South american awards 2012

After 5 months of travelling around and through South America we thought it's about time to pick our favourites in different categories. It's all just in our opinion based on what we've experienced in this time. Decisions are mostly influenced by the limited budget of a backpacker.

 

 

We travelled through Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador and Colombia. Out of these we chose the winners.

 




easiest travelling award

Travelling in Colombia is affordable, some streches are not more expensive by plane than by bus and those are in good shape and taxis generally have fixed prices or at least fair fares. If you're lost everyone is happy to help.

 

 

 

 

 

friendliest people award

 

Before we reached Colombia we had no doubt it'll be Bolivia. But Colombians won our hearts just after we crossed their border.

 

 

 

 

 

easiest spanish award

 

No doubt, bolivian spanish or castellano is the easiest to understand, no weird accents or slang. If you don't understand them you can be sure they talk Quechua or Aymará.

 

 

 

 

 

must see national park award

Madidi NP in Bolivia is absolutely beautiful, full of life, well protected and only accessible by boat. We'd go there again any time.

Very close second place, that has to be mentioned here is Galapagos. Just unique.

 

 

 

 

most perfect beaches award

Galapagos wins by its unspoiled, tourist and rubbish free beaches full of sea lions and iguanas. You never get bored.

 

 

 

 

 

best hostel breakfasts award

Nowhere else in the whole continent the breakfast came even close to those in Brazil. Fruits, fruit juice, cheese, ham, sausages, different bread rolls, croissants, cakes, coffee, tea. All included in the price. Good morning!

 

 

 

 

 

most relaxed award

Not much is happening in Uruguay which just suits us. Calm little towns, empty beaches and flat farmlands. Quiet.

 

 

 

 

 

budget friendliest award

Bolivia is cheap. Everything. But only in a bus you notice why.

 

 

 

 

most beautiful landscapes award

Colombians green, tree covered mountains, beautiful cities and the caribbean coast with splendid snorkelling and diving.

 

 

 

 

best buses award

 

Argentinian buses with luxurious chairs, dinner with wine, clean toilets.

 

 

 

 

 

outstanding ruins award

Peru with its Machu Picchu, just unbeatable.

 

 

 

 

 

 

best food award

The cheap and tasty food in Bolivia caters to everyone. There's a lot of meat, yes, but half of us is vegetarian and she voted for Bolivia too. If you cook for yourself you'll find the freshest veggies and the juiciest fruits just around the corner in a market. Chef's paradise!

 

 

 

 

most memorable wine award

Uruguay's Tannat you'll remember forever. Best enjoyed with a dinner. Also works without.

 

 

 

 

 

most different to home award

Everything is different in Bolivia, we really felt like somewhere else. And in every taken photo is at least one indegenious person, we like.

 

 

 

 

 

the country we're most likely to return to award

Colombia wins by it's comfortable climate (we say too hot is better than too cold), it's beautiful vegetation, friendly, beautiful people and the Caribbean coast which we didn't explore long enough. Let alone the San Blas islands...

 

Lazy days

Beach, sun, bikinis, surfers, sound of waves, lizards running around and a nice hostel on top of a hill! In a way it felt like coming home. We arrived to Máncora, just a few hours from the border of Ecuador, and we were instantly relaxed and happy. Because we hadn't spent as much time in Peru as we originally planned, we now had to wait somewhere for a week before catching a flight from Ecuador. Máncora was a great place for that. We both have been to nicer beaches and better towns, but after the mountains it was exactly what we needed.

A bungalow for 10 euros a night per person, 8 soles (3 euro) menus (fruit juice, salad and main course) all over the town and the beach 10 minute walk away. Our hostel also borrowed books for free. What more do you need? Tanning, planning, swimming, reading, beer, ice-cream and shopping kept us busy for one week. Some days there were huge waves, but because neither of us is that interested in surfing, we decided to skip that activity.

That's all folks. We did absolutely nothing, and we loved it.

 

Peru by bus

A few hundred photos and an equal amount of mosquito bites later it was time to get used to the city life again. We left Cusco on a night bus to Arequipa. We really wanted to get to beaches already, but Peru is so huge that you either sit on a bus for 50 hours nonstop or break it down and actually visit a few cities. Our first stop was Arequipa, about 9 hours from Cusco. Arequipa is a city with the population of almost 900,000, but the center had more like a small town feel. We stayed there for 3 days doing pretty much nothing. A bit of walking around, eating ice-cream, reading and time passed quite fast that way. Arequipa was a nice city but only a stopover and a resting place for us, so we visited one church and decided that that was enough sightseeing for this time.

From Arequipa we took a night bus again, this time to Nazca. Nazca is famous for its lines made by the Incas. They are different in shapes and sizes and nobody really knows what their purpose was. We thought that would be interesting to see, but having spent way too much money with the jungle tours and Machu Picchu, we decided not to do the popular plane ride over the lines. Instead it is possible to take the bus to a built viewpoint, from which it is possible to see two of the many lines. The mirador was about 20 minutes away by bus. It was awfully hot and you couldn't see the most impressive ones anyway, so we took the next bus back after spending there about half an hour. A bit disappointed by not doing the plane ride and not seeing the lines properly, but being happy because of the saved money, we went back to the hostel to sleep one more night before taking off again.

