Life in Paraguay

So we spent a month in Asunción (the capital of Paraguay) doing literally almost nothing and resting. For the first four-five days we were only lying in bed and watching movies, only came out of our room to get and make new food. And we really achieved what we wanted: to be in one place and do nothing until you get tired of it.

Actually we sometimes did get out of bed for longer than it takes to shop and cook. Almost every weekend we went on some kind of trip with our host, Victor. If if wasn't for him (and the fact that he owned a car), then we mostly would only have seen Asunción in Paraguay. So we went camping a few times and visited a few of his friends as well. The nature in Paraguay is lovely - colorful birds and butterflies, plants that are quite different from what I have seen, large flatlands and wetlands often dotted with palm trees, a few hilly parts aswell, small waterfalls and lakes etc. There are no big, grand must-see natural sights that would evoke a wow-effect but it is 'muy lindo' (very nice, lovely).

Their capital is like a very big town, and does not really feel like a big capital city (2,000,000 people in 'Gran Asunción', meaning with the sorrounding urban areas). There is a lot of potential to be have a beautiful city centre - many houses from the colonial times with elaborate decorations and so on. The problem is that after the houses were built, no effort of trying to preserve them has been done. The beautiful architecture is just falling apart in most of the places. The city does not even care enough to tow away some burnt car wrecks from the streets (in their 'main square' for example or near the government buildings)

With all that said (the town looked a bit creepy with all the dilapidated and empty buildings) it was still interesting and relatively safe. As there are not enough tourists, there are not many criminals, who make their living off tourists (pickpockets and hustlers). And as the crackheads of the centre (can't get around them. They were part of our everyday life) had enough people to ask money from (and were very often given money by the locals) so they did not really have to rob anyone or take part in crimes that would hurt anyone either(surely not 100% true but mostly, yes).
It turned out that Ernst (the crackhead living close to our house in an abandoned car) had stolen our host's car's tires a couple of times so they new each other as well :D

In the capital we also visited a few sights, like the train station (the first in all South America) and the zoo+museum and saw even further how much they care about their  things. In the train museum, all the old paperwork, photos and equipment was just rotting there, where somone had put them when the museum was opened - under a coat of dust, unhidden from any influence of the weather or the traffic pollution. Old photographs curled up because of the humidity, pages of documents turning brown-black. In the zoological museum, the exaples of different animals that were put in jars and in a liquid to preserve them, were often half-out of the liquid, half of the animal remains decaying; most of the name tags or explanations gone. They also had the worst examples of taxidermy that I have seen. Not that I approve it in other situations but what I disapprove even more is stuffing a skin of animal randomly so that it locks like a bad mockery of a living animal.

Despite their inability or unwillingless to really care enough about many things, they really were lovely people (actually most people are very friendly, nice and helpful in any country we have visited). Paraguayans were sometimes a bit shy and afraid to start taking to us. But they were all actually extremely curious (because of the previously mentioned extremely small number of tourists) and interested in knowing more about us everywhere we went. At first it was quite difficult as our Spanish was quite basic. But by now we have improved a lot. So generally if the other person takes the effort to talk slowly and rephrase, we can manage (I recently had a successful  40minute conversation with a man who only spoke Brazilian Portuguese and I spoke Spanish. But I 'll get to that.)

If anyone has an interest in moving to a warm country and making an investment, Paraguay  is your place. There are so many things this country does not have (in tourism sector or many others) that it is the right time to come and start them. Plus the relative simplicity to get residence and even citizenship.

Anyways, we left Asunción in a bus with a plan to spend 4-5 days going back to Ciudad del Este  (a big shopping town on the border if Argentina and Brazil, where you can find anything pirated and cheap) through some southern Paraguayan towns. Method of transport: bus.

Our first destination was Villarica,  which is 120km from Asunción. We reached Villarica 6 hours after the scheduled departure time. One of the reasons being that the traffic in Paraguay is as ill-organised as anything else. Everyone stopping at random places (in the middle of the road) and not really caring that there are other vehicles on the roads as well. The same width streets with the same number of cars in Northern Europe would definitely allow several times more cars through.

The other reason for taking that much time is that the buses stand and wait in every stop for a long time and pick up absolutely every person who waves their hand at the bus at random places as well (people wait 30m away from the station until the bus comes to them, instead of using the time that the bus is standing in the stop to walk to the stop). So there is not even room to stand and you are very lucky to get a seat even if you buy the ticket hours before departure.

That all brings me to the fact that travelling is not all fun. The pictures in Facebook show mainly the good and fun part of travelling. But there are also a lot of 'bad days'. The days when you are sick and tired of everything: nothing works properly, you can't buy the food that you would like, the stomach is constantly upset because of the local variety of bacteria, in every country/town there are new problems to solve, new systems of doing everything, different prices and/or currency. Not every day are you ready to deal with these problems. Sometimes you just wish that life was simple and straightforward.

The percentage of our 'bad days' had already gotten much higher before Asunción and we hoped that resting would solve that. But after we had spent most of our time of 'exploring Southern Paraguay' stuck in overcrowded and extremely slow buses, we discovered that we are still fed up with everything.

Our travelling had lost its purpose. It was time to stop and think about what we really wanted from this trip. It was immediately clear that we are not really that interested in the cities. But travelling with buses, this is what you get: going from the centre of one big city to the centre of the next one or you can also go to the small towns but then you really don't know where you end up in because there is no English information about them.

After considering different things, we decided that what we needed to improve our experience is to be able to see the nature and be able to stop anywhere we wished to. Depending on the public transportation set so big limits to us that everything had lost its value.

So our solution was to buy a cheap motorbike. That would also eliminate the husstle of walking around with our heavy backpacks trying to find a hotel (we have camping stuff so we can sleep anywhere we please) and give us a better opportunity to cook our own food more often (we could have used the gas cooker in cities as well... but we did not).

So we made as much reaserch as we could and decided to buy the bike in Brazil. We decided to base our search in Tres Fronteras- the place where three countries and three cities meet: the shopping town Ciudad del Este in Paraguay, Puerto Iguazú in Argentina (where we stayed the last time with our local friends and also  this time) and Foz do Iguaçu in Brazil (short name: Foz). We spent the first day getting ourselves a CPF,  which is like a Tax File Number that you need for buying anything from a phone sim card to festival tickets and cars-houses. You were supposed to be able to do it in a post office but when we got there we were sent (we had our bags at that day and it was abou 36 degrees) from the post office to the Federal Police, back to Post office, to Tax Office  (and almost back to the Federal Police) but we finally got it.

We found a few Brazilians through couchsurfing who helped us with some advice so we finally found a used bike shop through the Internet who seemed to be offering what we wanted. So not really knowing how long it was going to take (days? weeks?), we headed to Foz one morning. Getting to the shop took us four hours. We discovered that the moto shop was owned and run by a very talkative guy, who only spoke Brazilian Portuguese but nevertheless he managed to explain to us that it is 4x more expensive to buy a Brazilian bike than a Paraguayan one (our first experience in how our communication with the locals in Brazil will be like).

