Different Christmas traditions with lovely and warm people in Penedo

We left the nice beaches of Morro de São Paulo behind us and took a boat to Salvador. In Salvador we had only few things to do. One was to send our winter clothes back home, have lunch and to make our way to the airport. This time our destination was Penedo, close to Rio de Janeiro. We had heard that when the home of Santa Claus is in Finland, hes summer cottage is in Penedo, so we thought it would be a good place to spend the Christmas.

Pictures from Penedo's little Finland 

Drumming Salvador and relaxing Morro de São Paulo

Salvador

As mentioned in our previous post, we had first thought that we would go to Salvador one day earlier. But then we started to look what there is to do and see in Salvador and actually – not very much. Also, there were so many warnings on where not to go to avoid being robbed or mugged that it didn’t really feel like a welcoming city. That was one reason why we stayed one night longer in the cozy Lencois 😉

We searched where to stay in Salvador and we got basically two results: 1) Barra, the southern part of Salvador with beach access or 2) Pelourinho, their historic part of the city with colorful buildings. We had seen some beaches along our road trip, so we decided to stay in Pelourinho.

Street view in Pelourinho

Beautiful Chapada Diamantina and charming town of Lencois

After around 8 hours of driving on not-so-good roads, passing hundreds of bush fires and difficult gas station visits with language barriers we finally arrived to Lencois, a town in Chapada de Diamantina national park. We had checked that this town would be the best option for us to see the different places we wanted to see in the park.

On the top of Morro Do Pai Inacio

Driving through North-East coast in Brazil - Canoa Quebrada, Natal, João Pessoa, Pipa, Olinda, Porto de Galinhas, Aracaju

We had a few weeks road trip from Fortaleza to Salvador. On the way we stopped in several places, in some we stayed just for a night and in some we spent more time. Below you will see our route all the way to Salvador.

Cumbuco, Brazil - Kitesurfing, injuries and beaches

A direct flight from La Paz to Fortaleza would've been only around 2-3 hours. But those were extremely expensive, around 1500EUR per person! So, we took the 24 - 25-hour flight. Or it was four flights actually: La Paz - Iquique - Santiago - Sao Paolo - Fortaleza. Ush! All flights were with LaTam and all 4/4 were delayed by 1 - 1,5 hours. In Iquique and Sao Paolo we had to get our luggage, check them in again, and go through security and customs. Felt a bit unnecessary. In Santiago we tried to sleep on the benches but got maybe 30 min of sleep due to a) all noise around and b) the "very comfortable" benches. We asked if we could've bought entrance to a lounge but it was 49USD/person so we skipped it. But after all the hassle and 31 hours, we made it to Fortaleza, North of Brazil.

Trying to sleep at Santiago airport

La Paz and The Death Road

We had two reasons to stay a few days in La Paz. One was that we had to because of Uyuni and the second was downhill biking. Markus wanted to do the Sorata single track which is a downhill biking tour through mountains and jungle with jumps, drops and narrow paths on the mountains. The only problem was the price. Because Edda didn’t want to do it, Markus had to go alone, and if there’s only one person, it rises the price. It had been almost double price and over 100$ more expensive that the Death Road a.k.a World’s Most Dangerous Road a.k.a Youngas Road. After a short pondering, Markus decided to do the Death Road.

Nice views at Death Road

Salar de Uyuni – surroundings we’ve never seen before

So, we finally made it to Uyuni. We had booked a one-day-tour with Red Planet. There are many agencies that organize tours to Salar de Uyuni. After reading the reviews, we booked ours with Red Planet because they seemed most reliable and consistent. We arrived to their office and could leave our bags there, change clothes, use the toilet, etc.

We were happy to notice that we received a private tour since no-one else had booked a one-day-tour for that day. :D We started by driving to a train cemetery. It had old, rusty trains that, according to our guide, had belonged to UK before and that USA used afterwards and then left there when they didn’t need them anymore. We climbed on the trains and took some pictures there.

