British summer time

As you can see, I tried to update the template and backgrounds of this blog; it is not an easy task for someone with my web design skills. I will keep looking for nice templates, there are some external to blogspot so it needs some research to find nice ones to fit the purpose. Then it needs to be applied to the site which is another pretty complicated thing to do.. Today I have done my best to refresh this place so makes it more interesting and easy to read. I hope you like it!

Well, as the title say so, welcome to the British summer time! Long day hours, the smell of grass at the parks, lots of festivals, lots of rain and unpredictable weather! The last few days, there are four seasons in a day, it can start with sunshine and end up on a storm. A bit confusing especially when it comes on what to wear in the morning before leaving home. I don't complain, it is nice whatever the weather and summer rain is mostly enjoyable as long as it is not cold and windy.

Life has turned back to normal since I came back from the trip in Latin America. Last week I received the alpaca piece from Peru I bought and sent with the post. I was relieved to see it was finally arrived, I spent some good cash on it and I was concerned it may never arrive! It took sometime but I am glad I now have it with me! I am thinking to put it up somewhere in the house, maybe in my tiny room, it will cover the whole wall side.

Mum Vaso came to visit me in London for few days, it was really nice to be with her, it was about 6 months since I last saw her in Greece. We spent some nice time together, she did all the cleaning/cooking to keep herself happy and we've done some museums and sightseeing (under the rain). My housemates were away on holidays and I had the house on my own, well along with 3 cats and mum for few days. I am happy to say I met Clarisse, after quite long time, we had a wonderful Sunday, sunny and hot in the park, it was like we were on holidays!! We were lucky to meet up in the only real summer day so far this summer, certainly that assisted to keep our moods up and high! :)

I had also the opportunity to visit Northern Ireland on a business trip with work. I stayed for three days in Belfast and did few energy surveys in some big supermarkets. Now I am looking forward to go to (troubled) Greece. I am flying next week and staying for about two weeks. The situation in my homecountry is out of control (again) and I am very very concerned about the future of my fellow country people especially the young generation like my twins sister and brother. It is a long topic for discussion and I will not expand in this post about it. My very good friend Zacharias is also getting married to Evangelia and it will be nice to see them and all friends back at home.

 

London_June'11 from my window

I had the chance to go to a nice festival, the Sunrise Celebration festival. http://www.sunrisecelebration.com/  It was a fine British festival. Not too many internationals, I felt it was only myself non british in the whole festival! It was very well organised with many stalls, tents, stages, different kinds of music and lots of children facilities! It was not only about music, and this is what I liked most. There were all sort of different talks, presentations, demos on how to grow stuff at home even dance lessons before you hit the main dancefloors! The photos below from the first day, because the next one Sunday, a big storm brought havoc to the fest..

Sunrise fest_Tipis and yarts (for rent)

Sunrise fest_On a fest spirit

Sunrise fest_Chilling

Sunrise fest_Ikran from Avatar?

I've listened to few nice artists, inlcuding Banco De Gaia, Mirror System, Eat Static and some more. James Monroe was also playing, the dj who I've listened to in some of the most amazing locations in Greece when I was a rebelious youngster. He is still good but not as good.. :) His legendary record label Flying Rhino is not releasing any more tunes. Lamb were playing in the main stage, they came out an hour late, played for 45 minutes and that's it! Not that I was sad to see them go but I would prefer to listen few more songs of theirs.   

Sunrise fest_James Monroe and Mirror System (System7)

Sunrise fest_Toby Marks (aka Banco De Gaia)

Northern Ireland was really nice! Belfast is such a lovely city. I was prepared for the worst but it turned out to be way better than I thought! First of all, the weather was great! It was sunny and, unlike London, warm and bright! I stayed in very nice hotel at the Botanical Avenue. Queen's University was only 5 minutes away so there were many students living in the area. People were out and about, in good spirits and despite what I heard, there was not a sign of violence or paranormal activity. Local independent coffee shops were full of students. Certainly different city culture comparing to London. I was lucky to find out the Belfast book festival was running, so I checked the programme and went to see an 'improvised' comedy performance at the Crescent Arts centre. There was a group of people playing sketches derived from stories suggested by the audience! No script or time to prepare anything! It's a very hard thing to do and as the director said, actors walking on 'a dangerous edge' in this acting. It was very funny, I liked it. Not all of the plays were top notch but some were spontaneous and indeed very funny!    

Belfast_Fort at Carrickfergus

Belfast_City Hall

Belfast_EC is moving elsewhere

Belfast_Become a Spartan in Belfast!

In the evenings, after finishing work, I attempted some sightseeing. I went to the Botanical Gardens nearby. It was beautiful. I spent hours walking around. The sun was up and it was perfect for staying in the park. I found a beautiful roses garden. Many many different kinds of roses in a kind of labyrinth shaped garden. Got my camera out and used macro to capture the detail of some fascinating roses.

