Time to wrap it up!

Top places visited (even though putting these in order is really hard and probably quite pointless

1) Finca paraiso, Rio Dulce, Guatemala
2) Semuc Champey, Guatemala
3) Coroico & Yungas road, Bolivia
4) Iguazu falls, Argentina/Brazil
5) Ilha do mel, Brazil
6) Pantanal, Brazil
7) Islas Ballestas, Peru
8) Volcano Pacaya, Guatemala
9) Ilha de Santa Catarina, Florianopolis, Brazil
10) Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
11) Ometepe, Nicaragua
12) Punta del diablo, Uruguay
13) La Paz, Bolivia
14) Cartagena, Colombia
--- under different circumstances also:
15) Bay Islands, Honduras - peak of the rainy season
16) Bocas del toro, Panamá - overdose of tourism
17) Lake Titicaca and Isla del sol, Bolivia/Perú - altitude sickness
18) Uyuni salt flat, Bolivia - altitude sickness

 Top 5 countries visited
1) Panama - people, weather and confort at reasonable rates
2) Equador - natural beauty and perfect weather
3) Guatemala - authenticity, nature and very friendly prices
4) Bolivia - totally different from Guatemala but same reasons apply
5) Uruguay - the best bits of Europe and more collected in the middle of South America

The things you get used to(!)
Some things that are weird or impressive at first soon turn into a part of your every-day life. For example:

1) The dozens of men with machine guns on the streets, in shops, in banks, in hotels, ect. are only there for general safety

2) Not having toilet paper or even toilet seats in any public toilets or budjet hotels is not an exception but a rule - "who would SIT on a public toilet anyway?"

3) Humming birds, huge colourful butterflies or herds of howler monkeys are always nice to see, but not really worth getting your camera out for after the first dozen times.

4) Every building has geckos or lizards of different colours and sizes and talking parrots and chained monkeys are at least as common as domestic pets as dogs.

5) Street dogs may bark, but they don't bite. Not even when their seem to run after you in a flock of 20 - the one running in front of the rest is just another bitch in heat ready to get inpregnated like they do every time that happens. Most puppies starve to death if no-one decides to adopt them until they get big and can be dumped to the streets again. Dogs are not pets, but considered more like rats.

6) Hissing, honking, whisling and shouts and whispers like "my love", "hi baby", "hello doll" and "how beautiful" will get to you only if you're tired or allready pissed off by something else. (The ruder, and at times more threatning sounding variants, like "I love so much baby, come here and I'll show you how much", were too much for me to get used to and resulted in nasty comments back to the gentleman in question, either in Spanish or in Finnish)

7) Freshly squeezed fruit juices from fruit you've never even heard of before won't cost you more than a euro per a big glass. Just try to get them "sin azucar".

8) Asking directions from less than 3-5 people to get to one place is waste of your time. People who don't know will send you off into the wrong direction wihout meaning anything bad by it. Ask another 3 and follow the majority. NEVER hop into a taxi without checking with at least one local how much they'd pay for the same journey and making sure your driver agrees to the same amount.

9) You NEVER flush toilet paper. Doing so will cause the toilet to flood. Difficult to remember in the beginning and at least as hard to do the opposite when returning to places with 'normal' plumming after 8 months.

10) Sitting next to a window in a bus can make you really dirty, and buses often leave behind pitch black clouds. Because they are retired and repainted school buses from the States.


Lessons learned

1) I need YOU
I love meeting and getting to meet new peeps whereever I go. But new acquaintances are not really enough for me; I can share nice moments with some new locals and bond with a co-traveller experiencing the same cultural differences as I am, but who can I turn to when I'm simply having a bad day? Why would someone who doesn't know me want to hear about my stomach ache, care about my broken heart or just put up with me when I'm tired and cranky?

A Finnish song tells that you can tell who your true friends are in times of trouble and even though I don't think the past 8 months have been the most problematic ones of my life, but I've sure learned that I need those true friends.

That's YOU I'm talking about (unless you're only reading this to get travel tips or for back stabbing material)!

2) I need to communicate
Not only talking about Facebook now. It was hardest in Brazil where I didn't understand the language, easiest in Bolivia and Peru where I had permanent travel companions. I'm not sure if speaking English or Swedish made a great difference compared to Spanish anymore at this point, but just being able to share things, good and bad, just as they happen, was pretty nice.

At the same time, I also felt it was really important to speak the local language to be able chat with locals: not only the English-speaking ones who only represent a tiny part of the whole population but with anyone; old ladies on buses, construction workers in lunch places, shoe polishers on the street and house wifes in parks.

In the beginning it was hard not to miss the Spanish I learned in Spain, but it got easier along the way, even though every Latin American country and many of the regions within them offered new vocabulary and accents to battle with. Just when you had learned what a certain dish was called in one country, you went to another where it was something totally different.

