THAT YEAR I LIVED IN UNITED STATES

My USA Photo Album was lost for years, I emptied my house before leaving to Central America and left all boxes in my grandma’s basement. It’s true that I’m in a forever process of simplicity and live with less but there are few things you just can’t get ride – Memories. I saved all my USA Year pictures in 4 Cds, I always found cds safer then usb sticks… countless all college documents and works I lost in floppy disks and usb sticks pffff. I couldn’t find them in all boxes, everytime I’d go get something from the basement I’d look for the damn cds but never sucessful until last month.

These cds are not only my life in USA, also contains my travels in Toronto, Jamaica, Rio de Janeiro and that East Coast Road Trip I will never forget. Since my memory sucks I refuge myself in digital images so you can imagine how over the moon I was when finally found this little huge treasure.

ECUADOR CITIES ::CUENCA::

Cuenca could easily be part of my Ten Cities I’d live for 1 Year List. It’s a laid back town with low buidings, life here goes slow and with the flow. I had a great feeling wondering in the streets of Cuenca with no plans or destination. We got so evolved that we didn’t visit the touristic attractions around the city like Incapirca (Ecuador’s largest inca ruins) and Chorro de Giron (beautiful nature hiking) . Oh does it mean I gotta come back? :D Great excuse Marta!

ECUADOR CITIES: QUITO

In our travel plans (which are always changing a bit here and a bit there) we didn’t expect to travel one month and an half in Colombia, since we only had 4 months in South America. The truth is Colombia is huge and once we started traveling to the North we had no way back so we traveled in a circle and visited pretty much all the most important and beautiful places in Colombia.

WEBSITES WITH FREE AND CHEAP STUFF TO DO IN SAN FRANCISCO

San Francisco is not a cheap place to live at all, but is on my Ten Cities I'd live for a Year List because I'm into the lifestyle, the atmosphere, a place for artists to express themselves, multicultural, the diversity: beach, bay, wildness and city. You probably need a well paid salary to afford to live in this city but it's so worth it!

For travelers who will spend a long time in San Francisco and want to be part of the city instead of spending 2 weeks visiting touristic spots, this post is for you :) Also for those people who just moved to San Francisco and is a little broke or don't know what to do, this post is for you! Actually this post is for anyone who wants to go to San Francisco or just fancy the city. Ready to write some notes?

I'M A DEATH ROAD SURVIVOR!!

I'm not sure if you have heard about the Most Dangerous Road in the World. This sounds silly because how do you know is the most dangerous? Are there many accidents? Did a lot of people died there? To be honest, so far, I never seen more dangerous roads then Nepal's. The kind of road that is so tiny that you wonder how is it possible 2 cars passing thru at the same time? Or the ones with many deep holes. Or worse, that ones you look thru the window and you think "We are going to fall anytime" Then you close your eyes, you take 3 deep breathes and start thinking about something else. It's an adventure riding buses in Nepal my friends, but so worth it!

But today I'm not here to talk about Nepal. I still have a bunch of South America stories and tips to tell you about. During our trip I didn't hear anything about The Death Road close to La Paz, Bolivia. One day I was bored in a boat trip and asked a backpacker his Bolivia Travel Book. I found out there was a road from La Cumbre until Coroico that we couldn't miss, because of the high green mountains and beautiful scenery. I kept that in mind.

MY LAST SOUTH AMERICA TRIP MOMENTS IN PICTURES

Hello beautiful people!

I feel like the worst blogger in the World, being silence for so long, when I have so much to tell you and amazing travel pictures to share. No excuses but I really wanted to enjoy the very last weeks of my South America trip, so yeah, I'm back in Portugal after 6 months backpacking the Americas. Also I don't have a computer so I couldn't type anything during long bus trips to copy/paste into a blog post.

I have zillion ideas for blog posts and they are all written for later with great tips for your South America adventure one day and stunning nature and colonial cities to show you but the next days I'll be focusing in this blog organization. I have this big need of organizing my content to be more visible and easy to find. Get ready because I'm super excited.

Today I'd like to share some photos of this last month of travelling. I can tell you it was pretty intense, we'd stay max. 3 days in the same spot. Basically we were in Cuenca (Ecuador) and had to arrive by land São Paulo in less then 6 weeks! If you go to a map you will see the large distance :)

This was our Welcome to Bolivia, wow couldn't be better. A lot of travelers I met on the road said their favorite country in South America is Bolivia and now I understand why! In the other hand these travelers told us about the rudeness of bolivians and we felt it in the first hour in Copacabana.