Long way from Puno to Uyuni – how a strike changes your plans

For once we had a quite tight schedule for a few days. We had arrived back to Puno from Cusco to continue our journey to La Paz, Bolivia. We had booked one night in Puno because we could not cross the Bolivian border in the night. But then… We heard that there would be a strike/road block in Puno the next two days and no buses would come or leave Puno during that time. We had already been in Puno before and really didn’t feel like spending two more days there. Even if Johan and Maria would’ve also been there 😃

We discussed the issue with our hostel’s (HomeCenter Puno) receptionist and they told us that there would be a speed boat going from Puno to Yunguyo, close to Bolivia’s border. The boat should have left at 7am, but it left around 7.20am. The ride should’ve been 3,5 hours, but it was about 5 hours. We were expecting to come to a harbor, but instead we stopped in shallow water. Everyone was wondering what happened and then we noticed a small ROWING boat with two people in it. We then realized that the rowing boat was there to transport all apprx. 40 people and the luggage to the shore. The boat was leaking and the bottom was covered in water. We came to the main land and there the rowing boat couple wanted money. We had asked before if we had to pay anything extra and the hostel said no. We felt that it was not okay to ask the passengers for money – the couple should’ve asked the boat company for extra compensation instead.

Inca Trail – The longer way to Machu Picchu

After a not so well slept night, we woke up at 4.40am and packed the last stuff before starting the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu with Bamba Experience. The typical Inca Trail is a 4d/4n hike on a path that goes through valleys and mountains. The highest point was only at 4200 meters so for us it was not a problem since we had been at high altitude places for the past few weeks. We had been waiting for the Inca trail with both excitement and fear. We guessed it would be really tough but with amazing views of the mountains and valleys.

View from Inca trail

Sacred Valley

We went to Bamba experience to ask few questions about the upcoming Inca Trail and to check if they would have Sacred Valley and Rainbow Mountain tours. They offered us a three or five site tours. They told us that the five site option would be quite hectic and that we wouldn’t have that much time in each place but the other didn’t contain the Moray (the famous round Inka terraces) nor Moras (salt mine/farm) and we wanted to see at least Moray so we choose the five site tour.

The circles of Moray we wanted to see

Cusco – restaurants, handicraft markets and traffic police women

From Puno we took a night bus (Transzela) to Cusco. It arrived around 5am to Cusco and we took ourselves directly to our hostel hoping to get maybe more sleep or at least leave our luggage there. We had booked one night at Hostal el Labrador. Unfortunately, the front of the hotel was under road construction and it was a bit challenging to get to the hostel with all the luggage. But we managed to come in and the hostel was kind enough to let us in a spare room to get more sleep until our own room would be ready. Much appreciated! But the room was a bit small and the shower was not very good – mainly cold water. The breakfast was not very inspiring either. Well, it was the same that almost every hostel has – same white bread, butter, jam and tea. We searched for other options and found one hotel for a good price on Hotels.com. We booked 7 nights at Waynapicchu hotel. It was not as close to the centrum, but not too far away either. The room was nice, staff helpful (got us a heater for example when we said that our room was very cold), and there were different fruits at breakfast too. 😊

Well, enough about the accommodation, let’s see what we did during our time in Cusco 😃 First of all, it is nice to just walk around. There are lot of handicraft shops and different markets all over and it is just nice to see all the colorful textiles and interesting food markets. We learned later on from some Dutch tourists that many of the handicraft products are actually made in China and not at all the material the sellers claim them to be 😩 Once we saw some real alpaca products and the price difference, we understood that most of the products that are sold as “alpaca” are actually just something synthetic. That’s a pity. But we did find some cotton products and other things that we believe are “real” materials 😃

Beautiful colors in different fabric shops

Puno: Anniversary celebrations and Saturday market

We arrived in the evening to Puno and for our pleasure, it was the weekend of Puno's anniversary. This meant parades every now and then on different days and especially on the 5 of November when the actual anniversary was. On our night of arrival there were only adults in the parades and we noticed it was rather similar to the Finnish 'vappu': bottles went around and everyone in the parade enjoyed their drinks.