So we chose a Paraguayan bike  (400 Australian dollars - we still calculate mostly in AUDs), borrowed two helmets and rode to Ciudad del Este to buy our own helmets (helmets are compulsory in Brazil and we needed them immediately if we wanted to ride away from the shop with our bike). We did hold our breaths entering Paraguay again with a bike that was not really on our name. But none of the border guards or police even stopped us to check anything so that was a success. We found our helmets and immediately headed back to the bike shop because firstly we did not have a bike lock yet (didn't want to leave our new friend on the street while we search for other necessary things) and secondly we still needed some work done on our bike - it had a frame on it for towing things, that we did not need and a broken indicator light.

We held our breaths even more when we were on the Argentinian-Brazilian border. Argentina is the only country at Tres Fronteras that actually has an efficient (read:existing) border control. The guy checking our documents did not care the least that the bike was Paraguayan and not on our name (we had the documents of the bike) so that was a success. Time from bike shop to home: just under an hour (compared to four hours in buses in the morning).

So now we are really looking forward to continuing our trip because we expect it to be much more like we wish to travel: being able to see some amazing nature and stop wherever we want plus not depending on the local transport. Even if we can not take the bike over the Brazilian-Bolivian border (which we think we can) in 1,5 months, it is still worth it budget-wise because we are saving on bus tickets, food and accommodation.

We will have another shopping trip to Ciudad del Este  (things are considerably cheaper there) to buy necessary stuff for the bike and ourselves but we will do it by bus as we do not want to take our chances with the extremely corrupt Paraguayan police again (if they had stopped us with a bike in Paraguay, it would almost definitely have meant paying bribes). And on Tuesday we will head North to the Samsara music festival and to visit our Capoeira teacher near Ûberlandia.

From Argentina to Para-where?

So we made it to Puerto Iguazú (Argentina), which is situated in a very special place for two reasons. Firstly, it is at a place where the Parana river is the border dividing Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay (viewing platforms on Brazilian and Argentinian side, a muddy shore on Paraguayan... we'll get to that). Secondly, it is very close to the Iguazú falls which are the 'largest waterfalls system in the world'. The amount of water falling down is unbelievable. I can honestly say that was the god of all waterfalls that I have seen (being away from Estonia is getting to me. I am actually little-by-little starting to describe things by more than just 'all right' :D). Anyways, added a picture from the Internet because it is impossible to get a shot that would do this place any justice.

But sights are sights. What we actually will remember the most is the people we stayed at. So the guy we had met on a bus (coming back home to Argentina after living in different parts of the world for 15 years) took us to his friends' place where we camped in the garden for some nights. We were the first europeans (non latin-american) that they had ever had a longer conversation with and seemed to be pleasantly suprised that we don't bite. We had long conversations in Spanglish and tasted the best barbecue - asado.

Random facts about Argentina before moving on to a new country.

*They love their asado and they are very good at it (and are not shy to say it). There are grills burning on random streets and by the road (and under the bridges or in the middle of the road) from morning until evening.
*They are crazy about their maté. Every morning every Argentinian takes his/her maté cup, fills it with the herbs, fills a thermos with hot water and walks around the whole day, pouring new water on the herbs and drinking it through a metal straw. When friends/family come out together, then they share  one or two sets of thermos and cup.
*Argentina is quite expensive, which is the reason why we spent so little time in this country. It had cut a bit of a hole in our budget (despite the fact that we had still not paid for any hotels-motels so far).

So we decided that we are tired and need a rest. After working our asses off in Australia (it was physically pretty hard and crazy hours) and then going from one place to another almost every day, solving random problems, not really eating properly and being a bit ill doing it... we decided to try to find a place to rent for a month. We knew that Paraguay was cheap, we didn't know anything else about it. We tried to find some couchsurfing places or Airbnb but there were not too many options... and hotels (especially cheaper range ones) were almost impossible to find online.

Paraguay is one mysterious country - noone knows anything about it. Years ago, Asunción was the first center of all the exploration of all the continent and they had the first railway the whole South America. Then they decided to fight with Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay (I have now heard at least for versions about the starting reasons), lost the war (duh...), lost 90% of their male population and have not really recovered ever since.

The country spends literally nothing on developing any kind of tourism (I believe that this is the official page for any tourists visiting the country. http://peltolaparaguay.weebly.com ) and there are almost no sights recommended anywhere. We have now spent 1,5 weeks in this country and we have seen four non-latinos, all here because of some (volunteering) project, not tourists. We have met one local person who speaks English. So I can not stress enough how un-touristic this country is. The only place you can buy souvenirs is the central square of the capital - they fill just a corner of the square because there are no people there to buy them anyway (I am sure there actually are a few in the capital... probably).

To top it all off, about half of the country is virtually uninhabited. In the western half of the country, the Chako, lives only 2% of the whole population of the country. If you have done something really bad, this is the dry forest, where you will never be found.

Already entering the country, there was no border control - we asked to be dropped off the bus by the border and asked to get stamps in our passports to show that we have entered the country legally. We also gave clearly not satisfactory answers to their questions about our plans in the country etc... but they let us go in anyway.

We spent a few days in Ciudad del Este and paid for a hotel for the first time  (here we can finally afford the cheap ones). It is a crazy shopping town where you can get fake everything. The Argentitians have to take their fake CAT shoes over the river from Brazil in a boat (met a guy who was doing that) but the Paraguayans can just walk across the border. Right next to the border crossing are big fancy shopping centers and streets filled with makeshift 'shops' as well. This shopping jungle was where we probably saw a few tourists as well but they could also have been blonde Argentinians (a suprisingly high number of light-haired people in there).

Anyways, we were quite puzzled at first. We were still trying to find a place to rent over the internet but things do not happen through internet around here, especially through any international pages (and pages in English). Every time we were hungry and decided to go out to eat something, all the eating places seemed to be closed (and we had seen them open earlier). The set-up of any given street seemed to change according to the time of day, with businesses opening and closing at seemingly random times. And to top it all off, there was really noone to ask (and even googling gives little answers).

We finally found an Airbnb near Asuncion and although we had not planned to go to Asuncion at all, this seemed to be a place with a good price (and a 45% discount for staying the whole month) so we booked the whole month. We had a two-day stoppover in a town on our way before we finally got to Asuncion and got on a new bus to the location where the Airbnb app had directed us. We were a bit worried because we hadn't heard back from the host but since he had confirmed our stay then we were still optimistic. It turned out that the house did not exist. At least not where we were. And the host was not answering his phone either.

So being obviously pretty disappointed  (as we had come from the other side of the country), we wrote to another Airbnb host with a bit more expensive price and asked if we can stay for a few nights (to make new plans), took a bus back to Asuncion, came off at a random stop (where was even the centre we did not understand ... not very clear from google maps) and sat down in a park. The following hours include a new friend crackhead, his friends patroling the streets, a 'hotel' that we paid for by the hour (complete with a used condom in the corner) and some scary and relieving moments. Nothing bad actually happened..  just quite a few 'what the...' moments in one evening.

The 'what the..' moments continued when we made contact with our new host and it turned out that he lived just a few blocks away from the adventures of the previous night. It is also quite a coincidence that our friend the crackhead (I never remembered his name but let's call him Ernest as I have a feeling that I will write about him again) lives right across the street from a local police station in an abandoned mercedes. And the said police station is our neighbour. I have passed his car and seen the light of him smoking from a can.

Our host/landlord Victor lives in a cool apartment with a big balcony with a view to the river (over a slum) so we'll stay here to rest for a month. We didn't want to live in the capital but we have a good deal with someone who can explain the local life to us in English. It would be extremely difficult to find anything like that in a smaller place. We also have three dogs living with us. The newest edition to the family arrived about the same time as us and is a funny little puppy called Pochoclo, who is so fat that he  can't get up or down the stairs.

From what I described, it doesn't sound like a very nice neighborhood... well on the one hand, it is not. On the other hand, we are basically at the center of the city and there are safe routes as well (during the day, all routes are safe). In Asunción (and other Paraguayan towns), the city changes a lot also according to which corner you turn and the time of day. One moment, you have tens of busy normal people moving around and doing their thing, behind the next corner, there are wooden shacks built right on streets with people in rags, behind next corner, completely nothing, behind next corner ten bodegas (bottle shops) and fast food places.

In the same apartment that we live in, there is also a Spanish  guy who has lived here for four months and he has never had any trouble. It is because despite the way the country may look, all the people are nice and friendly and very helpful and very curious. People here are a bit shy at first because they have most probably never spoken to any Europeans before but very welcoming and nice.

Some random facts about Paraguay:
*People still love asado and maté, but Paraguayans drink even more of Tereré, which is like Matè but cold (you have ice in your thermos) and the 'cup' is made of cow horn. All kinds of different herbs are also added to the mix, which you can buy on street corners.
*They are crazy about Mandioka. It is a kind of root which is usually boiled and then it tastes exactly like boiled potato. They use it like the rest of the world uses bread by the meal (you get a plate of boiled Mandioka with every meal you order) but they also make different bread-like products and other dishes out of it.
*Riding a city bus is quite an experience (it is an experience the first time but a source of frustration all the next times). After you have flagged down a bus (it stops if you signal it) and are almost in the bus, the bus starts to move. The driver is selling you the ticket while at the same time picking up speed and dodging other vehicles. The bus also has stops but apparently you can get on and off wherever you want. Sometimes the bus stops every 50 meters. The bus starts to move and sometimes already 5 seconds later (and I swear I am not exaggerating) someone pushes the button, the bell rings and the bus stops.
The buses go up to 40km out of the center of the town here so in order to get to the last stop in any reasonable time, the driver speeds up very suddenly and stops at the last moment before/after every stop. That means that all older people or mothers with small children are given seats immediately even in packed buses (it would be impossible to stay standing up with this crazy driving)
*You know the 'first train in South America' that Paraguay boasted. It now has no trains or railway. Oh sorry. There is one freight train that very rarely brings some goods from Argentina
*Audiotuning is very popular around here. Quite a lot of people who have money install soundsystems that are so big that they can't close their car trunks anymore. They all listen to the same (horrible) beat while they drive around (and around and around) with the music turned up so loud that the only thing you hear is the panels of the car and the windows of nearby houses shaking. Best place to encounter these species of Paraguayans that we have seen: Caaguazú

*The locals also have a few bars but it is very common (in some areas more common) to sit in front of bodegas. They will even bring you a bucket of ice for the beers (as there are special prices when you buy 3-5)
*The traffic gets crazier in every country we get to (and the police more corrupt)
*Some prices (we still think in Australian dollar so 1EUR = 1,5AUD). Hotel room (out of Asuncion) - 10-20AUD, meal in a cheap restaurant - 3AUD, bus across the country 20AUD, bus in Asunción - 0.75AUD, 1 litre of beer 3AUD, 0,7l bottle of local 'rum' Caña - 3AUD, a packet of cigarettes - 0,75 AUD
*Most people speak Guarani to each other but most speak Spanish also
*Doing anything takes more and more time in every next country that we go to. Simple things like taking money from ATM (longest time: an hour on Sunday evening and a wait of over an hour on Monday morning) or buying a bus ticket takes forever. This is probably one of the reasons why 'being late' has no meaning here. If you get where you planned to get on the same day that you planned, you are not late.

From sea to desert to mountains to other side of continent

A few days in Guanaqueros easily turned into a week. But we managed to do other stuff besides resting and chilling as well.

For example we went kayaking on one day. I was quite grumpy about it at first because the idea of going on water and probably getting wet on a 13 degree cloudy day did not seem like a good idea at all. But we did get a whole new perspective on the area and saw some sea creatures. We also wanted to buy some seafood from some fishermen who were working on their boat nearby but ended up getting a big bag of oysters for free. We also bought some fresh clams from them and had a big seafood orgy back at home. And the next day we got fresh fish brought to our door by a motorbike so taking full advantage of the proximity of sea.

We also went climbing and hiking in the nearby mountains and visited a guy called San Pedro there. It was just a friendly and relaxed first hello but I have the feeling that we will encounter either him or his relatives again on our trip.

It was also quite cool to take part in a local birthday party of a friend of our host. That was pretty similar to Estonian parties with bonfire and getting home at 7am (never saw that in  Australia)

Our original plan (or more like 'idea' because we still do not make plans) was to cross the Andes at La Serena and then head towards Uruguay through Argentina. But it turns out that most of the border crossings are closed for the winter (snow and ice etc) so we had a choice to turn back and cross near Santiago or head more north.

So we hitchhiked our first car (to be honest our host Juan found our ride for us when he was dropping us off to the edge of town) and got ourselves a new friend for almost two days. Our truck driver did not speak a word of English but that did not stop him from communicating to us for the whole 1200 km that we drove with him (75kmph because we had a load of AdBlue and batteries and other chemicals on our trailer). He also bought us all our meals and drinks on the way and had us pitch our tent on his trailer.

So after hitching another car in Calamá, we made it to the driest place on earth -the Atacama desert and into the most famous town called San Pedro de Atacama. Since the air is so dry, then the temperatures 'work' differently there than in other places (it is over 2km from sea level as well). In the daytime it is 12-15 degrees but in the sun it feels like it is at least 25. At night the temperatures drop to zero (or below, since it is winter).

