changed it considering that it was the inside wheel from the back, and I remembered the movie “Cars”. We left almost in 15 minutes and we talk about a huge Mercedes bus…..We stopped again right away to a check point where everybody is asked to get down and the bus is checked for fruits and vegetables, a precaution to preserve, El Peten safe of outside infestation. When we crossed the bridge at the entrance in Rio Dulce we crossed also in El Peten , the large Northern part of Guatemala that is jungle, or more precise tropical forest. The old spotty ferry that was crossing the river before the bridge existed represented the connection between civilization and jungle. Nowadays a beautiful bridge spans the river and the roads in El Peten are very good. We arrived in Flores/Santa Elena with no incidents at 6:45pm in about 3 hours from Rio Dulce, instead of the 5 hours that I was told. Flores is an island, connected by a 500 meters causeway, in Lake Peten-Itza, a place that was a Maya town, inhabited by people from Chichen Itza in Mexico, from long time ago. It was destroyed by the Spaniards and transformed in a Spanish colonial town. At the other end of the bridge is Santa Elena, a useful place but where is not so nice to stay. When you arrive you are aggressed by taxi drivers who want to give you a ride for Q5/person to Flores. I shared a taxi with Denise and Danielle and the driver started to ask us what we do the next day. The guy was useful and stopped us to San Juan agency where they had the tours for Tikal ruins. There are buses that leave at 5:00 and 6:00am and many others for Q60 RT but we opted to go in a very early tour that leaves Flores at 3:30am to see the waking up of the jungle. The tour is Q300 or $40 because there they decided to change the US$ for Q7 only. The driver dropped us at the hotel Posada de la Jungla, where for Q100 I got a nice room and the promise to be wakened up at 3:15am. Denise asked me if I wanted to have dinner with them, so I went to the phone that was very close planning to return latter for Internet and we went to Capitan Tortuga, a good restaurant on the shore of the lake, where we ordered two shrimp ceviche and a pasta and chatted about all sorts of things, including Garrison Keiler, till about 9:30pm. Denise and her husband have 6 kids and she works as software developer/project manager for a large corporation, and Danielle, is the fourth and when she finished school came in Xela to learn Spanish before she may begin to study medicine. It was already too late for Internet, considering that I would wake up at 3:00am so I gave up and went to bed.

The minibus came at 4:00am and Estella was up with the phone in hand to be sure that there are no surprises. The moment you left Antigua towards the east things change. First it is not cold at all and you start wearing very light clothing and sandals, the people are completely changed and there are no more traditional costumes. Everybody is dressed in pants and shirts and the men wear a white hat. Occasionally, you may see one or two Maya traditional costumes but so rare that they jump at you. And the buses are no more the regular chicken buses, but boring buses. It is not very hot because there are still mountains but for sure the pleasant temperature of the altiplano disappeared and is a steamier. In the bus I met an old lady from Canada who traveled by bus from Montreal to Guatemala. She was speaking Spanish well that she picked in Spanish schools in Guatemala. She told us over breakfast that she was robbed around Santiago de Atitlan when she decided to go out of the village and take a walk to another village. Also, she met a Belgian guy whose entire backpack with many important papers was stolen. This place is notorious for this time of crime and it is mentioned in all the books that YOU SHOULD NOT WALK BETWEEN THE VILLAGES AROUND LAGO ATITLAN. The minibus run very well and at 8:45 we were at the Honduras border. The passing of the border is just a formality, these countries together with San Salvador and Nicaragua, having a similar deal like in the EU, but it does not work as smoothly. We had to pay at the border a Q10 for the Guatemalans, no matter that it specifically says that you don’t have to pay anything and another $3 for entering this zone, no matter that we were already in it. I changed $20 for lempiras, the national currency at $1=L18. At 9:15 am we were already in Copan Ruinas Village, 12 km from the border, at the Officina of the minibus and after I spoke with everybody there, it was clear that is no transportation to Quiricua and anywhere else except the returning minibus or some local buses. This was disconcerting because if I did not leave from Copan in the same day, the next day would be a full travel day. In order to do something anywhere you need to be there one night in advance to book your tours otherwise you may end up spending the day in the city. The minibus driver asked me to speed up the visit, Copan being a small site, but very beautiful and to come back with him at 12:00 pm and to drop me at the crossing from there I could take a bus to Rio Dulce where I wanted to go. I said that I will try but I knew, that no matter how small it is the site, it is hard to cover it so quickly, and I was right. Copan is located about 15 minutes walk from the village and I got there at 9:45 and got a ticket for $15 only for the ruins, no tunnels or museum because of lack of time. I joined some groups in various languages to listen to the stories and in the same time I shot lots of video and photos. However this was not easy and fast and I finished my tour at 1:30pm, regretfully because I liked the place a lot. Copan is the most beautiful of the existing Maya ruins. There are lots of steles located on situ, some of them copies but most of them original and their craftsmanship is remarkable. They represent one of the kings who rules successfully Copan that at its peak had about 27000 people. It was deserted around 900 AD like all the other famous ruins. The archaeologists opened tunnels under the temples and underneath they found like in many other sites other smaller temples perfectly preserved. The main construction in the place is a remarkable staircase that has on its steps hieroglyphs that tell the story of Copan since the beginning. It is huge and it is like a book in stone. There were many groups, a lot of older people but also many young. In other places I saw small children in Baby Bjorn or carriages. I left the ruins at 1:30pm and I took a tuk-tuk to the village for $1 and there I took several shots in town square who was full of people, all men wearing the white hats. The place looked like a scene in one of the film with migrant workers. I took the first minibus that was leaving at 2:00pm to the border, that leaves when is full. I tried to find out about the connections and I got various responses but these are the facts: The minibus took me to the border, leaving every half hour or when is full, for L 20. If you go only to Copan they just take you the entry paper they gave you in the morning and you are ready to go. I asked the lady to give me some coins from Honduras and she was very nice to oblige with it. On the Guatemalan side was a bus waiting and leaving at 2:30pm, every half hour, that was going to Chiquimula, a larger city that arrived there in 1 hour and 15 minutes for Q20. From there I would have liked a direct bus to Puerto Barrio but this was only the next morning at 6:00am so I took at 4:00pm for Q7 and this one connects to an to Zacata that was supposed to arrive in half an hour. It was an accident on the road so we were delayed half an hour and we arrived in Zacata, I got right away a connecting minibus to Rio Hondo for Q5, the crossing with the eastern route that connects Guatemala City with Petén that arrived at the Cruces in 15 minutes. So at 5:15 pm I was on the road waiting for the bus to Rio Dulce that was supposed in 15 minutes. The 15 minutes transformed themselves in 1 hour and 30minutes, when like in the good old days two buses came, secunda classe with Fuente de Norte, the operator from the area. One of the issues you are concerned about when you travel in Guatemala is security by night. It was getting late and I knew that I would arrived after dark in Rio Dulce but when I asked the guy from the bus office he told me that Rio Dulce is “muy tranquilo” and he was perfectly right. This delay of the bus and later on the nice atmosphere in Rio Dulce convinced me to scrap to return to Quiricua ruins the next day and stay only in Rio Dulce. The bus finally left at 7:00pm and it was supposed to arrive at 9:30pm but it stopped on the way, being a bus going all the way to Flores for the people and the driver to eat. I had my dinner and after we left a pouring rain started, a typical rain for the Caribbean, a sign that we are closer. I arrived at 10pm in pouring rain and I started squabbling under various roofs not to get drenched. I saw a sign of a hotel but was nobody there, and when I had no clue how to find a hotel in that rain I saw a light very close to me coming from an outside bar. I went to the bar, named Sundog café and the atmosphere was in total contrast with the rain. When I got in coming from the rain the four guys around the bar cheered my entrance and followed a great time of stories of travel, with lots of laughing and some beers. The bar was kept by a guy Yuri from Amsterdam. Sonny was from Istambul and moved to the States about 10 years ago or more, first in Atlanta, further studying photography in Santa Barbara University and living for the last 8 years in LA. Now he got on a motor bike and started 2 months ago in a trip to Ushuaia and back that he assumes that it will take about 8 months. Keith was from Australia and in his 60s. According to another guy who was very funny he started to travel around the globe in 1993 and now is at his second tour. He said that he came from Honduras and I asked him when he got there, expecting something like two weeks ago. He answered straight that in 1998! He was in Honduras during hurricane Mitch and lost his boat, got another boat fixed it but sunk it also and now has another one. A lot of people come to Rio Dulce during hurricanes because that gulf and area is protected in case of storms and they can secure their boats. Keith was in Vietnam war and told some stories about using Lariam against mosquitoes. Apparently it makes as much damage to your liver to get preventive medicine as to contact malaria, a thing that I knew before. The stories continued a little after the other funny guy left with his wife and I left with Sonny to his hotel, that we found to be locked. During the time when he wanted to see how to get in, I was asked by a guy from the nearby hotel if I want a room, so I went to this place where I got a nice, cozy and clean room for Q75, waving to Sonny that we will meet the next morning. The rain continued all nice hitting the tin roof but I slept in the tranquil atmosphere of this pleasant town with no stop till 7:00am.

Today were no specific plans. One idea was to go to Guatemala City with a private car for a day. The cost is $30 but depending who you ask can go up to $100. I left in the morning the hotel I stayed because the previous night Senora Estella said that I can stay in her house. Because I did not like the hotel and also the fact that I wanted to be easier to be spotted by the Copan bus that picks you up from your place I took my stuff and moved 4 blocks away. First I did a tour to some of the agencies and to the phones. I took the breakfast with the family and a couple from Holland and Senora Estella advised me to go to Santa Catherina, where today being the first weekend after Ash Wednesday , an event that was completely unknown in Todos Santos, it is Valediction and tomorrow it is a Procession. I took a tuk-tuk for Q20 to Santa Catherina, where, in the church on the floor, I saw a design made out of all sorts of colors, very nice similar with a sand mandala, but with Christian theme and not so detailed. I spent little time there planning to return and go to Guatemala City, so I took the chicken bus and got quickly in Antigua and when I was coming to the hotel I saw Mercadio des Artesanias and this was the end of the day. I planned to do some shopping in Santa Elena market, near Flores, at the end of the trip in Guatemala, but now because I lost a day, there were few chances to do it. So I spent the entire day, visiting markets and stores that I found out to be absolutely beautiful, some of them exquisite, Also, I did not have time to look in any of them when I came first, but now I enjoyed a lot looking for the beautiful textiles and artifacts that they were selling. I was reasonable till now because I did not buy almost any things not to carry them. Besides, when you do this shopping tour you enter beautiful hotels made in old houses with courtyards with fountains in the middle and catalpa and many other flowers all around. It is absolutely charming this town and the best way is to move from one café from another and keep sipping all days smoothies. But it was not the case, because I wanted also to see some things I missed last time, one of them being Casa Popanea, that I found to be close till further notice, and another the ruined monastery of Las Capuchinas. All this took me the entire day. Less eventful and slightly more relaxing but still not too much because I kept going to take pictures in many places that I last time I missed. And there are so many other interesting places Antigua… In the end I went to the house where I stayed to drop the stuff I bought and returned to town and went to see Las Capuchinas and eat in Las Fuentes, a charming garden restaurant inside a patio surrounded by beautiful art studios and shops. I got a nice quesadilla with a Conga smoothie and when I left for home, thinking of buying a belt from Aguacatan, I stopped in a store in Casa de Cultura, right near the cathedral and I bought for a fraction of the price both the Aquacatan belt, a very rare and relatively expensive textile in Antigua and a poncho from Huelhua, or something like that. Guatemala is famous for its textiles that so as diverse as the number of the Maya communities that exist. Some are too garish for our taste but some are extremely exquisite and I found a store in Antigua called Nativo that has absolutely exquisite textiles. They are collection textiles and the price can often be Q10000 but for exquisite work, In the market things are from kitsch to OK but nothing as good. So the fact that I found this in a sort of market stall was surprising. So with all this flurry of shopping activities the plan to go to Guate for the day was scrapped completely. I went home to pack the shopping of the day and now my backpack is full. The next step is the extra plastic bag. I took my official ticket for Copan for 4 00am tomorrow and I left now to try and have dinner in Santo Domingo, a 5 star hotel done in an old ruined monastery, that it was recommended by the doctors that I met first time when I was in Antigua.

I left at 7 00 am to St Francisco el Alto with a local bus from the terminal. One hour for Q7 brings you to this village located up on the hill, from where probably got its name. The Friday market is considered the largest and the most authentic in the entire Guatemala. It is definitely the largest and you can tell it right away because you are absolutely crammed like never before. Rows of stalls are on each side and in the middle of the streets and the traffic jam is continuously. Obviously shooting with a tripod looks a little ridiculous in these conditions but I was able to squeeze some stable shots, using the tables of the stalls, or bags of corn and so on. The bus drops you kind of in the middle of the square from where you have to climb streets to go to the church and further on, on top of the hill where is the animal market. This market is extremely large. They sell everything, like in Vietnam and such, but unfortunately, no matter that there were women dressed in beautiful costumes, in the market there were mainly men dressed in jeans and with baseball caps, with T shirts that spelled I am proud to be an American…. On top of a store that was selling embroideries and posters there were hanging the three major hopes of the Guatemalans: one poster with Jesus, one poster with Mary and one poster with the American Flag. Here when you say that you come from the US you are perceived as an angel coming from Paradise, way different than in France. The market was in full swing and I was able to shoot lots of footage with the animals and close up to some interesting women. I left from there to go to the church and there were more streets full of stalls and when I arrived at the church, there were mainly the textiles that in this market were not great. I went to the church and bought one textile mainly because the woman kept coming after me and kept discounting it. I wanted to stay more in the vegetable market and I walked the entire range of stalls but it was so crowded that I gave up after about 2.5 hours of hassle. This was the last market and to sum up the experience I can tell that the best markets are the vegetable ones that are happening in streets with no stalls, or better like in Zunil, in an open space. For shooting these are real eye candy. The rest are OK but you have to work a lot and you do not get the same sense of color. From SF el Alto I was supposed to visit 3 more places. Totonicapan is at 30 minutes by chicken bus and from there to return to SF and go to other two places. I had to skip Toto because it was obviously, even for my senses late, and I went directly to San Andres de Xecul that has a yellow church painted with multicolor angles, a unique church like this all the others having white facades. I took a bus that brought me to Moreria in 15 minutes, right near Quatro Caminos and from there I took another bus for 10 minutes, 3km, to San Andres. The church looked very interesting but I did not have the feeling that the painter smoked too much as it says in Lonely Planet. It is for sure very different that the other and interesting both inside and outside and worth a detour. The buses from there leave every 15 minutes to Xela and I took one that brought me in 45 minutes to terminal Minerva and from there with a minibus to Parque Central. On the way, right before Xela, the bus was stopped by police who asked all the local men to get off the bus and show some ids. They got back in the bus without any incident. Obviously I did not make a reservation for getting back to Antigua because I did not know what hour I will be back. With all this transport and the roads being continuously revamped is hard to predict. So I went to the agency who told me that the bus they had for 2 pm is delayed and will come at 4 pm and in any case I have to connect with another bus in Los Encountros that is coming from San Cristobal , Mexico. Muy complicado! He advised me to go myself to Transporte Alamo, 15 minute of walking and get a bus there, primera classe at 2:30pm. It sounded better and I went ot my hotel, I got my backpack, passed quickly by the post office and walked the 15 minutes and arrived at the terminal for Alamo at 2:25pm, but I was able to get in the bus. I chatted the first part of the road with a couple from Norway and at 6:20pm we arrived in Chimaltenango, where me the Norway guys got off to get a chicken bus for Antigua because the bus was going to Guatemala City. The chicken buses for Antigua were so full that the second who came did not even stop a rare event in the bus business. The idea is to put as many people can fit regardless if the live or die of asphyxiation. They are many are come very often and we fit in the third bus and in 40 minutes we got to Antigua. Friday Night Antigua was in full swing, so I dropped my bag in the first hotel I saw, Posada de Dona Angelina, OK but not great by any standards and I left directly to the center to find travel agency to but my Copan ticket. But as I said Antigua was in full swing and businesses were closed. I was desperate, so I entered a food store in front of Iglesia de la Merced, to ask if they know any agency opened, and it happened that one the women from the store to work in an agency. She started to cal everybody and eventually found out that there were no seats. We tried to find a private car to bring me to Copan and the next day to Rio Dulce for $125 and amazingly nobody wanted to go, no matter that she tried many. A round trip to Copan on private car costs $100 leaving at 5:00am. After one hour, hungry and thirsty, I gave up and I made a reservation for the next day with a minibus, no matter that she charged way more that the regular service. I went to a restaurant near the Iglesia de la Merced, called Hector Castro, opened 4 months ago and kept by this guy who speaks fluently English and Spanish. It is absolutely great and I highly recommend it. After that I went to the Internet but I was so tired that I gave up and went for a good sleep.