Belfast_Botanical

Belfast_Roses garden

Belfast_Rosy1

Belfast_Rosy2

Belfast_Rosy3

Belfast_Rosy4

The next couple of photos are from within the Queen's univeristy campus. I turned my attention to this sculpture below. Amazed to see its name was the same as my favourite band I was listening at the festival (Mirror System). The other photo is a fine representation of how new modern elements can be incorporated onto an old church building. Well, it is not a place of worship anymore, the university use it as a library.

Belfast_Mirror system

Belfast_Digitally connected church

And of course I flew with Air Lingus as their logo is the same as Panathinaikos!! olee

Belfast_Panathinaikos Air Lines \o/

Best wishes to all

Nektarios~

Andes to La Paz

We left the Amazonian jungle behind, again an 11hrs bus journey back to Cusco, from the green carpet to the green mountains, on the Interoceanic Highway, a controversial project due to its environmental impacts to the rainforests. It aims to connect Brazil with Peru and the Pacific Ocean thus with the Chinese markets. This time we had surprises on our way… We got in the bus, very happy it was half empty so we got two seats for each one at the back. Really cool, we thought it is going to be an easy one this time. After 3-4 hours driving in the night, our bus broke down. They told us to get off and wait for another bus which was coming after us. We didn't understand much, we were half asleep, so the people got out, got in the next bus and gone! It was us, the driver, the attendants and 2-3 more people. We spent sometime contemplating our next moves. No bus, no next bus, in the middle of nowhere, and another 4-5 hours to Cusco. They told us they will come to pick us up but that would be in many hours. We tried to hitch-hike but there were only heavy trucks going slower than walking speed! As all 4 of us are engineers, we tried to fix the problem by replacing the broken belt in the engine with one of the attendant’s tights. It did work! For 5 minutes... We were condemned! We started hitch-hiking every passing car! Luckily enough, about an hour later two relatively modern small trucks stopped and we got on the back, open air. It was freezing but the views of the landscape, the snow peaks, the valleys and the villages were well worth it. In fact, the delay made this trip a day trip which otherwise we would have missed in the dark. Four five hours on there it was exhausting but rewarding at the same time! Unfortunately, there are no photos from this part as all our camera batteries were flat. In our minds only…


We stayed another couple of days in Cusco, to recover and get ourselves sorted to leave for Bolivia. After five days in the rainforests and the open air journey, we were kind of exhausted! On top, we had to acclimatise ourselves again, travelling from sea level jungle to 3450m in only few hours, some of us got sick (not me) :)This time we took it easy and we had some nice relaxing days, with good food and sleep…

We arranged our tickets and got in yet another bus towards lake Titicaca and Bolivia. We changed bus at Puno and from there to the border, went through customs and head towards Copacabana, a touristy village on the shores of lake Titicaca, at the Bolivian side. We exchanged our Peruvian Soles to Dolares Bolivianos and got boat tickets to Isla del Sol.

Peru - Bolivia crossing

Peru - Bolivia crossing

Lake Titicaca_Lago sagrado

Lake Titicaca was beautiful. A high altitude lake, with a landscape that reminds Greek islands! Even Lonely Planet says so! Certainly wasn’t as beautiful as lake Yamdrok Tso in Tibet, even if the setting was very similar. We got on a boat for a 3 hours sail to the north part of the island. The boat was full of hippie travelers seeking a place to relax and take it easy. Titicaca is one of most sacred lakes in the Incas civilisation. We explored the Bolivian side.     

Lake Titicaca_Traditional (touristic) boats

Lake Titicaca_Snow peak mountains surrounding the lake

According to the Inka legend, Isla del Sol is the place where the sun was born. Indeed, there was plenty of sun here but during the night it was freezing! At an altitude of 3600m, the night is cold whatever the season of the year might be. In fact it was freezing, and very windy. We didn't even dare going outdoors, even if we wanted to. Not much to do in the island villages apart from couple of basic restaurants. We did not get too excited about the place and next day we got in (last) the boat and back to Copacabana shore.

Isla del Sol_Sandy beach

 

Isla del Sol_Elafonisos looking like beach

Lake Titicaca_Ferry boat

We left Titicaca behind on a bus ride to La Paz, the capital of Bolivia. The 3 hours journey took us through some more amazing landscaping. The altitude from here did not go lower than 3200m until the day we departed Bolivia. Snow peaks were visible from literally any angle you were looking from. 