3) 8 months is too long or 15 countries in 8 months is too much
I think I'd like my future travels (?!) to be shorter trips to more limited areas. Discovering one country in 2-3 months for example. Obviously, besides the airfare costs also the risk of falling in love with one place would increase, but it would definitely be less hectic and enjoyable than jumping from city to another every few days. And where would I go? Well, I didn't get to see Chile, my originally intended destination, and most parts of Argentina yet. Equador and Central America would also deserve more time. But then again, Malaysia, Vietnam and other South-East Asian countries are said to be fashionating too.

4) Not quite a hippie yet
My backpacks (55l+25l) weighted all together 26kg in the beginning of my journey. That included 4kg of textile bags that were presents for my CS hosts, 8 Swedish pocket books I hadn't have time to read, 2 boulders called travel guidebooks, a sleeping bag, a notebook, a good supple of cosmetics and basically everything I could need during the 8 month journey. Many others were a lot happier carrying their 10kg backpacks, but I don't regret my choice. Especially after the textile bags and books (in total 7kg!) were all left behind one by one...

I've learned that even though I travelled on a relatively tight budjet I don't want to give up on everything. I need a clean bed to sleep in, a daily shower and clean clothes. Those who can have the same t-shirt on for 4 days in a row can travel a lot lighter, but I don't really mind that. For the first time in more than ten years I stopped wearing make-up completely, but mainly too look as unattractive as possible (less attention, more safety) and not because my cosmetics bag would've got lighter as a result.

5) Don't book with a travel agency
... no matter how good deal you think you're getting. They won't help you in any way if something goes wrong and you can always find cheaper rates if you just look hard enough. Use Facebook and your bargain hunting expert friends if you're not one yourself!


Packing top picks

1) a front-loader with some extra pockets (I wish I had one)
2) duct/silver tape
3) a head light - try reading on you bed one night holding a regular flash light or going to an outside toilet on a pitch dark night and you'll know
4) a sewing kit
5) a couple of laminated copies of your passport (accepted as official id EVERYWHERE except when crossing borders; in Panamá & Costa Rica you need to carry a copy of your entrance stamp page too)
6) rubber bands – if you want to find your rolled clothes easily and creaseless
7) a couple of combination locks for locking the zippers of your backpack or your room
8) super glue (available at any street corner) for fixing everything from sunglasses & torn backpacks to sandals when you've only got two seconds to spare
9) a head set - all internet places, cibers, don't provide them and youtube videos you just NEED to show to other travellers might be too quiet to hear in noisy dorms
10) a nice notebook - a real one to keep you losing little pieces of paper with important contacts, timetables, addresses, shopping or to-do lists and other information (and which will be full of memories afterwards), and an electronic one if you want to update your blog regularly

All of this stuff, except the backpack, can be bought during the journey too – if you start in a cheap country. It's good to know that good quality travel gear & gadgets and electronics is generally NOT cheaper – European online stores have both better selection and rates.

Get rid of the local currency before you leave the country by exchanging them to dollars for example. On the other side of the border the rates are worse and you won't be able to get rid of your notes at all if you get far enough. For example in Costa Rica there's only one bank, located in the centre of the capital city of course, that will exchange Colombian pesos to dollars.


Budjet

1) flights
• Gothenburg-London-Mexico city-Buenos Aires-Mexico city – London by STA travel, 1294 € (in January 2011 I got a full refund not only for the cancelled flighs but the WHOLE package!)
• Cartagena-Bogota-Pereira-Panamá by Aires, 116 €
• Guatemala-New York-Reykjavik-Helsinki (inc ESTA) by Spirit airlines & Icelandic air, 413 €

2) Heath insurance 8 months, Backpackerförsäkring by Global, 234 €

3) Vaccinations Tyfoid, Hepatitis, Cholera, Yellow fever by Mediservice, 150 €

4) 8 months in Latin America; food, accommodation, travel, entertainment, phone expences, everything, 6900 €
• Cheap food; set lunches, local restaurants and self-catering in Brazil&Costa Rica
• Cheap accommodation or couchsurfing, splurging a bit in Bolivia & Nicaragua
• Cheap buses; comparing prices and finding second class terminals if possible
• Not many crazy nights out and DIY tours rather than organised ones
- The daily average comes to about 29€ per day (863 € per month) but there are great differences in the amount you spend in different countries. Getting by in Brazil, let alone in New York, for 40€ a day takes some effort while as with 20€ you can eat yummy 4-course meals, take pedicures and stay in comfortable hotels in Bolivia.

TOTAL ≈9100 € (-1294€ refund in 01/2011 for the cancelled flights)
NEW TOTAL ≈7800€



   
Final words

Thank you
- for reading this and for being part of this life I love living!

It's got to be New York, New York!

