I'm home, update.

I guess this means that we busted, because we certainly didn't make it to Buenos Aires, haha. We didn't even make it to Argentina! More on that momentarily.

So Friday in Cuzco we wandered around and explored and the city is AWESOME with architecture and everything but fuck man there are SO many tourists and the people there just swarm you like hungry flies

"taxi? taxi? manicure? massage? massage? massage?! TATTOO PIERCING PEDICURE MANICURE TAXI TAXI TAXI TAXI TAXI" *head explodes*

anyways. we went to dinner and i had really good soup and Anton had GUINEA PIG! Yep, guinea pig. I have a pic and everything. It was the full little guy, all shriveled up and roasted. So ridiculous. He said it was good, "kinda like chicken but with a better flavor." I had to take his word for it since I couldn't really chew.

I wasn't feeling in top form (obviously) so after food I watched Anton drink a bit at this place called Kamikazee, which we found after like an hour of searching because there are like no bars there only restaurants which also sucked.

Saturday we were wandering around trying to figure out Machu Picchu for the next day and I just was dying and one of my teeth was just throbbing and we were looking at practically a week of overnight buses and Anton was miserable because he was so worried about me and we just decided fuck it, let's go home. We were going to have to rush through Bolivia (like not even stopping in a single town rush, not just hurry) and only go to two places in Argentina and also we were only going to be able to spend one night at lake Titicaca and rush through Machu Picchu and it was just so shitty. So, we bought tickets home! PLUS we're going to sign up for the Inca Trail in March, which is a 4 day hike INTO Machu Picchu that's supposed to be AMAZING that you have to book 6 months in advance, and PLUS ALSO we still have our return tickets from Buenos Aires, so we have to go back and do Peru, Bolivia, and Argentina, and do them right. So I think it worked out for the best.

Anyways, upon deciding this we went and i ate spaghetti and Anton ate pizza and SALCHIPAPAS, which are AWESOME little sausage guys cut up and mixed with french fries. Such a great duo.

That night we did more wandering and such, we found a good bar for happy hour that night and had a few drinks. Well I had a few drinks, Anton had a few more. We also made friends with the bartenders Grainne and Rob, who are now my facebook friends. Very exciting stuff, people.

Sunday we returned to said bar. AND it was a drunken FEST on Anton's part, I was designated caretaker. He was so drunk, it was fabulous. We met this cool girl Gemma from Australia who we talked to for hours and hours about tons of offensive topics, and her ex boyfriend who she was traveling with (weird right?) Daniel and their red haired dude friend whose name I forget. Anton got so drunk he could barely walk and was passionately arguing with me about whether the plaza we were in (we'd walked there with our Aussie friends so they could club and we could go home), was in fact, the main plaza (it was). He was determined we were very far away (our hostel was like a block away from the main plaza) and kept trying to take a taxi and shit. All these drug dealers were swarming us going "Weed? Weed? Weed? Cocaine? Weed? Weed?" And I'm like HE CAN BARELY WALK I DON'T THINK HE NEEDS ANY FUCKING WEED. And Anton is rambling trying to ask them if it's Plaza De Las Armas, and they say yes and then he's like "NO! No! It's not here, but HERE *pointing far away as the drug dealers shake their heads in confusion*" I finally convinced him that I knew where we were going and got him home. It was spectacular.

The next day we began the dumbest flight itinerary in the history of man.

Cuzco to Lima.
Lima to Houston.
Houston to Mexico City.
Mexico City to Houston.
Houston to Phoenix.

Yeah. That's right. We went to Mexico City for NO REASON. But those two extra flights saved us A THOUSAND DOLLARS. I just CAN'T figure out why the airlines are losing so much money a year? SO strange.

Anyways, so we're home and I went Wednesday and got my teeth worked on and the one had a splinter broken off all the way to the root so I'm gonna get that crowned in a few weeks but they didn't want to do it now because they don't want to strain my jaw. Which is still sore. So Tramadol is still being a very good friend.