The town itself is 'made out of desert' so most houses are made out of sand. It is quite touristic but at the same time there is quite a big community of hippies who sell stuff on streets during the day and make music together on the main square in the evenings.

The views around the town are amazing. There are snowy mountaintops all around (a big part of them are volcanoes) the valley where the town is situated. There is snow also besides the roads in some places but in a lot of the places there is salt instead of snow. So we rented bikes one day and went exploring with a Chilean guy that we met hitchhiking. After riding 12+ kilometres to the very famous 'valley of the moon' it turned out that we can not get in because we didn't have helmets or reflective vest. Apparently some tourists had fallen and hurt themselves because they suck at riding a bike and now everyone had to suffer.

Since we had come all this way, we turned off the road and just went exploring some nearby hills. We found amazing canjons and a cave with the whole floor covered in a thick layer of salt cristals. The boys disappeared into the cave and appeared 40min later at the top of the hills/cliffs. I was wondering how long I should wait before going back and callinh for help.

I went back to the town as I was not feeling very well (a bit of a cold from sleeping in the tent in these conditions) but the guys went exploring some more. While we were in San Pedro we stayed with some local hippies  (one of them was Juan's friend who we had met in Guanaqueros) at the edge if town (with a view to the biggest volcano).

The next day we were even more tired (and a bit ill) so we wanted to take a bus over the Andes to Argentina. As it turned out, there were no buses on that day so we decided to still try hitchhiking.  Things looked pretty hopeless since in the 20min that we spent by the road, only two cars passed us. Luckily one of the cars decided to turn back and pick us up. So we started our long drive over the most amazing mountain range that I have seen in my life with a lovely Argentinian-Equadorian couple.

The Andes even look big on the map but the real thing is huge. It took us about nine hours to go over them and they were not quite finished even then. In these nine hours we saw very many very different landscapes and views. You could see the different processes that had formed these giant mountains from the shapes and colours (many different and amazing colours) that they had. In many places you could see that whole hills had been lifted up and turned on their sides by some otherwordly processes (the colourful layers of sediment did not run parallel to the ground). In other places there were enormous platoos covered in plants or salt fields. There were glaciets and snow and lakes and big cacti and llamas (or alpacas) and some local people living in their stone huts. So nine hours of being amazed and suprised and having ears lick up tens (closer to hundred) of times. The Chile-Argentina border was 4,2km from the sea level but that probably was not the highest place of the road.

We had a big plan of finding a cheap hotel in the first big town that we arrive in and rest there for a few days since we were tired and had not paid for our accommodation since Moree (cotton picking). Our plan failed miserably because al the cheap hotels were full and the ones that had room were more expensive than a good hotel in Australia.

So we found an unused piece of land near the center of the town  (it was too big to walk out of it) and tried to find a patch of land that did not have much garbage on it. While we were putting up our tent, a man appeared out of a makeshift shelter on the same plot(a few matresses, some plastic and cardboard) that we had not even noticed. Our neighbour approved of our camping spot and assured us that we had found a nice and quiet place to stay for the night (despite the traffic going past us). By the morning we already had two neighbors.

Dissapointed at the still expensive prices (and getting more and more tired and fed up), we decided to take buses to Paraguay, which according to our knowledge should be the first country that is actually cheap. In our first bus across the country, we met a guy who invited us to Iguazú insted, where he has a friend who would get us a cheap place to stay near the famous Iguazú falls. Since noone and nothing was really waiting for us in Paraguay, we decided to accept his offer.

Some very subjective discoveries about Chile and Argentina (can't tell yet which ones are true about all Latin America and which ones are not).
*Cheese is eaten a lot as it is one of the main ingredients of Empanadas which are sort of pies/pirukad that are supposedly popular around here and have different fillings. The minced meat one is about is (traditional Chilean) about ten times better than the Australian meat pie. So we have been eating them every day. Other milk products are not very common though - milk is mostly bought in powder form or Longlife milk. Didn't even see fresh one in Santiago.
*Traffic rules are recommendations only. Nobody expects anyone to drive in straight lines or use blinkers etc (surely it will get worse in other countries)
*Most of the dogs that are on the streets (and there are a lot) have owners and are loved. They are just quite relaxed about them around here and let them run around freely
*Throwing trash out of car windows is common. So is throwing it straight into rivers. Valuing their amazing nature is something that still needs some attention
*The shops are open pretty late. Can't remember the last time we could buy beer in a shop after ten (even small stores)
*Chileans and Argentinians really like their sweets. There is a big variety of different pastries availiable but since neither of us is a big fan of sweets then we haven't tried any.
*Chilean language is quite different from the 'real' Spanish because they make all the words shorter. They just lose half of most of the word. In extreme cases  only one letter of the word remains. So the rhythm of the language is very different and sounds like a whole new language.
*Argentinian is a bit easier, as they use full words but it is a bit difficult still at first as they pronounce every 'LL' as 'Ž'
*There is one bus station but in every station there are 10-20 different companies with their own office who only sell tickets to their own buses
*Argentinian long-distance buses have 'catering' which means a variety of sweets and biscuits. We even got one sandwich once (not sweet. yay)
*All the women are rather 'round'. Even the thin ones are not very close to my weight (and right now I am down to the weight that I last had when I was about 16 or17 years old because we often forget to eat and move around a lot

Landing in a new continent

Our leaving Sydney did not go as smoothly as we expected. After spending a night at the 'waiting area'  - a small end of one of the halls, which was the only place were the people were allowed to be in the entire airport, we found our place in the waiting line for the check-in. But as it turned out, there were some 'technical' problems and our Sydney-Auckland flight was canceled. That meant that we (and about 30 other people) were not going to make our Auckland-Santiago flight. So we were taken by bus to one of the airport hotels, which was in a small 'airport neighborhood'. It was definitely the fanciest hotel that I have ever been to as we usually go for the cheapest one. But we got three free meals and the drinks were included which lead to meeting some local guys just out in a bar. And that lead to going back to the center of Sydney for another last night gathering with some new friends we had just made. Made it back in the hotel to sleep for a few hours.

The rest of the way was pretty smooth. Except maybe the way from the airport to the city. Some hustlers managed to lie to us about the bus prices and take advantage of the fact that we had just stepped out of the plane and had not slept for over 24 hours. Before we even knew it, we were sitting in a taxi that we had paid about ten times more than we would have to pay for the bus. In addition, it was 5 degrees at noon on the first day so the mood of the first day was not the best.

After that everything got better. We were staying (through couchsurfing) with a really nice couple in the center of Santiago. Danielo and William answered about one hundred of our questions about Chile and South America each day and helped us find everything we needed (a little gas cooker and other survival things for example). We even went out in Santiago a couple of times, which we have not done for months (working all the time and living in a small town). William could not speak much English, wich helped us start practicing our Spanish.

I was quite confident that Spanish will come easily to me as I speak a bit of Italian. It does help a lot with understanding, especially with written texts. But so far every time I have opened my mouth, a horrible mixture of Spanish, English and Italian has come out. After a few (half-nonsense) sentences I get totally stuck because all I can remember are words in Italian and Russian  (why Russian?). So Erik has done most of the speaking so far.

Being in Santiago was very refreshing. In Australia, all the streets and buildings were relatively new (and boring) but now we saw a colorful mixture of culture around us. There were old, classical style houses with ornaments and modern highrises and small weird houses, each one different and special and a lot of graffity everywhere . Fancy expensive shops next to people sitting on the streets, selling things. You could get a meal from a flash restaurant or things cooked on street corners in modified shopping trolleys. So a lot of people from very rich to extremely poor were filling the street. Walking became more difficult because there were so many people moving around during the day that you constantly had to change direction and dodge people.

We also visited Danielos mother. These kinds of visits, for me, are the most memorable moments of every trip. When you visit a home of a local person that you never would have visited otherwise. Of course we also visit the friends we make on the road or couchsurfers, but they are generally younger people and/or have a bit more modern way of life. But older and more traditional people/homes are usually more special because they are less influenced by the modern way of life. In this case, the low-ceiling wooden interior of the house together with a very nice (rico) freshly baked traditional cake made us feel very homely and cosy.

Before coming to chile we checked some websites that compare the prices of different products in different countries and we were quite shocked to see that it was not that much cheaper than Australia. And it is true... if you want to continue living like you did in Australia. But what we have started to realize is that if you want to save money, you need to adapt to the local way of life.

For example on these very smart web pages you can see that half a litre of beer is quite expensive. But you should realize instead that the wine is very cheap. Or if you want to drink beer, then the locals buy big bottles of beer (instead of half litre ones) and share it (considerably cheaper). Or buying your food from the market and butcher etc is a lot more reasonable than going into the stores. So it is very useful to pay attention and adjust... and possibly stop buying some things that you are used to buying (if poor people are not used to eating it, it will probably be very expensive).

Anyways, we took a bus from Santiago to a random small town (Pichidangui this time) to get our first hitch-hiking experience. Since we had woken up very late, we got there just by the time the sun was setting. After getting some food from a local minimarket - (eggs, butter and onion), we made our way to a grassed area next to the town to camp for the night.

The nature here has been amazing so far - the mountains are magnificent (you could see the snowy tops of the Andis in Santiago) and the colours are bright. At our first camping spot there was the sea on one side (although we didn't see it as we didn't want to be too open to the winds and tsunamis that apparently happen here quite regularly) and on the other side (over the highway and a few kilometers away) was a big hill. The clouds came from the other side of the hill, wrapped themselves around the hill and flowed down from our side of the hill like a big blanket of milk. And the clouds did that weird (and beautiful) thing for hours. Even when the full moon rose from behind the mountain, you could still see the fog rolling down.

After our first night out over here (we survived and didn't even get cold at night... it is now about 17 degrees during the day and 7 at night) we tried to hacer dedo (hitchhike) with not much luck. After almost three hours we decided to give up and just take a bus this time. We are not giving up entirely though, we are just a bit rusty (haven't done it for a long time) and a bit afraid to just walk up to the truck drivers and ask, as we have heard is the most popular way to hitchhike around here.

So we took a bus to Coquimbo, walked 30min up the hill to our next cs host, discovered that we are in the wrong town :D, walked back down to the highway, took two more buses and finally ended up in Guanaqueros, this time in the right town.

We are staying in a small house  with four other people (a french couchsurfing couple, our host and his friend). Will say here for a few days and then we'll see what happens next.

Ps. I have now officially been to every continent of the world (that is not frozen over).

Leaving Straya

Sitting in Sydney airport 'waiting area'.

By now we have sold our car and have semi-successfully gotten rid of all of our stuff. It is not the easiest of tasks to suddenly reduce a car full of stuf to two bags that we would be able to carry but that would still contain everything we need for living. I have gone through my bag three times (after having already decided that I had gotten rid of enough things) to throw away even more things to make it lighter.

In one of the ceremonies that we had of burning our clothes (only a bit after I had posted a picture of it on facebook) Erik suddenly discovered that he could not find his phone. You can guess what happens if you don't check your pockets before burning your jacket. So a lot (most) of our cotton-picking pictures were destroyed.

We replaced the laptops with better camping stuff and since now we are ok to sleep outside down to zero degrees and don't need car access, decided to save money and camp semi-illegally near a Sydney suburb in a valley.

I am not exactly sure about will happen to my blog since now we don't have constant access to a computer but surely I will find a way to get something uploaded occasionally.

The year here has been a big learning experience, of different industries, skills and customs but mostly about ourselves. We have met some great people and had good times. So thans to all for making our second trip to Australia so much more than the first one could ever be.

New continent, new people, new adventures, new problems, embracing being planless and not being driven by a constant need to find a new job. The second year away from home begins.

The cotton harvesters

As it seems to happen to us this time in Australia, we found a new job quite quickly. As soon as we decided that ’now we are going to start looking for a job seriously’, Erik found an ad, that seemed to have something to do with his skills base and since we did not have any direction or plans as to where we wanted to go next, we decided to drive 500km to a job interviw in Moree. So the next day after getting there, Erik disappeared for four hours for his interview and when he got back, he said ’I basically took the job. I am going two hours south from here tomorrow for an unknown period. And you have work tomorrow as well. The future of whether you will get a job in the same place is uncler though’. So Erik flew off the next morning (quite literally, as the new boss  flew him to the other town in a small plane) to start the job as a ’go get’ at a cotton harvesting company. On the field, he is the guy who helps doing the maintenance to the huge picking machines and supplies them with fuel, water, and whatever else is needed. while the picking is going on, the people driving the pickers do not have time off during daylight hours, so he often also does the grocery shopping etc).

About  my first day of work... everyone who has been in Australia, especially in rural or remote areas of Australia have encountered big machines being transported from one place to another and they always have the escort cars in the front and in the back with big signs ’oversize load ahead’ on them. So on my first day I was the one driving the escort car on the back, while one of the pickers (that covers two lanes of the road... which means the whole road in these areas) was being transported from one town to another. I guess they were satisfied enough with me (despite all the prejudice looks that I got for being a small girl with dreadlocks) because the next day, I was told to pack my things and drive to the same place that Erik was sent to (near Walgett, who wants to follow us on the map) because they were putting me in a tractor. I think I mentioned in my last post that I just recently started driving a car.... oh well...

Anyways, the pickers go over the fields and spit out huge bales of cotton, which look like... you know when you were a kid and there were no cotton pads in anybodies household. You  just had rolls of cotton where you had to tear a piece out of. Well the cotton bales are like that roll of cotton wool, only they are 2,5 tonnes heavy and quite big. I bring them out of the field with a tractor (and a ’bale grabber’attached to it) and put them neatly in rows by the fields in sets of twelve bales.Before I even sat into the tractor, I had heard from four-five people about eight times in total that ’whatever you do, do not break the bales’. So on my first day I was quite worried about that. But so far (three weeks and 900 bales later) it has been a clean run. When the picking is going on then our work starts at 6.30 in the morning and goes on until at least 6-7... sometimes later.

Our longest day so far was quite a marathon. I started grabbing the bales at Walgett at 6 in the morning (the pickers had already gone to the next place days ago with Erik and everyone else. I was still there because my tractor had broken down and I had to wait wor the spare part to arrive.) I knew that I had to finish the whole field on that day and also drive the tractor to the next place on the same day. It was going to start raining the next day and the farm I was on, really was not a place that you wanted to get stuck in when it rains. Their soil is mostly clay, so when it rains, the water stays on th ground for a while. The previous year when it had rained they could not reach the highway by anything else but a boat for three months. Of the 14km that separated them from public highway, 10km were under water. So yeah. Since I did not want to wait for the rain and tractors are not allowed on public roads after dark, I was whizzing around the field the whole morning like a lunatic, not even stopping for five minutes. I finished at 1pm, cleaned the tractor a bit (it was covered in pieces of cotton plants and cotton) and hit the road. I drove all the way to the next place (again without any stopping for breaks) on side roads, full of kangaroos, sheep and cows but no people going max 40km an hour, because that was the fastest that my tractor goes... which is quite fast for a tractor. I finally reached my destination by six o’clock (I was guided to the field, where one of the pickers from our company was, through a two-way radio because it wa alredy pitch black by then). The only other vehicle that I saw on the last hour of my journey was another tractor, with a guy in a cowboy hat waving at me. By that time I had been working for 12 hours straight without a break. I even ate my sandwitch while driving. So I casually started cleaning my tractor and was planning to finish my day (the boss said that he would pick me up from the field soon). But then I was asked if I could work some more, because everyone were afraid of  the rain and wanted to get as much done as possible before that (the quality of cotton deteriorates significally when it rains and so does the price). So I spent another couple of hours grabbing bales - I warned the boss that I was already seeing halucinations because of the fatigue and I was planning to work the rest of the night in slow motion, just in case. He was fine with that and said taht it was completely fair. So I finihed the field at 10pm, called the boss to ask, if he wanted me to do another field and got the orders to wait until I was picked up and driven home. Ten minutes later the boss came and said ’guess what. Someone has broken a bale and we have to pick it up today. So we drove to another farm (there were ten picking machines on the field in the middle of darkness, each one as big as a house). We picked up a bale, which is a very very sh***y job, because the only way you can pick it up is to do it piece by piece by hand and feed the small pieces of cotton back to the picking machine. And little pieces of cotton and other plant parts and dirt keeps flying around you, so if you do it without a face mask (which no one could locate in the middle of the night) then after you are finished, everything in your throat and behind your nose is covered with cotton fibres and much much more.

 After we had done that, me and Erik were allowed to go home fortunately (he had been on the big field with all the pickers the whole day and pevious days), we were just asked to transport a big water tank on a trailer back back to the workshop. So we got back to Moree at midnight, after an 18-hour workday and decided to get something to eat. As it happens, the only place to do that, is McDonalds. So we decided to go there. After we had ordered, we encountered a small trouble. With our brains fried by the overworking we had forgotten about the little detail of the big trailer with a water tank behind our car. Well... we only got stuck for a little while and had to reverse out and I had to explain at all the next drivethrough windows, why I was not in my car (it is not allowed to walk through a drive-through in Australia). In the end, most of the workers and other customers (who also had to back out of the drive-through to let us out) were very interested in who we were and what we were doing and in the end cheering for us when we got our food.

After that day there have been many days working in the workshop in Moree, as we can not go on the fields when it is wet. By now we have cleaned and serviced all the machinery and have started reorganizing and bettering the shed (covered from head t tow in different oils and fuels at the end of the days) . We even went out to the field for one day, before it rained again tonight. So now we are waiting for the fields to dry out again (some more fixing stuff in the workshop) to get back in the action. The time flies much faster on the field than it does here.

We also live at the workshop (which is a big shed with lots of tools and parts and a break room, shower etc.) We live in a tent and have put up a large tarp that keeps away the rain. It is nothing fancy, but it would be stupid to pay for a hotel room or sth if we only come ’home’ to sleep on picking days. Since there is not much time to cook even, we have started to discover the world of frozen food. I must admit, some frozen food is not as bad as I would have thought, but whenever I have the chance (like the day off today) I still like making fresh food. Some other workers live here as well, but thay are a bit better off at their caravans.

We are counting the days to going to the next continent. The job right now is a good money boost for our travels and we do appreciate it a lot (in four days of working here I earned the same money as I earned being a teacher in Estonia in a whole month... and that was with all the bonuses and pay rises that I have gotten back there). But a change of scenery and culture is most welcome. Everyone who has been in South America is welcome to recommend any cool places and give other tips. We do not really plan ahead, so all suggestions are welcome .

Ps. The pictures are of a very bad quality because they are from my phone which is often covered in sand and oil etc. But I thought taht you understand what I am writing about a bit better if there is some visuakl aid. We’ll get better ones before leaving here. 

Transporting the picker

My tractor with the bale grabber

Fixing the picker in the dark

Erik helping to change the plastic wraps on the picker

Loading the picker on a seemingly tiny trailer

Our boss refuelling the plane before flying me to Walgett and landing beside a field on unsealed road after the sunset

Our camp

Big machines, big tools

Our life in Victoria (and travelling back North again)

I have not written a blog for so long that people are actually starting to talk to me on facebook to ask me, what I’m up to. So it’s probably time to write something to avoid this terrible burden. Just joking. I am still happy to talk to you... but you will generally have to be the person to start the conversation :D Usually when I’m travelling I just get so sucked in by the ’here and now’ that I just don’t bother keeping in contact with anyone. So it’s definitely me, not you. So don’t take it personally - I literally do not make the effort to write to anyone.

 Ok. So we have lived most of the time since I last wrote in Kinglake  which is about an hour away from Melbourne. To get to Kinglake, which is on top of a hill (about 700m from sea level), you need to take a very narrow and winding road with some quite scary curves with a view straight down from the cliffs. It is a tiny town, which has a shop (a really bad one with empty shelves, no choice and high prices), a pub, a pizza place, a fast food place, an op-shop (second hand), a petrol station and a library. We even met some hippies who are building an earthship, which is the first of its kind in Victoria. We occasionally tried to visit them and hang out, but they are always very busy building. 

Actually we lived about 5km out of town on Erik’s employers’ farm. We had an old small caravan, which was inside a big shed, because it was so old, that it would have  been  leaking rainwater otherwise. The shed used to hold 3000 rabbits, that our hosts used to grow. But now all the rabbits are gone and it was occupied by us and about 30 round hay bales. So technically it is the biggest place we have ever lived in. We had a little gas stove in the caravan, a fridge and some kitchen space in front of the caravan and a sink outside the shed. Our shower and toilet were outside so it was still a bit like camping, but much more comfortable. The best thing, however was the view. When you sit in front of our shed (which we very often did) you have a view over a big valley, with mountains on the other side. In the evenings the whole valley turns orange and pink, when the sun sets to the other side. In the mornings, the valley is usually filled with fog, which slowly rolls away when the sun, that rises from directly  the opposite  side of the valley, starts illuminating it with amazing colours.

I worked in a little eco-friendly winery about 15km from where we lived. I was the only paid worker of the place and spent my days doing various tasks in the vineyard or the winery. For example in the vineyard I helped to prepare the vines before picking (moving the wires that the vines lean against, tucking in the vines that had come out, dropping bad fruit, cutting away the shoots, taking off and putting on nets). In the winery I helped with the wine making, the majority of which is... cleaning various containers.  We move the wine from big containers to barrels or sometimes smaller containers, from barrels back to containers, from barrels/containers to bottles and so on. An all the equipment needs to be hygenically clean after every use (with no bacteria or other small creatures living there) because when you get someone living in your wine that you don’t want there, then hundreds of litres can go to waste. So pretty variable job actually with amazing views.

Most people probably don’t know but I got my drivers license just before leaving Australia. And I have happily let Erik drive the whole time, because I don’t really like driving either. Or I have always been very insecure about it and not wanting to do it at all. Well, on the cattle station I already had to drive a little. It was an old ute, that didn’t have third gear, but it did not really matter because all the roads were so sandy anyway that you would have gotten bogged if you tried to use a higher gear. But it was a good practice for me, because I finally got somewhat comfortable with using gears and driving in general, without having the pressure of traffic. But  when I started  working  away from where I lived, I have finally had to start driving. It is still scary (although the road that I took to work is not nearly as windy, narrow and steep as the other side of the hill), but I am finally becoming a ’real grown up’ person who can drive a car, as long as I don’t have to drive into a bigger town... I’ll get there but not just yet :D. Anyways the views are just amazing all the way from home to work, with vineyards and hills and fields and hot air balloons in the air almost every morning.

Erik works in the forest most of the days. He and his boss are doing forest regrowth surveys. That means that they come back to the coup that has been harvested, about two years later  to check if there is enough regrowth. That basically means going up and down the coup, stopping every 20 metres and then inserting the data into a gps-device, whether the spot is ’stocked’ or ’unstocked’, that means that they write down if there are enough of the seedlings that they are looking for and if not, then what is the reason for it (a quite simplified explanation, but he can tell you about it himself). I went with him one day to see what he is doing and after two hours I was bright red in my face and soaking wet. He did tell me in the beginning already that it is not just walking back and forth, but I had to experience it myself to believe it. Firstly, the ground is not flat or even reasonably semiflat – it is going up and down steep hills all the time. Secondly, when a person generally walks in the forest, he either has some small tracks of he will at least go around bigger the objects. That is not the case here, as they went straight through or over whatever they had in front of them. And thirdly (which I fortunately I did not see), very often the plants are spiky and horrible and a much higher bush than you are.

We were both very lucky with our bosses . Mine were  a bit posh nature admirerers, who try to do things as naturally as possible. They have travelled quite a bit (even had a very short stay in Estonia) and are sweet people with a broad horizon. (it can sometimes be frustrating to meet the Australians who have a very limited view of the world, eat only steak without any seasoning  and chips, and whose only travels have taken them to Bali). Getting a bottle or two of good wine every now and again adds a bonus (although, as I have mostly been more of a 5-dollar bottle buyer, I feel like I probably can’t appreciate their 45’dollar ones enough). Erik’s boss’s family, on the other hand, have travelled through almost every remote place in Australia. They had a 4WD adventure company when they were younger so they took people through the deserts and remote bushlands on a regular bases. But they are not the kind of people who would just settle with doing the same route the same way every time. So they always found challenges, for example going to places during floods or driving 2WD cars instead of 4WD ones on tracks (or very often without any tracks) that other people didn’t even dare to take on. We invited our bosses and some of their friends to our place for the independence day of Estonia and made them potato salad (the Estonian version), sašlõkk, devilled eggs, lack bread with herring and offered them Vana Tallinn (Erik’s bosses wife liked it so much that she ordered a box of it from Estonia). So had a very nice night with bonfire and nice people.

 And since we are both the only worker of our place, it is very easy to arrange and rearrange or working schedule. We can basically always take a day off or start when we want. That does not mean that we barely work or take advantage of it too much. On most days we still go from 8 to 5 but we do use the possibility to have some long weekends when we want to do something. For example we had a trip to go surfing and to the Grampians national park with two other Estonian couples. And last weekend we had a trip to Tasmania. We actually, at one point, had plans to go there in January and find a job there. But since we do not think ahead much, we discovered that it would cost us 800dollars and a month of waiting to get there with our car. But since we had heard so many good things about it and it was the only Australian state besides Canberra that we hadn’t visited then we decided to go there as well.

Since we are all about saving money (we actually spend money on other things, so we’re trying to even it out) we found a couchsurfing family, booked a rental car and were off. We were staying with a 60-something-year-old couple (Chinese and Aussie) just across the bay from Hobart. So we actually had a view of Hobart and mount Wellington from out bedroom window. And our hosts were so nice, that when they heard that my birthday was coming up, then we arrived back ’home’ to the smell of Rhubarb cake, that had been done following the same recipe as Estonian grandmothers do (our host had searched for the recipe on the internet).

Anyways, we discovered a small fraction of the amazing island (we only had 3,5 days) in our little rental car which was a very different driving experience  - the car actually picked up speed fast and didn’t rock, sway and rattle like our own car. Tasmania has a very diverse landscape (already in the small fraction that we saw), with hills and bays and peninsulas and rivers and lakes. There is a big part of the island (almost a quarter) that is totally inhabited, has no roads going into it and no people living there. The rest of the population of the island, is shattered around in small towns and villages, the biggest one being Hobart, with almost 200,000 people. There are steep rocks sometimes hiding  caves and beautiful beaches, the peninsulas occasionally look like you are in Sweden. That is, until you start looking closely, then you see that the plants are very different. The colours are much brighter and fresher than in the mainland and the climate is strange. Since the biggest known hole in the Ozone layer is just above Tassie, then it is hot there in 18 degrees already.

