Brasil and Rio de Janeiro

Hei all love ones and greetings from summer!

We have been here in Rio for one week now and so far so good =) The city is huge with lovely hilly landscape and white sand beaches, something for everyone for sure! So far we havent been doing too much of things here, just been a bit on the city, visiting some museums, having fresh pressed juices for lunch and hanging around with Maija and all her lovely friends. Its almost like beings at home since just yesterday we had Teca and her friends coming for the dinner, and we prepared food with Maijas Petri Dish! We didnt have lamb though but beef was almost equally good =) And with nice introduction i have learned the noble skill how to prepare caipirinas, so be aware Finns when i get back ill bring a suitcase full of cashaca!

And what else, hummm..... Well not too much actually. Last week we had nice time with Niina and Christophe when they were still in town, sun bathing and strolling sround in the city. After they left we have had most of the days with some rain, and more or less clowdy, but its ookoo since temperatures came down a bit. Still the biggest difference we notice after they went back to Finland was that all the mosquitoes started to attack all second-best food sources since Niina with her delicious legs was gone =)

And yes, we did some true activities aswell - we climbed on top of the Perdo da Gavia rock which offered nice jumppa for the legs and the butt and just amazing view from the top down to whole of the huge city of Rio. If i now find Christophes photos from Maijas computer i will put you some of them here. Otherweise seeya soon, we are almost back to Europe again!

view from the big stone down towards west and Barra

kaks Maijaa =)

view from the stone towards east and the Two Brothers stones

Maija and the amazing view

On the way up up up...

On the way either up or down - Niina and Daniele

And the first beer(s)  after getting down tasted sooooooo good! Toffe, our guide Gigi and Aline

Daniele, Stefano, Maija Hoo, Niina and Bruno. Maija YyKooGee is missing since she took the photos

No jo on ilme! After having three-month travel hair i shaved Brunos head. Here Christophe took a photo when it still wasnt ready

And here we go, the evenings first (i think) caipirinas at home

Dinner party from last week with Stefano and Bruna as additional guests. Toffe was mastering the kitchen and made some extremely tasty crepes, yumm.... Aijoo, this photo was taken with "Finnish smiles" on everybodys face. Stefano was the only one not succeeding since his teeth are visible when smiling ;o)

One day we went to the Lagoa and rented for half an hour a swan which we pedaled arond in the lake.

Caipirinas at Ipanema beach. Maija and Niina...

...and here Toffe and Bruno.

On Niinas and Toffes last evening in Rio we went out in Lapa and hooked up with Alex and Suski, also spending a holiday in Rio. And look, this time we had beer - but for starter only before the caipirinas ;o)

Back in Chile

Holaholaaaa!

Autumn/winter is here, again.. Piss cold here in south of Patagonia, windy as hell and some rain. No snow atleast yet =)  In Argenitnan side we made it to Bariloche, did a three-day hike in the mountains sleeping in refugios, and saw some truly amazing mountain sceneries. The paths were just terrible, but the climbing on the rocks on all four and sliding down ridges of loose sand, stones and gravel were worth it when seeing the Andes all the way to Chilean side.

From Bariloche we took the bus to El Chalten, and we chose the "scenery route" on the road number 40 - my ass i say! Two days of pampa, some lost sheeps, occasional horses, ñandus and guanacos, and then thats it. Truly nobody living there! But El Chalten itself was nice little village in the middle of the national park, from where we had a direct access to nice paths and great hikes. We spent night in the mountains freezing our asses off, but the Fitz Roy and glaciers were worth it definitely!

From there we got to El Calafate, just a horrible tourist city which only thing to do was the Perito Moreno Glacier - in all possible ways. Most of them seemed to be just huuuuuge tourist ripping off traps, so we just shared a taxi with one french couple and went to have a look at the glacier. Quite amazing, nothing ive seen before.

