My winter trip to Morocco

I never really understood why Dutch people (who are not limited to school holidays) always travel in summer. In summer the weather is good in the Netherlands, so why would you need to go to some other place then? For me it makes much more sense to go on holiday when the weather in my own country is bad. Then I can go on holiday to a place where the weather is good and by doing this I maximize the amount of days with good weather in my year. This is also the reason, besides being eager to visit yet another new country, why I booked a holiday to Morocco in February.

Getting acquainted with Moroccan culture in Marrakech

My plan was to visit the most important cities in the country and to experience what it's like to live in a North-African country. My trip started in Marrakech, where I was supposed to meet my Couchsurfing-host Oussama at the airport. He was a lot later than we initially agreed and I wasn't able to reach him over the phone so in the end I left on my own to the city center and stayed in a hostel. It turns out that he did send an e-mail that he would be late, but since there is no wifi at the airport of Marrakech I only read that e-mail when I was already at the hostel. Luckily I met some very nice people there so I still had a good time in Marrakech. It was especially interesting to be at the main square (Djemaa El-Fna) at night, when there are so many things happening at the square. There are snake-charmers, circus acts, musicians, people with monkeys and a lot of food stalls. It was a really interesting - but very touristic - experience.

The only bad thing about Marrakech (and all other touristic places in Morocco) is that you are constantly harassed by people who just see tourists as wallets with arms and legs. Since I don't want the story about my trip too long, I have written a seperate post about Moroccan culture. In this second post(see below if you are on the homepage of my blog) you can read more about how I was harassed during my trip by these annoying men.

Follow the backpacker!

After visiting Marrakech for one day it was time to move on. I skipped the hectic city of Casablanca because there is not much to see over there and stopped at Rabat: the capital and economical heart of Morocco. As usual I didn't book any hotel in advance and since I also had no clear preference for a hotel I played a little game called "follow the backpacker". When getting off the train in Rabat I saw a tiny girl with a big backpack walking in front of me. I decided quickly that she would probably be better informed about the ho(s)tels in Rabat than I was, so I followed her to see where she was going. After stalking her for 5 minutes I felt like a creep and also I was curious about her, so I walked up to her and started talking to her. In a huge French accent she told me she had been traveling together with her friend for one month already, but he left this morning and now she was on her way to a hotel that was mentioned in her Lonely Planet-guide. We decided to go find the hotel together and even shared a room that night. Together we visited the city for one day, but after that I had to leave her in Rabat and move to the next city because otherwise I would not get to see everything I wanted to see. I now understand why people told me one week is not enough to see Morocco.

Chefchaouen

My next destination was Chefchaouen: a beautiful city in the Rif mountains in the north of Morocco. There was only one bus per day from Rabat to Chefchaouen and it left at an inconvenient time (3 in the afternoon), so I decided to change my schedule a bit and go to Meknes in the morning. I read somewhere that Meknes is called the Versailles of Morocco because there are many beautiful gardens, but overall it's a boring city if you ask me. After walking around for 2 hours I went to the bus station to catch a bus to Chefchaouen. Unfortunately the last bus of the day had already left at noon, so I had to take a grand taxi to Ouazzane and another grand taxi from there to Chefchaouen. A grand taxi is an old Mercedes-Benz 240D which is shared by 6 passengers traveling to the same destination. You wonder how you can fit 6 passengers and 1 driver into one car? The answer is very simple: remove the cabinet between the driver seat and the passenger seat to make room for two passengers in front of the car and squeeze four people on the two back seats of the car. Comfortable traveling is not the highest priority here.

In Chefchaouen there are two things that are impossible: not to get lost while walking around in the old center for the first time and not to get offered some marijuana by secretive men on the streets. The city is located in the area where a lot of marijuana is grown and you can see quite a few stoners in the city. It's not an unsafe place though and I absolutely loved this place. To get an idea of what the city looks like by night and by day, here are two pictures:

In fact, I loved Chefchaouen so much that I wanted to buy a painting from there in one of the many shops. I'm not at all into arts, but it just seemed like a great way to bring a bit of the atmosphere of Chefchaouen home with me. You can read my experience of buying this painting in my other post about Moroccan culture.