I took the bus of 5 30 am from Todos Santos to Huehue. When I got in the bus I bumped again into Eva who also woke up early and took the same bus to Huehue to go early in the morning to La Messila at the Mexican border. We arrived in Huehue in two hours and said goodbye and bon voyage- me only for another week and she for another two months. The Xela bus connected quickly, in about 15 minutes. Meanwhile, I took several pictures of chicken buses that were abundant in Huehue terminal that is an important hub, trying to avoid a drunkard who was excited about my video camera. In about two hours I was in Quetzaltenango, Xela as is named by everybody, and I took a minibus from terminal Minerva to Parque Central. Here I started to look for hotels and it was not as easy as expected in Guatemala’s second city, but in the end I found a room, only for a day in a very nice colonial hotel, with a charming interior courtyard. They had to clean the room so I dropped my bag and I left to talk in tourist agencies to see how are things, in terms of local movement and movement away from here. It turned out, as expected, that is no direct bus to Copan, Honduras and you have to sleep in Antigua and go from there. I knew that and if you book it from here is way more expensive. Also, I got information about what can be seen around here, a thing that also I knew but I got an exact location of the places to visit, and this was very helpful to decide what to do.
So I went o have my desayuno at 11 30 am, and I studied the situation and it became very clear that I have to do the trips on my own because the organized trip they were not fitting my schedule, among other having time for lunch, I can not stand that, and having too many things to see in one day. In general I need more time for some places that is more to shoot, so I decided to go to the terminal and leave to the south of Xela with chicken buses. Luckily I forgot the tripod in the hotel, because I picked up the wrong minibus. The guys from the hotel directed me to the right place to take the bus, very close to the hotel, that dropped me in 15 minutes in Almolonga, a village famous for its vegetables that today was supposed to have a market. The market was not as big as expected but the people in the market were very interesting and I stayed there shooting for an hour. Meanwhile, a guy who saw me with the camera shooting, told me that he just came from Zunil, the village that I was supposed to go next, and that is a great vegetable market there. So I finished my shooting, I went to the church and I went to the bus and took a bus that was just leaving for Zunil and arrived there in 10 minutes. The guy was right. The market was in full swing and it was charming. The entire outside square was full with women dressed in traditional clothes, selling extraordinarily beautiful vegetables. I never knew that it exists, so nice and big organic vegetables! It was the best market I saw in this trip, just a veggie market, with nothing else and no tourists. I tried to get to some balconies, but all were private houses and nobody let me do it. Even without this point of view I shot tons of stuff from everywhere. I took a break going to the interior market and there was again a great show of veggie and people, everything colorful and nice. I left after an hour and I went to see the church, whose white ornate facade is very interesting. It has also a gilded altar and lots of icons that look very old. From the church I started in the search of Maximon, San Simon, that has here a place, being a protector of the locals. I found it and I spent there about one hour and assisted at two ceremonies that I was able to shoot almost completely. This is an old Maya tradition that in time became part of the CatholicMaya religion that is the local religion in Guatemala’s highlands. As I understood less and less people come to Maximon, who looks and is dressed like Michael Jackson! The ceremony is pagan, if this term means just non-Catholic, and it involves a lot of incensing, candles and lots of smoke that makes the video spectacular. I left Maximon just because it was 4 00pm and I still had to go to another place. I went in the square and I negotiated with a taxi to bring me to Fuentes Georgina. He charged me Q80- round trip, a higher price than normal but I was by myself so it was not too much of a choice. He had to make his money. Fuetes Georgina are some thermal springs, somewhere on top of Zunil about 9 km on the road. It is a very nice place and the two pools are a pleasure to be in. I did not have my bathing suit but I got in shortening my pants and the relaxing feeling you get is unequal. The water is hot, hotter that before, since a mudslide covered the fountains, renovated now, but opened another hot spring. Also, you can do a nice hike up the mountain in the jungle that is also nice and makes the entire trip worthwhile. The fountains were full of foreigners, Xela being also a major place for learning Spanish. I returned after one hour with the taxi guy who waited for me there, and I talked with him about a lot of things, practicing my Spanish that works excelente! The language spoken in Zunil is Quiche and is very different from the other languages from the area, Tzujil, Mam, from TS and Kachichel. He dropped me in the front of the church and I went to Cooperative Santa Ana, a woman cooperative for handicrafts where I found the beautiful bands the women from Zunil were wearing in the market and I bought some of the them. It was supposed to be a bus at 6 30pm from Zunil to Xela, the last one, but it did not show up and I was advised to go to the main road and wait, 10 minutes away. I did it and a bus just came, probably the 6 30 pm that was late, that brought me in 20 minutes in Xela and after a minibus ride I got to Parque Central where is my hotel. I went to eat and I picked a great place, that I highly recommend, The balcony of Enrique, a terrace that is overlooking the entire main square of the town, that is also Parque Central. Mexican pollo con cerveza and planning my trip for the next days because this efficient transportation from Todos Santos to Xela and the visits I did today saved me two days of the original plan. As a result, tomorrow I will go to the north of Xela, mainly to San Francisco Alto, where is a famous market and several other towns that have some interesting sites, hoping to be back in Xela at 2:00pm and take a bus to Antigua around 4 00pm. The rest, email, phone, blog and that’s it. It started to rain and it rained all night.

Waking up in Todos Santos when the sun shines and the clouds are clearing is like being in paradise. It is such a fresh beauty that mesmerizes you. In the morning I woke around 7:00 hearing the roosters and the cows but also the trucks with their powerful horns.The first thing was to go to the terrace on top oh the Hotel Mam, the name of the language spoke by the locals, to take pictures and quickly I went to the market to take advantage of the fantastic light.I shot lots of video in the plaza in front of the church and in the market. The plaza was full of military people, army and police and when I asked what´s about they said that nothing especially, they come and they go. And they vanished at one time. I understood that in Guatemala are 20000 national police and 30000 public police, so is customary to see around many important buildings, especially banks, a lot of armed men in a kind of uniform. This is reaaaal Guatemala, a country village where everybody is dressed in traditional clothes, men wearing some red pants with white stripes, with a typical shirt and a hat with blue band. Actually this is a important here because the men are those wearing mainly the traditional clothes. It is not too much work here and everybody sits and hangs out, so they are perfect target to be filmed. I went and I had my breakfast in a panaderia in front of the church watching the square. I started to chat with one local guy who told me that he was in the States, a trend that continued the entire day. Apparently everybody was in the States and will go again, with or without a visa, and surprisingly one of the most important subject for them are the American elections. All of them told me their stories, where they work and what and how they got there. One told me also the price, very expensive for a person in Guatemala: Q12000 to cross the Mexican border and $3000 for the American one. The last one I met during the day had a video camera and was shooting the village for a friend of his in Oakland. He said that he worked 2 years, and came back and are three families there together. He said he will go back in two years. He said that he spoke English, but we spoke Spanish still. Many of them speak a very basic English, because their interface in the States is only with Ladinos.When I came to the hotel I bumped into Eva who stayed also at Mam and we talked to meet in the market in 15 minutes. I went to the hotel to change some things, I asked again about phone and now at the internet was a smarter guy who said that he has phone and it was actually right behind (last night the girl said that you cannot call international…) and shot a little more in the market and went to the church. I talked with another gentleman about Maya tradition and looked a little at the mesa and when I got out I met Eva who was eating her breakfast at the same panaderia. I met before the Canadians in the market and they decided to go Sendero Madero, but it implies to take a bus for one hour, so I decided after we asked around to go to the tower on top of the hill from where is a beautiful view over the town. The walk is charming , among houses and fields that are worked by people. Like in the country you say Hi to everybody and you stop and chat with them or take a picture. People here don´t have a real problem to be filmed and some of them even ask for it. Still is good to ask first. Going up, at one point a girl of about 17-18 stopped and addressed us in perfect English with an impeccable Southern accent. I was so puzzled, especially by the accent and I asked her if she lived in the South. She said that she lived in the North, but when I asked here where she said that in Northern Alabama. He was great and very friendly and we chat a lot about her after we start again going up. We arrived on top of the hill, after a very strenuous 2 hours walk, but the clouds started to come in and the visibility decreased, but still was great. It became right away a little chilly and we started to go down and go to the village.On the way back we met again the girl from Alabama working a loom in a house balcony and I chat a lot with her. What was funny were her questions that were typical Southern, asking several times the same thing with that slow and wavy accent: did you enjoy, was hard, etc. Her parents came out meanwhile, and when I asked her if she will go back she said that she does not have papers and it´s over.The lover relationship with USA is very strong here. After that I found out from another villagers, I spoke with a lot, that she lived there for 10 years and did the entire school and his father was deported, so everybody waits for a change in the emigration law. Eva went to the hotel and I went to eat in the market, my regular meal of watermelon, and pineapple and after that a hotdog. Eva popped in the market and decided to go and buy some crafts from a store in Casa Familiar and I went to see Santiaga. Santiaga was working a loom surrounded by the entire family. We chat about an hour, about her house that will be different having private bath, something that no hotel in Todos Santos has, about the difficulties of construction, the work they just did, about Olivia, Daniela, the kids and of course the American election, Bush and the emigration law. We chat for about one hour and meanwhile it started to rain and it stopped. She send all the best and I left her after I took some pictures of her and her daughter and walked a little more in the village arriving at the cemetery, where among others tombs made all of cement, one was painted in the American flag and said USA on it. The person who was entombed was 23 and I don´t know if he was in Iraq or he wanted to cross the border in the desert. I left just after the blog to a conference in one of the Spanish schools, about the Guatemalans and USA. It was very interesting, a guy who studied in France presented. Meanwhile, talking during the day with so many locals, I got a pretty good idea and what he said just added details to the story. There are currently 10000 people from Todos Santos in the USA and 30000 in the city. Most ae illegal and can be deported. There are now 30 coyotes only in Todos Santos in comparison with 2 in 2000. The major problem is the lack of education, that like in any underdeveloped country is a privilege of the rich because you have to pay, in the peasants case more they make a month. The minimum salary is $90/month. Obviously when is any need of the Maya there are no money, however Guatemala built one of the most luxurious airports in the word , La Aurora, on which I landed. A lot of the people who go to the States prefer to stay there and not come back because off the intense corruption that exists in the country. After the talk that was till 7 00pm aI went to have dinner in a restaurant that I found on the main street. It is a restaurant for TS standards. I could not have a beer in TS in the restaurants for a reason that I did not understand, the occupation of the large part of the people being drinking. This was mentioned in the conference also, and is caused mainly by the lack of education. They go and worked their life in the US, come back, build a house and drink the rest. y 8 00pm I went back to the Spanish school to watch a movie and it was something about their radio station , the horse race for Dias de los Muertos and the elections. A very good documentary that touched again the same subjects as the conference. I saw there Olivia’a movies that are now mentioned in the Lonely Planet under Todos Santos. In school were also, a guy from England and one from the Czech Republic and a girl who sounded American by the accent. After the film was over I went to my room to read again the guide book and I decided to leave early to Xela the next morning.

The last two evenings in Pana I kept trying to get info about how to reach Todos Santos, and mainly long it Hill take and with what connections. It was impossible to get straight answers no matter that I tried in various agencies. The info that I got proved to be wrong an it was not a question of ill intention, but just the fact that they did not know. The only reliable info is still the info from Lonely Planet. So, not getting anywhere I gave up the idea to arrive in Todos Santos today and I resigned to the thought that I have to sleep in Huehue, with the idea to wake up at 5:30 am and catch the first bus. So in the morning I left at 7:00 to Solola, where it was today, Tuesday, one of the most authentic markets in the country. I left my luggage in Pana because it was no place to store it in Solola. I arrived in 20 minutes with the chicken bus and I started to walk the market. Indeed it is worth it. It is a fascinating local market, where the locals come and sells their wares and vegetables. It is a symphony of colors, everybody, men and women being dressed in colored huiplas in various designs. An advantage of this market is that is not a touristy affair, there are no handicrafts and in the morning there were only 4 Italians who were taking pictures. You could take picture till you run out of battery so many things are to shoot and photo. I sat down and watch the hassle and bustle of this amazing market, going from the veggie area to the wares, and clothing but coming back to the down-on-the-street vegetable area where the pictures were the best because there were no stalls. After I shot as usual too much I decided to leave earlier and take a chance to get to HueHue or even to Todos Santos. So I left the market at 9:30am and I took the first chicken bus to Pana, where I took my bag and went back to Calle Principal to get in a bus. They told me that is no direct bus to Los Encuntros so I took again a bus to Solola and when I got off this bus the driver attendant from the Los Encuentros took directly the bag and I left in no time to Contro as is called. Another 30 minutes and at 11:00 I reached the crossing. There it was supposed to exist, based on the info I got, direct buses to Huehuetenango. Wrong again! You have to take a bus to Quatro Caminos, 1 hour and 45 minutes away, now with the works caused by the road modernization. The bus, a Pullman, came in 5 minutes and I got in and got off in Quatro Caminos, and again the driver attendant from the bus in front that was going to Huehue, fetch my bag from the bus and put it in his bus and it left in 30 seconds. With such amazing efficiency and coordination, we left QC at 12:45 and arrived in Huehue at 2:30 , right for the Todos Santos bus, primera classe, meaning not chicken bus but a minibus, that was leaving at 2:45. The last bus to Todos Santos is at 3:45. The road to Todos Santos is paved most of the way. Only the last 45 minutes are of dirt road. All the way from Huehue till here the scenery is stupendously beautiful. These small minibuses are climbing the amazing steep mountains and you are continuously surrounded by peaks and look down in valleys that have villages. It is one of the most charming roads I saw and for sure is the best in Guatemala. I arrived here at 5:00pm after 7 bus rides. I just want to mention that the chicken buses are actually Ford trucks that have built in the back an enclosure with very basic benches. They are painted in garish colors and they are absolutely charming ….and hard to travel in them. But most often they are regular American School buses, still yellow and some of them having still the name of the school painted on the side. It even say on some of them School Bus on top. The difference is that the seats are way better when used in the USA…. I went to see Santiaga at Casa Familiar, a hotel that is in reconstruction, and took a room in Hotel Mam for Q30/night. The village is charming and I barely wait to explore it tomorrow, when by pure luck it happen to be the market day.When I returned from the Internet I bumped into an animated conversation in the kitchen of the hotel in Spanish. They were three foreigners, one couple from Canada, but the girl may not have spoken English, she was looking Portorican and a girl from Amsterdam. We chat all four of us a lot about markets, Guatemala and what can be done in Todos Santos. They knew about a hike that they wanted to do and it looks good but you have to take a bus also. Finally, I had to eat something because I was on fruit the entire day, but they ate already so I went wit the girl from Amsterdam, Eva to the nearby hotel Todos Santos. The restaurant, if it can be called this was was obviously empty but they cooked for us. We chat for an hour, in English this time. After she finished high school she started tio travel and went in Australia and New Zealand for 9 months. As a result she was speaking English perfectly, and very fast. She came back from Australia with a very strong that she worked to drop, and she did. She speaks Spanish fluently also. She studied Journalism for 4 years and now she travels for 6 months before she goes back to school. Now she is 4 months in her travel and tomorrow she will leave to cross the Mexico border and go in the night to San Cristobal de las Casas. I told her many of my travel stories and about my experience in San Cristobal in 1991. Great town! At 9:00pm we left and going in the market you see that everything is closed and the entire town went to bed. Good night at 9:00pm!

IMPORTANT: During this travel I met one person from Montreal who was robbed when she was walking between the villages around the lake. Also, she personally met another guy from Belgium, that was attacked and robbed doing the same hike. It is highly inadvisable to walk between the villages and is better to take a boat.

Lago Atitlan is a caldera of a volcano. This theory was established in 1980 but you may be able to tell it by the fact that is surrounded by cones, 3 of them. As a matter of fact roughly the entire Guatemala in this troubled area has lots of volcanoes and the result is many earthquakes. After allk the research done last night I took the classical tour on the lake that left at 8:30am. I woke up much earlier and I went to the lake that in the morning is extremely calm and pensive. It is a stretch of water of 5×11 miles and is surrounded by volcano peaks. It is so calm and peaceful that you may not think that is created by such turmoil. After a quick and large breakfast, with eggs and yogurt with fruits, I tried to find an agency to buy a ticket because last night I run late watching the game and the agencies closed at 9:00pm. Finally I found some guys in a hotel who opened earlier and I left to the dock, a kind of overstatement, and I got on Santa Fe boat that does this lake tour. Very few people were present at that hour considering that is another tour at 9:30 am for the same price Q75 that returns with the same boat at 3:30pm. The ride on the lake was mesmerizing in the crisp air of morning. You feel that you are in a very clean and far away territory, somewhere mystical like all the Maya traditions that surround you. I had a great chat with Patty from Chicago who was working for Jimmy Carter habitat for Humanity in Honduras for a while. The first stop was San Pedro de la Laguna, a pretty large town, where I went in the center to visit the church and the market. The church was interesting and it had a ramp instead of steps in front looking even more like a pyramid. The Maya are very diverse and the many tribes who fought among each others are still preserving their dress code, their traditions and way of life. It was not one Maya, but lots of tribes that formed this Maya World and here we find two of them, their names being very complicated to spell. In the market I had an incident because when I was shooting the camera fell together with the tripod, but luckily they are built pretty robust so nothing happened except that something insignificant cracked. From the market I went to the shore where there were lots of restaurants and yoga places. A lot of people stay here, being very cheap and spending weeks learning Spanish, the schools in Guatemala being famous for their efficiency and low price. I met so many Americans, mainly, who are here and apparently all who come here spend at least a week to learn Spanish. The result is that they want to practice the language and they try to speak Spanish with me. I am OK with that but most of the time, 1-2 weeks of Spanish tops does not help at all when you were not exposed to other languages.
At 11:00 we came to the boat and left for the second village, Santiago de Atitlan. This one is different, the local people being dressed in different embroideries and it has a church that had in the middle a hole that according to their tradition it has the entrance to the underworld. Statues of saints are dressed each year by the local women in new clothes and look very hip and Maya women are praying in the church. Close by is the statue of the God of the Lake, Maximon, whose story is extremely interesting and complicated. Is venerated everywhere in the highlands and another location dedicated to him is in Zunil. Maximon liked very much the women and he was castigated by God but was still venerated by the priests. The main result is that the offering he receives is in money, aguardiente and cigarettes. Nothing else! It is a wooden statue with a cigarette in his mouth. I got there after I asked some local people in the church. At the pier, when we arrived, local kids were running crazy to get you there asking for more money than the entire day trip on the lake, but the statue is very close, 3 blocks right when you leave the church. You still have to find it inside a house, of corrugated metal, in a cramped room that is full of candles and incense burning. But when you arrive there the atmosphere is overwhelming you, the place having a mystic like all the other Maya places. If you take picture you have to pay and for my video camera they asked a lot but as usual they cut the price in half and we got a deal. Maximon is not alone, but is constantly surrounded by two men who sustain him. I got out quickly and I run to catch the boat that was leaving at 1:00pm and to reach the third place and the last, St Antonio de Popolan. Meanwhile Patty stroke a discussion with another couple, also retired as far as I understood, on the boat who were going to Honduras where they own an island, and this was because some friends of them bought another island and it was fun! They were very nice and friendly people but I did not have a chance to talk with them. This village was simpler and the only interesting thing was the church and the Maya women dressed in embroidered blouses and men having some kind of skirts. We left from there at 3:00 and we arrived in Pana at 3:30pm. I went to the shore where I watched men collected sea weed that they use to feed the animals. Quite a show to see how they do it. I shot the entire procedure. After that I started my new research regarding how to get to Todos Santos and come back to Quetzaltenango till Thursday night, in order to be Friday to major market in ST Francisco de Alto. One over the other, transportation is sparse and you have to be very flexible or to have so much time that it does not matter. So, the bottom line is that either I have a 6:00am bus to San Cristobal de las Casas in Mexico that will drop me in Huehuetenango and take a 3 hour bus from there, or get a bus tomorrow directly to Huehue from Los Encuentros. I still don’t know how to do it, but tomorrow I will go in Solola for the market. This is a very famous market, one of the most authentic from the country, just one step behind the one in St Francisco de Alto. But the problem is what you do with your luggage when you visit a place where you do not stay overnight? If I could find a place to leave my large backpack in Solola, I would not need to return to Panajachel, but I could leave directly from Solola. I will figure out this mystery tomorrow. Before I closed the day activities I went to visit a museum tucked inside Hotel Posada de Don Rodrigo, a chain of 5 start hotels in Guatemala, very nice but the museum was useless. So, after that, I did my email, phones and got again a great ceviche de pescado from a different restaurant on Calle Santander.