Festive shoes

Colca Canyon - One of the world's deepest canyons

Our trip to Cabanaconde continued with a local bus about 30 min after we arrived to Arequipa. It took an hour for the bus to get out of the city because there were some constructions on the roads because the car amount in Arequipa has increased radically so the roads start to get too small. Well, when we finally got out of the city, the views stated to look good. A lot of smaller and bigger mountains, rivers, alpacas and other nice landscape. We used Andalucia bus company because their bus left earliest. The bus was quite old and the suspensions had seen their best days so we could feel all the big and small holes and bums on the road ;) The bus went first to Chivay, a small city, about 4 hours from Arequipa and 2 from Cabanaconde where we were heading. When we finally arrived to Cabanaconde, we had basically been travelling with a bus for 16 hours from Nasca to Cabanaconde.

Huacachina & Nasca: Dunes, airplanes and skulls

We had heard that the best buggy rides and sandboarding would be in Huacachina. Therefore we decided to go to a small oasis in the middle of sand dunes near to the town Ica. It was not a long bus ride from Paracas, only a bit over an hour. Huacachina is a pretty interesting place – a small lake surrounded by a few streets and amazing sand dunes in every direction.

Huacachina

Paracas - Biking, kitesurfing and Ballestas Islands

Markus had heard that Paracas, where we are going to stay at first, should have good spots for kitesurfing! We landed late in the evening to Lima in Peru where we had to stay one night. At the airport, we tried to order an Uber but Markus’ Uber app got some error and we didn’t know if we had ordered a car. When the app was opened, it informed that we should go to exit door 3 and wait for the driver. We went there even if we weren’t sure if our car is coming. After a while a man asked:  Markus? And there our Uber was. It was only a 1,2km long ride, but apparently, Lima is not that safe during Friday nights. When we wanted to go out from the car to check where our B&B Cusing Wasi was but the driver prohibited and said “not safe”. After a short looking we found our place and had a nice sleep before we continued our journey to Paracas. It was a 3 hour bus ride to Pisco and then a 10 min taxi drive to Paracas.

La Romana - a glimpse to the local life and more rain

As we mentioned in our previous post, we went to La Romana as our last place in DR. After 5 nights, we noticed that we should've listened to Chantal and went to Bayahibe instead. We had thought that La Romana would have more to offer and that Bayahibe's attractions would be only through resort bookings. Well, La Romana was not really a nice city to stay in. The city was dirty and it looked like it would be falling apart. People in the city looked grumpy and behaved like they would not have any interests in the world. We don't know how it really is, but we heard that it's very difficult to form relationships with the local people and that they are often very lazy. :/

Interesting-looking buildings in La Romana

Action, waterfalls and life in Las Terrenas

Hola chicos! :)

Time for some action and enough with boring beach life! :P We got a reminder in Las Terrenas about being careful in the ocean. We tell more about it later, but here's one picture ;)

From Cabarete we took a bus, almost a guagua (local minibus) to Las Terrenas. It was a semi big bus and it wasn't that cold as the bus from Santo Domingo to Cabarete. But...the driver was probably deaf as rest of the Dominicans, because they have some thing about listening to music as loud as possible. Yes, we had the pleasure to listening to bachata and salsa really loud the whole way :P 

Hurricanes and "kitesurfing"

The image of Dominican Republic is usually sunny, warm, beaches of white sand and especially in Cabarete, kitesurfing! Well, these were our thoughts also. When we arrived in Cabarete our Airbnb host Ralph told us that it's not raining often and that it's mostly sunny and quite windy even when it's off-season. The next day we had quite heavy showers and it was cloudy. We heard Ralph and his employee talking something about hurricanes and we asked about it, and yes, there was hurricane Matthew close to DR. That was not a good news for kitesurfing. When we went to Gokite, the staff said also that the winds can be anything and that it can't be predicted how Matthew effects them. Markus left all his kite gears to Gokite so that they would be there ready if the wind picks up. The first day gave some hope! There was a light wind (6-7m/s) and Markus got some kitesurfing even if it was light it was better than nothing. The second day the wind picked up in the afternoon and Markus went for a few hours session to kite. This time the wind was already much better, around 9-10m/s and perfect fore Markus new 9m2 Core Kite. And if there are no stones on the beach, Finn hit the fin ;) Markus dropped his board so that the fin peeled the skin from Markus' foot. It didn't go deep, but deep enough for few drops of blood and a bit blue foot... The foot got time to heal, because that was the last day with wind in Cabarete. For real! Four hours of kitesurfing in 10 days in Cabarete! :/

Still optimistic about the wind!