My last day in Morocco

On my last day in Morocco I decided to enjoy some typically Moroccan delights. The day started with a Moroccan breakfast with some delicious tea at my hostel in Fez. After breakfast, I went to a hammam (a Moroccan bath house) to wash myself and to get a massage. In my mind I always picture a massage as something that should be done by an young attractive woman (she may be a bit older as well, as long as she makes up for that with massaging experience) with soft but firm hands. This is not what a massage is like in Morocco though. When entering the hammam I was approached by a chubby, 50 years-old bald man with a moustache. He offered me a massage and full body scrub. With a confused look in my eyes I quickly scanned the room for other people who could give me a massage. There were no attractive women around (in fact: there were no women at all), so it was either getting a massage from this man or getting no massage at all. I did want the full hammam-experience, so with hesitation I agreed to let this man give me a massage.

The massage started with some experiences that could be described as a bit gay-erotic. We were both sitting on the floor, the man behind me with his legs pushed against my legs. The chubby was pulling my arms and body in every possible direction to warm up my muscles and while doing this he pushed his fat belly to my back from time to time. I felt a bit uncomfortable now, but up next was another stretching exercise where I was told to bend over and hold the toes of this my massage-man while he stretched me some more. I felt even more uncomfortable, but I had promised myself to have a real Moroccan experience today and did everything that the man wanted from me. Despite the uncomfortable feelings, the massage was very good. Then the body scrub started. It was a strange experience for me: I never did something like this before. After 10 minutes of scrubbing the massage was over and I was given some time to wash myself with the ultra-warm water of the hammam and to relax in the steamy area. I must have sat there, still on the floor, without any movements for like 5 minutes in some sort of trance. After my visit to the hammam I was feeling extremely peaceful and relaxed.
There was still one thing I needed to do before going home. My hair was a bit long and I hadn’t shaved for a week, so it was clear I needed to go to a barber as well. Unfortunately the barber didn’t speak any English or French, so I really did not have any control over the situation and was forced to watch the barber do his business to me. To my surprise he didn’t shave off my “beard”, but rather made it look more stylish. I wasn’t quite sure what to think about my new look, but decided to “wear” this stylish beard at least for the rest of the day. Unfortunately for you guys I forgot to take good before- and after pictures.
With my new haircut I went into the medina one last time to have a warm lunch. Unlike on most other days, the food was not that good, but that didn’t really bother me any more: I had enough good food in the past week to know that Moroccan food is delicious.

After lunch it was time to go home, so I went to the bus station to catch the bus to the airport. I had to wait for more than 1 hour for the bus to come, not knowing if and when it would come, because there is no fixed bus schedule for local buses in Morocco. But I’m not complaining. This only added to the experience of my Moroccan day.

My trip to Morocco part 2: the Moroccan culture for tourists

In Marrakech, just like in all other touristic places in Morocco, there are many people on the street who see tourists as walking bags of money. These guys can "accidentally" meet you at the bus station, chat with you for a while, offer to take you to your hostel (or say the hostel is bad/closed/far away and recommend a ho(s)tel they have connections with - or that pays them a higher fee for bringing in tourists) and then require you to pay a "tip" afterwards. I was aware of these practices - unlike two Brazilians I met at the hostel, who actually paid 10 euros to the guy who brought them there - so I told all of the men who approached me that I didn't want their help and tried to walk away. These men were very persistent though: even when they were walking in front of me and I deliberately took a wrong turn to try to shake them off they would still come after me. These men were not aggressive (I only felt unsafe once during my entire travel), but rather EXTREMELY annoying.
In the end I managed to shake off both of the men who tried to be my guide, but at the corner of the street of my hostel I met another man who walked the last few meters with me. Of course I gave him no money for doing this, but the bed in my hostel suddenly cost 1 euro more than other people in the same room had to pay for their bed: probably the commission that this guy earned on me.

Another thing that was new to me was the fact that I had to speak French more often than I would have liked to. My desperate attempts to change the conversation with a random stranger on the street to English failed miserably.
Me: "I'm going to meet a friend."
Random man on the street I was talking to: "Yesss. French."
Despite not having spoken French for at least 5 years I managed to make myself clear at all times. I'm sure that "Vous pouvez prener une photo de moi?" (at the last second I kept myself from just saying "picture" with a French accent) is not 100% correct, but the other person got what I meant.