The bus that I was advised to take was a regular bus but a Pullman. I was told to go at 6:30am in front of the McDonald , close to the market to a Panaderia. I went there and I asked and yes, the bus was coming there or nearby. I had my breakfast with Antigua Coffee and pane dulce and some meat pie and at 7:00 I went to the bus, paid Q36 and I was on my way to Los Encunetros. The bus ride took somewhere around 2 hours and they dropped me at the junction. This is actually what this place is. A connection of two main roads and everything is routed through this place. In the airplane industry it may be called a hub. Dropped was the word because all these buses are dropping their passengers and the luggage almost moving and they pointed me a local bus, nicknamed also the chicken bus because sometimes you may have other passengers except people, going to the market. The bus was full. This is an incomplete statement for anybody who traveled with this mode of transportation and this was just my perception. As a matter of fact, after I got on the bus other tens of people got in from different stations and somehow they sat down, sardines in a can. The ride took about half an hour and it was very intimate. We were 6 people on two seats that have a space between them but somehow we occupied the space also sitting on the benches. If you think that is not more space to throw a needle another person gets on the bus, and after the while the bus attendant starts to walk inside the bus to collect the money. He is very delft in this and in the same time he is constantly outside of the bus, in plain speed getting on top, and preparing the baggage that should be returned to the descending passengers. When they get down the bus almost stops and they get off catch the luggage and off we go again, the attendant being on top, or on one of the stairs, leaving one way and coming back the other way. It is a whole show to watch him. Meanwhile the driver is very relaxed on roads in hairpins, answering his cellphone and sustaining conversations. After the half an hour intimate ride I got in Chichicastenango, for the major event the Sunday market. There are two markets a week, Sunday and Thursday, both very active but this one has also the possibility to watch some religious events, and it happened. Chichi, as is called by everybody, is a magical town. It is a Maya town and this you can tell from everything. There are two churches, one in front of each other, that are only in name Catholic. The steps going to St Tomas, the main church look like the steps of the pyramids, and the atmosphere inside and on its entrance, reminded me of scenes from Jokhang Temple in Lhasa. In no other place, except Lhasa, I saw so much incense burning and the entire air being saturated with smoke from this incense. The atmosphere is magic. I spend a lot of time in front of the church, on its steps and inside, where unfortunately you are not allowed to take pictures, and this is not from commercial point of view. The church has plates in the middle of the nave where people come to put candles right on these plates on the ground. Besides them they put rose petals and pine tree pins. There are about 4 plates like these and is a continuous flow of Maya believers who come and pray or thank the Gods for what they achieved. It is mesmerizing and you cannot stop watching. This is true belief and the devotion you see around stays with you. After visiting the church I got out in the market that is right in front of its steps. Maya are coming from everywhere for this market and they come with chicken, pigs, wares, and vegetables among many others. They sell and buy and all are dressed in traditional clothing. After pounding the market, left and right, buying some textiles and having my lunch of fruits, as expected, melon, red and yellow, papaya, mango, and pine apple, I bumped into a building that was the inside market, where the show was magnificent. A flurry of activity with lots of buyers and sellers, a story only the video can tell. Getting out of the market I went to the church again where some petards were exploded. A mystical and interesting ceremony was taking place, with two important floats being taken out on its , now, cleared steps, and ported through the market to Iglesia De Calvario , that is in front. This was done by the Confradias, that are Maya associations that preserve the traditions among many other, but they are invited by the community to be part of it and in spite of the fact that it may cost them money to do it is accepted right away being very prestigious. As a matter of fact, the government has a mayor and a priest for the church, the first elected and the second appointed, but the locals elect a complete body of people that deal only with the indigenes. The locals, Maya, respect the authority imposed but they want to deal with its own elected authority. Petards, lots of incense burning, smoke and magic. They moved the floats to the other church and they performed a ritual, praying and dancing. I got to close with my shooting and I got a scold from one of the top guys so I had to go down and shot from a distance. They prayed to the four cardinal points and move the floats with their prayers and after that they started again to put petards to dispel the evil, and the evil formed from foreign tourist fled forced away by the noise. They danced with a large ball symbolizing probably the earth and when they were done they move back on the same way to the St Tomas church.
I returned with them and I went again in the church from where I took a guide to go to a hill nearby where is an idol, Pascual Abajo, venerated by the locals. He explained me lots of things that I already knew from the book, but he was nice and we chat going up the hill. We passed though Moreira that is a place that have masks used in festivities, Moreira being the combination of Maya with Spaniards. I wanted to buy some mask but I was already terrified to the amount I have to carry so I passed and we went to the idol, a nice 20 minutes walk in a pine tree forest. The idol is heavily used, it looks like a statue from Easter Island and here it got the name from. It was nobody there and he explained me lots of things related with colors and traditions. From the idol we went to the cemeterio, where the tombs of the Maya and the Catholic are separated and clearly distinct. The catholic being larger, with capellas and the Maya tomb being small but caring on top also the cross, a symbol that they were using well before the Catholics came with Columbus. I took pictures and I was lucky to see a ritual of some persons who were asking for good luck in business. Very interesting and eerie. One of the major issues that I had coming to Chichi was to figure out where to leave the backpack because I did not plan to get a hotel in town. In the morning, after I saw that the tourist office is closed on Sundays, I stopped at the Museo Colonial and I asked to leave it there. The custodian had his lucky day and he asked me for Q50 to do it. I was in a rush and I negotiated down to Q25, still astronomical but efficient, and now at 3:00pm I was supposed to go and pick it up because he was closing. I paid Alfredo, the guide, Q40 what we negotiated and I went to the museum where I picked the backpack and with such a heavy weight I just walked a little to look for some stuff near by. I tried to find a direct bus to Panacachel, the town on the shore of lake Atitlan, where I am now but I could not find and the only hope was the same famous chicken bus. It came after about 20 minutes wait and it was full to a level that even they considered reasonably full. So I stand in front near the driver not having the guts to get inside, no matter that still two guys were able to squeeze in somehow. I wanted to take a picture but I don’t know if the passengers have liked it. So I got back in Los Encuentros in half an hour from where I took an other chicken bus, this time empty to Solola, from where I took another bus to Pana, as Panajachel is known, total time 45 minutes. Calle Santander is the heart avenue of the town, full of hotels, restaurants, internet and international phones from where I made a quick call and posted the story from yesterday. After that I went to a travel agency to get info for the tomorrow tours on the lake and many others, like the bus to Xela, and followed by a delicious dinner of a generous cevice de pescado watching the end of the Superbowl and the Giants win.

Today was a tough day. It is possible to see Antigua in one day but how about in half a day. Los Nazarenos was nice but in the evening the water did not run. I don’t know why because in the morning was working with no problems. So I started to walk in the city at 7 30 and tried to see what can I do to visit Pacaya Volcano in the night. The owner of the hotel said that he preferred to go during the day because is clear and no clouds but in the night you can see the lava flow and is spectacular. So I preferred the night and I went into the centro and started to visit the market because it was the market day for Antigua. Interesting for the first market in Guatemala but if you were in other markets.
Lots of people coming to sell mainly vegetables and some other house wares. Aftre I gave it a tour I ended in the bus terminal that was right behind it. What a view to see all the chicken buses colored like is no tomorrow, a treat on the streets of the town. It is not a treat when you travel with them but about this latter. So I took lots of pictures of them, no chickens however.
From there I went to have breakfast and latter to visit the churches from the Northern part of the town. Convento and Iglesia de St Geronimo and La Recolection, both ruined like all the old churches of Antigua. The city was the glamorous capital of the Spanish territory of Guatemala and the Spaniards built lots of churches here. It is impressive to see these monuments completely ruined some of them being in existence for less than 50 years. In 1773 a strong earthquake destroyed the town and its buildings to such an extent that the Spanish kings decided to move the capital further away from the three volcanos that surround Antigua, and they used an old Maya settlement on the current Guatemala City, unfortunately not too far away from the earthquake area.
When you look at the impressive churches ruined and you see the huge walls looking towards the sky, you may have a glimpse of the power this extremely powerful corporation, the Catholic Church had in those days. And it last extremely influential even today, Quite a result of longevity for such an enterprise.
I could not enter the second church because I did not have quezales, and he did not want to get US$, so I went to the centro and after going and asking in different banks who had still long lines in front because of the payment day, I found one bank, suggested by a guy from the States who was living in Guatemala, where after a short wait I was able to exchange money. This problem solved I went to the agency and I bought a ticket for $8 for Pacaya in the afternoon leaving at 2:00pm and returning in the night. With this problem solved and three more hours to go , I started to visit the centre that I pounded the previous night, with its two palaces and the cathedral, and the remaining ruined churches: St Francisco, with its tomb of Hermano Pedro, the only saint recognized by the church from Guatemala, I stopped in Sky Café that I bumped into, the friendly owner brought me on the roof for pictures, to Santa Clara where Maya women wash laundry in some basins in front of the Church to Santo Domingo, converted in a 5 starts hotel and quickly I run to the hotel, to leave some stuff and to get warm clothes for the night on the volcano. I arrived at 1:50pm at the agency just to notice that they were closed and was no bus in site. After trying to ask what is going on, at 2:00pm I went to a nearby agency to ask and I was able to book quickly with them for only $5 and they brought me to the minibuses that were in front of the cathedral. Here everything that travels is full and the three minis were to the capacity, like in Vietnam or Laos. On the way to the volcano I chatted with a woman from Wisconsin who came here with Rotary club in a health mission similar with the one Peter from the plane mentioned. Apparently there are physicians and dentist coming here to help in a lot of humanitarian missions. The hike to the volcano is not so bad but tiring. You can get a horse that are parked in the same place where the buses stop and where you pay Q40 for the park entrance. The groups are very large, from 3 buses, and this is an advantage, because in the past there were robberies on the volcano but now apparently is tranquilo. It is heavy traffic on the volcano this being also a holy place for the Maya. A lot of people come in the night to see the lava flow, and we came down we met a lot who were just started to go up at 7:30pm.
The bus ride took somewhere around 1 hour and the walk took about 90 minutes with such a large and diverse group and we arrived to see the volcano and its petrified lava field. Seen from above it is spectacular but it looks like any other volcano, that has an unexploded cone. Is sending smoke every 20 minutes. We started to climb down to the lava field and we did not expect too much because from above you see some smoke but nothing else during the day and it was before sunset. But when we arrived deep on the lava field, we were up for a surprise because the viewing point is just several meters away from the lava flow that burns, cracks, smokes like a gigantic BBQ. As a result some Israeli guys brought some marshmallows to cook them in the volcano and they hooked them on the top of a walking stick, there were rented by kids at the base of the hike. Volcano marshmallows! I walked in various spots and the closest I got at around one meter away where it was, obviously, very hot. I took lots of photos and footage with the flowing and crackling lava, and it was very difficult for the guides to take us back. Eventually, we left and we stayed more on a point from where you could see, take picture and shoot , the origination of the lava flow that was coming down like a river. If you had enough time you have gone there, but walking on cinders from the volcano is not exactly a walk in the park and you have to be very attentive not to fall because the lava cuts you in no time.
We left and started to go down after the sunset and in the woods down became very dark and luckily some of the guys had flashlights. We took back the minibuses and during a ride I had a chat with Joe from Chicago, a student in medicine for Physician assistant, who was here with the same helping mission.
I arrived at 8:40pm and the surprise was waiting in the agency where I went to buy the bus ticket for to go next morning at 7 at Chichicastenago. The bus was full and at 9;00 all the agencies were closing and being Saturday everything was in party mood. I was at a loss because I had to leave to Chichi the next day to see the market and the cofradias so I went to the hotel to ask the girl for help. She was very nice and called several people and eventually, she told me what to do to take another bus, Pullman, at 7:00 that was going regular to Los Encuentros and changing from there with a chicken bus (local bus). She was so nice that I did not complain about the lack of water in the evening. I was not extremely happy but apparently I could go, so I went to have dinner in Sangre, a place that looks like the trendiest places in Soho or Las Vegas, with a very simple a very cool design, that I saw the previous day entering to see something else. The tuna was great but I was extremely tired after a very hectic day especially with all the problems with the agency that did not provide and the lack of ticket for the next day. Can I make it to Chichi the next morning?
I went to the internet place from the previous night, that I found to be closed on Saturday night, and I went to another one but I was so tired that I gave up and went to bed. This was a very tiring day with just a little food and a little water and running continuously. Not anymore!

Antigua! What a great city. Cobblestones streets. One story houses. Old buildings and ruined churches. A stroll on its streets is a treat for anybody. I arrived here after a bumpy flight caused by the storm from the NE and with several delays. All the flights in Charlotte, NC were delay and I was afraid that I may miss the baggage connection but the connection to Guatemala City was delayed more than an hour and everything went smooth. Except the bumps because there were clouds everywhere. In the plane I spoke with Peter , a physician from Kalamazzzo, MI who comes in Guatemala every year representing a Foundation that helps a local doctor to put some order in the health conditions of the indigenos from the villages of Lago Atitlan. Extremely interesting, because the efforts are amazing and most of the work done by the local doctor is voluntary because the patients are beyond the level of dirt poor. If they pay the visit, they pay $1 but even this is too much for most of them. And we talk health , is just about clean water, and toilets, etc. Peter will stay only there and like many other gringos is taking Spanish lessons in Xela but is not easy for native American speakers to catch the language. From the Guatemala City airport, La Aurora, very glitzy and in permanent construction, I shared a taxi with a couple from DC who wanted to go as fast as possible to climb tonight a volcano. The driver, Daniel, practiced seriously his English on us and spoke very nice about his country. We asked for several tips and we got them.
The road from Guatemala City to Antigua is about 45 km and it should be the same number of minutes but the traffic is intense and it took us about an hour to come intot Antigua, and he dropped us in front of Casa Cristina where the guys from DC had a reservation. I wanted to stay there but they did not have any rooms so I took a room in the nearby Los Nazarenios, a beautiful place, close to Iglesia de la Merced. I dropped my bag and left to the city to exchange money, quetzals, but today was a day of salary payments for Guatemalans so all the banks had such long lines in front like I did not see since the fall of Communism. Hundreds of people were lining up to get their payments and the result is that tonight a some of them were drunk. Luckily only few of them. I did not see in my life so many people lining up in all the banks in town, like the bank were going under. I gave up the idea of the bank and I tried an ATM but it said something and refused to give me money. But is no problem because obviously you can pay in US$. I walked the streets to get a sense of the town, that is not large is easily manageable in one day. When the evening came, I came back to Parque Central and I stopped to eat at Fonda de la Calle Real, where I tried the local dish, Pepiano Pollo, a sort of molle poblano but without mole and something else on top. Good. I tried also an interesting dessert whose name I forgot. In the night, after the restaurant close, 11pm on Saturday, the bars stay open till 1pm and the city is pretty alive, but I saw more young Guatemalans than gringos. During the days is gringotown. Everywhere you see foreigners and they of all the imaginable nationalities. It´s true that Antigua is a major destination and if you come to Guatemala you cannot miss it.
After dinner I got my fleece and I went for walk, in some shops selling souvenirs and artefacts, not as nice as I expected, and here I landed in this internet café. Good night!