The check-in lines to Fort Lauderdale (Florida) flight were long and moved slowly at the Guatemala city airport, but arriving three hours before take off made sure I made it in time. For some reason I had never realised Florida was all desert, at least this part of; it didn't look at all like the tropical beach paradise I had imagined it to be. The border of the city from the desert was as sharp as if it would've been cut with a knife, not even one house breaking away from neat rows of buildings.

After passing through the passport control with electronic finger print collection, x-ray shots and good-old fashioned photographs I had fun at the gate observing real life images of American stereotypes all around me: rich and bitchy house wives, loud mouth African american drama queens, obese families in five dollar shorts, glitter loving latinas in too small clothes, over protective mums and annoying teenage cheerleaders were all something I though only existed in movies, or were at least uncommon enough not to be seen all on one flight.

My flight to New York was supposed to leave only two hours after the other one landed, but as everyone had got onboard an announcement asked us to get off due to a technical problem with the aircraft. This meant that I arrived to New York two hours delayed, way past midnight and got to take a late subway ride to Chelsea, to my CS friend Jen's beautiful home. We had met in Uppsala on the day before my stroke and had lots of catching up to do.

After my 7 months long and sunny summer, I was a bit sad to go straight to the Finnish winter without seeing my favourite time of year, autumn, first. This is where New York and the Central Park came to the rescue: sunny november day with maples dressed in their most spectacular autumn colours was exactly what I wanted to see.

After a long walk in the park we strolled around in the Metropolitan museum and took a ride on the Staten island ferry to see the tiny Statue of Liberty.

Our lunch menu was a New York classic, a bagel filled with 2cm layer of cream cheese, and the dinner didn't fall too far behind either, a greasy thick pizza done by 'real italians'. Tastes about a billion times better than it sounds, but it isn't hard to see why obesity is a problem in this country.

The autumn weather continued on Thursday, but this time it was rainy all day - nothing compared to heavy rains in the tropics though – so we went for an authentic brunch at China town and tried shopping at the world's largest department store, Macy´s, only to discover how terrible service can be at its worst. A cute police officer said he was sorry I was leaving, when I asked him which subway line to take to the JFK airport, and asked if I came to New York often – why did this not feel like harassment at all, just amusing, while nearly all comments from Latin American men got me so irritated? Perhaps, because I felt more safe here?

Being in New York felt nice, but at the same time a bit strange. Getting back to western reality with flushable toilet paper, people of different genders that you can treat and that will treat you in the same way, non-home made lunches and everything so well organised made me a bit confused. Like a step closer to home but not quite there yet.

There was no queue to the check-in to Reykjavik at JFK and I didn't even get my money bag stolen when I accidently left it on a chair I sat on in the terminal and came back to look for it 15 minutes later. Not quite what I thought the largest airport in New York would be like. The guy sitting next to me on the flight had a very familiar accent in English and was in fact a Finn, heading to Helsinki on the same flight as me. I was worried of how we'd make it to the next flight with only hour scheduled between them, and the guy laughed – our flight was going to land ahead of the schedule anyway – and we did actually had plenty of time even for breakfast and reading. A guess Icelandair is not quite like Guatemalan chicken buses.

On the flight to Helsinki I sat next to a guy who came to the terminal straight from the pub "which is what always happens on these business trips", and the woman sitting next to him agreed and laughed at his odour, 'the smell of old booze'. I had truly come home to my people.

Big kites and goodbyes in Guatemala

I left Semuc Champey on the most Guatemalan way possible: standing at the back of a normal-sized pick-up truck with 30 other people, with the wind in my hair and feeling tall, being literally a head taller than everyone else around me.
Another crowded minibus from Lanquin to Cobán left as soon as I got there but the bus boy and the driver pissed my off by charging me 50% more than everyone else on the bus. The difference was only 10q (1€) but that didn't make it any cooler – if I wanted to pay the gringo prices I would've taken the direct gringo transport all the way with the other tourists. After being persistant, quite vocal and speaking my fastest Spanish, which is apparently pretty fast even on the local standards, I got 5q back, but still felt and told the driver he was just another ladron to watch out for.

At the bus station everyone told me I'd have to take a taxi to get to the central square, or that it would be more than a half an hour walk there. I decided to give it a go anyway and arrived to my hostel, two blocks past the square, 10 minutes later. Incredible how convinced everyone is that I have plenty of extra cash to get rid off.

In Cobán I finally got online after a couple of days in the internet shadow and saw my friend Oscar's message saying that if I wanted to get the stuff I send to Tapachula before Monday (my flight home being on Tuesday) I'd need to get there by Thursday night. The only problem was that I was more than 10 hours bus ride away on Thursday afternoon. After a frantic search for bus companies and their timetables and many messages and calls to Oscar, he came to my rescue by taking some time off from work to pick up my stuff on Friday. So I could take it easy for the night and take a 3am bus to Guate the next morning (4h, 40q, 4€). In the early hours of the morning I checked out the brand new Transmetro local transport system in Guate getting to the South terminal just in time for the 8am bus to the Mexican border (7h, 60q, 6€) and shared a crowded taxi with four locals for the last 15 minutes of the journey (5q, 0,5€).

