The Travels of Päivi and Santeri

Bolivian people are used to carrying anything from groceries to children in their backs like human backpacks. The border between Chile and Bolivia is in 6000 meters and air was quite thin. We saw a group of Norwegian tourists in the border queue fainting from altitude sickness. They recovered after having some coca tea. It's a good medicine for altitude sickness, but unfortunately not a drug. It had no effect on us.

The flight marathon:18 take-offs and landings, 35 hours of flying and 50 hours in airports within five days.

Cheviot is a small village of only 400 people located in the South Island of New Zealand. We lived there a few months with some 40 000 sheep. Tim & Heidi who we met in South Africa had invited us over.

These photos are about our wedding anniversary in Sydney, Australia. The following review was originally posted to Lonely Planet’s thorn tree forum, but it has expired. The photos related to that review are at the end of the story.

Bad timing. We discovered desperate Indonesians and bad tourism when visiting Bali and Gili Air right after the Kuta-beach bombings.

Is time money? People have to sell less time in Buenos Aires to buy the same amount of time than in Helsinki.

Lee Brasil Bra$il! - Guía de turismo para brasileros. Queremos recordarte que esta guía es sólo para los brasileros que trabajan con los turistas.

Argentinians want to be respectable, but breaking promises and being always very late is considered OK because it is “relaxed”.

Dear friends, We have been busy translating La Habanera into English . It´s ready! Päivi has also started to translate our Brazilian tourist guide book into Spanish. It takes more time and will be published later. The Pätölä satire (in Finnish only, sorry) has now been wholly released.

This is a travel book of three different journeys. All of them are tied to each other and happening in the same place, at the same time. They are: the journey into ourselves, the journey to the other side of the world, and the journey to find the meaning of life outside Rat Race.