This was my third visit to Bangkok and I decided to revisit the area around Rama I Road where I was last time in 1994.
After hanging out for a while on Khao Sarn Road and having a breakfast, I got a tuk-tuk that dropped me in the Pratunam market close to Baiyoke Hotel for 100B, quite a lot but I did not have the energy or the time to haggle. I gave him $3 that was roughly what he asked for and I found myself near the tallest building in Thailand.
I checked the market that was selling mainly for locals and I went on the streets and alleys nearby that are like a bazaar, lots of stalls selling tons of clothes mainly foreign brands counterfeit or possibly extra stock. I went back and forth, doing some shopping and I walked up latter to Ratchadumri Avenue where is a grand mall, Central World Plaza, adorned with huge pictures of Mr. Bean right in front of a Ganesh shrine where lots of people come to pray in a continuous flow. I wanted to see and shoot a little in the grand hotels, and first I went to Bai Yoke Hotel, the tallest building in Thailand, that has a restaurant on its 84th floor, but the time of the day was wrong and I planned to come latter in the evening, a thing that did not happen. Latter I walked on to the Grand Hyatt and further to the old Hilton, bought recently by Raffles, that has an interesting “linga” fertility shrine on its grounds. Obviously, when you are in that area you cannot leave without doing some shopping so I bought lots of gifts from the streets stalls, maybe too much.
I walked on Rama I Road and took the metro to Oriental and Shangri La, where I hang out in their restaurant and lobbies to cool from the outside heat and after a short walk in the area I took the boat on Chao Phra, a ride that I always enjoyed that brought me to a restaurant on the river’s shore, close to the main temple area, a place where I spent some hours every time when I was in Bangkok, where I enjoyed the sunset with a cold bottle of Singha beer.
The clock was ticking and I had lots of things to do back on Khao Sarn Road so I had to start going but on the way I passed through Sarang Luang, that was full of people running kites in the sky, a famous pass time in Asia, in a show of carefree living and enjoyment that hardly you can see in the West. I watched it mesmerized for a while, flying kites with the palaces and temples lit on the background and reluctantly I had to rush to pack and make the final arrangements for departure. This was a smart move, because there were many things to prepare and last minute purchases and, I found out in shock that the ride to the newly built airport, that I did not know about, takes now 90 minutes. So instead of 10pm I had to leave the city at 9pm and I rushed through everything I had to do, skipping dinner and most of the last moment shopping but still I went to buy a new Paul Auster book for the 18 hours direct flight to NY. The hourly airport minibus from Khao Sarn Road drove very fast at 100-120km/hour on the newly built and glitzy highway that connects the city to the airport and we arrived at the airport in 50 minutes due to lack of traffic at that time of the night.
The airport was packed like I never saw before. The line to the Thai check-in was as long as the size of the terminal and I was really lucky that I came one hour earlier because I had to wait more than one hour to do the check-in, that trickled down to a huge line for passport check and a last one for security, at the gate. So, no matter that I left Khao Sarn Road at 9pm I was able to enter the plane at 12:15am and all this time I kept waiting in lines……At the check-in, being obsessed by the long flight, I asked for a door seat and, by miracle, I was able to get one and this saved the day for two reason: first I got a great seat to stretch my legs and second I got a very pleasant travel partner in Tasha with whom I chat a considerable part of the flight. After dinner with a little wine and a shot of scotch, the previous sleepless night on the bus from Vientiane kicked in and I was able to sleep for 8 straight hours being awaken by the steward who was bringing breakfast.
Tasha was coming from Bali, another 4 hours flight, and was going to Boston, another 1.5 hours with some 4 hours layover in NY. Quite a journey! She is a jewelry designer her work being shown and sold in her mom’s gallery in Ipswich, MA and she works as a bartender in Boston to make some money trying to find her pace and sense in life. We had a great conversation and the time passed like they were just 3-4 hours. Thanks Tasha for the great time we had in this flight! I watched the movie “The Queen” that was great and soon they announced that we are landing on JFK where the temperature was 37F and we were still in sandals and silk pants…..Wake up. The dream is over. Back to reality!
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It is said about Vientiane that it may be the most peaceful capital in the world. The streets are calm, the traffic is limited and lazy and is hot. The dinner I had at Cote d’Azur was great with soup of fish cooked provencal by made out of dried fish and some kind of beef flambee, very tasty. I walked latter on the streets and I got to see the new hotel, Don Chan Palace, built with Malaysian contribution, the only tall building, besides the stupas, that exists in Vientiane. It is located off center, on the Mekong but inside it looks “Chinese luxurious”, meaning kind of bland and with no traits. Just a lobby with nothing, so different from the hotels built by Europeans and Americans architects. I left the hotel and went to take a walk on the Mekong, not a good move because is dark, so after a while I met some guards with a gun who asked me to go back because it is dark and it may be a little dangerous , no matter that in Vientiane crime is almost non existent. So I walked back and continued to walk to the hotel on the main promenade, towards my hotel that was closing the doors at 11:30pm. When I booked they did not have single rooms and I asked for a double room with bathroom, so they looked suspicious and they told me that the hotel closes at 11:30pm and …. no visitors. Laos, like most of the countries in SE Asia, is a major destination for sex-tourism and after dark, like In Thailand or Vietnam, the street is populated by a different crowd that congregate around the guest houses and hotels frequented by foreigners. During the evening I was trying to book a train to BKK for the next day but the offices were closed. I was convinced that is no problem to find a berth and I was wrong because the next morning when I started more convinced to do it, there were no more AC berths available, just with fans. I hesitated and latter on when I checked there were none left, the entire train being booked including first class. So I bought a bus ticket, that had some advantages, one of them was that brings you directly to Kao Sarn Road so I did not have to schlep my luggage from the train station.
In the morning trying to find seats on the train, I got to a guest house where I tried to make a booking. One guy who was at the reception asked me where I want to go and I said that I will go with a tuk-tuk directly to Pha That, that is a stupa famous in Laos, the symbol of the country that is also on the national flag. He said that he will go with me for free on his motorbike because he is a student in English and wants to practice the language. So, still waiting for an answer for the tickets, we left and visited the stupa located in the northern part of the town. Very interesting and beautiful, the stupa was full with people from Thailand who came in a weekend visit to Vientiane. I shot some video and I noticed a blemish that I did not notice before on the filter. After I figured out how to clean my viewfinder I noticed that the blemish is still there so I had to replace the filter with the UV one and shoot again. We visited also the two temples nearby and we left to their Arch located in a park close by, that is the symbol of the city. I climbed in the arch for a great view of the city, that as I assumed is flat with no tall buildings. After this visit we left back to the guesthouse fwhere he dropped me and left to school and I continued to investigate for my ticket. In the end not finding anything I bought from my guesthouse a bus ticket, that also had the advantage that instead of 15:00 they were picking me up at 17:00, extending my time in Vientiane for 2 more hours. I started around 11:00 the tour of the city, that is small enough in terms of attractions to be covered in 4-6 hours. I went to the market and I had some great shakes, looking through the overpriced items sold there. In Laos the asked prices are much higher than in the other countries in Asia, and you have to bargain hard to get to the real price. I bought another milk shake and I went to visit two importnmat wats, Wat Phre Kaw and Wat Si Saket. the first housing now a museum of religious objects and the other is the oldest wat in Vientiane. Most of the wats in Vientiane were destroyed in various wars in the 19th centuries and rebuilt in the 20th century, sometimes in a different style than the original. From there I continued to see an old stupa and several other temples, chatting with the monks that are kids getting their education in the wats, this being for many of them, country boys, the only way they can afford. All of them study English hoping to become guides and they want to practice, so they come to you to talk in English, asking mainly the same questions, where are you from, how many days in Laos, etc. I chatted with them everytime the possibility came by. Following my way to the other temples, that more or less look and feel the same, most of the having the “sim”, main building, built in Siamese style, I passed by a handicraft store where I purchased on the spot a great hmong wedding jewelry. Great stuff that I could not find anywhere else! I got another shake to cool off the heat, it was very hot in Vientiane, and continued my tour and at 4:30pm I went to the hotel to change, pack and be ready for the bus. The minibus came at 5:00pm and picked me up and several others to the border, where we exited Laos and got in the no main land. We left our luggage in the bus that is a two tiered one with super AC and reclining seats and we waited one hour tlll 7:00pm for the bus to leave. I chatted with a German student from Mainz and two Japanese sisters from Okinawa, one of them impressed me a lot because she spoke English extremely well with the high school vocabulary all the kids in America have. I asked her if she studied in the States and she said that she studied one year in high school. The kids are like sponges and they absorb right away. She was not perfectly fluent but she had an American accent and ALL the expressions of kinds in school: “amazing”, “actually”, and a lot of “like”s. The funny thing is that the German student was speaking in the same way without ever being in the States. He got it from movies I guess, but obviously the attraction of America is fascinating among young generation.
We left at 7:00pm and we stopped in Udon Thani that is the border to Thailand, we crossed after a passport check, got on the bus and stopped again after 15 minutes in a place on the shore of Mekong where they fed us, some veggie rice. I chatted with a girl from Vancouver who was on a long journey like most of the people here, going now for the wrap up to Pukhet and with one middle aged Italian from the Po delta who was traveling also for a long time, telling me that he suspended his job for 4 years (!) in order to travel. After that the bus stopped only at 12:30, a classical stop for all the buses for the driver and the assistants to eat. This is not great because they wake you up and is hard to get asleep after that. The ride was great, the entire way on highway of several lanes where the buses are driving very fast. The bus was very good, (yes, we are finally in Thailand), and we arrived in Khao Sarn Road at 4:30am, much earlier that planned. The street just started to wake up, only the girls and the other “girls”, the boys, where pondering it looking for late customers. I left my luggage at a hotel, shaved, washed, got a quick fix with a watermelon and I am ready to go for a day in Bangkok. My flight is tonight at 12:35 am

Vang Vieng is quite of a place. It is populated with young backpackers and is surrounded by karst peaks with tons of caves inside. Also, the river that crosses it represents its major attraction for water sports and the mountains are enticing for biking and rock climbing. It is an outdoor sports place like Moab, UT or similar. Meanwhile, the place is full of guest houses that charge ridiculously cheap prices, around $5/night, and is full of restaurants that have these style table-beds with pillows like in Dahab, Egypt, with the difference that the pillows are not directly on the ground/sand, but on these elevated beds like in the chaikhanas of the Middle East. So all the “falangs”, foreigners, and locals are stretching their bones on these beds, eating on a small table in front of them and watching a large TV that is playing mainly “Friends” or soccer. I knew about all this but I said that is worth seeing to believe it!
Most of the backpackers are hanging out there for many reason one being the cheap accommodation and food, the great crepes on the street very popular in the night and lots of sport activities , that make many of them to stay for at last a week in Vang Vieng.
In the morning after I had my breakfast of eggs and coffee, I started to explore the places around and what better way to do it than by bike. So, I rented a bike for $1 and I went to see a cave on the other side of the river Nam Song. The cave was interesting but no big deal, but the beauty was the nature around, with the beautiful river and the karst peaks that were magnificent. I biked around, in the forest on small paths where the legends says that the entire area is populated by spirits, and I came back in town, going again on the other side to see a beautiful guest house a German woman on the way mentioned it to me. The guest house named Maylin, held by an Aussie I guess, is charming with adorable gardens and cottages on stilts and everybody living there were like living in paradise. It was funny that I got to talk with two Irish. She was laying in a hammock and was so sorry that she had to leave because the whole setting was marvelous. She kept saying that she is very sorry and very sorry, but she has to be in BKK by tomorrow. I consolated her telling that I have to go to work myself and I asked her where she has to go from BKK, expecting something like Dublin, but she said that she has to go to ………..Sri Lanka. I felt her pain into my soul! What a trade off: Vang Vieng to Sri Lanka. I said good bye to them and planned that we will meet at the bus stop because they were taking the same 1:30pm VIP bus to Vientiane. Meanwhile I talked in the guest house with a couple from Vancouver who were already traveling for about 4 months, 3 in Vietnam and they were going for an entire year.
From Maylin guest house I went directly to the bus station to buy my ticket and when I arrived the guy from the booth asked me if I want to go with the local bus at 12:30pm for only 25000. The price was irrelevant but because I had nothing special planned, I went back and dropped the bike and took my luggage and I made it in time for the 12:30 local, on a bus in a very bad shape (where I met the Irish couple) but it did the trick and reached Vientiane in exactly four hours, at 4:30pm. The ride was good, with all the windows open for fresh and non-AC air. A tuk-tuk brought me for 15000 kips to the Mekong promenade and after choosing between two guest houses I ended up in Joe’s Guest house where I have AC and I am right on the Mekong for $14, quite expensive for Vientiane standards. I walked a little and found all sorts of Internet places and overseas call centers and I plan to eat tonight at Cote d’Azur, a French restaurant and after that, to have a beer on the Mekong.

After I finished my blog I left to my guest house, Hoxieng, to drop the bike and pick up my Romanian passport that I left it as guarantee. The guy was astound when he saw the passport because he never heard about Romania and now he saw somebody from there. But before I was able to reach home I bumped into Hunter in the market and we started chatting. He told me to go to the agency because the guy was concerned that I did not show up today to pay so he did not know if I will come with them the next day. He told me a little about himself, studied System engineering, that is applied math for solving engineering problems and he worked in MA for a defense contractor till last year when he left for Thailand, where he liked it a lot and decided to try to live and work there, so he posted his resume on a website in BKK. A high-school in Phisanoulok found it, called him for a math teacher position, interviewed him and offered the position at the interview. He was the only applicant and they offered him around $900/month a large salary for teaching in Thailand. The job was easy because the expectations are very low, just to be presentable and to be able to get along with the other people, so they liked him and they wanted to raise his salary and offered him another year to teach, but he decided to return in the States where he wants to teach math so, after his return, he will apply for the certification and start teaching math in high school. He found his way in life in Thailand!
We kept chatting about my own family connection with math and I had to leave him to solve my immediate and non-math problems, in any case we would have met next morning for the trip. I went to the agency, I paid and I dropped the bike and eventually I took the passport latter in the evening, because the guy was not there, and I left to visit the night market for the last shoppings, that are always a lot and the result was that I filled up the new backpack I bought in Vietnam with things from the market….
I went to sleep at 11pm and next morning, the host started to knock in a door and woke me up around 5am but I did not get down from bed till 6:15am when I went to see again the monks, but just the ones coming near my guest house. I packed and I went for a coffee that was good this time at Joma, reading the paper to see what is still going on with the hazy air that was settled over the city and country in the last days, caused by the fact that the peasants are burning the rice fields to clear them for the new plantation. The haze is terrible and it is also over Chiang Mai in Thailand causing a number of people to check into the hospital and obliging the Thai government to spray water from the planes to try to clear it. I paid the guesthouse and I asked them for an extra receipt, and I got both stamped by the travel agent, and they give me some water and bananas to have it on the way. The van was in front and the driver loaded my luggage and we went to pick up Hunter and Dana from their guesthouse and at around 8:15am we left towards Phonsavanh, the capital of the province Xieng Hoang the place where is located the Plain of Jars. The trip was more than awful because was on a continuos winding road the same way as the one when we crossed from Meteora to Metsovo, the only road where as a driver I got nauseous. But this road was not one hour like the other one, but 7 hours and continuosly winding. We stopped several times to get air and all three of us were kind of nauseuos. Each time I had to stretch on the car bench to calm my stomach but in the end none of us threw up. At least this! Obviously that the landscape was beautiful, we continuously crossed mountains, the country being very mountainneous. Winding road with lots of hair pins going up and down for almost 7 hours! And if this would not have been enough, on the way Hunter mentioned to us that the road between Luang Prabang and Vang Vieng was listed in February 2007 on US State Department Advisory list as a no-go destination for Americans. There were attacks on buses that happened in the past and the road was listed as unsafe. The Hmongs conducted a guerilla war against the government forces that lasted since 1975 till 2004 when they gave back the guns but in situations like this, many guns still remain available used by wrong doers. These guys were coming from the mountains and attacked villages and buses but the book said that these incidents did not happen for a long time. Still on the way, in each village we saw at least one person carring an AK47 but when we asked everybody told us that they were government soldiers guarding the village and we should not worry because the road is very safe… Finally at around 2:15 pm the road got to be in a lower plain and we arrived in the nondescript town of Phonsavanh at 3:15pm. I got a room for 70000 kips at “Nice Guest House” and we went for lunch of sweet and sour fish and rice. After lunch the sun was towards sunset so we went for a walk in the market that was full of unknown products and we tried some of them. Hunter has a passion for languages and he learned German and studied some Arabic and in Thailand learned Thai so he was able to talk with people here in Lao, the languages being very close to Thai. He knew a lot about the world, traveled in Eastern Europe also and he impressed me by the fact that he knew that my name is Romanian. Dana grew up in a farm in CT and he was a horse trainer. He went to the university on a scholarship for polo, a sport she told me many things about, and she worked in Hawai as a polo player and horse trainer. Now she wanted to play polo just for fun, staying away of the glitzy crowd that populates this game, and to work more to train horses . I lost them in the market and when I finished my visit I started walking the main street but it was nothing to see, just a beautiful sunset, so I sat in a restaurant to have a beer and read my book. The restaurant named symbolic “Craters” is located near the MAG office, that is the office sponsored mainly by New Zeeland to do demination here, the main danger in a region that is littered with mines and UXO, all sorts of detonable devices from the American war and also from the war between the Vietnamese and Royal Lao Forces. The area was bombed to oblivion by the US because the Vietnamese setlled here and they were running the front from this area, so the number of sorties was extremely high to the point that the capital Mueng Sai was completely obliterated and after the war was over, they had to move the capital of the province in Phonsavanh, because there were no buldings left standing in the old capital. MAG did the demination of the main sites in the Plain de Jars and the sites can be visited since 1990 but still you have to walk only on marked path, being a slight possibility to still exist undetonated explosives. The number of bombs that were thrown from planes was so large that their cases are used for decoration in town, “Craters” having four tall cases standing in front of the restaurant and there are many more in Bomb Cafe and other. You can see all sort of bomb cases, both from aluminum and steel, the ones from aluminum used to make pans and pots by the villagers. I had my book and beer till 9 00pm and I went to the hotel earlier for a shower and a good sleep but unfortunately I was awaken latter by some noisy guests.