CULTURAL SHOCK PART II - PERU AND BOLIVIA

The Death Road downhill biking. I will tell you more about this crazy experience soon :)

Oh Bolivia. We have been in Bolivia for a while now and if in the very beggining I felt like packing all my stuff and get the first flight back to Portugal, now that we are leaving soon, I don't want to. I wanna stay longer, exploring the corners of this incredible country.

In this whole South America trip, I was super excited about Peru and Bolivia, I don't really have a reason for this, I guess all the pretty places and indigenous people I used to read and watch in National Geographic caught my heart.

ENTERING MACHU PICCHU: STEP BY STEP

Hello buddies directly from Cuzco, Peru!

I have been in Cuzco for 2 weeks now volunteering in an hostel, exploring the place and the Sacred Valley. You can't imagine how much I needed to settle down just for a while, backpacking and moving every 4 days is so tiring sometimes. Arriving a village at 6 am when you just been in a bus for 12 hours, barely sleeping. Sometimes it takes hours to find an hostel that fits in our budget. This is a backpacker's life and like anything in the World with the positive and negative sides.

Cuzco is the town that usually travelers stay to get to Machu Picchu. What a wonderful town! You should consider to take at least one week in this area, it's surreal. But in this post I want to tell you how you can get in Machu Picchu, since is not that easy.

CARTAGENA AND THE COLONIAL BUILDINGS

Did you ever arrive a new place that you couldn't stop taking pictures? The last time I felt this way was 6 years ago when I've been in New york City for the first time (I lived in Maine and was only a 7 hours drive to NYC so been there several times). I just couldn't stop myself, those high buildings with historical architecture, the movement in the streets, I was completly fascinated!

Cartagena was the same. Although is a less busy city, the colonial style houses got me quickly, the pastel and vivid colors mixed with whites and wood, I was in photography heaven.

TRAVELING WITHOUT DESTINATION

Did you ever book only one way flight ticket? Did you ever travel without plans of where to go, what to visit, what to do?

I think that when you travel with your job, kids, bills waiting for you it's hard not to organize: you know you have one week vacation in that beautiful country and will make the most of it.

Now imagine someone who answer "Yes" to both questions above. That's me. I like to go with the flow and ask locals what to do. I like to wake up pack my stuff and leave to a sunny place when it's been raining for 2 days straight. That's what I call freedom and that's the main reason I adopted traveling as my lifestyle.

EIGHT THINGS TO DO IN BOGOTA

Bogota is not that type of city and you will fall in love the first second there: is not beautiful at all, super pollutted, that much busy that you take almost 2 hours in the bus for a ride that shouldn't take more then half an hour. Besides these points, Bogota has beautiful areas and places to visit, not to mention that is sorrounded by high mountains.

Overall I suggest you to spend a week there, I'm pretty sure you won't get bored. There is always a party outdoors going on, electronical music in the park, live concerts and many other events, you just have to get out of your hostel and walk to find them out.

LIFE IN SOUTH AMERICA (AND CULTURAL SHOCK)

Hello dear pals and traveler fellows!

You have no idea how much I missed this place, my virtual home. These 2 weeks were completly insane, really! I left Portugal in the end of September and seems I'll come back in the end of April, wow!! Remember when I talked about settling down? Hahaha it's not going to happen... for right now. But I have some plans for 2015 including leaving my life of nomad and living out of a backpack and live one year somewhere, which is still a secret. First I gotta be sure that is going to happen, then I can spread the word. If all goes as planned, I finally can host people in my house :) It's about time to pay back all these years staying with adorable and helpful friends, family and couchsurfers.

GUIDE: TWO DAYS IN SAN DIEGO

What do you think when you hear about San Diego? Sun, beach, surf, palm trees? I can tell you are 100% right, plus, San Diego is a really relaxed and chilled city, far away from the terrible traffic jams of Los Angeles or San Francisco.

I only been two full days in San Diego so I had to make the most of it! Grateful I'm in Couch Surfing and was able to find a great local host who drove us everywhere and told us about this nice city and the sorroundings. He also brought us to the best brownie and pizza in the World (Andy if you are reading this, thanks a lot dude!)