 

From Titicaca to La Paz

 

La Paz from above

 

La Paz is the highest in altitude capital in the world (3,650m). Again our breath was sort, getting tired in the smallest effort. The city centre was beautiful, with lots of churches and flea markets. The local buses were old american Dodge, really cool but noisy and dirty. Here there were only very few people speaking English so we had to try even harder to communicate. Bargaining artifacts and t-shirts was such fun especially when none of the involved parties could speak each other’s language! We managed to achieve some good bargains!

La Paz_Dodge bus(1)

La Paz_Dodge bus(2)

 

The architecture was pretty similar to the previous cities we visited, like Lima and Cusco. There were lots of colonial buildings and churches. The city center was buzzing, very busy and our city tour walk was breathless, not really because of what we were seeing but because La Paz is not on a flat plane and it was really difficult to breath especially when you go upwards.. :) We did some nice sightseeing. We also visited Coca Museo, a small exhibition about coca leaves, the powder as well as information about its cultivation through the centuries and other controversial stories about the drug use in US and elsewhere.

 

La Paz_Atrium within the hotel we stayed

La Paz_Catedral

 

La Paz_Coca museo(!)

La Paz_1st of May demonstrations

La Paz_Hail stones

La Paz_City architecture (1)

 

La Paz_City architecture (2)

 

La Paz_Local periptero

 

La Paz_The struggled rooster

The following picture is from San Pedro’s prison main gate. This is one of the weirdest institutions in the world! Prisoners in here pay their own cells, they have to work to earn their living, and they even do tourist tours inside the prison! This is the book I was reading through this trip, Marching Powder, written by Rusty Young. It tells a real story of an Englishman drug trafficker who was convicted for trying to sneak 5 kg of cocaine into Europe. He became the prison’s tour guide, he had a restaurant and a small shop. The book shows the dark side of life in such place, someone cannot believe these situations exist. We didn’t get in for the tour, the guards did not even allow us to take photographs, but I manage to sneak one. If you wanna read more about or see some photos check http://www.marchingpowder.com/

La Paz_San Pedro prison

As they were only few days left, we sadly decided that we cannot visit Salar De Uyuni, unfortunately. We needed another 2-3 days to travel south of Bolivia and return to La Paz to get our flight and simply we did not have enough time for this. Instead, we decided to do the mighty Death Road! A 63km downhill bike ride into the most dangerous road in the world!

 After a ‘heavy’ night out, we got up at 7am, got in the van with all the gear and head to the mountains. We went up to 4700m, had a brief from our instructor and we started the downhill ride.

Starting point

 

Death Road_Tarmac section

 

Death Road_We can make it!

The landscape was amazing! The first section was on tarmac so it was easy to drive and at the same time to look around and use the camera for some short filming (!) There was our instructor guide in front and the support van was following behind us. We had clear instructions not to overtake our guide. We asked for an ‘aggressive’ ride and we pushed him to his limits!

Death Road_Action preview (lower your volume plz)

 

Death Road_Pare!

The gravel section was a dangerous, adrenaline high activity! We had such great fun! We drove our bicycles through a narrow road, with no barriers whatsoever and cliffs over 300m high! There have been numerous fatal accidents (deaths, thus the name) including buses falling over. Today the gravel section is not used by the traffic which is now diverted to a newly constructed road. There were many groups cycling the Death Road. Sometimes it was even more dangerous when we had to overpass them. I loved the activity from the beginning to the end! It was grrrreat and we couldn’t believe it when our guide said this is the end of the route. We wanted to get the van and go back to start over again!

Death Road_Majestic views

 

Death Road_Narrow crossing

Death Road_Steep hills

 

Death Road_Survivor

 

Death Road_In style..

Death Road_On the edge

 

Death Road_Waterfall passage

Death Road_Messy

 

Death Road_Our downhill group

 

Bliss on the way back to La Paz (1)

 

Bliss on the way back to La Paz (2)

Back to La Paz the same evening, none of us was too happy about leaving. We did our last minute shopping and prepared our back packs for the long return flight. Our flight was early in the morning and again we manage to sleep only 2 hours so we sleep in the plane. I was flying with Angelos to London and the other two back to Martinique; all of us through Miami where we separated.

It has been an amazing journey, a journey of landscape contrasts, from dessert to lush green mountains, to snow peaks (well we didn’t climb them though), to the jungle and Amazon by-rivers, to high altitude lakes and capital cities! Additionally, the food was great, the culture, the history, people were friendly and even with our limited Spanish we did not face any problems throughout the trip. It was a journey of a lifetime to remember, a journey I would recommend to everyone to do it at some point in their life! I wish I could stay longer to do Uyuni, then Chile and Argentina, but I don’t want to be greedy. I had great time, great moments and I believe I am very very lucky having the opportunity to do something like this. I wish to all of you reading this that one day you make it happen! And if so, please let me know, I can give you some really good tips!

That was a nice trip guys! 

Hasta luego amigos!

Nektarios~