Next morning I woke up at 6:00 am I packed and I went outside in a nice sunrise for a quick walk and breakfast. I met Hunter and Dana and at 8:00 am the driver came to pick us up in the hotel. I went to the bus station to buy a ticket for tonight bus, (VIP bus at 7:00pm – 6 hours to VV , local bus at 4:00pm – 7 hours to VV) and I noticed that the price dropped considerably at the bus station compared with what I spoke with people in the city! No surprise! From there we left for Plain of Jars, an area that has a lot of jars, huge stones sculpted inside used probably for storage, but about which nobody knows anything when or by whom were built. It is a megalithic mystery of Laos, the only place where these Jars/stone exists. There are several legends, each minority having his own, but the bottom line is that nobody has a clue. There are about 60 sites in the area with jars like this but only 3 are visitable being demined. The bombs thrown from the American bombers left many craters and destroyed many of jars in the area named in the war, PDJ, a French acronym for Plain de Jars. We met or guide, Mr. Yeung who joined us latter on, and we visited Sites 1,2 and 3, all being relative close to one another but still you have to go by car. What is interesting is the large concentration in each of these sites and nothing in between. The supposition is that the jars were used by the villages for storing various things, including people , alive as jail or dead as in a cemetery. Some jars have lids but very few still remain. Mr. Yeung gave us all sorts of stories and we visited also a cave used by the Vietnamese army as a hospital. Some jars were short but several were as tall as the height of a person. The whole visit was short, maybe about 2-3 hours and it proves that it can be done in one long day RT from either Luang Prabang or Vang Vieng but the agencies want to do it in no less than three days. Because we still have lots of time on our hands we went to visit a destroyed Russian tank and the old capital, the obliterated city of Mueng Sei. The only 3 things that remained standing was the old French Office, the old temple dating from the 16th century and an old stupa. All three are kept as they were with no renovation, a relic of the bombardments. We visited all three and we went back to Phonsavanh. On the way back, realizing that we have a lot of time left in the day, we decided to change gears so Hunter and Dana asked to be driven that day to Eastern Laos, instead of the next day, an me , after a short stint at the Internet Cafe to complete my story I picked up a tuk-tuk for $1 and I went to the bus station where I changed my ticket for a local bus at 4:00pm, and they even gave me 10000 kips back. The other local bus in the morning at 9:30am did not leave because of lack of passengers. Because I felt so nauseous the other day when we came by minibus I was horrified by the prospective to take again the same road, even for only half of it. So I did not eat and drink anything all day, except some fruit in the morning. I had a bottle of water with me and that’s it and I kept pondering if the VIP bus from 7:00pm would be better that the local, that has small seats and no AC. But to my surprise the ride to Vang Vieng was very smooth with no problems and no nauseous feelings. I understood once again that these minibuses, that are great because they pick you up at the hotel, are a pain because they drive faster and you are less comfortable in them. After a good part of the way with the local bus when I saw that I feel perfect I ate a sandwich and bananas and drank some water. I chat with two Dutch girls from Rotterdam who were traveling for 3-4 months and they plan to visit so much in SE Asia that even I thought that is a little exaggerate. We talked a lot about Burma where they wanted to go but they were reluctant. The VIP and the local bus takes the same 6-7 hours to Vang Vieng and I reached Vang Vieng at 10:30 pm, the bus station being on a long Airstrip built by the Americans in the war, Lima site 27, and right away I got my luggage to Nana guest house very close to the bus station, that for $5 gave me a spotless room with two beds and a perfectly clean bathroom. I did not have too much time, people in Laos go to sleep early so I went right away on the main street, got a crepe with chocolate and a beer, weird combination, watching in awe the restaurants and discotheques that populate this town, where people are not sitting but they lay down on some kind of elevated tables, with another table in the middle, similar with what they have in the tea houses in Central Asia or in Dahab, Egypt on the beach. I watched a snippet of Friends, that runs on all TVs in Vang Vieng, a snippet of a soccer match of Manchester United and went to bed. During the night it rained twice, strongly, but when I woke up in the morning the rain was over.

Laos is the dream come true. I spoke with many travelers in this trip, here and in Vietnam who were in Laos and all of them went more or less through the same experience: they planned the trip in Laos for 1-2 weeks based on what they were able to read in the book and all of them ended up extending their visa and no necessary because they found much more to see or explore. It is just the atmosphere of, probably, one of the best kept secret in SE Asia.

Sabaidee! This is the salutation you hear continuously from everybody. It is for “Hello” and “Goodbye” also and it is used also by the foreigners and is nice and comfortable to hear it. In Vietnam everybody says “Hello” or “Hi” and everything is very pro-American, surprising after such a difficult past, but maybe the new market economy makes people try emulate America. Here a lot of things remained French, including the inscriptions on the major institutions, like the Post Office, but still the salutation is local.
Last night, after I had my email done, I went for dinner to the oldest restaurant here in Luang Prabang, dating from 1960, and I had Stuffed Bamboo shoots, a very good and interesting dish. Inside the bamboo shoots they put some meat and they fried it, the dish being delicious. As a matter of fact the food I had here is exquisite, maybe caused by the large number of tourists and travelers who can afford to pay just a little more on dishes. Not the same thing is in Vietnam, where if you want to have good food you go to the best restaurants, that comparatively with the rest of them are slightly more expensive, (still very cheap comparing with USA or Europe). Otherwise the food in Vietnam is repetitive and unappealing.
After dinner I walked on the main street and I bumped into Susan who was nursing a beer in one of the restaurants. We chatted for two hours, a great discussion about many issues. After she raised in Virginia her two daughters, who just finished college, she retired from a job of photography, graphic design and product conceptualization and marketing, sold her house and she began wandering throughout the world. She got a voluntary position with Peace Corp in Essaouira, Morocco where she lived for two years working with the Berbers who were making handicrafts, helping them promote their products. She learned one of the Berber languages and when she was done she decided that she will keep traveling. So, now she wants to spend half of the year traveling in SE Asia and other places and half of the year working with the guys who bought the Silk Mill in Pittsfield, MA, who want to create there a artist commune with work, living and exbition spaces. We are invited to the opening of the first exhibit in June.
I left Susan at 10:30pm and I went home to take a shower and go to sleep because I had to wake up in the morning to see the monks. Again!

The monks did their tour of duty the same like the day before, long rows of yellow robes, taking their rice in silence and peace. I met Gunther and I walked with him, losing him latter in the crowd. From there I went back home to dress for the day and I went to have breakfast on the Mekong, Lao black coffee, banana shake and omelette with a Mango cake that they sell in the city. Plus the views over the Mekong in the morning! When I left the restaurant I bumped in a middle aged Aussie that I met yesterday on the boat. She was telling yesterday about the hellish experience she had riding the bus from Hanoi to Vientiane. The bus was crammed to maximum, having a bench in between the chairs to fill it to more than capacity. It was an AC bus, so the windows could not open being sealed, but….the AC did not work and inside was like in steam bath. The entire trip took…23 hours, leaving at 8:00pm and reaching the border at 8:00am and entering Laos at 9:30 am. She said that she would not wish it to anybody, but she was lucky because…. the other day the bus broke down and the passengers missed the border opening so they had to sleep in the border town and it took …45 hours to get to Vientiane. So I guess that my one hour flight did the trick !
She will travel till her money run out, somebody was renting her house in Australia implicitly paying her mortgage, and she traveled a lot when she was young but she told me regretfully, with no too much interest in those times for cultural travel. And I know what she talks about because I see many young travelers who are here to have a great time, not knowing most of the times what great opportunities they have to see these great sites. It is just about hanging out and living in a cheap place where money is running longer and they chill more without work. Obviously, most of them are not like this and they are deeply involved in seeing, exploring and understanding the culture of the place.
After I parted with the Aussie, who was going to live in a tree house for three days to see and hear gibons, a successful ecotourism program that she decided to join, I went to rent a bike for $1 a day and I start exploring the city. I did not have any plan today and I wanted to wander with no checkboxes or lists of to-do things. I saw several temples that I missed last time but this was not the intention, I just bumped into them. I crossed a bridge trying to get to a place and I found a meditation temple, about which I read but I had no idea how to reach it. It was looking and feeling like the one we saw in Chiang Mai, with inscriptions on trees but his time just in Lao not in English. It has a beautiful gilded stupa on three tiers.
From there I came back in town and biked lazily to other places and I visited two more temples. I stopped around 2pm in a very hip coffee place, Jabo, close to my guest house, a sort of local Starbucks with pastries and nice assortment of coffee, but the frappucino I had was more than disappointing, so I may skip it tomorrow no matter that I planned it for breakfast.
After that I stopped in several stores to buy some things and I went on Mekong to cross it to see some temples on the other side, not very convinced but still… But maybe the weather noticed my visiting mood so it started to rain and I took refuge in a store waiting for the rain to stop, forfeiting my plan to cross the river. The rain continued and after I got some info from an agency for the next time I come to Laos, to go to Mueng Sing, I biked through rain stopping in some other stores. The stores are expensive here. They know that the ones who are buying from them have to have money so they jack up the price ridiculously. I bought a hanging from Sapa for $4 that here they try to sell for $62!!! The same one! There are also very beautiful stores with remarkable things. I found extremely beautiful weaving that they sell, different ones, in the market for $4-7 but in this store they were, of a different quality and an exquisite taste, for $300-650. Eventually, I decided to go to eat something so after I stopped at the guesthouse to take my book to read I went to a great restaurant that I saw on some ads named Tamarind, that makes traditional Lao food. They served me sticky rice, that you eat with your hand making a ball and getting the food with it. The food was more than delicious, was an experience in itself on all sort of spices and dishes from Luang Prabang, a seaweed from the Mekong that they dry outside with sesame, garlic and tomatoes, eggplant salad cooked in a different style, coriander as salad that I never ate before and some sweet tomatoes all with a local hot sauce. They are specialized in these kind of specialty dishes and they do not serve dinner so I told them that I will link them to the blog http://www.tamarindlaos.com , one of the best culinary experience I had in Laos.
When I finished lunch/dinner it was almost 5:30pm and the monks in the wat across the street started to chant, a thing that all monks do at that time. I joined them and I shot some video inside and moved latter for more chants and more video and sound recording in another wat nearby that I missed to see inside. I wanted not to miss any more the chance to call home so I came and at 6:30pm I spoke with Victor who just woke up and was very happy when I told him that we will play together soon.

Last night after I wrote the blog I walked a little in the night market where I bought several things and I was pondering what to do. I kept entering in agencies and talk with guides to see if I can go to the North. Apparently, the guy who gave me the first information, was misinformed and the night bus ride to Luang Nam That, that he told me that is 7 hours is actually around 10 hours and the ride to Muang Sing that he told me that is 1.5 hours is actually 4 hours and not back to back, Muang Sing being all the way in the North at the border with Burma. These are the ways you have to deal on travel, especially if you go on sites that are way out of the beaten path and no information you receive, including this one is not guaranteed. So this destination was out of question and I started to investigate for the original plan with the Plain of Jars. I found two guys leaving today and coming back to Luang Prabang in 3 days but that did not serve me at all, no matter that it was a possibility riding a night bus to Vang Vieng, so I put it as an option and I thought that the morning will bring something and it did.

The monks are the heart of Laos. When the Commies took power in 1975, sweeping in victory the entire Indochina they banned the offering of alms to the monks, that represent the core belief for Buddhists. As they got in trouble, because one year later there were riots in the streets, they had to reinstate it and live in a communist system with religion on the side. Still they banned many children for going to monasteries and introduced the indoctrination in temples but the alm offering remained. I was in the morning at 6:00am and latter at 6:30am to see this alm offering and is a spectacle by itself to see a long row of monks aligned on the side of the street coming from far away to the place where are seated people who give them rice. A long row of yellow robes with a large bowl of rice that they open and accept the offer. Begging for monks is a major element in Buddhism in order to make you humbler and acept that you don’t mean anything. This alm offering is important both for the believers but also for the monks to strengthen their religious education. The long line of yellow robes passed in front of my camera, impressive and silent, the whole procession that lasts somewhere around 15-20 minutes happens in silence in the dark light of the early morning.
On the sidewalk were lots of people aligned on straw mats with bowls of rice giving each monk a little rice…. And throngs of tourists to see the show, some of them making also the offer.
It finished around 6:45am and I went to have breakfast on the shore of the Mekong, coffee and omlette with the always present fruit shake. Right after breakfast trying to get in contact with a guy from an agency with whom I spoke yesterday, I entered another agency and I asked about the trip to Plain of Jars, a place that is quite out of the way and few people go because is not cheap. The guy told me that he has two Americans going there on Wednesday and continuing to the border with Vietnam. No matter that in my mind was to leave there on Tuesday, tomorrow, I found it very convenient and I decided in my mind to go with them. Actually, returning to the agency later today for the day trip I booked, I met them in the agency: Hunter teaches Math in Physanoulok, Thailand and is from MD and Dana is from CT at the border with RI, close to Cape Cod. I chat with them a little and they were happy latter on in the trip when I told them that I may join. The trip of today, a classic of the area is a two part trip. In the morning we left with a long boat on Mekong admiring the life on its shores with the fishermen in full action. We arrived, after we stopped to a village that makes whiskey, as they call it, a typical tourist trap, to some caves, Pak Ou, where the kings of Laos brought every year statues of Buddha as offers, most of them standing, Luang Prabang style. The statues are small and they fill several ledges in the cave and the whole experience would have been great if I did not visit the Buddha cave in Kalaw , Burma, where the statues are huge, gilded and you walk through them like through a forest. So for me the cave was a total disappointment. There are two caves and the second one, in spite of being dark was more interesting than the first. The good thing was that the caves are somewhere up the cliff that confers great views over the Mekong.
From there we returned directly to Luang Prabang. I had lunch, papaya salad and two(!!!) fruit shakes and I left for the second part of the trip that visits a waterfall 30 km out of Luang Prabang, Keung Si. I did not expect much, I saw enough waterfalls to be weary of them, but what was there enchanted everybody. It was a tropical forest with cascades that were falling one from another in blue small pools of waters, like you may see in movies and the guys from Las Vegas try to recreate in Mirage Casino. Actually the first impression when I got there was that I saw this in the lobby of Mirage Hotel!!!!! If you keep walking up you get to the main cascade, so tall and beautiful on several tiers falling from one to another, each in a blue pool. Absolutely everybody was more than enchanted to see it and is hard to describe in words and maybe even in pictures, the impression that lasted on us.
From there we returned directly to Luang Prabang and we did not stop in a Hmong village as the schedule was. I met in the bus an American, Susan, who will be for 3 years in Pittsfield, MA where some guys bought the old silk mill and try to convert it in an art space, for the artists to show their work. She is the artist that will conceptualize this conversion. I went home took a shower and came back in town , crossing the busy night market, bought some scarves and came here for the phone and internet. Latter dinner and tomorrow I want to rent a bike and go around the town. You don’t want to leave this place!