A well-slept night and a nice lunch later we got on the bus heading to the capital, Lima. We had decided to stay in a safe but a bit posh area, Miraflores. 9 hours on the bus and 20 minutes in a taxi (mostly because the taxi driver had no clue where the right street was, but luckily my amazing Nokia has a navigator with maps of Peru) and we arrived at our hostel. For us Lima sounded like just another big city, nicely located on the coast though, so we only stayed for two nights. First day we spent recovering from the noisy bus ride and happy to have a hostel with good cooking facilities, we enjoyed making our own food and chilling in the backyard. Next day, still feeling lazy, we though we should at least visit the city center so we took a taxi and took a guided tour in the dusty, bone-filled catacombs in the cathedral of San Francisco. After walking around the city for a while, we took a taxi back to Miraflores, to see a park at the beach, Parque del Amor. A nice little park, but the windy and chilly weather made us start the walk through Miraflores towards the hostel pretty quicky. Around the Parque Kennedy there are many nice cafes and restaurants, so we stopped for a frozen mocha and a coffee with Baileys on the way.

Next day we were happy to hop on the bus again, knowing that after the 18 hours of bad movies and worse music we would be on the sunny beach of Máncora, northern Peru.

 

Return to mosquito country

Back from Machu Picchu, tired of big crowds, we returned to the agency from which we had booked our tickets. There we talked to a guy who did tours to the rainforest. We were so amazed by the beauty of Madidi national park in Bolivia and we absolutely loved spending time in the jungle, that it didn't need too much thinking to book a 4-day tour to Manu national park with a company called Wild Watch Peru. We had one day in Cusco to stock up with insect repellent and off we were again.

Compared to Madidi, Manu is not as easily accessible. From Rurrenabaque in Bolivia it is only a 30 min boat ride into the park and another hour to the lodge. To get to Manu, you have to drive for hours and hours to get to the park. The tour left early in the morning. After picking up all the people, we drove off stopping in a small village, some pre-Inca ruins and did walks in the cloudforest. Cloudforest is the cloudy, still a bit chilly, high-altitude part of the jungle, which has different flora and fauna than the rainforest below it. The first day we saw the national bird of Peru, the Peruvian cock of the rock. It's not only the name that is funny, the poor creature looks quite silly, too...

We arrived at the lodge just after the sunset and were happy to relax after most of the day spent in the car on the bumpy road and with the amazing 80's & 90's music they seem to love in this part of the world. So after dinner we planned the tour with the guide, Hebert, and then crawled under the blankets.

We were supposed to wake up at six to go for a morning walk, but the heavy rain kept everyone in their rooms until breakfast. After that the rain stopped and we went for a walk around the garden of the lodge, where we were told about rainforest plants and how they can be used as medicine, for recreational purposes or for food. While walking, we also saw a friendly toucan who posed for our photos for a long time!

After the walk we hopped back in the minibus to be taken to a wildlife sanctuary, a rescue place for wounded animals. The animals were walking around free and they were quite friendly with the people. There we saw a black spider monkey who was excited to climb all over us, a capybara, a sloth, two wild pigs, two macaws, a baby ocelot and coatis. It was a fun experience to get so close to these animals, but it's never the same than to actually spot them in their natural habitat.

After the sanctuary we drove to the river and took the boat towards the second lodge. After settling down in our bungalows, we left for a walk around the area. We walked down the path towards the river, and the turned uphill. From there we could spot three types of monkeys: red howler monkeys, squirrel monkeys jumping from tree to tree, followed by capuchin monkeys! We had never seen this many monkeys in one place. We kept walking to a giant tree, where we found a fat liana and some of the group tried hanging from it, or more like smashing into the tree and falling down into the bushes. We also spotted many different birds, including a toucan and oropendolas. After this we returned to the lodge, where we just watched colibris feeding from the flowers and butterflies flying everywhere.

After the sunset we left for a night walk. We like nightwalks, because you can spot all the creepy crawlies that hide somewhere during the day. We saw huge sc. orpion spiders, grasshoppers, mice in the trees and a green tree frog.

The next day we woke up early to get on the boat which took us downstream the river. We did a little walk to a lake, where little rafts were waiting and we could watch the birds that gather around the lake. We saw hoatzins, vultures, oropendolas and many other birds. After crossing the lake, we did a little walk to spot more animals. We mostly spotted termites and butterflies. Then we walked back to the rafts, but someone had taken them so we had to walk back through a little swamp. We got back to the boat and decided to jump in the river on he way back to the lodge. We spent a long time playing in the river, building little dams, until we got too hungry and took off again for lunch. After lunch we took the boat again towards the same direction and went for a short hike before the sunset. We spotted different birds and a huge tree, big enough for the six of us to hide behind the roots. After the walk we went back to the lodge for dinner.

To celebrate our last night in the rainforest we made a fire on the beach and sat there until we couldn't keep our eyes open anymore. Early the next morning we took the boat to town and then the bus back to Cusco, where we slept for one night before taking off to the next destination. On the way back we stopped for a walk, and were lucky to spot a common woolly monkey, a new species for us!