Overview of Cabarete area - what to do, where to go :D

So, it was time to switch from one country to another. We woke up quite early (around 4am) and took an Uber to the airport in San Jose, Costa Rica. We flew with Condor, a German air carrier and most of the passengers were flying to Frankfurt. Some of the crew members seemed even surprised that we were going to stay in Dominican Republic and not continue to Germany. :p Anyhow, the flight went well and we landed in Santo Domingo. Markus bought a prepaid sim-card at Claro to have access to internet more often. The procedure of buying the card was not very smooth. It took maybe 30 minutes to get a prepaid sim-card and we couldn't test whether if it works or not at the store because of the "big walls". We had to go outside the building to test it. Well, it's working fine now, which is good. 

Since we were not going to stay in Santo Domingo but going directly to Cabarete in the North, we had to find our way to a bus station. Markus negotiated a taxi price from 40$ to 20$ from the airport to Caribe Tours. This is from where many long distance buses leave. We were lucky and the faster bus left only 25 minutes after we arrived to the station. The bus ride took a bit over 4 hours and cost around 380 pesos/person, so less than 8€/person. The chairs in the bus were comfortable, but we noticed a cultural difference in the behavior of the fellow passengers. Everyone was listening to music or watching telenovelas or whatever - with no headphones on!? Seriously, is it just us or is that rude to other passengers?

Finally some crocodiles in Jaco, and leaving CR

We left the nice and relaxed town, Puerto Viejo to Jaco. We had few reasons to switch place and one of them was crocodiles. Jaco is known of its massive crocodiles! The second reason was that our favorite hostel Kinkaju closed its doors for three days. It was a long drive to Jaco, around 5h but it felt quite easy thanks to good roads and we drove non-stop except for our stop over at the crocodile bridge. We had been told that there are tens of crocodiles hanging around the river bank under a bridge. It sounds a bit weird that some animal would just be in one place all the time, but when we came there, it was a quite amazing sight. There were crocodiles in the river, on the river bank and in between. Biggest crocodiles were close to 5 meters long and in every way massive. Luckily the bridge is high enough above these fellows, but Edda thought that the bridge rail is way too low :p We saw around 36 crocodiles from the bridge, and all of them are living freely in the wild, it’s  not any zoo or farm. We came to the bridge in the last minute. We had around 10 minutes to check out the crocs before a big thunderstorm came on us and we had to run to our car.

I'm not fat! Just big boned! 

Cahuita & Puerto Viejo, Part 2: Chocolate, storms and some surf

After Cahuita we stayed 3 nights in Puerto Viejo. We found a very nice hostel – Kinkaju just walking by it. It was a few blocks from the main street, so just perfect – quiet but close to everything. It was clean, had a good kitchen, great Wi-Fi (not common in CR ho(s)tels!) and most importantly – amazing staff! Jenny and Arno, who were working in the hostel were extremely friendly, helped with suggesting different activities or places to see, were interested in what we do back in Finland, how the life is there, etc. They even organized a get-together with us in the hostel on one day. Everyone brought some snacks and something to drink and we just hang for a few hours talking. Really nice stay and we highly highly recommend this hostel!

Cahuita & Puerto Viejo, Part 1: Animals, Chocolate and jungle

After our jungle experience in Tortuguero we traveled to Cahuita on the East coast of CR. It was a four-hour drive from La Pavona and it was almost a pleasure because the whole way was a good proper road! We had heard that it should be a nice town. Unfortunately, the town was really dead. There were not many people on the streets and everything seemed more or less closed. We stayed in Buena Suerte B&B. The room was okay, but didn’t look very fresh. We also had a small lizard in our room. Markus tried to calm Edda down by saying that the lizard will eat the spiders. :D We had booked the place based on recommendations online that said that the place has great breakfasts ;) And they were really nice, indeed. We could choose between salty or sweet breakfasts. The plates looked a bit different depending on the day, but the salty could be for example eggs, a wrap, rice and beans, cooked vegetables, meat, cheese and a fruit plate. The sweet one was e.g. pancakes, tiramisu, cookies, some other cake and a fruit plate. The plates were really generous. One night with breakfast was around $30 for two people.