And after hard decision making and joopaseipas we decided to skip Torres del Paine. Hiking we have now done in all possible mountain areas, and it especially annoyed us that you end up paying heaps of money here and there just so that you can go walking in their national park, cook you own food and do camping. So no Torres del Paine for us - this time atleast =) Still we got back to Chilean side to Puerto Natales, spent there one day, and yesterday we got to Punta Arenas, the capital of Patagonia. This city seems like a funny place, and tomorrow we will catch a bus from here to Rio Gallegos in Argentina, from where we have a flight on Monday to Buenos Aires and from there to Rio de Janeiro! So be aware all Brasileños, Maija and Bruno are on their way =)

So it seems that our round the world trip is getting close to its end, and in three days we will be in Rio. Well, anyways before coming back to the Finnish spring we will have a couple of weeks to spend in Rio, from which the first week Niina and Toffe will be sleeping at hostel Goyena aswell =) Lets see what nice excursions we will do from there then. Iguassu falls we ended up now skipping, since it also smells like another Perito Moreno tourist trap. The falls them selves must be really spectacular, but all the lovely looking places with easy access are filled with rich and fat European and American tourists, and thats just horrible. I think i can afford leaving those places to them..

Butbut, now we'd better get to the town and find some nice brunch from somewhere. Big hugs and kisses to you all, and seeya super soon!

<3

From Chile to Argentina

Hola locos!

So now after less than two weeks we have maed it to Argentinan side to Bariloche. After leaving from Santiago we took a bous tour to Pucon, and the bus stopped for one night in Pichilemu, quite a funny little village. In Pucon we stayed for three four nights, since the place was incredible. Well, the village itself was pquite turisty and definitely not representative of nirmakl CHilean cillage, but the surroundings were amazing. Mountains, lakes geothermic hot springs, volcano. And we did all that. For the best view ever we climbed up to volcani Villarica, which had glacier on the top, and if we eould have been lucky we could have seen some lava in the crater. Well, we didnt see the lava but we surely felt the gases pwhen we were standin on the pegde of the crater. Awesome view and lovely hike.

Two days after thart we took a but to Argentinan side, to San Martin de los Andes, and once again while sitting in the but the landscape when crossing the Andes was just crazy. On the Cihlean side the mountains were lush green and moist and as soon as we got to the other sine in Argentina, it became dry and windy and bushy, just like in the cowboy movies =)

We spent two days in San Martin and on the other day we rented mountain bnikes and were biking the whole day up to a closed ski resort from where we came back down to the village on a bumpy and rough dirt road, was good fun though! And yesterday we took the "scenery ride" with the bus via the road of weven lakes, again, some more lovely scenery. And after stopping for a while in Villa de Angostura we arrived to Bariloche.

Today we are planning to have an administrative day and find about all thr hiking thracks and possibilities where we could head opf tomorrow  for few days. MAybe three days and two nights in the mountains would be enough. Then we have to also fond about the buses going south to El Chalten and El Calafate, to see some more amazing moutnains and glaciers =) Cant wait! Sorry, no pictures this time, the compu seems to be more than slow.

Hugs and kisses to you all, greetings from Argenita <3

Las Fotooooos!

Hummm... These fotos were now totally randomy selected since this computador is one that you have to pedal to get it running (poljettavaa mallia)... I dont know what happened to these pictures, why they are stretched like this, and i surely dont know how to turn them, but i might make a second effort to find some nicer ones... This is from Sydney and it sky scrapers.

This one is from the Blue Mountains national park close to Sydney - quite nice view

Hihii, this is an larvae that has encapsulated ans waiting to be hatched to be a butterfly

This is from the beach where we spent our first night with our camper van in Australia. These rock formations were incridibe, wow..

Still the same beach

And well, this one is from Santiago yesterday, from the lookout point on one of the hills in the city. They say than on a clear day you san see the mountains but i assume that those non-smog days are not there anymore, atleast not so often.

HAhaaa! I had access also to Brunos photos through my camera, so here is random selection also his photos =)

Forest from somewhere, cannot tell where though, sorry!

Now look at these Austraian trees, thayre crazy! There is secondary roots growing down to ground from branches and they actually penetrate the gound and act as an support and/or transport. So cool!

The moon in Melbourne

Dunno what

In Melbourne we visited a gallery where was an exhibioçtion about manga and stuff realted to that. They also had a video where they followed step by step how the traditional hand-drawn animations are done in Japan. Awesome! And actualy now when i think about it, the previous picture must have been related to this exhibition aswell.

Bruno had to finally throw away his legendary 40cent Schengdu flipflops, yhyyyy... ;o)

Old volcano crater in Aucland

Maori rowing boat contest somewhere on our way to the Tongariro national park in New Zealand

same happening

Tongariro park "big crossing" of 20km, and this is one of the craters. Awesome views and landscape. I had other pictures here loaded about the same hiking aswell, but for some reason i cant see them anymore. Maybe they show up when i publish this text

sunset from the same national park

The perfect school book volcano. We didnt climb on this one, the track just passed by it

Our camping site close to the Tongariro, with the volcano and the big moon on the back ground

Steam pushing from the pithole in the ground with boilig mud in Rotorua. How cool!