We had heard from a friend of ours that Hobart has a pretty good live music scene and he recommended us two punk bands to go and see, if we get the chance. We found out that one of them was performing on the Saturday we were there, so having no knowledge about Hobart nightlife, we headed to Bristol Hotel (where the band was supposed to perform the net day) on the day before, hoping to find likeminded people. That had been quite hard in our travels because we have mostly been in country towns (or out of towns) with occasional visits to Melbourne, which has just been too big for us to find our place. Bristol Hotel was a mixture of Zavood, Genialistide klubi and Kroks. It had this unpolished and rugged look (many Aussie places just do not have a nice atmosphere) but it was cozy. The floors were a bit sticky, the people were a bit strange (a healthy mixture of people from alternative styles), the security guard did not pay much attention to what you were doing unless you were causing trouble and the atmosphere was to our liking. One room had a black metal concert going on (faces painted white and black and all) and the other room had live hip hop performances. We left just before the bands were getting better because the beer was starting to taste too good considering that we had come with our little car (it is theoretically allowed to have one mid-strength  beer an hour is Australia). 

The next day we came back with high hopes. The concert was taking some time to start. We took saw a band come on and decided that it was probably not the band that we came to see, because it was more of a college pop-rock band with slight hints of punk music. And I thought I was being paranoid when people were gathering before the gig and I didn’t even see even one mohawk (there had been at least one the previous evening) and people seemed to be a bit too ’fashionably’ dressed. Well... it turned out that the ’college rock’ band was the punk band that we had come to listen. And the main performer, that I had been pretty excited about too because they had been described as mixing punk music with country and emo music... they were the living copy of Foo Fighters. Not that I have anything against Foo Fighters... but that was not what I was expecting. It was still a fun night and all but I was looking for something more raw. The night was still fun and Hobart does have a pretty colourful night life and different options. I was a bit annoyed by a gay guy, who was a bit too absorbed by being gay. I think it is a bit sad, if your sexual orientation is the only thing that defines you enough so that you have to mention in in every third sentence and only talk about that. Yes, thanks. I already understood you are gay the first five times you mentioned that, would you like to reply to any topic without bringing it up.

Anyways, Tasmania is the first and probably the only state in Australia that I would actually like to live in. I am not saying that it is my favourite, because  I still love the wildness of the North West of Australia a bit more. But I would never want to live in the West for the rest of my life. In Tasmania with its rugged and gorgeous nature and just the right blend of culture in the Capital... I really would not mind.

We planned to depart Kinglake on the Easter weekend. I am actually glad that we didn’t because the roads were just so full of people who were all going Easter-camping that the main highways had the average speed of 20kph and all the lunatics with their trucks, boats, caravans and different vehicles that did not even look like they were supposed to be on roads. Anyways we had to postpone our departure mainly because a very important bolt in our engine decided to break into two pieces and in order to get it out, the whole engine had to be taken out. So while Erik spent 3,5 days (starting with the sunrise and finishing way after the sunset) days getting out the engine and putting it back (with the occasional help of his boss/our host) and I drove around a rental car, earning just enough to cover our living-costs, the repair costs and the price of the rental car while doing so.

Leaving Kinglake was a bit sad because  we had to leave all the animals behind again (and well... the people also). We had a little (it took us almost 24 hours) d-tour to buy some moonshine for the road from an aquaintance, went camping on top of the Great dividing range (which we had to go over at least five times on our way north), spent another night with our former hosts and left Victoria behind us. We tried to meet some friends in Sydney (th guys that we lived with when we were in Sydney four years ago) -  started making the arrangements almost two weeks beforehand and told them that we were only stopping in the city to meet them.  When we got there then the two of them that we had managed to contact were out of town camping so we decided to wait one more day. The next time we did not hear anything from them so we decided to leave, feeling quite down.

Moving up north we visited some Estonian friends, Guide, Kaari and Raimond,who live currently in Tamworth - gave them a call the previous day and just arrived the next...no problems. We spent two nights at their place, catching up and just enjoying living in a real house for a while.

We met up Jaanika and Karl near Byron Bay – they were renting a room in a very hippie house. I love hippies and all but sometimes things can be a bit too much as well. In addition to the three actual bedrooms, there were people living in front of the hous in a van, in a ’room’ that had been crated at the back of the living room with the help of some cupboards, one (in the end two) people were living on the terrace under some mosciyo nets and all the children (at least four of them but you never know), were sleeping on the living room floor , the door of which, that was leading outside to the terrace was always open, even during the night, because one of the head-hippies, who was also the mother of most of the children, said that the energy does not move otherwise. Jaanika cleaned the house three times a day (I can’t even imagine what that place looked like before she moved in and started cleaning), if you left your food in any of the common areas (the kitchen cupboard for example) then it had a big chance of disappearing. And they even asked if we could contribute to make up for our living there (we slept in Jaanika and Karl’s room, Erik made some video editing for one of them and when we took J&K with us for two days then they also took new people into the room that had already been booked for in addition to all the wine and other stuff that we shared with them), which we really didn’t feel they deserved.

But near Byron we went surfing for the second time...the first time I probably didn’t even write about.... But to sum things up: I managed to get one nice long slide on the board a once each time of surfing but I was on my hands and knees... no sign of getting up on the board. Erik got up a few  times the first time already and therefore did even better the second time. We visited Nimbin again as well and stayed a few nights. Nimbin is the first and only town that I have been in during my life, where the main place in the town that has any action (people and music etc) in the evening does not serve alcohol. Imagine a place (a cafe? A bar?) in Estonia that is popular in the evenings without serving alcohol... Nimbin was created when in the 70s (maybe it was 60s) the local greenies celebrated the fact that they had successfully managed to stop logging in the region and decided to celebrate it with a festival. Instead of the festival ending, more and more people came and in the end there were some people who decided that they will stay for good.

We went camping again for a few days with J&K. Of course we had to choose a camping place with questionable road conditions as the rain clouds were gathering so we had to pull their car out of the muddy road when we wanted to leave. Right now we are in Moree caravan park and started looking for a new job. We are in a bit of a hurry because our visa ends at the beginning of July and we do not have much time left here.

By now we are getting a bit tired of the easiness and the level of control in Australia so we are already looking forward to South America a lot. Our second year in Australia has also been good because we already know how things work and it is quite easy to find our way here. I have learned about myself a lot and have learned to analyse myself and discovered some new things about me. I guess the relative easiness of our travels here have made it possible - there is no actual question of figuring out the society and life out around here.  With that I am not saying that I would not like to discover Australia more There are surely more amazing places here that we have not seen . it is just such a big country. But South America will be full of challenges again. At first we were planning to buy a car in Chile but now we decided that we are distancing ourselves from the locals too much if we do that. Without a car we will have much less possibilities to discover some places by ourselves but I do believe that we will get to know the people and the culture very well and we will get to go to some places that we couldn't even find without some local tips.