The patio in front of our room

Tortuguero – A Fisher village and a National Park in the middle of nowhere

After our hike to Cerro Chato and Hot Springs we left from La Fortuna around 6pm towards Cariari. We had planned to leave around 2-3pm but the hike, springs and lunch/dinner dragged out a bit. We were going to Tortuguero but had to make a pit stop at Cariari. Tortuguero is a small fishing village and National Park in the NE part of CR and it is accessible only by boat or plane. We chose car and boat. The public boat to Tortuguero leaves from La Pavona, a few house village, four times a day and the boat ride takes around one hour and it took some four hours from La Fortuna to drive there. Because of the long drive, we stayed one night in Hotel Vista al Tortuguero in Cariari. 

Our hotel room at Vista al Tortuguero

Cariari is basically the closest place to La Pavona where you can overnight and from there it is still one-hour drive on dirt road to the harbor. If you come with your own car it might be difficult to find the harbor, because it cannot be found on maps (e.g. Google maps). You can find La Pavona on maps, so when you arrive there, just continue driving after the road ends on the map on the only road there is, and you will arrive to the harbor. We left our car to a secured parking place for the two nights we were planning to staying Tortuguero and the price tag was $10 a night. Basically you do not have that much of a choice where to leave the car if you don’t want to walk a long way to the harbor because there is just the road and then the $10 secured parking place. 

Arenal area - La Fortuna, hot springs and Cerro Chato

After visiting Rio Celeste we drove to La Fortuna. We had booked Hotel Villa Fortuna first for only one night. The hotel's location is a bit out from the centrum, which did not matter since we had a car. It wouldn't have been a problem by foot either, but this was more convenient. The hotel had received good recommendations and it didn't disappoint. The room was clean, there was a shared kitchen where we made breakfast and there was even an outside pool. :)

Room #8 if we remember correctly 

Arenal area - Rio Celeste (blue river)

We left Monteverde after our coffee, choco and sugar cane tour to Rio Celeste. We had planned to stay at Hotel Rio Piedras for two nights in Neuvo Arena. There were two reasons for us to stay there: for easy access to Rio Celeste and for Markus the possibility to go kiteboarding if there were windy days. In the beginning of the way we saw Arenal Volcano from a distance but it looked like it would like to throw out some lava ;)

Arenal volcano

Everything does not always go as planned… We arrived to Piedras around 4 pm. The place looked empty so we went to the restaurant next door to ask with Edda’s un poco español. We found out that the hotel is CLOSED!

Monteverde - a peaceful, beautiful and adventurous town

It was time to change bikinis to long trousers and long sleeves! Someone had mentioned to Markus that Monteverde is a town worth visiting. We were anyhow going to  go to the Arenal area and Monteverde was on the way. We found a nice-looking 2-star hotel online, Monteverde Inn located in the Valle Escondido Preserve (Hidden valley). The hotel has an amazing location - you can look over the trees in the valley at the mountains. We even got lucky one night and saw a rainbow over the forest and a beautiful sunset! 

Playa Santa Teresa, Cabo Blanco & Montezuma

After our small off-road trip to Santa Teresa, we found a nice hotel, Beach Break Hotel that was clean, cozy, quiet and close to the beach. There is basically only one road in Playa Santa Teresa. There are hotels, grocery stores, restaurants and surf shops on both sides of the road. The beach is several kilometers long and mainly sand. The surf is better here than in Tamarindo because a bit bigger waves and plenty of space. We went surfing one day and the second day we went to Cabo Blanco National Reserve and Park. The road to there was a small adventure again, with river crossings and steep and muddy up and downhills to drive. 

