South America, web 2.0 & Travel

The Salar de Uyuni is an all time favorite for me. This tour must have been the fifth time I travelled here. And each time I get amazed again and discover new details. We made the tour in two days from Uyuni to San Pedro de Atacama. In viventura on our Peru-Bolivia-Chile Tours this is the standard length. The common tour is three days though, but you basically get to see the same things. By going two days you avoid the “Jeep Caravan”, about 30 jeeps start the tour every day… Another tipp: make sure to stay at one of the Salt Hotels around the Salar…

The tour starts in Uyuni at the train cemetery.

Then maybe the biggest highlight waits for you: the biggest “Salar” in the world, the Salar de Uyuni.

and the famous Isla Inkahuasi (also known as Isla del Pescado)

The tour goes on towards the end of the Altiplano. A huge plateau at around 3500 to 400o Meters von Cuzco, Peru to Uyuni, Bolivia. The two mountain ranges kept the ocean water while the Andes where rising millions of years ago. The Salt Water formed a huge lakes, the only remains today is the Titicaca Lake. Going from the Salar de Uyuni towards San Pedro de Atacama will give you the most picturesque scenes:

After the green and blue lake you leave Bolivia, from the border it’s a 50 minutes drive to San Pedro de Atacama. And each and every time I get on the chilenean road I believe to have arrived in another world.

For all my pictures visit the Bolivia 2009 galery. Also, over at Nils Blog you’ll find some more picture ideas for you Uyuni trip.

I just got to Peru after a marvelous week in Ecuador. Along with Sebastien, Carlos & Daniel, our new viventura team members we visited Tom’s office for y week. Yvonne, Tom & Co organized great weekend trips that took us to the Cloud Forest, the Cotopaxi Mountain and to the Thermal Baths.

The complete photos can be found in the Ecuador Photos Section.

What a desaster, my facorite hockey team lost to arch rival Düsseldorf and is out of the playoffs. Time to get rid of my “playoff beard”. But now, that it’s gone, I wonder if it was that bad? Seems strange to have the faceskin so clean again. What do you think? What’s better for me? a beard? Or better stick to my old look?

And here an overview of the pics…

Hope I get some advice from you…

At viventura we work hard to get innovative ideas out there, but as a Tour-Operator we are sometimes limited to what a Destination has to offer. Here are some ideas, that are adaptable for South American Destinations also, to give them a little push.

creative materials to construct the Hotel

There are lots of examples for this kind of idea, even in South America. In the Salar de Uyuni we have the “Hotel de Sal“, the “Salt Hotel”. What’s special about it? Everything is made out of salt, from the walls, the beds up to the pool table. They don’t have to search a long way for teir material, as they are in the middle of the Salt Desert. Or take a look at Iglu Hotel, doesn’t that sound like fun to you? So why not construct a Sand-, Bamboo-, etc Hotel. You would really get some attention and new clients.

design hotels

So you have no special material, you don’t have a special location? You could invest in your rooms. Make them have a special design, that stands out. The French are well known for their art, no wonder that you find a design hotel in Paris. Another example is this Hotel in Germany.

the Prison Hotel

Aren’t you interested in how it feels like spending a night in a prison without getting in trouble with the law? Well in Germany a prison Hotel “Alcatraz” is located in a former prison. We have some famous prisons and prisoners in South America, wouldn’t it be great to be able to offer this kind of excitement to your clients?

Community Bases Accommodation

Get in touch with the locals by staying with them over night. Community Based Tourism is a great way to find out what live in a rural area is really about. With viventura we are doing it for some years now and out clients love it. Take a look at Capachica. This is a huge opportunity for South America, as lots of people come here for the cultural experience. If you are interested in starting a Community Based Tourism project the foundation viSozial can give out free advice.

Sleeping without a Roof

This would be so simple. Having the chance to sleep under the sky. I remember my first trip to Machu Picchu. I didn’t want to sleep in the overloaded dormitory at the Wayna Picchu Hostel. So I climbed over the fence to sleep under the sky right in the Wayna Picchu ruins. That felt so great. Why is it, that this is not made possible? In Germany one hotel made an event out of it, sleeping “on the cornfield“. The climate in South America would make this possible all year round in lots of regions..