Having already got used to the hundreds of 'cambio, exchange!' & 'taxi, taxi!' shouts the border crossing went well without too much hassle (Guate exit fee 20q, 2€) and after another half an hour bus ride, wondering around Tapachula unsuccessfully looking for a bank to transfer money to the friend who sent my stuff and taking a local bus to Oscar's place in the middle of Halloween parade transport chaos, I felt this was pretty much all I could take for the day. I didn't have to wait too long to fall asleep when I laid down on the mattress on the floor of Oscar's bedroom and only woke up for three seconds when he came back home from a night out at 3am.

The next morning at 7am I was out on the road again and made my way to Guatemala city the same way I had taken the day before. After I had crossed the border the bus driver told me I had 30 minutes for getting breakfast and showed me the way to a nearby restaurant charging 30q (3€) for the typical Guatemalan day starter. I looked outside, and instead chose the old ladies on the street corner selling something, which turned out to be bread filled with black beans for 2,5q (0,25€) each. With the huge fresh fruit plate from another vendor for 5q (0,5€) my breakfast was complete.

In Guatemala city I managed, even without remembering the hotel name or full street address, to find the same pension, Pension Meza, I had stayed in 6 months earlier and was welcomed in by the same dude who said goodbye to me back then. And just like the last time, my CS friend Luís picked me up for a nice dinner and a couple of beers and again made sure I got back safe and sound.

On Sunday morning I did two hours of efficient gift shopping for the near and dear at home in the Central market place and packed my backpack more full and heavier than it had ever been before with its seams crying in agony. The state of my budjet also looked more worrying than ever, but not spending 5€ here and then buying something half as nice for five times more in Stockholm, when I'd get my first pay in a few months, didn't seem too wise either. You might have to feed me when I get back, but at least you'll get a piece of Guatemalan handicrafts in return. Well worth some noodle soup.

Luís had assigned himself my designated driver, or just happened to be heading to the same direction, and gave me a ride to Antigua and to my new hostel El Caminante (45q, 4,5€) there. I took a nice evening stroll around the city with my old CS host Pampa, who hadn't found a flat yet after his three-month adventure in Europe, so he couldn't host me, but who had promised to take me to the huge kite festival taking place only an hour away from Antigua the next day.

My hostel sucked, or maybe the Halloween night just isn't one of those nights you should even think you could really sleep in a hostel anyway, so I got up at 7am after having slept a half an hour here and there and feeling like I had a hangover, even though unlike Pampa, who looked pretty dead when we met up with him and six other CSers the next morning, I hadn't even had more than two bottles of beer the day before.



The kite festival was awesome. It takes place every year on the 1st November in at least two places near Antigua and the Sumpango celebration in a small village of 2000 inhabitants we took part in is visited by over 100 000 people on just one day.










The kites were colourful, beautiful and indeed gigantic, and crowd around them seemed to be on their best mood; kids flying their small kites and indigenous women all dressed in their most beautiful, handmade outfits.










We walked to the village cemetery decorated with hundreds of flowers and filled with people sitting down on the grass close to their loved one's graves having lunch, eating ice cream or waving incence burners to keep the bad spirits away on this day of the dead.




On the way back to the festival area we tried some new fruit, like litchi and jocote, and some other local delicacies, like grilled black corn and cordobas. With our tummies full of snacks and a little bit of cold beer, it was time to see some kites crashing down.




The idea is perhaps to get them up into the air and from them to stay there, but like most of the crowd, we too enjoyed the failed attempts at least as much as the successful ones. And since only two out of a couple of dozen teams managed to get their kites flying properly, and all other ones had two attempts with each kite, we had plenty to enjoy.
From the European perspective it was hard to understand why the announcers kept on asking people to make more room for the kites and the team members trying to get the kites up for security reasons, but the area wasn't constricted in any way so that some of the people getting too close were hit by huge kites consisting of relatively heavy bamboo structures crushing down on their heads from the height of 5-20 metres. Nobody got killed, but their bruises must have been at least as bad as the throbbing bump on my head after hitting my thick scull into the low roof jumping into a chicken bus on our way to the festival.

We all got home safely and after giving a huge big hug to my favourite waiter Pampa, it was time to get back to Guate again. My last full day in Guatemala and Latin America was over and I didn't feel to bad about getting a bit sun burned knowing that there was no chance of that happening again in the next six months.

My last overcrowded chicken bus ride, my last Guatemalan breakfast, my last sweaty backpack trek in the concrete jungle and my last cold shower for a while – I'll miss them all, I'm sure.