When we arrived the reserve area we saw two dears next to the road. There are two trails, one is around 2 km and the other around 10 km. The latter ends to a beach so it's around 5 km there and 5 km back. We were around 9 am at the reserve and had planned to do the longer hike through the jungle. When we got off the car we could hear some thunder further away and we were hoping it would pass us.

Off-road on road and some coffee - Tamarindo to Santa Teresa

Our day started with breakfast, packing and checking out from Coral Reef Surf Hostel. Our road trip trough CR would start today when we have picked up our 4wd Hyundai. We started driving to Playa Santa Teresa where we would stay few days surfing, checking out the town and nearby area. After about an hour of driving, Markus saw a sign about some coffee farm and turned to a smaller road. We were lucky because the coffee farm had a guided tour 1.30 pm and we arrived 1.29 pm so it was a perfect timing. The Coffee farm is Cafe Diria and it's run by a family for decades. Dennis, our tour guide, is in the owner family and he was really great and held a very informative and fun tour on the farm about how coffee is made. He told also fun facts about cashew "nuts" that the cashew fruit is really delicious and the nut is actually a seed ;) and the cashew seed is actually poisonous before it is roasted. We learned about the process and quality of coffee beans etc. In the end we had a tasting test about the coffee quality. It was not an easy test but we made it :D After the tour we got some coffee drink that tasted a bit like Irish cream and some local snacks that were delicious.

 Coffee beans and plants at different stages

Surfing in Tamarindo

As we mentioned in the previous post, we have been staying in Tamarindo for the last few days. We had heard that Tamarindo would be a good place for beginner surfing (Thanx for the tip, Pia!). Markus has surfed a long time ago (12 years ago) and Edda had never tried it. Tamarindo is filled with surfing schools. All of them offer more or less the same packages and have the same prices. But what differs is the teachers.

We asked about surfing lessons in three places. The first one seemed a bit weird. It was a small shop in the corner of Main Street and Callejon Oeste. The guy gave us a "special price" - $35 dollars (instead of the "usual" $40). He started to talk about him being a professional fishing man (showed some picture of a big fish on a boat) and that his way of teaching was the best and if the other teachers would suggest a specific time for surfing, it would not be good, etc. The second place seemed okay, but we still wanted to ask from another place. We ended up to Costa Rica Surf Club. The price for a 2-hour lesson was $35 (group lesson). But we were lucky with the low season in Tamarindo and Edda got a private lesson for the price of a group lesson. :D The Tamarindo beach is quite big and during low tide you can walk to Playa Grande where they have also a National park and turtle nesting beach.

Tamarindo, and the beginning of our Costa Rica exploring

To travel around Costa Rica with public transportation is not the easiest or fastest way, but for sure it is cheap compared to the other methods. We wanted to come to Tamarindo from Sugar Beach close to Potrero. First we were supposed to take a taxi, or actually this time the shuttle that took the hotel's housekeeping. Edda had asked and got the information about the trip to Tamarindo that was as following: "First take a taxi to Potrero next to a football field and stand under the big tree. A bus to Santa Cruz drives there by, and you want to get off in Huacas in front of Banco Popular. From there you walk a bit back to the next road, because the bus to Tamarindo drives that way, or you can take a "collectivo" ride (locals taking several people at a time to different towns for a small fee)." If you have gotten used to good public transportation, you can imagine that this system may feel a bit confusing ;) Well, we got actually a free ride from the Sugar Beach receptionist because the housekeeping shuttle was stuck somewhere.

The Bus Stop and the bus in Potrero

Six nights at Hotel Sugar Beach

After the long and tiring bus ride from San José to Hotel Sugar Beach, it was nice to just relax with doing nothing. We wanted to have a bit nicer and relaxing hotel for the beginning of our honeymoon so we decided to come to Sugar Beach for six nights. The hotel has bungalows with two rooms. We had one with sea view (#22) and it is nice to sit on the terrace, having a cup of coffee and looking at the sea.  The rooms and hotel were good with few minor shortcomes. The restaurant is on a tiny hill with a nice view to the sea. Since we were here during the low season (27.8. - 2.9.2016), there were only few other guests during our stay and it was quiet and relaxing. The beach is big enough for the hotel. It is a black sand beach but with a lot of rocks in the waterline and we found only one narrow sand path through the rocks out to the sea. There is not much to do at Sugar Beach, but that is one of the reasons we chose it. It is a great place for relaxation (if you don’t mind 24/7 sound of waves ;) ). The hotel has boogie boards to rent for a price of 2$/h. We rented it almost every day for an hour or two, and even Edda started to like playing with it ;D The waves at the beach are not big enough for surfing so a boogie board is a good option if you want some action in the sea.