There was a weekend of vintage cars in one of the small towns we stopped for the night in New Zealand. This one was parked on the parking lot of our motel.



The Pacific Ocean in Coromandel peninsula in New Zealand. Soooo blue!



Santiago de Chile

Hola!

Greetings from sunny Santiago, we arrived here two days ago. So far so good, we have bought some bus tickets to head south starting tomorrow, and the chilean people are just lovely. Heartwarm and helpful and smiley, nothing to complain about =) Santigo itself is a bit boring, not too much things to do or to se, and i think our three nights here is more than enough. So far the most gratest thig the city itself has offered to us was the Mercado Central where we has absolutely delicious seefood lunch! Yummy! It has been quite nice to walk around in the city though, but i didnt get the homey feeling here as ive dome in some other places where weve been visiting.

Our next destination where the bus will take us day after tomorrow is Pucon and Villarica volcano. Im determined to see some lava, so lets hope that the volcano is on its (not too) active mood when we get there.. Then after that our plans are not too clear. Depends how we feel about the lake district we might go to Argentinian side to Bariloche and check out their hikes in the Natural Parks and atround the lakes. Then it will be ass-aching 30h bus drive to south leading us eventually to Tierra del Fuego at the end of the continent. Then we still might have some time for some hikes in Torres del Paine national park before catching a flight to Buenos Aires or directly to Rio, vamos a ver ;o)

So far our travel has been ookoo, some things and places more great than others, and we still have six weeks to go. Time runs sooooo fast, i think we ujst started our trip, and theres still so musch to see. I defnitely want to get back to New Zealand one day to explore and see it all properly, and i think i will get the same feeling about South America aswell as soon as we get out of Santiago. The only problem though is that South America is some what bigger than New Zealand. Well, atleast we will have something to do and somewhere to travel in the future!

Huhhuhh.. I think i will out out this ttext now, and if i go to our room and am able to find the cable to connest my camera to this compu then i might out here some kind of selection of pictures for you to see.. I already know that i dont have any pictures on my camera about New Zealand since Bruno filled his SD card already in Australia and ttook mine in his camera.. But some i do have surely, i will put some of then here for you to look at =)

Besos a todos! <3

New Zealand!

Everybody move to NZ!!

This country seems only after one week amazing, definitely the best of anything we have seen so far. Landscape is awesome, people are nice and theres a billion things to do here. We will come back, no question about it =)

So, today er are going to the airport of Auckland and head towards Santiago de Chile. We have finally made a decision how to get our asses to Rio since i bought a tracel guide about Patagonia. So there we will head, although according to someone (..) its not america latina enough ;)

But my time is running out, so thats it folks for now!

M&B

Cairns

Moromoro,

Here we are in Cairns safe and sound. We took back the campervan today and tomorrow we have flight to Melbourne where we are spending few days before going to New Zealand for a week. Driving to north along the coast has been great fun, and against all odds not at all too rainy. Lucy i admit that here in Cairns and down in Townsville it has been raining, but we were waiting the highway to open in Airlie Beach where the weather was more or less ok. And yepyep, the highway from Townsville to Cairns seems to be still closed due to all the rain and floods, but we did yesterday the strongly NON-recommendabe inland drive to get here. The road was two-way but one lane, but we were lucky enough that it wasnt raining too much so we saw early enough when a road train (truck with three trailers, scary...) was coming. so that we pulled over to dirt to let them pass. Interesting 10 hours of driving :)

We also finally saw the Great Barrier Reef, although our trip was cancedde twice due to rough wind. But once we finally made it there it was definitely rewarding. i could have been snorkelling for more than the three hours and look at the fish in all possible rainbow colors, lovely!

And also another awesome thign we did was in Mon Repos Beach where we saw sea turtles hatching, emerging up from the sand and running down the beach towards the sea and the waves. Incredible! It just hurt me to know that out of the 150 turtles we saw only one if any make it until htey are 30 and come back to the beach to lay the eggs - if they are females that is. The males never come back to the shore, they just spend all their lives swimming in the ocean and looking at all the fish in all possible rainbow colors - would be nice ;)

But honestly i will (one day) put here some pictures, we have plenty of them. The Australian part has been lovaly, cant wait to get to South America.

kisses to you all!