360 in 365 – Joachim voyage autour du monde

Here it goes again.

So yeah, two days ago I took the road and after 22 hours and 3 busses I’m in La Paz. And after one night I don’t have the altitude sickness anymore.

The plan would be to stay in Bolivia and see things during two weeks and then I’ll see. These two last weeks I haven’t taken lots of pictures, I didn’t look at any travel guide, I haven’t had to open my backpack and close it again two days later, I now have some little habits and can speak a bit with the guy at the almacen down the street, and we speak about our national football teams. He tells me Chile is going to win the Mundial, I don’t have any argument to counter with that, because I don’t care about football and “we” lost against China anyway.

Anyway, did I tell you about my Chilean-Canadian friend? Her name’s Nathalie, she speaks French, Castellano, English and Chilean (if you read the french version, the joke’s about speaking French and Québécois, hohoho). We met on the bus to Ushuaia, she told me she was on CouchSurfing and she hosted people from around the world. So after we went in the snow on the mountain, and then we took a tea in a house in the woods like in Canada, and she told me, if you come to San Pedro de Atacama, contact me.

That, I did just as I arrived in San Pedro two weeks ago. She was still on travels in Bolivia and Peru with her Argentino lover but only came back last week. And as she came back she told me she’s moving out, and I’ll have to help her. When you learned I was to travel around the world, would you have thought I’d help someone move in the middle of the desert?

Now I could have thought lots of thing could have happened to me, but moving, well, that’s a surprise. And it’s good to have surprises. I had other surprises, like from my bank. But you know, I didn’t have an answer yet and I’m going to Bolivia, but Bolivia’s not that expensive and it should be ok. And after that, who knows?

Oh yeah. These last days I’ve started once again to want to see lots of things. Maybe it was when I saw pictures from Nathalie’s travels, she went to the Lake Titicaca (and someone financed one day there) and to La Paz, and I want to go there, perhaps even take pictures. After that I don’t really want to go to Peru. I mean, people told me Peru’s crazy touristy. People also told me that about Thailand six month ago, and then I had not the nicest experience there. I mean, it would not be the same of course, Thailand was crazy crazy. But still, I don’t really want to go to Peru yet. I would prefer going to Colombia. People say “Colombia’s dangerous, never go there” but traveller who went there tell me “Colombia’s great, go there”. When you’re travelling, you don’t need the latest Lonely Planet to find your way, but you’re lost if you don’t have your common sense. And my common sense is telling me : Colombia.

We’ll see.

Oh, and I’ll close on a less candid note, before leaving Paris I met (on twitter) two people who were also going to travel across the world on a motorbike, and then we met again for New Year’s Eve in Vientiane and had a great old party. Of course, I’m writing about Johanne and Nico and if you read french head over to their blog aptly named On The Road Again. The bad news is, their travel was stolen from them yesterday. And when I write that, I mean, the bag containing their computer, cameras, passports and money was stolen from them in Ulaan Baatar, Mongolia, along with their morale. That’s really bad for them and I think about them and I wish them courage and I hope they won’t go back to France right now…I know it doesn’t replace the stuff that was stolen, but perhaps it can help for the morale. And I know these questions, “no money, the only way is back”… but no, the way is to continue :)