Luang Prabang is magic. It is Thailand 20 years ago, because Thailand now is so touristy not being anymore the calm paradise of the forgotten hippies. Lunag Xueng Prabang was the capital of Laos till the communists moved it to Vient Cheng, the “sandalwood city”, renamed by the French, Vientiane. The king built here a palace, that was originally supposed to be the French governor palace, at the beginning of the 20th century and ruled the country from here. But the roads were terrible and Mekong unreliable so a trip on the Mekong from here to Saigon took longer than an ocean crossing to Paris. So Luang Prabang remained unspoiled by times and modernity and just recently the road got renovated and you can get to Vientiane in 10 hours by bus on a switchy mountain road. It looks like a larger village but is full of temples called wat like in Thailand, built in a similar style, and lots of restaurants, bars, internet cafes and outfitters who wants to take you in all sorts of adventures, by bikes, elephants, rafting or kayaking. I woke up early but I laid down in bed and I had my breakfast of fruits with yogurt and sandwich on French bread finished at 9:00am and just after that I left in exploration. I visited most of the wats in town, the town being small and if you rush a little you definitely can cover in a day or two. I took it very easy, chatting with monks and visiting slowly the sites and the Royal Palace. The king, after was appointed by the Commies “Supreme Adviser”, on the same model they did in Vietnam, was jailed in a cave and he died in the 80s of malnutrition and lack of medicine. Officially…. it is not official version but his picture, statues and portraits are all over the palace, that look exactly the way it was when he was evacuated from it. His two daughters are living in Paris, two sons in the USA and another one of them, the Crown Prince is here in Luang Prabang in his previous residence that is transformed in hotel nowadays, after Laos also adopted market economy policies. I walked the entire day through the wats, on the shore of the Mekong and his tributary, Nom Kham, Luang Prabang being located on a sort of peninsula between these two rivers. I stopped at lunch for a cold beer in a very shi-shi bar Kili Wine Bar, rested a little and after that I climbed the steps on top of the hill, Phu Si, to see the view of the city, unfortunately covered in a sort of smoke the entire day that makes the visibility limited. It gives a hazy look to the sun. Coming back to the main street I tried to call again at “bunici” but to no avail and I had an early dinner of Indian Food, not so good like the great Lao dish of fish I had yesterday in Tam Tam Bamboo. Now I will go in the night market, something similar with Chiang Mai with the difference that it closes around 10pm because the entire city does not stay late at all, except several bars for foreigners. I tried during the morning to arrange a trip to the Plain of Jars but it is not so easy. If you go by bus it takes one day each way and you spent one day there. I tried to go by minibus, just two days but I have to find other people to do it and it may be more difficult. So, if it does not work out I may skip it and do something else in the North in an area with markets and many other minorities. It is a great difference between Laos and Vietnam, a difference that the French tried to ignore and failed. The Annamite Line separates the two people and this mountain range is actually the demarcation between the Chine influenced people and the Hindu influenced people. In spite of the fact that Champas were Hindus they were complete absorbed in the Vietnamese state that had a huge Chinese heritage. Everything there is Chinese, starting with the temples that look and feel like in China, with the Buddhist tradition that does not have the Buddha statues we were used to, the Confucius influence that is the core of the belief and finishing with the people that act like the Chinese, but being more gentle and nicer that the Chinese, with the food that resembles the style of Chinese cooking, that after 3 weeks I could not take it anymore and I went for an Australian Steak…. Besides, the Chinese influence and the new market economy made Vietnam the new capitalist Mecca, and people act this way. Everything is business, calls for ” buy from me”, “cheap”, money photo”, “one picture one dollar”, “give tip”, “sama same…but different” are regular and all the foreigners are amused or annoyed by them. They made it as logo on T-shirts and the worst place is Sapa, where the Black Hmong are the most intense. The tranquility you expect in SE Asia has nothing in common with Vietnam and the worst is in the big cities where the traffic can make your life a hell. But after a while, maybe a little more than 1 week, you learn to walk in the middle of a hellish traffic thinking about your stuff, ignoring and being completely oblivious at the cacophony of sounds that surrounds you. Absolutely anybody who has any form and size of a horn, be sure that he will use it continuously and after a while in your mind the noise disappears… Maybe you were able to stop the world! When you land in Luang Prabang the shock is huge. The fact that the buses are not pressing the horns and nobody is peddling towards you is so surprising that you think that you landed in paradise. Everything is very slow, like the flow of the Mekong, people do not smile all the time but they are extremely nice and very polite, the time stops and you realize that you landed back in time, maybe sometimes in the 60s in a dreamy Thailand. Everybody who stays here, stays much more than they need, hang out, take a bike, nurse a beer, or chat with others. This looks to be the place where everybody comes to relax after a “tour of duty” in India, Vietnam or China. And me too also, because now my vacation starts from here!

Last day in Hanoi was dedicated to the the Old Quarter, named also the “36 street quarter”, the old area of the city that housed the old time guilds of the city, 36 guilds in total that gave it its name. I forfeited the breakfast in the hotel and I went to a restaurant for a breakfast of fruits and a delicious shake of a mix of fruits, something that I don’t know if it can be so good in any country from the North. After that I started to walk the quarter. Each street that carries the name Hang, that means in Vietnamese “merchandise”, was the place where in the past that particular item was sold: there are streets for rope, clothes, shoes, religious items, silversmith, jewelers, blacksmiths, funerary stones, etc. I started the tour at the Hoang Kiem lake that sits in the middle of the city and it has on in its middle an island on which is located a temple dedicated to a national hero, this being very “in” in Vietnam, the same like in China. There are many temples dedicated to kings, generals, scholars and heroes. From that temple I started to walk the guild streets that now-a-days do not sell anymore always only that merchandise but for sure it exists a concentration. I followed a tour that is recommended in the book and I reached interesting places, and several temples and pagodas located inside the quarter. The streets are charming being shaded by trees in the entire Hanoi, but unfortunately the spring mist that started in the morning became more and more annoying and was becoming a real drizzle. I kept walking, arriving at one of the old city gates and following the street on which there were selling funerary items, I got to the mysterious place where they sell the fake money, stashes of copied hundred dollar bills that they burn as offering in temples in the main kang, oven. These and many others are part of the offering for the dead part of the famous Confucian tradition of worshiping the ancestors, the core activity during the Tet festival of the Lunar New Year. From there I went for a little longer walk to get on the famous bridge over the Red River that was the main target for the American aviation during the war. It is the major artery that connects Hanoi to outside at it was bombed 8 times but repaired easily by the Vietnamese. On the bridge was a group of “short haired” Americans that were on a tour to various sites related to to the American War. They looked like Marines and their guide was talking only about sorties and how many bombs can destroy an objective. He had also the same hairdo! The bridge is impressive, apparently was built by a student of Eiffel. Currently is still a main road, being in the center of the city and is crossed by train and motorbikes. It was getting late , almost 10:00am and I had to be back at the hotel at 12:00 the latest, when the taxi for the airport was coming, so I hit directly to see Uncle Ho laying down. The drizzle from the morning became rain and I did not have anything with me for cover, even a cap, but there were 21C so was no big deal. I thought that it was easy to see Uncle Ho, but the line was impressive even in the on and off rain. I checked the luggage, because you are not allowed to enter the tomb with any kind of cameras or cellphones and I proceeded to stay in line, sometime around 30 minutes. I was able to make it because the tomb is open only 5 days a week between 8-11, and I did it right before 11:00am. I got drenched in the rain and inside was AC but the view is very short trying to accommodate so many people that came in trips to see Ho. It is better done that the tomb of Mao in Beijing because you walk around the crypt. Ho was quite a character and no matter what bad things he may have done, he will remain in history like a great figure for Vietnam. Seeing the amazing cult for ancestors the Vietnamese have, especially the ones who made a difference inn the history of the country, you realize that Ho achieved both the independence and the unification of the entire country. So any missteps, and even disasters of the communist experiment, will be easily forgotten by anybody balancing these great achievements. And all were corrected now when the country is moving ahead to a market economy of the most capitalistic nature. From Uncle Ho’s tomb, that ended symbolically my visit in Vietnam, I went thorough the unceasing drizzle to the hotel but before I stopped to a store, in the way, where I bought something the other day to get a receipt. At the hotel, I packed and repack because the whole issue about this flight was that I must have 20 kg. So I took a lot of stuff on me together with all the books and I crammed as best as I could all the stuff in one bag hoping for the best. Besides, I had another package that I bought in Dalat. I paid the hotel and took some receipts from them, chat a little with some Aussies, originally from Vietnam whom I met the day before before I left to Tam-Coc and I got in the cab that was waiting in front of the hotel. The airport is far and it took him an hour to get there but the check-in went smoothly and it turned out that my luggage barely did it, being somewhere around 19kg. After quite a wait I got in the bus that brought us to a plane that looked tiny near a Boeing 777 but it did not look so tiny latter on. It was a propeller plane, the first time I flew one of these guys, ATR 72 made in France and did pretty good in the 1:15 hour flight to Luang Prabang, the old capital of Laos. The plane had 70 seats but I guess that there were maybe 20 people in it. We landed in Luang Prabang at 4:00pm right in front of the airport building and we got out and enter the airport and I got a 15 days landing visa on the airport. For the picture they scanned the passport… I did not catch in time because if I entered on the Romanian passport would have been cheaper…..The formalities were a breeze comparing with Vietnam and I found myself outside together with 4 French people with whom I shared a taxi-van for $1 each and we got into the city right away parking in front of a guest house. Right away you realize that finally you arrived in SE Asia. Vietnam it may be located geographically in SE Asia but culture wise is more in China, the 1000 years of occupation and the new economy of the country changing aggressively their culture. The tranquility of SE Asia does not exists there, everything is a rush and a humongous cacophony of sounds and noise that make people completely immune. In Vietnam absolutely everybody who has a horn is using it fully and the entire pedestrian, animal and motor traffic does not hear it anymore, because is more than a second nature, it became the background noise, so you can press the horn behind somebody and the person does not even flinch. We were surprised that the minibus that took us to Luang Prabang does not continuously press the horn and make a big fuss! I tried one guest house where the rooms were charming but they had only for one night so I left my luggage there and after a quick search I found a similar one, with AC and beautifully shiny floors, in all houses you have to leave the shoes at the entrance. I repacked my luggage and I went in town that is small and charming, similar with Sukhotai or Chiang Mai, the Lao people being named in history Thai that creates a big controversy nowadays. The culture is similar with Thailand and does not have any relation with Vietnam. I ate in a very nice Lao restaurant TamTam Bamboo, a dish of fish, chatting with Gunther, a German from Stuttgart who works for Lufthansa and here I am at the Internet Cafe to make a phone call (in Romania nobody answered again!!!!) at home.

I woke up in the morning with the idea of posting the text about Halong Bay that I wrote last night but the internet was still not working, so I decided in the last moment to leave for the trip to Tam Coc in spite of the fact that the sunny weather predicted on weather.com did not happen. The group was very small, with two girls from Geneva and a couple from Saigon, very artsy , the guy trying to talk on a slik cellphone the entire trip. The trip, that took about 2-3 hours, no matter that they say that it takes mostly 2 hours, was to Hoa Lu, the first capital of the unified independent Vietnam, unification obtained by a king in the 10th century, after he was able to get rid of the Chinese who came in the 2nd century AD and forget to leave for 1000 years. So it can be worse than with the Russians! The unified part was just the north of the country after which they started to move south in areas occupied by Champa Empire and in the 17th century were able to absorb the entire Champa kingdom of Danang. Hoa Lu was the first capital, a citadel in those time with temples and palaces. The first king had three sons, and his beloved one, the third son, was killed by the first one out of jelousy and fear that he may lose the throne. So, at the death of the king the queen did a swift move and married the commander of the army who became in this way the king instead of the fraticidal son. This second king is credited also with major victories against the Chinese and is also commemorated in Hoa Lu. The only things that remains from the old citadel are two temples dedicated to these two major kings. The temples are interesting from the historical perspective more than anything else and they are restaurated in the 17th century. But people come here even today with offers and prayers. After the visit of the two temples we boarded the bus and went to Tam Coc for a mediocre lunch and right after that we got on boats to visit this site. Tam Coc is named also “Halong Bay on land” or on the rice paddies. It has the same limestone rock formations like the ones we saw in Halong Bay and is looking closer with Yangshou, being placed on a river. The river is smaller and to visit it you board a boat that is rowed by two women, that takes you through a stupendously beautiful scenery of peaks and green rice paddies tilled by peasants. The river crosses through some caves and the boat ride goes inside these 3 caves where you have to duck your head not to hit the ceiling. After about 1 hour you get to the end of the trip and you start touring back. The boat trip is popular both with Vietnamese and foreigners and the river is full of boats, the rowing women trying like in the entire Vietname to sell you something else while you are a captive audience on board. We arrived at the harbour and after a short wait for the two artsy Vietnamese, we left to Hanoi, where before we reached the center of the city we slowed down to look into the dog meat market, a specialty that only in Vietnam is consumed. However, even here it looks like is eaten only by poor people and is looked down on. The market was depressing, or this was our perception not being familiar with this type of food, but probabily the same would look any other meat market for a vegetarian! Finally, we arrived in the city and right away I started to pound the streets to cover some ground before the tomorrow’s departure. I shot some video in the center and I arrived in the glitzy part of the town, where the Opera built by the French is located surrounded by the best hotels: the old Metropole now owned and managed by Sofitel and the new/old Hilton. The area around them is full of chic bars and restaurants, and there are also all the label-stores. I entered Esprit that was full of employees and no customer and one T-shirt was selling for half million dongs, same price like in the US! From there I went directly to see the Hanoi “Hilton”, the way the POWs were calling the jail of Hanoi. The person who was named the first ambassador in Vietnam in 1994 lived there for a while. The jail is still there but only a fraction of it, transformed in museum, because most of it was demolished to make space for a highrise with conference centers and luxury apartments. Times change and the place was primary real estate! I finished my tour with a visit to the St. Joseph cathedral where I stayed a little at the mass in Vietnamese and after that I went to find Cafe des Arts, a glitzy French restauranbt were I wanted to eat in the last two nights in Hanoi but because I was too hungry I settled each night for a closer place to my hotel. The food was great, and the dishes were very interesting but I went for beefsteak tartar, something that rarely I eat but they boast that theirs is the best and it was!. All watered with a bottle of Halida local beer! After dinner I tried to call home but nobody answered so I gave up and now is late, and I am retyping this posting because I lost the first one, and I will go to sleep. Before going to the hotel I passed by a Frech pastry place and I got two great cakes and I stopped to ODC travel to pick up my plane ticket for tomorrow. It is very difficult in Vietnam to get exactly what you want because the command of the English language is very poor for the majority of the educated people. They are able to communicate but in simple lines, if you get them in subtleties they are lost and they don’t understand you at all. It turned out at the agency that the ticket is not on Vietnam Airlines but on Lao Airlines. First time they told me that is the same plane and they code-shared and latter they told me that they do have separate flights. Either I did not understand or they have no clue, and both are possible. In any case you cannot get the difference between: the same plane and the same flight! And they are completely lost in this! And this is ODC travel a pretty established agency but the employees are similar with many other agencies. The difference is made by the fact that some of them are more polite and look more professional in their neat offices.
Finally I got to the hotel and I was able to post the last night post and write and rewrite this one. When I was in the middle of the first draft, Emin, the Irish guy from the Halong Bay boat, just showed up from his third day on Halong Bay (we did not know that we stayed and stay in the same hotel) and told me that the weather today was even worse then the other days, the boats were stopping and had to honk in order to keep in contact with each other because of the heavy mist.

Halong Bay is the jewel of the crown, the best site the Vietnamese have and for good reason. It is an area close to Haiphong, a bay in the Gulf of Tonkin, where the legend said that the dragon who left the land to go into the sea, smashed the earth with his tail and broke it in many pieces, before disappearing into the sea. So the bay has many island, somewhere around 1600, and it would take a long time to see all of them. There are trips of 1-4 days to see something and they cater to all categories of travelers on boats that sail the gulf. I left around 7:30am from the hotel, and in the bus I found an eclectic group, mainly French with some Malaysians, an American and an Irish. The bus ride to Halong City, the newly developed city that is the hub for the bay cruises, was about 4 hours with a stop in between. We arrived at 11:30am and at 1:00pm boarded the boat and after some unexpected delays we started to cruise. The weather was not good at all, something that we understood is typical for this time of the year, especially for the month of March where a sort of continuos drizzle is hanging in the air, but is so thin that you don’t get wet on your clothes just on your hair. The immediate effect is that the visibility decreases considerably and everything floats in a kind of mist. I knew about it, a very similar weather with the one we had in Yangshuo several years ago, and the landscape is identical. The boat was pretty big, with cabins for sleep, very comfortable and, as usual in Vietnam, very clean. We cruised for an hour, with limited visibility and we arrived at some beautiful caves and got down to visit them. All sorts of legends and stories abound about these grottoes , most of them fabricated by the guides, talking about dragons, princes and princesses and their 100 children, but the bottom line is that they are very beautiful limestone caves, unfortunately packed with all the tour groups that visit them in the same time. After this short visit we got on the boat again and we cruised to a floating fishing village, floating platforms in the bay where the fishermen live, the plan being to buy fish, but in the end nobody did it. We continued to a place where they were renting kayaks but again with no clients from our side and finally we stopped on an island, from whose top the visibility was great, or as great as can be in the misty weather. The weather started to improve and in the evening it cleared out, and you could see even stars on the sky. The entire landscape is made out of rock formations that sprout out of the sea, peaks, higher and lower, with vegetation on them and you navigate through this maze enjoying the beautiful view. In spite of the bad visibility, the clouds and fog gave a more mysterious look to the place, and you had more chances to see the dragon that people repeatedly said they saw coming out of the sea. I did not see exactly the dragon, but I have to check what is on video, and maybe, maybe…Meanwhile the crew of the boat fed us, gave us the keys for the cabins, and at 5:00pm we got electricity and hot water, so we went for a quick shower. Most of the people were intrigued about my camera, usually the Westerners are more intrigued than the locals who think only that is very expensive, and we started to talk, the French, from La Rochelle, proving to be very nice, however they could not stop mentioning the Romanian gypsies who are prowling the people in France. The two dinner tables were organized by languages, the French at one table and the English speaking at the other. Again, I was impressed with the Malaysian couple, Chinese descendant, who were speaking very well English, and he told me many things about the politics in Malaysia, where the Chinese and the Indians do not have too much of a say in politics, that is controlled completely and very authoritarian by Malay. This is the third couple from Malaysia I am traveling with and I cannot say how impressed I am with their command of English and I say this in comparison with the Vietnamese, who even if they speak very well, especially the guides, it’s almost impossible to understand them and nothing that require a little more finesse in term of tenses is understood by them. In the end, I chat with Emin, from Ireland, a very nice Irish boy who did not want to go to Sapa because there were no Irish pubs and Saturday is St Patrick’s Day, a very important event for any Irish person. He told me that he watches every year the NY Irish parade broadcast in Ireland. Also, it was Aaron from Boise. ID, who was happily traveling since April last year, part time in the US and part time outside, but he was feeling that the end is near and he should come back, but it was still a chance to extend the trip to meet some friends who were going in the fall in Nepal. We had a long chat followed by a game of Switch, a card game Emin taught us and we had great fun playing, sometime late after the French and Malaysians went to bed. But the fun had to stop because at 10:30 pm the engine was supposed to be cut off and we still can enjoy everything but in the dark. Emin and Aaron went to sleep and I got on the top deck of the boat. It was magnificent!. The clouds cleared and you could see far away Halong City. We were anchored in the middle of a bay surrounded by peaks that were poking out of the water, and also surrounded by other boats that all were drifting at anchor. It was so quiet and beautiful that it took me a long time to decide to go to sleep in my cabin. It was warm and you could stay on the lounge chairs on the deck, close your eyes and feel how the boat drifts. All the boats, or most of them , had the lights off. The whole experience was magical. Finally, I decided to go to sleep, not for any other reason but I got asleep several times on the lounge chair. After a night sleep in the village followed by another in the sleeper train, here I was sleeping on a boat. I went directly to sleep and I woke up in the morning, hopefully for a better weather but the clouds were even worse than the previous day, so after we ate our breakfast we cruised back to the harbor in Halong City where we arrived at 11:00am as scheduled. We had quite a long lunch and after some delays with the buses, during time the pearl sellers were prowling on us to purchase their wares, they succeeded to cram 21 people in a minivan and we got on our bus for the 4 hour trip to Hanoi, where we arrived at 5:30pm. Here the weather was a little better but not very different and in the evening the same drizzle came over the city. As a result I had doubts if to go tomorrow to a trip or not, but I checked the weather and tomorrow is supposed to be sunny, so I will go. Here , I had to solve several issues and the first was to see how I will get to Laos. Investigating further they told me that it may take 17-22 hours by bus and everybody gave me a different estimate, so I figured out that is not a pretty set deal and you may get stuck in customs for a long time. So I decided for a flight, that I’ve crossed it before from my options when they told me that I can have only 20 kg, but you can have more than one pack. But balancing with 22 hours, I went for the flight, and after doing a research on the Internet for the type of plane they use, ATR72 ( French) that in my mind was confused with IAR72 (Russian), I bought a direct flight to Luang Pabrang, Saturday at 3:00pm, for an one hour flight. Nobody knew what planes they fly and neither who makes them! This took a while, and after that I had to go to the store where I bought the jacket to ask them something and quickly to the Water Puppet Theater, a famous tradition in Hanoi, where by chance I was able to get a ticket for the 8:00pm show, everything else being sold out. The Puppets were very nice, the show was color full and entertaining. They have these puppets in a pool of water and they manipulate them horizontally from the back of a curtain, different that the vertical way that is in use everywhere. Stories, traditions, legends with music, etc. I was starving and from the theater I went and ate in a very nice restaurant on the shore of Hoang Kiem Lake that is in the middle of Hanoi, at the base of the Old Quarter. After dinner, it came the phone moment, unfortunately the connection was not great and, before I got to the internet in the hotel, I stopped to one of the many bootleg CD places and I bought 6-7 new CDs. Last night when I finished to write this I tried to post but the internet in the hotel died. I saved it and tried again this morning still to no avail, and I hope that now it will work.