If you don't have much time in San Diego here is my suggestion for an itinerary:

OH SO AMERICAN: HALLOWEEN

If in Europe we consider Halloween the creepy night where we get out with scary costumes like zombies, witches or skeletons, in USA you will find cute rabbits, fairies or mermaids. Their costumes look more the ones we wear for Carnival and it's so fun to play around our characters, being someone we aren't in a daily basis.

Halloween is not only partying with costumes, there are other fun activities like carving pumpkins and knock neighbour's doors playing trick or treat. It's a great economic time of the year for the stores that sell candy and chocolates, the consumism is full on in the end of October. Other fun activities include telling scary stories and watching horror movies.

ALAMANY FLEA MARKET IN SAN FRANCISCO

First thing I search online when arrive a place? Local Flea Markets! Last year when I was visiting San Francisco I attended Berkley Flea Market and this time I was lucky enough for being in SF for the weekend so I got a chance to visit Alamany Flea Market. It's every single Sunday from 8am until 3pm but at 1pm many vendors start packing up so don't arrive too late. It's situated in 100 Alemany Blvd and you can get bus number 9 to get there. If you are driving there's plenty of space to park your car. We walked almost one hour and in the way we found Bernal Peak, a great hill to have a great view to the city and to the bay.

VICTORIAN + ALTERNATIVE NEIGHBORHOOD OF SAN FRANCISCO: HAIGHT ASHBURY

Guys, I owe you ten thousand posts about San Francisco! I've been trying my best to write down all the interesting things you should visit in this awesome city I love more and more. But the truth is that I go with the flow and totally forget about internet and my blog stays a bit behind... here Iam! 

After spending more then a month working and visiting my friends/american heart family, we finally decided to rent a car and explore South of California. Guess what? We couldn't rent a car because we do not have a Visa, Martercard or American Express Card... What a BIG bummer. USA without a car sucks big time, if only transportation was good and organized... not happening. 

OH SO AMERICAN: "HELLO, HOW ARE YOU?"

There are all kinds of stereotypes about americans: they are very patriots or they think their country is the best, they only eat fast food and are over weighted. Obviously this is not true, only a small percentage of americans might be like this, but also in every single country you will find people with these characteristics. This is something humans have to change, we have to stop making absurd generalizations and start thinking a person as unique personality and not an entire nation as a whole. 

FORT BRAGG AND THE OCEAN

Hello! Hola! Olá! I've been a month in California and no photos of my travels for you yet. I've been mostly in the country side working as housekeeping and gardening so I don't have excellent pictures that deserve a blog post.

Since we don't have any more work and about 3 more weeks until our flight we decided to explore the area we are right now. We started with the weekend in Fort Bragg, a pretty colorful little town in the coast of North California.

It's windy out there but just the feeling of smelling and watching the ocean, I didn't care for being cold or not. If you are around for a while you know I born and grew up in the ocean so I miss it a lot when I don't get to see it for few days. I definitly need to buy a house in front of the beach! :)

OH SO AMERICAN: THRIFT STORES

I thought that would be fun to share with you guys american lifestyle thru my eyes. In these series I’ll post about what I've seen only in USA that I’ve never seen in other countries in the World.

I decided to start with Thrift Stores because they are one of my favorite things about USA and you can find these kind of stores in every state you go.

Thrift Stores are places where you can score great clothing, kitchen ware, books, decoration items and mostly everything you can think of for a very cheap price. You get to buy a book for 0.50 cents or 1 dolar, a jacket for 3 bucks, an amazing painting for 5 bucks. How does it work? People clean their closets and find things they don’t want anymore so they donate to thrift stores. Mostly of the thrift stores I’ve been are non-profit, all the profit goes to community projects and to help people in need and all the staff is volunteering, usually retired people. (this is a great way to spend your time doing something useful for the community!)

TOP FOUR VOLUNTOURISM EXPERIENCES IN COSTA RICA

By Lonely Planet Costa Rica Travel Guide

If you feel like going to a warm country not only for tourism but also to make the difference, these are good options, according with your interests/tastes. Click to acess to the website and get more information. (I cannot waranty that all websites are updated)

Teach English
* Amerispan Unlimited 
* Cloud Forest School 
* Institute for Central American Development Studies
* Sustainable Horizon
* World Language Study