Let's talk business

As mentioned in my other post, I bought a painting in Chefchaouen. Here is the full story.
It was my first morning in Chefchaouen and I was planning to first go sightseeing and buy souvenirs in the afternoon. When I saw a small shop with some beautiful paintings I thought it wouldn't hurt me to look around and get informed about prices and went inside.
One of the artists, a man with a grey beard in a white garment who told me he was from a small village in the Sahara, proudly showed me his paintings of camels and the desert, but of course I was more interested in the paintings of Chefchaouen. He showed me some more paintings and I complimented them in my "thanks, but no thanks" style until he showed me a painting that I absolutely loved. He told me the price was 30 euros and I told him it was too much for me. I wasn't planning to make a counter-offer but the man told me there are no fixed prices in Morocco and that I couldn't offend him with my offer, so I offered him 5 euros. He said it was not enough, put the painting down and showed me some micro-paintings with the price of 8 euros (5 euros after 10 seconds of saying I was not interested) but they were too small for me so I started leaving the store. The man walked back to the painting I liked so much and noticed my hesitation while walking away. He then surprised me by asking me for my final offer out of nowhere. I was too surprised to answer strategically and gave an honest answer: 10 euros. Of course he wanted to make this 15 euros quickly and almost started begging for "a liiiiittle more", but when I told him that it really was my final offer and started to leave the store again the man said that my price was ok and so I had to buy this painting.
I'm happy that I got this painting and I do think I got it for a reasonable price, but I wasn't too happy that I had to carry it with me all day while climbing up and down the mountains around Chefchaouen.

Another strategy that can be used while talking about prices in shops is the guilt trip. I wanted to buy a mirror for my sister and walked into a store to look at one. A man (not even the owner) walked up to me, introduced himself as Mustafa and asked me how much I wanted to pay for this mirror. He refused to make an offer first, so I told him I wanted to pay 4 euros. He asked 20 euros. The mirror wasn't too special in my opinion, so I wanted to walk out the store, but the man blocked the entrance (in a non-offending way: again, people are not unfriendly, just very much focused on earning money) and asked me to pay a bit more. I offered 5, then 6, but wasn't going to spend more than this because there were many other shops as well which offered reasonable alternatives. Mustafa gave me a hard time and the store-owner came to support him and just when I was thinking we wouldn't reach an agreement the owner started packing the mirror. I wasn't sure what price we agreed and the owner said "let's make it 7 euros". I felt a bit angry because I never agreed on this price and then Mustafa said with a nasty and disrespectful tone "you're really going to make a problem out of 1 euro?". This is a very mean strategy. Of course 1 euro is like nothing to me now that I have a full-time job and I can easily pay 1 euro more. So in the end I did pay those 7 euros, but I left the store with a bad feeling, because I felt I paid too much for a product that I might not have even wanted to buy.

I hope you all enjoyed reading this and can learn from my experiences in Morocco to be better prepared when you go traveling to a similar country yourself. Soon I want to write a blog with travel advice by the way. So if you're interested in that, stay tuned! ;)

Results of ISC#5

The voting deadline was yesterday and so the voting section has been closed. The points given by myself and the other 9 wonderful people who voted in the contest have been added up and a winner has come out. Do you want to know who won? Check out the result by clicking on this link.

Thanks to everybody who voted! In the coming weeks I will be sharing some more music from other countries that just didn't make it to this contest. 

First I will go on yet another trip though. This time I'm going to visit Morocco for a week. I'm already excited to go Couchsurfing again (can't believe that it has been 2 years since my last CS-experience!) and am very eager to try some of the delicious Moroccan food that is for sale at the main square of Marrakech. Also I'm going to spend Valentine's Day at a very romantic place this year...

Stay tuned and you will be among the first to read my travel stories.

International Song Contest #5

The time has come again, in the past year I found so many good songs from all over the world that I couldn't resist creating another edition of my International Song Contest. And here is something new: the recap video now contains parts of the videoclips of all songs! Hope you all will enjoy this change.

I would like to ask you to make a top 10 of your favorite songs and submit them via the form at the bottom of this post. To encourage active voting, I will send a personal thank you note including a small gift from Holland (or abroad, if you're Dutch) to one of the voters. If you want to win this prize, please write down "Yes! I want to win!" in the Comments section after you finished voting.

Rules:
- To be able to vote, you should have at least listened to the entire recap video.
- Voting goes via the traditional Eurovision-system, so to vote you have to make a top 10 (see voting form below)
- You can vote for your own country (even if you helped me select the song from your country), as long as you promise to vote honestly.
- You can vote until 9 February 9:30pm CET.