Green Hotels

With the energy crisis this one would definitely get some press coverage. On hotel, that provides it’s own energy and this way is energy independent. Take a look at this Hotel in Vienna.

creative paying methods

This is a simple but fun idea. We actually published this in 2004 in our viventura blog: “Get to South America for 200 EUR“. The idea: pay by weight and not by person. This was a joke for the first of April, but if you would offer this for your hotel, you would get quit some coverage. And this idea is not limited to weight, it could be age, name, hair color, etc…

special located Hotels

Do you have a specific sight in you destination, that might be suitable for arranging rooms there? Take a look at this hotel. Amsterdam is famous for it’s huge port. Container ships start here for their journeys around the world. So one investor had a great idea: build a Hotel within a Crane. Said and done, Amsterdam offers the first Crane Hotel. Or think of the famous Tree Hotel close to Manaus. A fantastic idea. Here another example from Germany.

art hotels

Do you know a great artist that want’s to be promoted? Well just give him the chance to be promoted with a room. Imagine your hotel as an “Art Gallery”, each room is dedicated to a different artist. That wouldn’t be that hard to achieve, but still you set yourself apart from the rest. For example take a look at this Art Hotel in Italy.

funny architectonic hotels

Where ever you are, you can make your Hotel look funny and/or interesting. Like the “Boot Hotel” in the Netherlands. Make a “Arepa” Hotel in Colombia, a “Completo” Hotel in Chile, a “Tortuga Hotel” on Galapagos…

Theme Room Hotels

The Fantasy Hotel in Canada invested heavily in their rooms. Every room has a different theme. African, Arabian, Polonysian, etc…

Hotels to travel in time

There are lot’s of Hotels like this. In Germany we have cavalier Hotels, here is an example to go back in time on a campground.

Hotels in interesting neighborhoods

A great example for this are the Favela Hotels in Rio de Janeiro. People are really interested in Favelas but just recently Hostels opened the chance to stay there overnight also. Take a look at this Favela Hostel for example.

Work was intensive these last weeks, lots of interviews, new people to train. etc… So Adriana and me took a long weekend to the Caribbean. A German pal opened a small, but beautiful Lodge close to Capurgana, which is close to the border to Panama. To get there we took the long way… 9 hours from Medellin to Turbo by bus. From there about three hours on a fast boat to Acandi. The boat was jumping so heavily and just locals seem to have the privilege to get the calm seats in the back, so our backs really hurted really badly. On the spot we decided to fly back to Medellin from Capurgana (which doesn’t have a street connection to the rest of Colombia…). From Acandi it was just another 30 minutes to get to Aguacate Bay.

We stayed at Bahia Lodge, a nice Lodge run by Lothar. He had been working two years to get the Lodge running, but recently in December he opened to the public. It’s located at a beautiful liltte bay with a nice beach. Depending on the year the waves get so big, so swimming sometimes isn’t possible.

From Bahia Lodge it’s about one hours walk to Capurgana and in all 2,5 hours to get to “Playa Miel”, already Panama.

Enough said, here are the pics…

Sabaneta is a nice, charming little town in Colombia. For some years, it’s part of the “Zona Metropolitana de Medellin” as Medellin grew and grew, it accumilated Sabaneta. Sabaneta nevertheless hasn’t lost its charm. The fondas - the little bars, where football is shown and usually men hang out watching a soccer game - are more typical then in any other part of Medellin. The life takes place around the main square, where every night some food stalls invite zou to have a snack. Here are some impressions using my Nikon D90

I can’t even remember when I had my last night in a tent… Must have been somewhere in Patagonia some years ago. Adriana is a nature-lover, so this weekend we finally had our first camping expirience. We went to “Piedra Blanca” a well accessible “reserva natural”. It’s just about an hours drive from our apartment. And it’s just going up, and up, and up. It’s about 900 metres above Medellin and the climate and scenery is comparable to the one in Bogota.

Enough said, here are some pics from the weekend…