The plan for the last day in the North was to go to another market in Cok Ly. I pondered upon the idea because it was an alternative to go to another market that was different, in another province, but unfortunately, it was a slow day for that market, named Bin Liu, the high market days would have been between Thu-Sun.
There are many minorities in the area and it was fun to see their customs and the dress they wear. On one side of the mountain are the Flower Hmong, Liu, Tay and Dzay. On the other are the Black Hmong and the Red Dzao and in another province are the Red Hmong and the Black Dzao. Probably there are more of them but is hard to identify them, after just several days of walking in the area.
I was able to see the first group in the market in Bha Ca and Cancau and the second group in the market in Sapa, so Bin Liu market would have been perfect for the third group but in the end I decided to keep with the original schedule to go to Cok Ly. We woke up at 6:00am, said good bye to our hosts and left to meet the jeep (Russian) on the road. The village was awake and the water buffaloes were roaming the alleys. We arrived at the road but no sign of jeep, Bang called and eventually woke up the tour operator who sent a jeep with one hour delay. The way to Sapa is just 17 km from the place we were and we arrived when the clouds/fog started to lift and the views over the city were marvelous.
You could see the city out of fog but the fog was still lingering under the city. Great view!
I had breakfast on the Bamboo restaurant and left to the Sapa market, and do the last shoppings I planned for, some things that I already saw and wanted to buy and I had to pick up the custom made blouse-coat I got for Cristina.
I went again to the market, where there were not too many Red Dzao like the day before and I went to see the church and a local temple. At 10:00 I went to the hotel, pick up the luggage, got in the jeep and we left for Cok Ly market on a road that on its last 17 km before the market, was all dust and all our luggage and our lungs got dusted to a level like I never saw since I was in Tibet. The market itself was disappointing, very small with the same minorities. Organized travel in Vietnam is OK but the agencies do not have the creativity of advising people what to see and this is an issue when you don’t know the local customs. Instead of seeing three markets on the same side of the mountain, I would have opt for another from the other side. I walked a little in the market and I settled for some roasted peanuts for lunch, forfeiting my official lunch with Bang.
But still I picked up this trip because after the market it was a boat ride on Chai River that it turned out to be very nice. I was very lucky that the weather improved in the last two days, and the cold spell from the last week went away, so I did not need my newly bought Armani jacket at all. It was warm for T shirt and extremely pleasant on the boat, that was going through canyons with caves and we stopped eventually to visit a Tay village. We had tea with the people in the house, a custom here, and always when we stopped somewhere people were offering Vietnamese tea that like their coffee is strong and bitter. They showed me the upstairs of the house, the Tay house having a lower level for animals, that they partitioned and made a living room also, and a top floor for sleeping. I wanted to go to the bathroom but no matter that they showed me where the location was I could not figure it out. It was a pig style there and some other huts but nothing to resemble what I know to be a toilet. And obviously I did not expected tiled ceramic walls and toilet paper! But still I could not figure out which was the toilet!
We left the village and board the boat admiring the beautiful flowers of a local tree, called rice treat, and we rode the boat for another 30 minutes till we got to the road where the jeep was waiting for us. Another cup of tea in the shade, it was already very hot, and we left for Lao Cai on a beautiful sunset, cruising around the Vietnamese shore of the Lap River that is the border with China. In Lao Cai we went directly to the Chinese border and I looked to the constructions from the other side but I could not go there because I did not have a Chinese visa and neither a return Vietnamese one.
Bang showed me the market building in the Chinese city and told me that the first floor is occupied by merchants and the second and third by the “Meat market” , prostitution in China being legal, (not in Vietnam). All the girls are registered and pay taxes. Two full floors in a large building! The Vietnamese can cross the bridge anytime for a day trip and if they want to stay overnight they have to arrange for a permit. Bang said that is cheaper in China that in Vietnam, in terms of food, accommodation and transportation. The buildings in the the cities are impressive, the Vietnamese built a Commercial center, business center that looks very modern and on the Chinese side was built up pretty seriously.
From the border we left to the railway station, where I went in a hotel to change, arranged by Bamboo/Sapa, I tipped the driver and I had another discussion with Bang, who told me that he may try to immigrate to USA, the dream of any young person in Vietnam. I told him about the visa lottery, that he did not know about and we promise to keep in touch. One stop, after Bang left, was to the Internet to post my story and do the the email but the computer/network was so slow that I could not post, so I saved it, email it and posted this morning.
My stomach got a little upset yesterday, not bad but enough to have some shrills, and I got on my steamed rice and water cure that works miracles, better than any fancy drug, so till this morning everything was supposed to be in order. The train was leaving at 9:15pm. I got in the compartment with a German couple from Munchen with whom I chat for about an hour. Friendly! I told them that I lived in Munich a while ago and turned out that they live very close from where I used to live. We went to sleep, the same uneasy sleep of the sleeping couches, and we arrived in Hanoi at 5:30 am, took a motorbike and arrived in Camellia Hotel to wake up the host who was sleeping in the lobby.
I did all my repacking, because I bought a small backpack for local travel and I had breakfast, did my posting and email and I am waiting for the bus that will take me at 7:30 am to Halong Bay, a two day trip where I will sleep, tonight, on the boat in the bay. So no Internet!

The crowd from the Trekking Cafe was very interesting: Daniella was from Australia and came in Sapa several days ago. The moment she was hitting Australia’s land she was getting bored right away so she traveled almost continuously for the last 10 years living 4 years in India. Roelf was from Amsterdam and he was the third time in Sapa. Mongolia was his preferred country of travel and in Sapa he was doing some voluntary work with the minorities who knew him very well so they invited him the next day to a wedding. Abas, or something like that, was Moroccan living in Switzerland and studying in Laussaune but mainly he was traveling and was in lots of places. I chat with them till 11:00pm when I had to leave and go to sleep. The plan was to leave in the trek early morning but I wanted to visit Sapa, so I woke up again before sunrise. The room I had was magnificent, covered in windows on two sides, like the entire hotel, The Green Bamboo. I had breakfast and I left for the market. Saturday and Sunday were market days in Sapa but still the market had plenty of Black Hmong and Red Dzao who were pounding the streets. I got inside the market where the local people sell and the view was fascinating with lots of materials embroidered and beautifully decorated dress, like I did not have a chance to see with the Flower Hmong, who may be a show in themselves but their taste is far from the European style. I bought more than I wanted to do and I kept walking the market and taking shoots. These tribes are more aggressive, being in constant move to sell and they harass foreigners to buy and also they ask for money to have their picture taken, so the task was not so easy but with the lot of experience I had in snatching pictures it worked in the end. I spent in total about 2 hours in the market and around and I was at 11:00 am at the hotel where I was supposed to meet Bang. We left for a walk, a trek they call it because the range of tourists/travelers is very large, and after a short walk on the road we started to go through rice paddies and beautiful landscape. The weather was sunny and the views were magnificent, with terraced valleys and hills covered in mist. We walked very slowly because I took so many pictures. On the same road we met an American woman from Seattle, whom I will meet latter in the village, and lots of Black Hmong who were going to and from work. Around 2pm we stopped at a beautiful hut located on a river cross and we ate some cold cuts and a beer that there costs more than in the most expensive restaurant in Saigon, 25000 dongs. We continued after lunch to the same slow pace and we arrived in the village. Meanwhile we crossed two villages of Black Hmong, in one of them I bought a water holder. The Black Hmong are very good artists but they are dirty and illiterate, based on what Bang said. They do not have electricity and are pretty impolite and aggressive. Basically they come after you and they keep pestering you to buy stuff from them, mainly cheap souvenirs. This is the reason they are not liked by the guides and all the accommodations, home stays as they call it, are done in the next village that is a Dzao village, another minority very industrious who send their children to school so they are smarter and better educated. The school is free for the minorities but not for the Vietnamese who pay a pretty hefty tax. The moment we got home, around 4:00pm, the guide and the hosts started to cook and the dinner that happened around 6:30-7:00pm was a festine with about 5-6 dishes. Obviously they are very generous and their tradition probably obliges them to cook so much but most of the travelers cannot eat the astronomical quantities they cooked there. Before dinner I went for a walk in the village in sunset and I kept thinking about our quick and constrained life in cubicles and theirs, outdoor. Obviously they would give it up easily for more cushy jobs but the atmosphere of the village was so idyllic that I could not stop thinking about this comparison. I sat on top of the hill and watched each household with its own flurry of activities, working in the garden, bringing back the water buffaloes, or planting on terraces and listening to the barking dogs or at one point monkeying with two girls from the village, a 13 year old that was as tall as Victor and the other of the same height being 8. I thought that the first girl was 8 but she was very mature for the age. After the walk I went for dinner and we ate, four of us, the owner of the house with his son, Bang and me, and drank a couple of glasses of Happy Water, the corn brandy they prepare in house. The dinner happened in the kitchen, on very low stools, maybe two inches from the ground and the kitchen was roamed by the house dogs and cats they were shushed outside when they were expressing their desire to have a bite. The after dinner tea is always a moment of relaxation in Vietnam and I had a long chat with Bang about all sorts of issues and about his travel groups and experiences he had with them: the most difficult by far are old Germans and Israelis. Germans are demanding and very impolite and Israelis want to get everything possible for the least amount of money paid. It was very interesting to hear this from a Vietnamese guy and to match in a way my impressions of travel, these two categories being the most difficult for me also to deal with. Of course there are exceptions, but they are just exceptions and not more than that! I had to cut short the discussion with him because I passed by before dinner to the nearby home stay where was a large group of travelers of all nationalities and I promised them I will join after dinner. When I arrived the discussion was in full swing with Kristin, a journalist from Seattle perorating about the American domestic policy and journalism in the USA. There were also two Danish boys who just finished high-school and they were traveling for the first time in life for 4 months, the last one being in the USA, so I obliged to give them some hints for which they were in desperate need, a very funny Spaniard from La Rioja whose dream was to go in the honey moon to Las Vegas, a guy from Manitoba who was going to teach English a month in Cambodia, a girl from England and two girls from Switzerland, all of them, except Kristin, traveling the following night with the sleeper train back to Hanoi. After Kristin gave up the podium, the others started all sort of more mundane discussions and I chat a little with Kristin. She came with her mom to Hoi An to make her wedding dress (it is very inexpensive there) and she was getting marry soon but her boyfriend had to work so he could not come with her in Vietnam. The discussions run late and at 11:00pm I went to sleep. The beds for the guests are in the attic, a sort of “duplex” apartment but basically like a barn. On this second floor there were about 15 mattresses each one with blankets, pillows and a mosquito net for the summer time. It was very clean and you have to take your shoes off when you got there. I slept till 6:00 but I heard all night the dogs barking in the village and in the middle of the night it became very cold. The walls are made out of lumber but not tight fit so you can see outside.

I woke up in the morning in the first horn of the traffic before sunrise and after packing and a quick breakfast where I was joined again by the Aussies I left for the market.
The market was a little slow at 8:00 am but started to get animated a little latter and around 10:00am was bustling with activity. The tourists were in a row with lots of cameras and tripods and early in the morning it looked like a shooting stage with lots of Flower Hmong women on one side and photographers on the other side. Latter on the number of Flower Hmong exceeded the number of tourists by a comfortable margin so the westerners and local photographers were lost in the crowd.
The market sells everything, there are blacksmith making hoes and carpenters making the plouws, Flower Hmong buying and selling embroideries, Vietnamese selling dogs, pigs, cows, water buffaloes, horses, etc.
I took lots of beautiful pictures like everybody else and I tried to find vantage points for great shoots but most of the time I admired the hustle and bustle of this magnificent market. The Cancau market was smaller but it had the advantage of being almost completely populated by Flower Hmong, here you find all sort of other vendors. I saw also Black Hmong but very few because most of them live in Sapa on the other side of the mountain. At 12:00 I left the market, I met Bang at the hotel and we left in the afternoon for a trek to see a village that is very close to Ba Cha. The village has all the mountain cut in terraces for cultivation and the landscape looks very interesting. We were able to get inside a house, something that the agency has arranged with the locals in advance, and the owner, who was Flower Hmong, gave us to drink something that he calls corn wine but is actually a very perfumed corn brandy, very strong, a sort of palinka, that I could not have thought that you can do from corn. Also, he played for us from pan flute a traditional song and dance and gave me a tour of the house, the major production being the corn brandy. After that we continued to another part of the village where there were houses of another minority named Tai. We returned to Ba Cha for lunch and we left at around 4:00pm with the jeep to Sapa on winding roads crossing rice fields where people were working their fields with water buffaloes or planting rice. Great views! The road takes about 2 hours from Ba Cha to Lao Cai and another hour from Lao Cai to Sapa, crossing the mountains that they were still covered in clouds and when we arrived in Sapa the fog/clouds was extremely deep that we could see only at 3-4 meters. I got a room in Green Bamboo Hotel and I went for a walk in town, a stark contrast to the other villages, with lots of sleek stores catering mainly for tourists, selling nice weavings all priced in US$. The people did not looked so friendly, probably fed up by the number of tourists and Black Hmong women were pacing the streets and asked everybody if they want to smoke ganja. A sort of Jamaica in the mountains! I went a little to some of the stores, had my dinner and tried to find a internet store to make a phone call home. Tomorrow I will leave in a trek that will end up with a night sleep in a village house watching what the local family does in the evening and morning. So no internet at least for tomorrow, if not for the other day also when I will take the night sleeper train to Hanoi.

The tourists that travel Vietnam are a different crowd that the ones in Burma, Tibet or even Cambodia. There are backpackers and travelers but most of them are on tourist groups. A lot are French looking very bourgeois and their age is the best in the 50s but mainly in the 60s, comfortable tours with all inclusive. Travel in Vietnam is organized very well and I think that exists tons of tours offered in the Western countries. So the interaction with other travelers, caused also by the magnitude of the two main cities and the main attractions that are around Hanoi, is smaller, not like it was in Burma or in the village of Siem Rep. But still I was able to find lots of people I interact with and Sapa I think is such a place where you can make contacts. I am now in this Internet cafe called Traveler Cafe, surrounded by travelers that just chat exchanging all sort of stories of travel.