When we got home I was SO happy to see Drew at the airport and then so happy to see my parents and brother and lauren and then LIKE THE HAPPIEST IN THE WORLD to see my son, Crooked Tail, and wednesday we just layed around all day (except the dentist appt) which was wonderful and then last night I got wings and got to drink 50 cent coronas and see my bff's Chuck and Trevor and yeah, it's good to be home, though I already miss my travels.

If we weren't already planning our next bout of travels I don't think I could take it, it's already the light at the end of another tunnel for me. So, until March, I guess this guy is about closed up. I'll probably put some pictures on here I guess, but I've got to figure out a good way to get them all together because I have over 1600 of them so I'm trying to decide how I want to go about it. Maybe a website or jut buzznet or something...we'll see.

In closing, South America and Central America kick complete ass. I can't wait to go back.

Making it to Peru, Lima disaster.

It has been a rough few days. But we have made it to Cuzco. Where to begin...

Well, the 12 hour bus ride from Quito to the border town Huaquillas took 14 hours, and when we arrived in that SHITTY town we found the worst organized border crossing we´ve encountered ever. To get stamped out of Peru, you had to catch a cab from the bus terminal 4KM back to the immigration, which the bus PASSED but didn´t stop at, forcing everyone to take a cab. The guy told us 4 dollars to drive us there and to the Peru side. We agreed, and went and got stamped out, then he was driving us back and stopped in the middle of the road. He´s like "Oh I can´t go any further, this is Peru now". Okay fine whatever we said, so then we got out and were looking for the Peru immigration office. We asked someone, they´re like "Oh, it´s 3KM ahead." EVERY other border crossing has been walkable, except for one or two where we took a bicycle cart out of laziness. This was ridiculous. So we got a little Took Took (little motorcycle cart taxis that were all over guatemala, and a little bit here) for a dollar to this totally unlabled non descript building. We NEVER would have found it without a taxi. They´re just forcing you into it, jerks.

Anyways. So we managed that, and this was about 730 or so. We were hoping for an 8 oclock bus or a 9 oclock bus since it was 17 hours to Lima and we had to be at the airport by 440 or 500 at the latest. No deal. Earliest bus was at 11AM. And it took 16-18, which means 19. Only in this case it meant 20. Tuesday on the bus all day was rather unexciting, we ate corn on the cob and stopped at a shitty cafeteria
place and managed to get quite a bit of sleep with the help of some rum...only 6AM ruined all of that. At 6 in the "$/(%" morning, this dude gets on and is talking EXTREMELY LOUD in Spanish about some shit, some dude just trying to get money for this and this and that and that. He woke us both up and Anton was freaking out and I was trying to calm him down by telling him he´d stop soon. Like 15 minutes later he was just begging the guy "Get off the bus!! It´s 6 in the morning!! GET OFF THE BUS" so then the guy was like trying to get money and still yelling so Anton tried to hand him a wrapper of some sort while I told him we´d been on this bus for TWENTY HOURS and he WOKE ME UP and could he please be LESS LOUD and the guy said something
else to the people and then TWO people through soda bottles (one empty, one half full) and hit Anton in the head. After a life of being super tall being hit on the head is like his least favorite thing, so he freaked out and stood up and was yelling and I was trying to restrain him and not laugh because he was a bit tipsy still from the rum and all the people in the back (and whoever through the waterbottles) just froze and looked so uncomfortable and just stared at their feet. It was so ridiculous, they were terrified of him. Not that I wouldn´t be, but yeah. Very very ridiculous and frustrating. The guy FINALLY got off the bus after like a half hour. I couldn´t believe it. Try that in America. Try getting on a bus from Portland to Arizona at 6AM after the people have been cramped and miserable for 20 hours and yelling shit and collecting donations. You´d be thrown out the door within 2 minutes. Or shot. Sweet sweet US, almost makes me miss you.