After the voting has ended I will publish the results on my blog and make a fancy animation of the voting process, to give you the feeling like you're watching the results of the real Eurovision song contest.

Recap video:

Click here to watch the recap video.

List of participants:

1.	Romania	Vunk ft. Antonia	Pleacă
2.	Poland	Margaret	Thank You Very Much
3.	Uzbekistan	Ulug'bek Rahmatullayev	I Love You
4.	New Zealand	Jackie Thomas	It's Worth It
5.	Norway	Martin Halla	Illuminate The Sky
6.	Ukraine	Potap & Nastya	Miy Otmenyaem
7.	Germany	Michael Schulte	Carry Me Home
8.	Bosnia & Herzegovina	Halid Bešlić i Legende	Tamburasi
9.	Armenia	Luara	Fire In Me
10.	South Africa	NRG	Mayday
11.	Hungary	Gigi Radics	Úgy Fáj
12.	Iceland	Jón Jónsson	All, You, I
13.	Malaysia	Zee Avi	Concrete Wall
14.	Denmark	Apollo	Too Many Nights
15.	Russia	Sergey Lazarev	V Samoye Serdtse
16.	Switzerland	Remady & Manu-L	Holidays
17.	Guatemala	Ricardo Arjona y Gaby Moreno	Fuiste tú
18.	Finland	Satin Circus	If You Love Me
19.	Israel	Chen Aharoni	Crazy
20.	Bulgaria	Mihaela Fileva feat. VenZy	Opasno Blizki
21.	Spain	Adelén	Bombo
22.	Brazil	Luan Santana	Te Vivo

You can access the video on YouTube by clicking on the name of the song.

VOTING IS OVER

New year's resolutions and the prisoner's dilemma

It was the first day of the new year. My friend posted a picture on Facebook of herself on New Year's Eve. She was wearing a tight dress and looked absolutely stunning. Next to her photo she wrote: "Happy New Year! Resolution: lose weight". I wrote to her that she looked fine and didn't need to lose weight at all, but she didn't believe me. I wished her good luck with her weight reduction plan.

Today it's the first Sunday of the year. Like I do on most Sundays, I went to the gym. It was very hectic out there. There was barely enough room to place my bicycle next to the gym and inside I had to wait until I could start my workout, because all treadmills were taken. In the strength zone however I could freely use all machines: here it was not more crowded than on any other Sunday. It goes without saying that this busy first Sunday of January was caused by all those girls who made a new years' resolutions to lose weight. The new girls that I saw didn't look fat at all though. Some might have been a bit chubby, but no-one was fat.

I started wondering: where does this focus on losing weight and being skinny come from? Is it because these girls want to be sexy? Then we must ask ourselves the following question: do guys really prefer a girl with a flat stomach over a girl with some "lovehandles"? The answer to that question is usually negative. Guys don't care so much about the weight of their girl. And it may be a personal preference, but I would actually prefer a girl to have a few extra pounds. Moreover, it would be a big turnoff for me if a girl would be on a diet all the time. (Unless she orders a regular meal in a restaurant anyway, only eats half of it and then gives the rest of her meal to me. I would like that.)

A second reason why girls want to lose weight could be that they want to look pretty compared to other girls. In that case, this situation can easily be translated into an example of the so called Prisoner's Dilemma.
Let's think of a fictional world where there are just two girls who have to decide to either lose weight or stay the same. Assuming that it's uncomfortable to lose weight and that girls feel even more uncomfortable if they are feeling less pretty than the other girl, you can translate the choices both girls have in the following table:

	B loses weight	B doesn't lose weight
A loses weight	Both girls are feeling equally pretty;   both girls are feeling uncomfortable	A feels pretty, B doesn't feel pretty   and is very uncomfortable
A doesn't lose weight	B feels pretty, A doesn't feel pretty   and is very uncomfortable	Both girls are feeling equally pretty; both girls are feeling comfortable

As you can see, the optimal situation here for A and B together is the situation where both girls don't lose weight. They are both feeling equally pretty and are both feeling comfortable. However, if you are girl A and you can't trust the other girl to also not lose weight, you might want to lose weight as well, because otherwise you can end up in a situation where you feel both unpretty and very uncomfortable.