We walk up around 6:00 am when the train got to Lao Cai, a city on the Chinese border. A guy from the agency was waiting for us in the train station with large billboards carrying my name, and they brought us right away to a restaurant for breakfast, that like any other meal in this trip is included. The surprise was that they did not gang us up together but there were two jeeps with two drivers and two guides, one for me and one for the Aussies, so after the breakfast we said goodbye, starting to drive over hills and mountains to the first market in Cancau. We stopped several times to take pictures of fields full of rice and of peasants plowing their fields with water buffaloes, the main mean of subsistence for these families. Nothing is mechanized and it looks, watching them work and barter, like we live hundreds of years ago.
The clouds were very low and it was a little chilly but not colder than Hanoi. The area where we are now is lower than Sapa, the main town from the area and the main touristic center, that being at 1600m may be very cold, but supportable in March, this being one of the reason that I did this trip starting in Saigon and going towards the North.
The Cancau market was in full swing when I arrived with almost no tourists, that started to come latter, and lots of Flower Hmong people that were selling their wares and produces.Their customs are spectacular, completely embroidered in joyful colors that makes them the major attractions of these markets. There were some other people, like Black Hmong from Sapa and Dzao. They were selling also dogs, horses and water buffaloes, and the women were carrying their children on bundles stuck to their back. I spent at the market about 3.5 hours and left to Bac Ha, the major village in the area where tomorrow will be a major market. In Bac Ha we stopped to the house of the old ruler of the village during the colonial times, a large and elegant French Mansion. The Hmong ruler named Hua, was called by its people The King and he left with the French in 1954, probably in France and latter in California where his descendants are living nowadays. Again I spoke with Bang, my guide, about the American war and I got more or less the same answer. “The past is the past and we are looking into the future”. They love Clinton who did the opening with Vietnam. We came to the hotel where I booked a room, included also in the tour, and I left my luggage inside, after that coming downstairs for lunch. It came to be around 2:30pm when I finished lunch so it was no time left to go around so I went to the internet and I checked the email and do the blog from yesterday trip, hoping that later in the day I’ll do the second part. I went for a walk in the village, that is very basic, with some hotels and restaurants for tourists, but not too many tourists come here; they prefer to stay in Sapa and come here just for the market. I went to the market, bought some mango and when I was going to the internet I met some Dutch people and we had a very long and interesting chat about travel in Southeast Asia. They were also on a tour that went in China also, and they did not have too many good things to say about China, but they enjoyed Vietnam and Laos, who they told me that became the newest backpacker paradise, with places la Vang Vieng full of shops, disco music and large TVs in outside lounges.
Finally, I got to the internet and I published part of the story but I had to go to the hotel to meet Bang at 6:30pm for dinner. In the hotel I bumped into the Aussies, with whom I had dinner, and latter on the Dutch guys and their wives showed up. I tried to go back to the Internet but I was up for a big surprise: both internet places in town that have in total 30-40 computers were completely taken over by the village’s kids who were playing games and chatting. I tried to go from one to another but the girls who were managing the places told me that is “Full” and is nothing to do….Latter! So I watched a typical touristy traditional dance show in one of the hotels and I got the idea to check in the hotel where I found out that they have an internet computer (only one!) and is working but very slow. Hope tonight to go to bed earlier, maybe 10pm.

Hardly you can find such a great day trip like the one I did today at the Perfume Pagoda. Everything is spectacular and by being in the full festival of the pagoda it made it ten times better.
After I finished all the dealings with the travel agents to see what can be done and how, I went in the evening to the hotel and I booked a day-trip to a place outside Hanoi, called “Perfume Pagoda”. The next day, promptly as usual, the minibus came and picked me up at 7:45 am from the hotel and we drove for about 90 minutes plus a short stop to a place from where you have to board a boat The canal, where the boats are located was packed with small boats, hundreds of them easily, that were carrying people to the base of the mountain where the pagoda is located. The place is an important pilgrimage place, and it happened that one month after the Lunar New Year, called Tet here, is the festival of this pagoda and everybody flocks there in hordes. Even if this is a major tourist destination, barely you are able to see the foreigners in the mass of Vietnamese that pack the shrine.
When arriving at the harbor, everybody boards boats that are rowed by two women , one in front and one in the back and the river gets crammed with row boats in the most spectacular show. Some boats have 2-3 people but some can have over 30 people. The boat ride went for about 1 hour and we arrived at the entrance of the park, where we got a ticket, paid in advance by the agency and started climbing the mountain. The climb is also packed with pilgrims and aligned on the sides by stalls selling everything imaginable. It is a typical pilgrimage place, with religious artifacts but also all sort of food used also for religious offer. It exist also a cable car that does the up and down rides, but I preferred to do the walking pilgrimage for the uphill part. The bad part was that the rain of the past days made a slimy walk and I got mud caked on the sneakers and pants. After the one hour walk, that you cannot shorten because the road is packed, I arrived at a point where I had a stalled humongous line in front of me that was waiting to reach a gate in front. Eventually, this happened after about 30 minutes when I saw that after the gate there were steps going down to a cave, where in about 15 more minutes I found a huge crowd. All the pilgrims congregated there with offers that were brought to the three altars inside the cave. They were making the offers, praying, giving money to the shrines, they were rubbing money on the rocks and wash with the beneficial water drops from the stalactites in the ceiling. The spectacle was astounding and I watched it for more than half an hour and shot lots of video.
At around 2:00 pm, when I was supposed already to be down in a restaurant with the group, I left and I rushed to the cable car, that brought me fast down the hill. We ate in the restaurant and we chat about the events and the whole experience with the guys in the group: a couple from Amsterdam traveling 3 months, another from Switzerland biking Laos and Vietnam for about 4 months, a couple from Malaysia who showed to uss all the animals that were ready for dinner, like deers and mountain mouse, etc.
After lunch we left for the boats, where the water rides increased because most of the pilgrims were leaving and the river was even fuller of rowing boats, and further to the bus that brought us to Hanoi and dropped us in the center. Priority number one was to go and buy a jacket because everybody in the group told me that in Sapa is very cold and I did not have anything with me except a sweatshirt. China and Vietnam are the major countries for manufacturing western goods, so I got in a store, like in China, that were selling excess production for North Face, Armani, Tommy Bahamas, Polo, Lacoste, etc. After I pondered with a North Face jacket, I found a very slick Armani jacket made out of silk and I don’t know what else, and I decided to get it and got dressed with it, a perfect match to my mud caked sneakers and my dirty pant. Armani himself would have had a heart attack if he saw me! I went to the agency to be sure that they will not forget about me, especially that half of the city, but not on contiguous blocks (!) was on blackout and I checked again with them for a flight to Laos, that I found out that is code shared between Lao and Vietnamese aviation and they fly with small propeller planes (70 max), but they have flights directly to Luang Pabrang that is something, saving about 32 hours on the bus. I don’t know yet when to do and I still have to do a little more research about this issue. I went to my hotel, that was in blackout also, (so no internet!) and I booked my Halong Bay trip on Wednesday morning, two days on the famous bay so beautifully depicted in the movie “Indochine”, with one night sleep on the boat. So, the plan is to arrive from Sapa on Wednesday 5:00 am and to leave at 7:30am to Halong Bay.
The minivan from ODC Travel came to pick me up and dropped me and two Aussies at the train station, the guide giving us the tickets and asked us to be very careful about them because you hardly will be able to find others. The trains are packed and the agencies have their share of the seats. As a a matter of fact, I did some research about this trip and it turned out that the deal I got from ODC Travel was great. Sure, $222 for Vietnam sounds very high (only if you are here you understand this statement, it’s very hard to spend money in Vietnam everything being extremely inexpensive so $100 has a very long run here), but counting that is very hard to get soft sleeper seats and you have a guide for trekking and a jeep that carries you everywhere all the time is very helpful and makes your life easier. Other agencies or individuals that try to arrange the trip made higher offers with lower services, and investigating locally in Bac Ha for the price of a jeep it came with astronomical numbers.
The train ride was good, the sheets clean, no matter that the sleeper carriages, even being privately owned and invested, were kind of dingy, old and rugged. The Aussies, at their first outing abroad, were terrified of theft and they were locking themselves completely inside. We traveled also (4 in a compartment) with a Vietnamese who was living in Lao Cai and who studied in Sorbonne social studies. Extremely educated, it was a pleasure to talk with him, unfortunately the Aussies were not so enthusiastic about him and it was late and we went to sleep, the rough sleep on the sleeper carriages.

I booked one night in Hotel Camellia ($13) and I went directly to investigate what trips can be done outside of Hanoi. I saved my days during the entire trip because in a trip like this you never know what may come up and the most important asset is time. Even if I wanted to stay an extra day for leisure or extra visits in one place, I still decided to leave in order to save time. And it was worth it because in this way I had time for trips around Hanoi that were really worth doing. I asked the girl from reception of the hotel, who was a little lost in the landscape, about the available trips and she was able to make a list for me for the trip in the North, in Sapa and Ba Ca plus a little trekking, something that is not easy to arrange because you have to visit some markets open only in some particular days of the week. This was the reason I wanted to arrive here on Thursday because the markets are happening mainly during the weekend but I found also an extra market on Tuesday. The girl said that she will give me a quote for the trip but when I came in the evening she was not up to snuff, and obviously she did not know how to do it. Luckily, I contacted another agency on the way back to the hotel, that had exactly what I wanted to do and in spite of being a customized trip, and implicitly more expensive they arranged it and hopefully I will leave tomorrow at 8:30pm; four days in the North, 3 of them in different markets and one on hiking, with 5 nights, 2 of them with sleeping coach on the train. Beside this trip, I had to arrange two other one-day trips and a two-day trip to Halong Bay, the place that I saw first time in the movie “Indochine” with Catherine Deneuve. Also, I had to make arrangements for going into Laos, the bus being somewhere around 20 hours, so a flight would be advisable. Plus visa for Laos, plus, plus…..So, I spent in the morning and in the evening a lot of time with these arrangements, at least with the research and, finally, in the evening I paid $222 for my Sapa trip, in the North with the minority tribes, the highest amount I spent in Vietnam till now! You cannot spend money here, everything being so inexpensive! Meanwhile, I visited the main sites in Hanoi, that has some interesting things but less than expected. I will spend another day at the end in Hanoi, probably next Saturday. I went to see “The Temple of Literature”, that is a temple dedicated to Confucius but also the siege of the first University, the school that was producing mandarins, the representatives of a meritocracy imposed and introduced by the Chinese for administering their country and foreign provinces. This university was founded in 1070. I wanted to see Uncle Ho in the mausoleum but it was closed but I visited the Ho Chi Minh Museum, pretty interesting if you see it as a tourist and not involved in the local politics, and a set of other pagodas and temples located near by. The terms of pagoda and temple is reversed in Vietnam: pagoda is a place of worship and the temple is used to worship the ancestors. A family may have a temple and a village may have a pagoda for worship. I walked a lot and ate some veggie lunch and in the evening, after I finished my bookings, and after I ran around to no use to find a internet phone (because only Maria picked up and she was in a rush to wake up Guvi who was still sleeping at 7:55am), I went to have dinner of fish with ginger in a fancy restaurant. I tried to reach another restaurant, Cafe de Arts, pretty fancy, but I could not find it quick and I was hungry and, as usual, I did not have time. During dinner I started to study about Laos from a Lonely Planet in xeros copy bought in Nha Trang, these copies widely available in South East Asia, to see what I have to do there and if I have to skin a day from Vietnam to add it there, but I think that I am OK. It’s late and I am sleepy.

By reaching Hue I left the tropical area of Vietnam. It is raining, sometimes extremely intense and the palm trees disappeared. It is slightly cooler.

Hue was the imperial capital of Vietnam and the first question was if you can visit it in only one day, but because a lot of people do not even choose to stop in the city I thought that this may not be a problem. During the previous night dinner, that ended majestically with the flaming banana, I spoke with one of the guys from the restaurant who said that they do customized tours in town on motorbike. The next morning after I read more attentive the guide book and I noticed that most of the visiting sites are actually not inside the city but some of them are far out, I went to him to make arrangements. It exists also a tour by bus but I tried to avoid that, and I still don’t know if this was a good idea. The guy I spoke with was busy but arranged with a friend of his, and meanwhile I did my email and checked the blog and saw a show done by Victor and Claire after I emailed Cristina that I am looking at them. This is not easily done everytime because very few computers have Java installed. My guide came and first brought me to the post office to call home and I talked with both Victor and Claire. After that I mount the motorbike and rode through rice paddys worked by peasants, to a Japanese Bridge, similar with the one in Hoian, but its location was very pleasant. Latter, he brought me to a pagoda that had a mass and the chanting and the atmosphere, with lots of believers swarming the place who came to pray, was very interesting. Here, Buddhism is the major religion and is very baroque, sometimes too baroque for my taste, extremely flamboyant and visual, so is good to shoot it on video. Buddhists are a majority and this was the reason why they entered in direct conflict with the Diem administration of South Vietnam who placed in top positions the Catholics. The mass was very interesting and from there we went to visit one of the imperial tombs. The emperors from Nguyen dynasty , began at the beginning of the 18th century to built majestic tombs outside Hue. They built them in places they enjoyed and frequented during their lifetime and this lasted till late in the 19th century, before Bao Dai, the last emperor, came to power. He died in France in 1997 so he did not do anything like that. The tombs are impressive and is hard to believe that these were done so recently. The funny part was that the royal tomb is a very complex assembly with walls enclosing other walls till you get to the coffin, but the emperor is buried in another unknown place because he was afraid of theft, and all 200 people who help in the burial were killed. Unfortunately, I was able to visit only one tomb, the other being further away, and this is common in many day trips, you may have to choose what you see if you don’t want to stay more days. From there, we stopped to some Chinese tombs located nearby and further we visited a pagoda, where the monk who self immolated in 1963 lived. He was protesting against the Diem Regime in South Vietnam and his act was on the front page of all the newspapers in the world. We visited a fishing village and another pagoda and finished with a visit to the citadel, that was originally large and it had its own Forbidden City, purple, for a particular reason, nowadays disappeared completely. The citadel named “The Imperial City”, was bombed heavily by Commies in the Tet offensive in 1968. Whatever was left intact, the Americans bombed at their turn, trying to dislodge the Viet Minh from the citadel, because they were able to hold the entire city under their rule for 3.5 weeks following the offensive. This bombing campaign happened during the battle of Hue in the American War. Still , the Vietnamese restored a part of it and is still enough to see but on the location of the Forbidden City Purple and two other palaces in the back is just grass and some bronze jars left. After the citadel we returned to the hotel , around 5pm, because at 6pm the bus for Hanoi was supposed to leave.
I went to eat right near the hotel, some fish, and when I was eating somebody came to me and told me that the bus broke on the way from Hoian to Hue and we don’t know when we leave. I kept eating my fish when another guy came to me and told me that we should get quickly in a bus to go to another part of town to board the bus for Hanoi. I ate quickly the fish, the chips and the beer and jumped in the minibus, with the same group that followed me more or less : the girls from Malaysia, Sarah from London who was traveling now with an American girl and two boys from England. All 7 with lots of luggages in a taxi: you could not breath. The taxi brought us somewhere else in Hue and we boarded a bus from another company, that amazingly did not break. It stopped 3 times in the night, for dinner, pause and breakfast and brought us in 12 hours in Hanoi, but dropped us not in the Old Quarter but somewhere near the University. So, again we boarded a taxi all 7 and we got in the Old Quarter where we dispersed in various places and we may meet again. The way to Hanoi showed that we move towards North; it rained and it was cold and here people are dressed with scarves, jackets and cover their faces but is not so cold. It is chilly but not so bad, probably in the 16-17C.

I booked for the 8:00 am tour to MySon, so I woke up at 6:00 am, packed my stuff, left it in the hotel and I went for a walk in Hoian before the tour left. The target was the market , that in early morning was buzzing with activity, the women, all wearing the Vietnamese pointed hats were packing the fish market. I spend a lot of time there and I shot lots of video but it was hard because there were so many women there and so busy the market that they were bumping into me with baskets full of fish and shrimps. After a while I realized that is late and I had to rush to the hotel, where in the lobby I found the Italians, father and daughter, from the Nha Trang trip. It turned out that he, Leandro, knew Romania very well because he lived 4 years there. He knew far much more than me about the country and he was in places I never wanted to go. But he was there for business, apparently he was dong some exports. I did not ask him more but I may meet them again on the way. This is typical in travel when people follow the same itinerary. As a matter of fact, today I met Sarah, from Mekong/Cambridge, we rode in the same bus, and also a old lady from Wisconsin that I met before and two girls from Malaysia, one living in Australia and the other in Singapore, with whom I was in the broken bus the other night. So I talked with the Italians, Leandro and Medea, and had breakfast together and waited for the bus to bring me to MySon. It started to rain, pretty serious at times, but it turned out that was a short rain and the weather became OK latter on. The bus came at about 8:30am and after a heartful goodbye to the Italians, I started to MySon. Myson was the religious center of the Champas, the population that occupied this central area of Vietnam between 2nd and the 15th century. They were pirates, mainly, and because of this unfriendly job they were in constant conflict with the Vietnamese and the Khmers, being assimilated latter on, in the 17th century, by the first. They built impressive monuments, tombs for their kings and MySon is their center, a center that lasted between 4th and the 13th century far longer than any of the other centers in SE Asia, Angkor, Ayuthaia, Bagan, Borobudur, etc with which they were on par. Angkor in comparison lasted only 300 years. Unfortunately, after great efforts were done by the French to restore the monuments, the area was a free range zone during the American war and many bombs were thrown here destroying most of the monuments. The trip was interesting and short, just one hour inside the monuments but enough for what is there. I expected much less than what I found and, no matter that there were many tour groups, I was able to see and walked unhindered by others. The rain stopped and the sun came out timidly. On the way back to Hoian I was pondering if to stay the afternoon the Hoian, that is charming but basically was not much else to see, or to go with a 2pm bus to Hue. I arrived in Hoian at 1:20pm and eventually I decided to move ahead and I booked for the 2:00pm bus. The open ticket system works very well , especially in a country long and thin like Vietnam. Also, they arrange tours and trips like a science, and all the tours are arranged , or can be arranged in such a way to match the departure of the open buses. Also, there are more than one open bus system, and this should be checked because some of them are offering a much larger flexibility, schedule wise, with