Anyways, so we get to Peru at about 700 and take a bus to the airport so we can figure out our tickets and we find out that our flight has been delayed till 1030 so we can still get on. "Great!" we say, maybe pissing off the maybe was maybe wasn´t preacher won´t curse our day. No deal. After telling us we could get on and us celebrating she was like "oh, wait, I only have 1 seat. We switched from a 150 passanger plane to a 120 passanger plane. Sorry." That would have been much better to hear before feeling overwhelming relief and celebrating, afterwards it was just another blow. Sigghh... And you can´t talk to people here like you can in the States. She said the tickets were non refundable, and I was like, "Well isn´t it the airlines fault that we can´t get on since we are here before the plane left and there are no seats? I mean, if we´d found out the flight was delayed by calling or
something and didn´t show up till now what would happen?" And she flips out and starts being like "You are VERY late, this is not my fault, I´m just trying to HELP" and getting all bitchy and I was like "GEEZ calm down, I wasn´t saying it´s YOUR fault, it just seems like a weird policy" and then Anton sent me away because I was making things worse because 38 hours en route and 30 minutes of being preached to in Spanish at 6AM makes me a bit of a bitch, I´m afraid. So anyways, the girl was very helpful in the end and I was definitely wrong in how I talked to her, but you can get away with that shit in the states. We would have got a refund no problem considering the reason the plane was delayed was because they had to switch planes so if we had been there on time we STILL might not have been able to fly. Whatever though.

So we were told to come back the next morning and we could hopefully fly out then.

AND SO BEGAN THE DAY OF MYSTERIES.

We went to a hostel listed in lonely planet that seemed nice, but it was full, but the same people owned another hostel a mile or so away and took us there and it was a really non descript building with no sigh that was really nicely furnished, was more a 3 bedroom apartment than a hostel, though they didn´t have towels so we had to use tshirts, but that happens) and then we were off to explore Lima. I promptly broke my sunglasses. They were $4, so that´s okay. It was a sign of things to come. We walked a couple miles into the main square and literally the day before Anton had been blabbing and talking about how funny it would be to put a clown nose on me and then take me to dinner and when ordering drinks be like "I´ll have a beer...one for the clown too." and I have NO idea where it came from but we laughed and forgot...and then while walking down the streets of Lima there is a peddler guy selling CLOWN NOSES. It was the most ridiculous coincidence. So we bought it and I wore it around and we went and ate some chicken wings and chicken nugget thingys and garlic bread and Anton ate cow hearts and he got to say to the waitress, "oh, and can you get some salt for the clown?" But it was in Spanish and it was, "O, puede traer alguno sal para el buffon?" It was very funny.

Then we went and drank way too much. Unreasonable amounts even for us. I think the joy of finally getting off the bus carried us away...plus the Pisco (the Peru liquor, 45% and not hard to take shots of) was flowing like water. We were in a bar connected to a hostel, and it had tapas so we had some mushrooms stuffed with cheese and something else (it´s fuzzy now) and a cheese/salami/green olive plate that was tasty. While there I broke this little orange glassish ring I´d bought in Antigua. Broken thing number 3. I guess it was okay though because it was due to me laughing so hard I hit the counter and it shattered, so it was broke in merryment. We met a very fabulous gay Peruvian dress designer that spoke good English and yelled with him for awhile. He had quite the crush on Anton, it was very funny. Gay guys LOVE HIM. Gay guys and older women, that´s his decreed market.

Anyways so at some point we made a really old man draw our pictures (which we managed to not lose, score 1) and we think we took a taxi back from the bar because of a mysterious photo where we appear to be in a car but neither of us know for sure, and also unknown is how we knew where the hostel was because when we had to return later (more on that soon) we had no idea and had to go back to the sister hostel to this one to get directions. ANYWAYS.

While being extremely blacked out at our hostel (the hypothesis is we were trying to take a shower because I was naked, which I only know because I ended up with blood on my stomach and lower) I took a fucking nasty fall and split my chin open. I barely remember this. Anton remembers it slightly better, but not really. We managed to get dressed and out the door, and I just remember crying and he thrust 50 soles at the cab driver and told him to FUCKING GET THERE and the guy was like running red lights and driving on sidewalks and other insanity. I vaguely remember being there but I don´t remember the shot they gave me to numb me, I remember a little bit better the 3 stitches I recieved. The visit cost 27 dollars. Then I blacked out again.

Antons memory is a little better at this point and I guess we had to go to the FIRST original hostel because it actually had a name and taxi drivers knew it instead of the signless pseudo apartment we were staying in and get directions to OUR hostel but considering we couldn´t find it this time I can´t imagine we found it the first time so we might have gone to the first hostel TWICE and demanded directions. That is mystery 1.

Somewhere during this night we lost our clown nose. Mystery 2. Also mysterious, there was a entertainment center in the living room that the (foolish) owners had left three bottles of liquor in, Anton got into the rum, but to do so you had to open 2 little glass doors. Come the morning, one was missing without a trace. Mystery 3. And the blood from my wound disappeared at some point (there was nobody else staying there, so did we clean it up? Who knows.) Mystery 4. And the bathroom door was locked from the inside when we awoke that morning. Mystery 5. Also mysterious is what we did for a good 3 hours between blacking out at the bar and me splitting my chin. Did we stay there? Did we go somewhere else? Mystery 6.

Needless to say Thursday was horrendous. Even Anton didn´t feel good. He had a headache and I was a disaster and yeah....needless to say we didn´t wake up at 300 in the morning to Antons lightly beeping watch. We slept till like the afternoon.

And when I say disaster I mean disaster on the grandest of scales. I dare say I felt worse this day then in Cartagena when my vomiting was so loud the maid came to check on me. I was too nauseous to drink anything (without promptly puking) but SO dizzy and weak and miserable because I was SO fucking dehydrated and plus I slammed my jaw sooooo hard the whole thing is sore as shit (though it´s improved slightly today) so yesterday I could barely open my mouth and I was just stuffed full of Tramadol.

I have to say though, Lima was the PERFECT place for this to happen. It can´t be ignored that this is the FIRST place where we´ve seen fucking Jello and Pudding cups at little shops. It was dream food for injured me. So after eating pudding and jello and managing to drink some powerade I was feeling more or less human again so we went and got some sushi. It was very tasty, I mainly had a couple pieces of tuna that could kinda melt in my mouth and then stuck to bowls of miso soup and cups of hot green tea...it was a good cure.

We layed around last night and read our books and went to sleep pretty early and SUCCESSFULLY woke up at 300 in the morning (actually it was 251, a terrible hour to wake up at. If you´re still awake, that´s cool, it´s not like 5 o´clock which is bad no matter if you´re still up or waking up, but yeah, anyways) we hailed a cab and asked him how much it would be. "40 soles," he says. It´s like 3 soles for 1
dollar, so that was ABSURD. We were like no way and started to walk away and he yelled after us "20! 20 soles!" And Anton was like "15" and the guy started grumbling so we were like fine, 20. He drives us to the airport and when we get out Anton goes to pay him with a 50. He gives him back 10. Anton´s like, um, what? And the guys like 40! 40 soles! And so Anton grabs the money back and tells him he can have 20 or nothing, and the guys like 40 40 40! So we just walk away and left him with a few choice words so the guy follows us into the airport pestering Anton but (very amusing) not going NEAR me, like dramatically. Anton was in front and I was in second, and no matter how much slower I walked the guy wouldn´t pass me because he´d have to get closer than like 10 feet and he was terrified. Women may have less rights in these countries but you DO NOT F with somebody elses girlfriend, which is nice for me. Whistle maybe, but beyond that not even the slightest touch or angry word is ever directed to me.

Anyways, so we get to the counter and the guy walks up and tells the guy at the ticket booth that we didn´t pay. We explain that the guy is trying to rip us off by doubling the agreed upon fair, and the counter guy calls over security. (luckily EVERYONE at the airport speaks english, or nearly everyone). They saunter over and within a minute or so it´s obvious that they are completely on our side (I mean even if we were lying, are they going to piss off the rich tourists or the poor taxi driver!?) and PLUS they knew themselves that 40 soles was a RIDICULOUS fair for the airport, we even got them to admit that 20 was a bit of a rip off. But the guy would not back down, and this back and forth went on the whole 15 or 20 minutes we were at the ticket counter, half dealing with the tickets and half dealing with
the crazy taxi driver. About halfway through he was like okay, 20, so then Anton was like, okay Good! And then instantly he was back at 40,and then he went down to 30 and Anton told the guards to tell him that he was getting 20 or nothing, his pick. So AT LAST the guy took the 20 and grumbled off. What a piece of shit! The guards were very nice though, they just laughed and such.

The flight was uneventful (and late, as per usual, even though it was the first flight of the day), and we arrived here and split a taxi with two Israelis into town. It´s a cool city, there looks like there lots of cool buildings and such. We haven´t done much exploring yet, we napped for 5 hours or so and are now here trying to figure out Machu Picchu and such. I´m just glad that we have a few days off till
the 2 day bus ride to Iguasa Falls.

Oh, and if you are reading this Donovan don´t tell mom and dad about my injury, it will just worry them. I´ll tell them upon my return.

Last of Quito

The futbol game yesterday was good fuckin´ times. It wasn´t international, two teams from Ecuador played, but people still went ape-shit and screamed and jumped up and down for hours and such. We drank big beers for $1.50 (bit different than stadiums in the states). We had to use ice because they were warm but that´s kinda the program in Ecuador, they like their beers and sodas and such warm. Whatever, we´ve managed.

We took a 25 cent bus ride back to our area (the cab ride out was $8, slight savings) and ate some pizza and drank more beers and chilled. Another determined child set his sights upon us, and gazed at us longingly while we ate pizza, this time it was me that broke, and gave him a piece. He was kind of a loser for taking off the tomato and the green olives and the jalapeños but whatever, I´ll let it slide I guess. He was after all like 11.

We then attempted to try and find an internet cafe but Quito SUCKS for the internet. Absolutely sucks. Everything we found was either closed or didn´t have headphones for skype or the headphones they had didn´t work, and considering that was the reason we needed the internet it was no good. We are working on changing our tickets and figuring out when we´re coming back and all this shit and it´s a big pile of chaos. Woo.

So we went back to the hotel and watched movies and Anton drank aguar diente. You, me and Dupree was amusing..though bad...but good in that amusing way that bad movies are.

Today we awoke and got all our shit together and left our bags at the hotel and came to the internet (about the 5th one we tried, as per usual). Now we´re trying to get everything figured out before we embark on our 30 hour bus ride to Lima.

I am SO frickin excited for Peru, Machu Picchu is going to totally kick my ass.

Fun with Google Maps

View Larger Map

Not quite done...

Mas Quito, Ecuador

Man, Quito kicks some serious ass. It is a city that is basically surrounded by mountains, and there are some WILD fucking views that aren´t hard to get to at all. Plus I woke up this morning and wasn´t sick, which also ruled. Not even a little lingering sick, totally A okay.

*Noteworthy: Anton and I have discovered where all the Sacagawea coins have gone. They are all here. Every last one of them. We haven´t gotten single dollar bills for change ONCE. It´s so fucking annoying. We just keep imagining what would happen in the states if you paid for a $1 item with a 5 and got 4 fucking Sacagawea coins back. Sometimes it´s even worse, like 3 Sacajawea coins and two 50 cent pieces. Or like 2 Sacajawea coins, two 50 cent pieces, 3 quarters, and like 5 nickels. Seriously. 20 cents in change? Expect at least 4 coins. So hilarious.

So today we went up another cable car which was awesome but annoying because we had to buy express lane (shan´t stand in long line like common peasants! bufaw!) and it was $7 each instead of $4 but whatever it would have taken an additional two hours or so I figgerrrr. It was also pretty chilly up there and we had to hoof it up a little hill and the elevation here is a bit intense so I was out of breathe and feeling pathetic with our short journey. But whatever, I was sick yesterday...yes...that´s it....I´m not out of shape at all.

Here is a cool panoramic of the city:


After that we went to another hill that was slightly lower and was almost more cool because it was super cheap (just had to pay for a taxi) and you could see everything a lot clearer. There was also a museum that had some weapons and paintings and army uniforms and shit.

Then we went to a massive statue of an angel, I forgot what it´s called. It was pretty real. Here it is:


THENNN we went to see this AWESOME old church. It was really awkward because as we were walking around inside there´s like people praying and other tourists and shit but Anton´s shoes were squeaking SO FUCKING LOUD with every step and I couldn´t stop giggling and then we had to leave.

Here that is:


Then we walked and walked and walked and walked miles and miles and went to a market where we purchased souveniers for ridiculously low prices ($1 fancy pen, $2 beanies, $1.50 statue thing...etc.) At the market we also encountered the most persistant child peddling candy that we´ve ever seen. It was ridiculous. She would stand right in front of Anton as he was trying to walk and keep trying to put the candy in his hands or balance on top of his book (this went on for like 5 minutes) and then we went in this store and she waited outside, after not exiting promptly, she came inside and started poking him and handing him the candy and finally he broke. 50 cents later, we got rid of her and got some little banana chewys that are kinda like laffy taffys. Whatever.

At this other nearby market there were like 3 tattoo and piercing shops and they had a picture on the wall of someone with their fucking FINGER pierced which was gross but we were going to buy bigger guages until...until the chic pulled out the drawer of all the different sizes and it was just a clusterfuck of a million pieces and she was just digging through it with her bare hands. Mad sanitary bro? There we also saw this lady that couldn´t have been more than 4 feet tall and Anton asked to take a picture with her (She was like half his size) and she said no. It was so awkward. I just ran.

She also had no teeth.

But that´s the style here, it seems.

After all that excitement we hoofed it and hoofed it and hoofed it and are now here.

Tomorrow we´re going to go get drunk and watch FUTBOL. It´s two teams from Ecuador...should be real. I´m going to yell drunkenly in Spanish and not understand what´s going on.

That´s been just about every other day on this trip, so it should work out nicely.

Quito, Ecuador

Quito is a cool city, lots of creepy old churches and colonial esqu architecture. Also lots of wild statues...it´s also INCREDIBLY cheap, especially since we just left Colombia which was mad expensive. Anton went to the pharmacy today and spent $15 on a bunch of shit, it would have been at least $80 in the states and probably at least $55 in Colombia. Viva Ecuador! Plus their official currency is the dollar, which makes our lives a lot easier. Converting in the thousands in Colombia was getting old...I still miss it already though. Te quiero, Colombia. Te quiero.

I had a bad fever last night and haven´t felt too great all day, but I´m starting to feel better. Needless to say we didn´t do too much today...I slept 14 hours last night and fell asleep this afternoon for another 3. Anton has been taking very good care of me with gobs of vitamins and drugs and water. I´m on heavy doses of anti-malaria medicine (just in case) so I should have some pretty hallucinatory dreams tonight. Hopefully they are good ones about Crooky bear.

The one thing we did do today was go to get lunch...Here is the list of Anton´s consumptions:
-2 Large pieces of sea bass
-Fried Rice
-Mixed Seafood Ceviche
-Beverage made from beer, raw egg, and sugar blended together. (Cerveza de Peru)
-Menudo (Stomach Lining) soup with chunks of liver, kidney, stomach lining, artery, other chunks he was unsure of, blood sausage, and potato.

I had a small bowl of chicken broth with potato and a blackberry juice. Hahahaha. I got nauseated watching him eat the menudo, it was far from ginger friendly.