 Beach of Hotel Sugar Beach

A long day filled with bus rides

We have obviously not managed to get used to the new time zone(s), because I woke up around 6.45 today (Saturday 27.8.) and Markus right after. We had to find our way to some bus station in the morning in order to get to Brasilito and then close to Potrero where our first real stop is. We had booked an Airbnb room for the night in San José and stayed at a guy’s (Alvaro) place in Alajuela.

Our room at Alvaro's Airbnb room and the view

He thought our bus to Brasilito would leave from Alajuela centrum from the Central Bus Station. We took an Uber to the bus station and discovered that a bus to Brasilito would only leave from San José. That is what you want to hear in the morning before breakfast - that you have to move to another area to find your bus.

One night & day in Miami Beach

We arrived to Miami around 9 pm after a long flight from Helsinki. Our flight was a bit late because a big thunderstorm north of Miami. When we landed to Miami we saw a bit of the thunderstorm and it was really beautiful.

We decided that we are taking a taxi instead of a bus to Miami Beach to our hotel Wynwood South Beach Hotel because we were quite tired from the flight and it was late. We went for a short walk and to buy some water. We took also a walk on the beach boulevard at the same time and it looked to be somewhat busy in the bars and clubs. The short walk made us thirsty and we took a beer and a wine at our hotel and went to sleep ;) The Wynwood hotel was quite nice. Clean and nice rooms, but it’s Miami Beach, meaning the noise from the streets around 4-6 am is loud so if you want to sleep, remember your earplugs :P

Random and mixed thoughts in thin air (first flight to Miami)

Hello again! :) 

We are flying at the moment over Island, the legendary football country ;) well, at least their team had a great spirit and they had the best fans in the European Championship games in 2016 and they are probably remembered better than the champions from the games. To be more serious and cut the crap, Island is one of the countries on our list where to visit. They have geysers, natural mineral hot springs and a rough but beautiful nature not to forget the many active volcanoes. Beside this, they have also very good beer in Island that I was a bit surprised about, and you can’t blame me…Island is not that famous of its beer ;) These were just fun facts to know.

We have had it quite hectic since our wedding 30.7. with returning and cleaning everything after the wedding, and the missing tenant gave us also some extra grey hairs but luckily we got a nice family until middle of January last Saturday. Hopefully we find a new tenant from January until end of May because if not it eats our travel money and we would have to sleep under banana leafs with all the bugs, or that is what Edda is saying. I don’t mind that much where we sleep… About sleeping, Edda is sleeping now and I get to express my thoughts without anyone disturbing my artistic flow ;D  

I have problems to sleep on planes but let’s see if I get some sleep later or then I just watch some movie, and fall asleep.

Our journey around the world starts in 3 weeks!

We got married last Saturday!!! Wuuhuuu! :) The day was absolutely perfect and we would've loved it to continue for days.

Well, this blog is not about our wedding, but about our next journey together. We are starting our trip around the world in three weeks. This blog will tell you about our preparations, thoughts and experiences. We write this blog to share our experiences with our family and friends but also hope this will help others that are planning a similar trip or wondering about a specific country.

The countries we are going to visit are Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Peru, Brazil, Chile, New Zealand, Indonesia, Cambodia and Vietnam. We have pitstops in Miami Sydney and Hong Kong. We have bought a One World "around the world" package through Kilroy Travels. They were very helpful in finding good flights and in suggesting different activities in different countries. In the end, we ended up booking only the Inca Trail in Peru and decided to check other activities once we are in the locations.


Our trip around the world

We have also booked the first nights in Miami and Costa Rica. The first place in CR is just for relaxation. :) Few words about planning: