Katja and Augustas hitch-hiking through the world Stories http://www.followtheroad.com/en/letters.php Letters <![CDATA[ Photos of Peru online! ]]>
our photos from Peru are online! See how we spent our time in the jungle of Peru, and what we saw along Rio Napo, in Iquitos, Lima, and Tacna. Enjoy our world!

Katja & Augustas

]]> http://www.followtheroad.com/en/photos-of-peru-online.html 2008-04-26 00:00:00 <![CDATA[ Details about our finances, expenses and equipment ]]> how can we finance our trip, what expenses we had in the last 2 years and what travel gear to we travel with.

We are welcome to read all this here:
http://www.followtheroad.com/en/faq.php

Whenever we will have time we will prepare more articles for this section - health, accommodation, food and water, etc.

However, we are always openly answer all the questions send to us personally. No secrets.

Greetings,
Augustas ir Katja ]]> http://www.followtheroad.com/en/details-about-our-finances-expenses-and-equipment.html 2008-04-25 00:00:00 <![CDATA[ Three weeks in Lima and other news from March ]]> cured malaria and finished with Dengue. We thought that postherpetic neuralgia got activated. Started to search for biomagnetism specialists. Unfortunately the only 3 such doctors in Peru are in Lima and all of them ask for impossible to pay fees - each session 150-170 soles (40 EUR). Besides that, one of them claims he serves people from different social levels, so we wonder how poorest people from the town earning maybe hundred dollars a month could afford 40 EUR session? Talking to these doctors personally got us an impression that the main aim of them is MONEY rather than honestly helping people. Finally, we decided to go for biomagnetism in Chile, and here in Iquique (where we are staying last few days) Katja finally went to the biomagnetism specialist and of course started to feel much better.

In the end of March I received POSITIVE results of Leptospirosis analysis which was initiated in the end of February (diagnosis of this disease lasts 3-4 weeks). This disease is serious, so it is important try to prevent its damage to the body by taking doxyciclina (antibiotics). This is what I was doing for 10 days. Since Katja's symptoms were not decreasing, we suspected that she had some kind of tropical infection (don't forget we have spent 2 months in Peru jungles). Following this thought in Lima we visited an experienced doctor of tropical diseases and for our surprise he diagnosed only bronchitis, nothing more. He prescribed 7 days antibiotics (claritromicina). This time Katja accepted treatment of conventional medicine, as we could not think of anything natural. After 5 days taking this antibiotics, Katja's body started to react to the chemicals (rapid heart beating, spasms) and she decided to stop taking these pills.


Lima is an enormous city with 9 millions inhabitants. We lived in Comas district - the Northern part of Lima. This is were we spent most of the days, as traveling to the city center is too time-consuming. One way trip is normally up to 1.5 hours, depending on the traffic jams and the route of the bus. No, we were not in favour to spend 3 hours a day only in the buses. In Comas we were hosted by Carla - hitch-hiker, actress and simply an interesting personality.



Here is a short list of the most remarkable events during our stay in Lima.

Earthquakes

Night from 28 to 29 of March I woke up in the middle of the night. I rose from the bed. Felt like the bed is shaking. Last vibrations I felt immediately after I woke up. Understood that it is an earthquake!
"Katja!" I shouted. She, of course, woke up and looked at me if she would be asking "what is happening?" I got confused. At that moment any signs of earthquake disappeared. It was silly to say that the earth is shaking when it was not shaking. In other words, I was confused, maybe all this was just an illusion? "Don't worry, everything is fine... Sleep sleep..." I told her and we continue sleeping.

Morning. Katja is already enjoying new day, me still in bed. Suddenly the windows make a cracky sounds, then follow the walls... Now for sure EVERYTHING is shaking! An EARTHQUAKE!!! We both realize that and ran outside of the room.
"My documents!", Katja came back to the room and grabbed her neck pouch with the passport.
"My trousers!", I realised that it would be better to put my trousers before I expose myself on the street. PASSPORT! was another thought. During the stress I could not clearly remember in which part of the backpack I have my neck pouch. To make it sure I have it, I grabbed the whole backpack. When I reached the door I finally got an idea that my documents are on the top pocket of the bag. When we managed to get out of the house to the street, the earthquake was already gone.

Next day newspapers announced that the first earthquake at 1:30am had 4.3 and in the morning 8:00am - 5.3 points by the Richter scale. It is of course far away from the disaster in Peru last August - earthquake that reached 8.0 points by Richter.


Best traveler of Lithuania

In March I was announced as the best traveler of Lithuania in 2007. This contest for travelers called "Magelan of Lithuania" was organized for the second time by InfoEra which is an official distributor of Magelan GPSs in Lithuania.


Short short short

When in the end of February I was attacked by Dengue and malaria at the same time and got high fever, my long hair started to irritate me. The only thing I wanted at that time - to say good-bye to my long tail of the hair.

My short-hair "illness" was transferred to Katja. She got dreams of having short hair as well, in this way avoiding every morning care of the hair - mainly brushing them. She started to realize her dream by searching Internet for the haircut she would like to have. She wanted this one:



When my tropical diseases were cured and high fever was gone, I almost forgot the annoyance of long hair. However, the word "barbershop" anyway sounded as sweet and attractive as, for example, "bakery".

Katja was the pioneer of all this fuzz. She was the first taking final actions. In Comas area of Lima one could find lots of barbershops for 5 soles ($1.85), but she did not trust them. She was sure they have a single cut and have not much experience in doing special orders. Katja wanted a bit of quality and decided to pay 20 soles ($7.40) in a more luxury barbershop. Most important - she was happy about the result.

I could not wait longer. In a random barbershop for 5 soles I showed my 3 years old passport picture and said "want to be like this!" Result was satisfying.



Nonsense of capitalism

For healing Katja's bronchitis doctor in Lima prescribed the following medicine:
Klaicid 500 mg
(Claritromicina)
14 pills

In the pharmacy of the clinic we asked how much is this medicine. The cashier made few clicks in the computer...
"10 soles [$3.7]," she replied.
Impossible price, we thought.
"It is for 10 pills or what?"
"No, one unit."
We could not believe it.
"Wait wait, don't you have anything cheaper? Something from the other company?"
"Wait a minute... Yes, we have. 13 soles for the package of 10 pills."

Pure nonsense of MONEY oriented capitalism, we cannot find another explanation to this.

PS: These kind of cheap "non-commercial" medicine in Peru is called "generic". Our Peruvian friend Carla said she has heard that the government is going to forbid sale of generic medicine. Would be a real disaster for such a poor country like Peru.


The Big Search

We are not googles, so what we search - takes time. We mean job possibilities. Last month we have send more than 100 emails to the hostels in Bolivia, Peru, Uruguay, Argentina and Chile asking for any kind of paid job. Our aim is to save a bit more money in order be able to continue our life journey.

By now we only got one request to make a website for a travel agency in San Pedro de Atacama - the city in the desert of Chile. Besides that we will continue writing for Lithuanian media and will wait until the former German teacher will correct Katja's 500 pages book about the first part of our trip (January 2006 - April 2007). Once this is done, we will search for a publisher in Germany.


]]> http://www.followtheroad.com/en/three-weeks-in-lima-and-other-news-from-march.html 2008-04-17 00:00:00 <![CDATA[ We are in Chile ]]> When we got an idea that Katja's 5 weeks bronchitis is caused by the pollution and contamination in Lima, we decided to escape this place as soon as possible. We bought night bus tickets to Arequipa (1030 km, 45 soles - 11€). Acting last minute in this city we tried to search for free accommodation online. One of HospitalityClub.org members said "you are welcome in my place." Finally, when we arrived to Arequipa we got to know that her plans suddenly changed, she had urgently go to Lima and for this reason she send us to a "cheap" hostel - $5-$7 per night. Well, this we cannot afford. We also checked Hare Krishna community, but they require recommendation from other temple. Actually Arequipa looks cosy and pretty, but we were forced to leave it us to search for a free accommodation was too late. The night bus to Tacna town near Chilean border was the same $5 so we decided for this investment. Early morning from Tacna we got into another bus to Arica, already in Chile. From here we continued our trip by hitch-hiking and the same day (Friday) we arrived to Iquique (330 km from the border).

The first two nights in Iquique we stayed with Jamir, who works in the infantry of Chilean army. Every day from Monday to Friday he walks through the deserts and searches for the illegal Bolivians. When he comes home, hours and hours he spends playing GameCube games. Most of them are about transformers. 35 years old Jamir is a transformers fan for more than 20 years. On the weekends he relaxes watching animated and other movies of transformers or sorting out his collection of these figures. Even his T-shirt is about the same - transformers. Jamir's plan is to work for the army another 8 years (total 20 years) and then get military pension and go traveling.

After two days we had to change the place to stay, as Jamir's family had a cat and Katja has very strong allergy to them. Now we stay in Jose's small house 15 km south from Iquique on the calm beach called Playa Blanca. Ok, it is not expected to be calm all the time. Jose warned us that earthquakes do sometimes occur. We should not worry much about this, but just in case it is super urgent case - when the things are falling and the windows cracking - he showed us some trees up the sandy mountain where we should run and stay. He means the case which have never occurred in the last 100 years - strong earthquake provoking flooding of the sea. Such disaster would be not normal, however Global Warming in our days changes everything.


Couple of things, which we could not miss in Chile:

The Desert!

We are not traveling with lonely planet bible so to find out that the Northern part of Chile is pure desert - was a surprise. Locals claim this desert is much bigger than Sahara. This lasts for 1000 kilometres from the border.

Regions in Roman numbers
The country is divided into 13-15 regions. Besides that all of them have proper names, most of the time they are referred by numbers. On the maps and road signs most of the time regions are identified by Roman numbers (region VII, region II, etc).
- Which city you are coming from?
- From Temuco
- Where is it?
- In the 9th region.

Actually, this numeration is rather logical as the numbering is increasing by one once you travel from North to the South. Well, the most northern region recently was baptised as XV, because government decided to split region I into two units.

Prices
It is one of the things we still need to get used to. After staying 3 months in Peru, costs in Chile seems to be very high. Another thing we have to learn - currency rate of pesos. One dollar in Peru was 2.7 soles, here the same dollar is valued to 435 pesos. This rate is very similar to Costa Rican colon, where 1 dollar was about 500 colones. Now seeing the prices in Chile we are converting this number to Peruvian soles (as we have feeling for them) and to dollars. Double convertion is a bit tiring for the mind, but in couple of weeks we should be able to start orientating directly in Chilean pesos.

Here are few prices from Chile. City bus costs about 370-450 pesos (0.60€). Fruits and vegetables - 2-3 times more expensive than in Peru:
Bananas 0.45-0.80 €/kg (Peru-Lima 0.20€)
Tomatoes 0.85 €/kg (Peru-Lima 0.45€)
Apples 0.85 €/kg (Peru-Lima 0.35€)
Bread 1.15 €/kg
Carrots 0.70 €/kg
Potatoes 0.45 €/kg (Peru-Lima 0.20 €)
We hope that going more South prices will get slightly smaller, as now we are in the deserted area, and fresh food here sometimes travels thousands of kilometers.

]]> http://www.followtheroad.com/en/we-are-in-chile.html 2008-04-15 00:00:00 <![CDATA[ Our house in Iquitos ]]> This artricle we shared with CoolWorks:

http://www.coolworks.com/blogs/2008/03/our-house-in-iquitos.asp

 

]]> http://www.followtheroad.com/en/our-house-in-iquitos.html 2008-03-19 00:00:00 <![CDATA[ Iquitos - city without cars ]]> We will disappoint you - this entry is not about ecologically clean place. Iquitos - is a huge city without cars. Let's try this. Close your eyes and come into the middle of any road. Open your eyes. In front of you - only motorcycles - isn't it?  We repeat this exercise. The view is the same - only motos. Really, the existents of cars in this city is almost none. Alright, we saw few trucks, and couple of strangers (or maybe rich men) with mazdas, toyotas, volkwagens and even Russian Lada. Actually there is a 100 km road to the South West of Iquitos, which leads to Nauta. There are several small companies offering a ride to Nauta in a car for 10 soles ($3.5). But in general, to drive a car in Iquitos should be a disaster. The amount of motorcycles here is enormous. Street lines do not exist to them. They drive how they want, they cut curves as it is faster for them, just the colors traffic lights, surprisingly, they do recognise and respect. But still, being a pedestrian crossing the street I would try to be noticed by the drivers. Otherwise they freeze by staring at the traffic lights like zombies. They see nothing else. Whenever a green light shows a sign to be lit, all the motorcycles are already in the other side of the crossroad...

Motos with two wheels are mostly private ones. They make about 20% of all the traffic. The crowd of traffic is formed by the 3-wheel constructions, which are, by the way, the most effective means of moving in Iquitos. These constructions are called motokars (moto-cars). Their function - taxi. Common taxi cars in other places does not exist in Iquitos. Nevertheless motokars successfully replace them as there are crowds of them. Motokar obviously has a motorcycle, which is driven by the driver. Behind him - a soft bench for up to 3 passengers. 4 people would also fit, if there is a need. Behind the seat for the passengers, there is a bit of space for the bags or backpacks, which are usually fixed with couple of ropes. All this construction has a roof, and if it is raining, the driver fixes a big plastic in front of the motokar as well - so your trip will be more or less dry.

Most of the motokars do not belong to the drivers. They rent them for 20 soles ($7) per day. That means one needs to earn at least 30 ($10.5) soles daily, in order to feed his family at least with a plate of rice.

The cost of the trip with a 3-wheel motokar is negotiated between you and the driver. The tariff starts from 1.5 soles ($0.5). This you will be charged for a 1-2 km trip. The longer the distance, the higher the price - 2, 2.5 soles and more. For example, if you will need to travel from the center to the faraway located airport - don't even dream about the ride cheaper than 7-8 soles ($2.5). Actually, for the shorter distances, motokars tend to ask 50 centimos more than the trip is worth, so if you will hear 2 soles for a short trip, immediately ask for 1.5 soles. Oh, forgot to mention, the price should be arranged before the trip!

By the way, if you are traveling solo, the cheaper is to use city buses for 70 centimos ($0.25). We are talking about miniaturistic buses without window glasses for 40 passengers. Well, they actually have something for the windows in case it is raining. one needs to pull a framed plastic glass from the bottom of the window. The routes of buses usually go via the main roads of Iquitos. So if you need to get to the other side of the city, the trip by such bus would be much more economic than by motokars. Specially, if you need to get to the airport.

So, WELCOME to Iquitos - the world's largest city (half million inhabitants) without road access. The closest town with the roads connecting rest of Peru is Yurimaguas - 3 days by boat on the rivers Marañón and Huallaga (70 soles - $25).
]]> http://www.followtheroad.com/en/iquitos-city-without-cars.html 2008-03-17 00:00:00 <![CDATA[ Whom do Peruvians call monkeys? ]]>


"Mono manda a la basura a la OEA." This could be translated as "Monkey sends OEA to the trash bin". Here OEA (Organizacion de Estados Americanos) means Organization of American States, which unites 35 countries of American continents and Carribean. The message is very short and is talking about the president of Ecuador, who is dissapointed about the last political actions in Colombia. He blames the OEA for that. He also says that now the OEA is worth only to be thrown to the trash bin of history.

The Ecuadorian president is a monkey? Exactly! The same as in Lithuanian they call Latvians heads of horses (zirgas galva), here in Peru they call Ecuadorians monkeys. While on the other side of the border, in Ecuador, they refer to Peru people as chickens.

These nicknames we have already learned from Nicolas with whom this January we stayed for 2 weeks in Pantoja - the first village after crossing Ecuadorian-Peruvian border. They have a military base over there and once in a while we had a morning entertainment by soldiers of the base. At 6.30 a.m. they were running circles with guns or wooden trunks around the village and singing songs about the monkeys (having in mind Ecuadorians) and their blood. Then they were arriving to the school's football field (in front of our house) and making different exercises for the next half an hour. It was really interesting and at the same time strange to hear that in the Peruvian military songs they express disrespect to their Ecuadorian neighbor.

So far to the news from the local newspaper. News - or not - about us are that we are still stuck in the worlds biggest city without road access - Iquitos. My (Augustas) malaria is fully cured. I am making my last blood tests, and the results about the other possible diseases (dengue, leptospirosis) will be known in two weeks.

Coming week we are hoping to finally get back to the road. The first "highways" are 3 days away by cargo boat ($25) or few hours by an airplane ($50-$100). We are checking possibilities for free rides by airplane, which is not as easy in this part of the world. In case we succeed it would be perfect for us, because yesterday we did a grand calculation of our savings. Left are only 1200 EUR. Once we will get back to the road, we will be heading towards a place where we could earn some money for our trip. We still don't know where that will be... (any ideas welcome!)

Greetings,
Augustas ir Katja ]]> http://www.followtheroad.com/en/whom-do-peruvians-call-monkeys.html 2008-03-08 00:00:00 <![CDATA[ Fotos of Ecuador online! ]]> Hello to all,

the photos of our stay in Ecuador are finally online:

Ecuadorian photo series

Enjoy getting lost in our world!

Katja & Augustas

]]> http://www.followtheroad.com/en/fotos-of-ecuador-online.html 2008-03-04 00:00:00