Our hotel last night was super shitty, the shower faded back and forth between scalding hot and freezing cold, the room was dirty, non functioning tv, and there was a dog and small child and dude using AIM with the bling sound on full blast till fucking late and the sink (Anton´s urinal) was leaking and yeah...it was only $10 but still. Today we found one for $13 that has a good full sized shower (the other one was like a third of a normal size) that is nice and warm and it´s really clean and has a nice firm bed with lots of blankets and also has cable tv. It´s amazing what $3 gets you.

We´re going to do lots of sight seeing tomorrow, and Sunday we´re going to go to a big market. Tomorrow we´re also gonna look for a cockfight, I guess they are big here. Alecia of a year ago would be very disappointed.

More Cali

Anton made another great insight moments ago, "No one really picks their noses here (in Colombia), everywhere else they were..."  (As he picks his nose)
We are in the bus terminal in Cali waiting for our 10 o´clock bus (it is now 6:30) so we have some time to kill.  We found the worlds smallest internet cafe (it´s like a narrow hallway about 4 feet across that´s jammed with four computers) and are rocking it here.
Yesterday while walking a homeless crackhead looking lady walked by and made kissy noises at Anton and exclaimed "You are BEAUTIFUL!".  Very amusing.After the mad hoofing it we went back to the hotel and cooled off and showered again and took a sweet nap.  Then we got ready and decided to go exploring.  Anton wanted to drink and I wanted to watch and take Tramadol and it worked perfectly.  We found one dive bar that had Costeña but Brava is the better beer (brava is 5.5% and Costeña, along with Aguila, Pilsen, and Club Colombia are all 4% though FAR easier to find) so we went searching for Brava.  Before we left we tried some stand food of Empanadas which are like fat potato wedges with carne in them.  It was tasty, they had a variety of sauces and such to accompany. 
We found the next bar which wasn´t so much a bar as it was a liquor store with chairs and tables out front (they are VERY common here, I don´t even know how many different laws they´d be breaking in the states) and it had brava in cans for $1500 which is like 80 cents or so and Anton drank like 10 beers and I had like 4 waters and a soda called "Pony" that was malty and good.  We met up with a guy in a Hewlett Packard t-shirt that spoke Ok english and a few of his friends that didn´t speak English and just stared at me while Anton and HP gabbed.  It was very amusing. 
At one point the HP and one of his guys (this dumb seeming guy from Ecuador) and Anton split a bottle of Agua Diente.  After it was brought back to the table the HP guy was on the phone and Anton grabbed the bottle of liquor from the table and RAN into the street screaming and knocking over his chair and the Ecuador guy was staring all terrified thinking he wasn´t coming back and I laughed so hard I cried.There were so many people pestering us to buy crap like weird twirly light things that would be GREAT on E but worthless here and those white pipe things that hold your shampoo in the shower and roses and gum and one guy was pushing COLORED PENCILS and it was just retarded.  An old dude that was trying to sell peanuts to us didn´t respond to Anton´s replies (lies) of being allergic (he was just like oh whatever eat they good!) and then Anton tried to kiss him and the guy freaked out and tried to get away so then Anton chased him and the old guy was fucking FAST and they ran down the street and around the corner and he finally cornered the old guy and gave him kisses.  Then ran back.  Then the old guy reappeared demanding "Uno Mil" for the kisses, which he did not receive.
Another smarter guy that spoke perfect English joined a little later and kept telling me "Your boyfriend is CRAZY!" and it´s more funny because it´s like the 5th time this trip I´ve heard it.  He also asked me which asylum I picked him up in.  And it´s fuuunnnnnnyy.
We went home and I finished City of Joy (fucking Amaaaazing book) and slept till like 11:30 and it was time for the zoo!  We hoofed it the 2.5 miles or so over there (stopping at Subway on the way, the only Subway we´ve seen in Colombia) and the zoo was only $4 and SO COOL!  There were flamingo´s, bears, zebra´s, lions, a HUGE tiger that was laying right next to the glass so we were like 5 inches away from him, a bunch of turtles and birds and other furry creatures...lots and lots of monkeys...it was great.  One monkey was so cute and kept swinging on his rope towards the glass and slapping the glass in front of our face.  I think it was actually a mean monkey, but it was hilarious so we took it as him joking around.
We hoofed it BACK, stopping at a restaurant called, I kid you not, "Mario Bros" (same logo and characters and everything) that had an extensive list of hot dogs.  We had, what we both agreed, was the best hot dog ever.  I can´t really claim that too confidently considering I never ate a hot dog before this trip really, but Anton saying that means something.  It had Papitas (little fried potato chip thingys), swiss cheese, grilled sausage thing, ham, bacon, ketchup, mayo, some pink sauce that was good, hot sauce...and yeah.  It was retarded.
Now we´re here.  We´ll probably be arriving in Quito around 1 or 2 in the afternoon tomorrow...then it´s mountains and mad mad party till the 30 hour bus ride to Lima. 