Girl B will think the same way and we will end up in a situation where both girls decide to lose weight, feel equally pretty as they did before and are feeling uncomfortable. The only way they can get to the "optimal" outcome where both girls are feeling comfortable, is if they can both make an agreement to not lose weight. If you translate the message of this example to the real world, it would mean that all girls should sign an agreement that they will not try to lose weight. And that's exactly what I want to achieve with this blog post.

So hereby I kindly ask all girls and women in this world to make an agreement to not lose weight this year.

Thank you.

Coincidentally this would also allow me to do my workout in peace, without having to wait for all those girls on the treadmill. That's not at all important to me though, I wrote this blog post mostly because I care so much about the well-being of girls in this world.

Because after all, I'm such a kind and caring person, who is not sneaky and manipulative at all.

Trip to Peru and Bolivia 2-25 November 2013

Never before had I joined a group trip. Never could I have imagined that I would enjoy my group trip to Peru and Bolivia so much. The main reasons why I wanted to join a group trip this time were because of the huge distances I would cross (in total I spent more than 70 hours in a bus or train during the trip), the fact that I didn't speak any Spanish and my laziness to search for tour agencies that would offer trips to places like Machu Picchu, Salar de Uyuni and Colca Canyon. In the end I really enjoyed having some company with me while travelling.

It all started as a normal travel for me. I didn't know any other group members in advance, so on the flight to Peru I was alone and talking to the middle-aged Peruvian man who was sitting next to me. I had already noticed this man before boarding the plane. He was wearing a t-shirt that looked like it was designed by some stoned hippie in the 1970s and his eyes were opened like he was surprised at everything he saw. The man certainly looked like he had an interesting life story and when I found myself sitting next to him during the 12-hour flight to Lima I knew I was going to try to get it out of him. I was right about his life story. It was an interesting one. The man, who introduced himself as Miguel, just came back from Greece, where he visited his sister. His sister was a diplomat who had lived all over the world, including the Netherlands. And before visiting his sister, he had made a trip to Tibet, India and Nepal, with a two-day stopover in Qatar. We exchanged travel stories, talked about Peruvian culture and food (he was right when he said I was going to love it) and other things. All in all this was a good start to my travel.

Arriving in Peru

At Jorge Chavez International Airport I said goodbye to Miguel and first met the other group members. We were going to travel with a group of 24 Dutch people, plus a Peruvian guide and an Ecuadorian travel photographer (you have to be jealous of this man's job...). It's a big group, but at least I was sure to meet a lot of new people. On the first day we all went on a city tour in Lima to get to know each other.

The second day we needed to get up early for a day full of excursions. In the afternoon we arrived at Huacachina: an oasis in the Peruvian desert. After enjoying the swimming pool for a while, we went into the desert at 5 o'clock for a bumpy (but awesome) ride in a buggy and to go sandboarding. We arrived at some very steep dunes, where we would go down on a sandboard, which is like a snowboard for sand. The first person who went down cheekily drew a line to indicate how far he had gotten on his sandboard. That's when I knew I had to break his "record". So I asked the guy on top of the dune to push me as hard as he could, held my feet in a straight line with the rest of my body and there I went... I was even faster than I expected. Some guys that were standing on the "record-line" had to jump out of the way to avoid a collusion and I beat the existing record with flying colors.
After all this excitement we went to a high viewing point in the desert to watch the sunset, which was awesome.

Nazca & Lake Titicaca

On the third day of our journey we visited Nazca and the famous Nazca lines. Nothing special to tell about this (it was a bit disappointing to me), so I will tell you an anecdote. During the first two days I had shared the food recommendations from my Peruvian friend with two other group members. The first two days they were really excited about my suggestions so they appointed me as their culinary advisor for the coming weeks. On day 3 I wanted to pull a prank on them by saying that spaghetti with pesto, fried egg and banana (really, it was on the menu there!!) was a delicious Peruvian delicacy and that they had to try it. Apparently they really trusted in my advice. Even after I explained that it was just a joke, they both ordered this dish. My words sometimes have bigger impact than I think and I felt sorry for these two guys. One of them didn't finish his meal more than halfway and the other guy finished it and said it was delicious, but I could hear from the tone of his voice that it wasn't true. :)

After Nazca it was time to go into the mountains. We first visited Arequipa at an altitude of around 2200 meters. From here we made a two-daytrip to Colca Canyon, where we would go see some condors: big birds that can be up to 3 meters wide when they spread their wings. We stayed in a village at an altitude of 3600 meters and for many people, including me, this high altitude caused some trouble in the form of a headache that wouldn't go away. Luckily for me I recovered well after a night sleeping (or maybe it was because I ate a lot of alpaca meat there), but other people felt uncomfortable for days due to the high altitude. Here are two pictures of our trip to Colca Canyon:

Up next was the city of Puno. The city itself is not so special, but the location (next to Lake Titicaca, the highest navigable lake in the world at an altitude of 3810 meters) is very special. I joined a boat trip to the Uros Islands. These islands are not like normal islands: they are not stuck to the earth but rather floating in the lake. Originally these islands were made by a local tribe that didn't want to be conquered by the Spanish when they invaded Peru. Initially the people used boats to escape from the Spanish people, but soon they developed techniques to create floating islands. We were "invited" by one of the families living on these islands nowadays. They showed us how to make a floating island, explained more about their culture and showed us how they live. We were also allowed to try on traditional Peruvian clothing. Of course I had to try this as well. How do you think I look in the following picture? Like a true Peruvian, eh?

Anyway, soon after the "trying on clothes"-phase the friendly and welcoming atmosphere changed. The women started selling all kinds of handmade products (probably produced in a nearby factory...) and we felt more or less obliged to buy something after accepting their initial friendliness. Then we were invited to join a boat trip to another island on a reed boat, which cost 3 euros per person. Of course this is not a huge price, but considering the fact that 24 people joined this boat trip (of only 15 minutes) and that during the boat trip cute local children would start singing for a "small tip", we don't need to worry about the financial situation of the people living on these islands. That is, if they are actually living there.
Despite the commercial attitude of these people, I still had a very enjoyable morning on the floating islands.

Experiencing life in Bolivia

After 9 days in Peru it was time to go to Bolivia. After a short stop at a small village with some ruins next to it we arrived at La Paz, which is one of the highest big cities in the world. Not the highest capital city in the world like some people think, because La Paz isn't the capital city of Bolivia. In La Paz I had the option to join an organized city tour plus an excursion to Valle de la Luna: a valley where the landscape looks just like moon-landscape. But I thought: why do this the easy way when you can do it the hard and more exciting way as well? So I decided to make my own tour, on my own. In the morning I walked around the city and in the afternoon I went searching for a local bus to Valle de la Luna. Using the local bus in La Paz is a real experience. There are no bus stops, all buses are just driving around the city center at a really slow pace with an open door, allowing people to hop in if they want to go somewhere. Of course it's possible to signal the driver first and make the bus stop for you, but most people just jump into the bus while it's driving. I remember only one time when the bus actually stopped for a new passenger, but this new passenger was an old lady who used a stick to walk, so she physically couldn't jump into the bus. :)
The typically Bolivian driver, who was making unhealthy noises from time to time, made my adventure complete. Without any issues I arrived at Valle de la Luna, where I met two Japanese tourists who gave me a ride back to the city. All of this would never have happened if I would have chosen to join the excursion.

After visiting La Paz we were facing a long bus ride towards Uyuni. Distance is a factor here, but it's not the main factor why this trip takes so long. This main factor is the fact that we had to drive 160 kilometres on an unpaved road to reach Uyuni. We were driving on this road with another bus close behind us when disaster strikes. While overtaking a slow truck, the bus behind us gets stuck in the sand. And it was really, really stuck. In line with the unwritten rules of driving on unpaved roads in Bolivia our bus driver offered his help, so we had to wait as well. It took more than an hour to get the other bus on the road again, but at least this extra stop allowed us to take a closer look at the sand tornados that were developing next to us. In the end our bus ride from La Paz to Uyuni took 14 hours.

It was worth it though: Salar de Uyuni was THE highlight of my trip to Peru and Bolivia. It feels so special to drive in a jeep through this totally deserted landscape. It felt like being on another planet, because at some places all you can see is salt, salt and more salt. All photographers know that in these circumstances it's difficult to see depth on photos. Therefore Salar de Uyuni is an ideal place to make funny pictures that fool its viewers. For example, on the picture below I am crushing my roommate during the trip, after shrinking him down to miniature size first:

And for those of you who actually want to learn something from reading my blog, here's an explanation of how the salt flats were formed in the first place: a long time ago there was a huge lake close to Uyuni. Due to the warm and dry weather, the lake dried up, leaving behind all of the salt from the water. And here's a funny fact: when Neil Armstrong was walking on the moon in 1969 one of the first things he saw when looking at the earth was a huge white spot: Salar de Uyuni. If you want to experience the same thing, I highly recommend looking at South America using Google Earth. Just like I did many times when preparing for my amazing trip to Salar de Uyuni.

Cusco & Machu Picchu

After visiting Uyuni we had a lot of travelling days. Via Potosí, again La Paz and Copacabana (not the famous one, just a small village at Lake Titicaca) we went back to Peru. We would spend four days in and around Cusco, to allow some brave group members to walk the Inca Trail towards Machu Picchu. I didn't do this, because I wanted to have enough time to visit the city and the area around it. On the first day I stayed inside the city. One may think that Cusco is only famous for being close to Machu Picchu, but actually it's a really nice city where you can easily spend a few days without getting bored. It's very lively and has a beautiful main square called Plaza de Armas. For reasons unknown to me all main squares in Peru are called Plaza de Armas. But all of those Plaza de Armas's are very pretty, just like the one in Cusco, photographed from above here:

For the second day in Cusco we rented a minibus with a small group to take us to some nearby Inca-ruins. It was very nice to see all these ruins. The day was also memorable because we had a driver who was not very concentrated. He even managed to hit a donkey on the road (yes, a donkey! how can you not see a donkey standing in the middle of the road?!?). The donkey fell down on its ass and got up quickly, looking very confused about what on earth just happened to him, but it seemed like it was doing ok again.

On day 3 we took a train to Aguas Calientes: the village that is right next to Machu Picchu. We spent the night there and the next morning at 6 o'clock we arrived at the gates of Machu Picchu. We were hoping to see the sunrise there, but it was already light when we got there and moreover it was too cloudy to see any sun at all in the morning. First we walked up to the Sun Gate to greet the people who walked the Inca Trail. After this, I started climbing Machu Picchu mountain. And I was a fast climber. I climbed this mountain in around 50 minutes and was the first tourist to reach the top that day. What I had feared for already happened: I could see only clouds. In the end there was one small moment when the clouds opened up enough so I could see a small part of Machu Picchu, but the amazing view I had hoped for never showed itself. This was the only short view on Machu Picchu I got:

So after being at the top for some time I went down again. When I was walking down I suddenly saw it: an amazing view on Machu Picchu. So I asked the first person that came by, a latino man with long hair and a cowboy hat, who didn't speak any English, if he could take a picture of me in my Inca Kola shirt. I had bought this shirt especially for this day so I could take a picture together with my roommate (who bought exactly the same t-shirt) in front of Machu Picchu, so don't start thinking that I am a typical tourist because I wear such a t-shirt. This is a sensitive topic for me: I consider myself a traveler, not a tourist. :) Anyway, the latino guy had some trouble with my photo camera, but in the end he made a nice picture.
For two hours I was walking around Machu Picchu. I came close to the exit, but felt it was too early to leave, so I sat down to enjoy some food. Shortly after this I was approached by a school teacher who was there for a trip with his class. With some hesitation he said: "¿Hables... español?". I told him I only spoke English and then, after some careful consideration he produced the word: "Photo?". So I stood up to take his camera and take a picture of his class when suddenly 3 giggling schoolgirls appeared next to me. Apparently they wanted to be on a picture with me. I don't know why they picked me out of all those tourists walking around there, but I calmly posed for one picture. After this, more the guys in the class also wanted to have a picture with me. And even their teacher wanted to join the picture. In the end pretty much all schoolgirls wanted to have an individual picture with their new "amigo" as well. Patiently I posed with them, because they all seemed so excited to have a picture with this tall Dutch guy.
After this memorable moment, I went a little up the hill again, took the photo with my roommate in front of Machu Picchu and then hopped on the bus back to Aguas Calientes.

The final day

Basically the trip was over now. We just went back to Lima with a domestic flight and the next day we would get on a plane back home. The guys from the group bought a lot of alcohol to have a secret party in the hotel (it was not allowed to drink in Lima that day, because there were elections the next day), but I still had one thing left to do: hang out with a local. Traveling with Dutch friends is fun, but I had missed meeting up with locals, seeing cities how they see it and listening to how they look at their home country a lot during the trip. So I was very glad that I could meet up with my friend Jhoselyn on the last day. She and her friend took me to Barranco, where we enjoyed a great view over the Pacific Ocean. At night she even guided me to a well-hidden local club where we had a nice night together.

