BSA in Colombia

I always thought South America equals sun.
That is wrong. At least in August.
We arrived in Bogota on the 28st of July and were freezing off our asses.
I was wearing a shirt, a longsleeve, a fleece and a jacket and I was still freezing.
Other thing was that as soon that we arrived in Colombia, BSA kicked in. BSA is a common disease around backpackers. It's short for Backpack Seperation Anxiety.
And it's widely spread, especially in Colombia.
So after 2 days in Bogota, we took the flight to Guayaquil in Ecuador... We heard Guayaquil could be kinda sketchy, so we accepted the offer from the spanish school that they are sending a driver to Guayaquil who is gonna pick us up.

We came to Ecuador with the intention to learn spanish. Because we don't speak spanish. The driver did speak spanish, but no english. So we were in the car for 2,5 hours with him and he did the best thing he could actually do: talk. A lot. In spanish.
It was good fun, even though we didn't understand a word. Besides "si".

We arrived in Montañita and at the cabañas and it's great. Besides that there is no sun. at all. Instead we have a lot of mosquitos.
The town is filled with hippies from all over the world trying to find peace of mind while smoking herbs and braiding hair, while we tried our best with surfing.
Our knees are multicolored and the lips are chapped from the salt. But I love it.
Our surf instructor is probably depressed since our trying is pathetic and no success in sight, but next week we will try again until it finally looks good...

Now we can just hope for sun and that we won't look like seals from below since I heard sharks dig them. Cross your fingers.

and here we go again...

Flights are booked!
One month Ecuador and one month Colombia.
First language school in Montañita and then further to Santa Marta / Taganga at the caribbean coast...

Start: 2nd of August!
Can't wait.

Once upon a t-shirt...

I promised, right?
So your shirt is back on the road again!!

thanks again.


India


Vietnam


Cambodia


Burma


Samoa


Thailand


Australia



New Zealand

and after all...

...
After 8 countries,
226,5 hours in buses &trains (yes, thats almost 10 days of 24/7 traveling),
68 hours in planes,
11 hours on ferrys,
53,2 kg luggage,
6 immense cellphone bills,
2 bank accounts in deep debts,
4 empty sunscreen lotions (also SPF 45),
5 empty bottles mosquito repellents,
5000 temples (only bagan has about 4000),
1 church,
1 synagogue,
1 lost hoodie,
6 hours in hospital,
1 motorbike accident,
2 creditcards thats probably wont work anymore,
1 lost bikini,
1 broken camera,
2 manicures,
4 massages,
4 saved turtels (cudos also to you Javier),
minus 600 ml blood,
540 litres drinking water,
4 empty bottles of red nail polish,
1 night in the car,
947 new friendships (cockroaches, spiders, bats, ants, tarantulas, moths, rats etc)
2 diving licenses,
5 packages of antibiotics,
11 scars,
1 lost sunglasses,
2 hardened stomaches,
2 backpacks full of dirty,tatty clothes,
1 pair of stolen flip flops,
3 times at the hairdresser,
2 playlist that we cant stand anymore,
34 marriage proposals,
7 new laugh lines,
1 wasp sting,
2 girls who dont want to go back to uni at all,
1 new sister (according to the thais),
and the feeling there is so much more to see in this world...

we are back in vienna.


and the only thing we can think of...
where are we going next...?

burma & sydney pictures

beautiful burma

i know its been ages since the last post...

first of all a couple of things i forgot to mention last time..

first of all i had a motorbike accident in koh phangan, which was really stupid cause the roads over there are crazy and hilly and it was all fine until... i was trying to park the motorbike.
now spare me the "women and parking" talk.. the motorbike slipped, so did I and suddenly the stupid motorbike wanted to be really close and cuddly and I was lying underneath it.
that all happened two days before the fullmoon party which made it even better bc being patched up at the fullmoon party with 5000 people around you...not the greatest idea.

apropos fulloonparty...they stole my flip flops. 9am and they were just gone after we came out from a little swin in the gulf of thailand.
BUT my hero nora stole me new ones so i didnt have to go barefooted... unfortunately it was size 45 so not the best fit.. i bought new ones the next day and the 45 flip flops have a new owner by now...but thats a different story...

so after koh phangan we were traveling to koh tao and went scuba diving and did our diving license...it was great... so now we are official divers .whoop whoop.

but like it always is when you are having a good time...
I got sick... fatally sick. after 5 paracetamols i still had a fever and it was horrible...

luckily we had a doctor from vienna in our hostel and Im still pretty sure he saved my life.he told me what medicine i have to take and was looking after me while I was miserable...
First of all he said it might be decompression sickness, then he said it might be malaria and then dengue... great.

Our flight to Burma was supposed to be in 2 days, we still didnt have no visa and lina was all crying in bed.
so nora was being an amazing mommy and talked for hours to the burma embassy and they told her the embassy is opening at 9am but we should be there at 530 cause there gonna be so many people.

lesson learned.
never trust the embassy.

530. we are at the embassy. empty. no one there. until 9 am. great.

anyways..we got the visa and went back to the hostel...not without spending 6 hours in bangkoks traffic (yes! 6 hours! yes!)...

after arriving back to the hostel, me totally drugged to the eyeballs with aspirin and all different kinds of antibiotics, the vienna docotr takes a look at me again ("bist du deppart, i hoab noch nie solch a mandeln g'sehn!) and tells me if Im really unlucky my eardrums might burst at the flight to burma...

make a long story short...i got doped up with pain killers and we flew. eardrums didnt burst. yay.
was a great decision that we took the flight, cause burma was so worth it...

when we arrived in burma we were asked if we need a taxi and as soon as we got into the taxi we realized that there is no taxi sign on the cars like on all the other taxis. awesome. After being a little panicked about being kidnapped on our first day, our taxidriver Mutu seemed to be a really nice guy and took us to our hostel.

at the first night in yangon we went to an amazing nepalese vegetarian restaurant (thx javier again!) where some locals were celebrating ones birthday, playing the guitar and singing songs like "hotel california" and "take it easy"... seemed like we were dealing with big "eagles" fans...
we had a great evening!

the lonely planet recommended we should call the german embassy to let them know we are in burma...so we called them... "german embassy hello?" "hi, we were told we need to let our embassy know that we are here?" "hmm... the office is closed. maybe u try again on monday." "uhm...ok.thank you"...

so after having a really great time in burma where we went to inle lake, bagan (ever shared your bathroom with a whole family of cockroaches?) and back to yangon we arrived in bangkok yesterday night...

tomorrow we are heading to sydney and i promise to post some pictures next time...
have a great day everyone!!