It was difficult to say goodbye to Peru the next day. I really enjoyed my stay there and I'm certainly going to miss drinking Inca Kola and eating all the delicious Peruvian food. Really, the food deserves a special mention here. Many people asked me what I enjoyed the most about my trip. Here's my top 3:
1) Riding in a jeep on Salar de Uyuni. It's such a special feeling and it should be even more special when it's hot and the salt becomes a bit fluid. The salt will then reflect the blue sky above it, which makes the landscape even more beautiful.
2) Sandboarding in the desert! I'm certainly going to do it again, when given another chance.
3) Visiting Machu Picchu. This is the most well-known place in all of Peru and it didn't disappoint me. Especially when you think about the history of this place it truly gives you a special feeling to be there.

That's all about my trip. I hope you enjoyed reading my stories. If you have any other questions or comments about my trip, let me know via a comment here or a message on Facebook. I will be happy to give you more information.

It's Eurovision time!

Every year when the month of May is approaching something happens inside of me. I start to feel restless, but on the other hand I'm also enthusiastic, excited and talkative. It's clear: I have Eurovision fever again.

Many people don't understand why people actually like Eurovision so much. They all complain about how their own entries are always horrible and never do well in the contest. That may be true: this year the Netherlands also sent in a very bad song to Eurovision that is certainly not good enough to finish in the top 10 and although critics are positive about the Dutch chances to reach the final I wouldn't be so sure. It's going to be a close call.

Anyway, my point was that there will always be bad songs at the Eurovision Song Contest. And this doesn't necessarily have to be so bad. You can laugh at funny events that are happening during the show (Greece will make a great show with an old man playing a traditional guitar while being surrounded by younger men who are wearing kilts), ask your friends to close their eyes and make them guess if the Romanian singer is male or female, start considering to donate new clothes to the chubby Israeli singer because her current dress seems to be a bit old and is way too tight or be amazed at how one young man from Azerbaijan can sound like a boyband all alone.

And actually there are some very acceptable songs in the contest as well. Here is my top 5, starting with number 5:

5. Denmark (Emmelie De Forest - Only Teardrops)
Denmark is the top favorite among bookmakers, together with Norway, which will not even reach the final if you ask me. The song has everything: a pretty girl singing it with a good voice, a flute-solo to help the voters remember the song and also a good musical composition. Besides this, Emmelie has many roots in other countries, which generally helps a lot in gaining extra points. We'll see if the bookmakers were right in predicting Denmark as a winner next week.

4. Belarus (Alyona Lanskaya - Solayoh)
Belarus didn't bother to send in a very original song this year: just a catchy song that is easy to dance to and sing along. This could be a huge hit that is played at clubs close to sunny beaches all summer long, but I doubt whether it's enough to win Eurovision this year.

3. Malta (Gianluca Bezzina - Tomorrow)
One of the most simple songs of this year. A young and charming guy on a guitar describing the life of an IT-guy who falls in love with a spontaneous girl that totally throws his life upside down in a style that reminds me a lot of Jason Mraz. Probably the song is too simple to win the contest, but it should be able to finish in the top 10.

2. Finland (Krista Siegfrids - Marry Me)
I realize that not all of you may enjoy this Avril Lavigne-clone, but for me she has that something special. Krista is a very fierce and energetic rock'n roll chick, though I'm afraid that due to her enthusiasm her live performance will not be as good as the video clip. I won't judge her on that expectation though: I like the energy of this song, so she's my number 2 in the contest.

1. Switzerland (Takasa - You And Me)

When I first heard that Switzerland was going to be represented at Eurovision by 6 soldiers of the "Heilsarmee" (Salvation Army), including a bass player that will be 95 years old, I thought that this would be another crazy low-quality song. When I first heard it however, it turned out to be a very nice pop tune. After listening to it a couple of times more it actually became my favorite song in the entire contest.
The fact that they are my favorite doesn't have to mean anything though: in the past 5 years Switzerland was among my top 5 favorites 4 times, but they only qualified for the final once: in 2011 they finished at the last place in the final with only 12 points.
However, if a couple of Russian grandmothers could finish second in last year's contest, then why can't a band with a 95-years old bass player win this year's edition? If all older people in Europe vote for Switzerland they will win for sure.

So the main message of this blog post is:

Elderly of Europe, unite, and help Switzerland win the Eurovision Song Contest of 2013!