End of Bogota, Salento

Thursday night after my last post we had somewhat decided to take it moderately easy but that didn´t last for long. We went to the cheap bar where all the local college kids were hanging out and ended up having mountains of tequila and cerveza...I ended up breaking two shot glasses...and we ate hardboiled eggs. Then we blacked out. Both of us. That´s saying alot...I black out pretty easy but when I ask Anton questions and he doesn´t remember either then you know we were FUCKED up.

Friday I actually felt pretty okay...we kicked our butts out of the hotel and went to an Argentina steakhouse and got a big meat platter and afterwards around 5 we managed to find the cable car thing. It was SO BAD ASS. It went up the side of this super steep mountain and there was an amazing view of the entire city (which is retardedly massive, like 7.5 million people live there) and a huge pretty church on the top (it was called Passion del Cristo, or something along those lines. Baha) and we wandered and I took a million pictures and yeah, it was probably one of the coolest views I´ve ever seen.

After we did that we went to find the internet so I could call Trevor for his BDAY and on the way Anton saw a food cart thing that had two giant pig heads filled with pork and rice and stuff so he got some of that and I tried a bite pretending that I just hadn´t seen an entire roasted head. It was pretty good, admittedly. Then we found the internet and I called and got to talk to Trevor and Tim and Chuck, (3 for the price of 1!) which was happy and then we went to a little underground burger joint and I had a delicious burger.

We had to wake up early and leave Saturday morning and...well....we failed. We were supposed to wake up at 6 but slept until like noon (what else is new) and went to a Waffle and Crepes place and had Crepes (which are good, never had them) and coffee and it took forever and the people were half retarded but the food was good, so whatever.

Outside our hotel a little Chinese man tried to ask Anton for money and instead of responding he just started doing this really amusing dance and the look on the guys face was pretty amazing.

We got to the bus terminal and decided to take an overnight bus as it didn´t really make sense to leave in the afternoon because we would have been stranded in a middle town we didn´t want to be in (Armenia, we wanted to be in Salento but the buses don´t run late enough and yadda yadda yadda) so we hung out in the bus station and read and drank some beers until our bus left at 11:45. Sweet 8 hours chilling in the station.

A very funny point is that in the bus terminal there was a bathroom and they charged $600 pesos for it, which is like 30 cents. That may fly in America, in some parts. Buttttttt, imagine for a moment, the fact that it COST EXTRA FOR TOILET PAPER. Are you fucking kidding me!?! $200 pesos extra...yeah, fuck you. We just stole napkins.

The overnight bus was definitely the most wild bus we´ve been on so far. The road was really curvey and the driver was going so fast around these blind turns and it was pretty hard to sleep, but we were exhausted and managed to get like 5 hours or so. At one point the bus driver actually pulled over and napped for a couple hours. Ridiculous.

We arrived in Salento Sunday morning. Salento is a small town in the mountains, it´s super gorgeous and everything is close together and the streets are so hilly. We were planning on napping in our hotel but we wanted to rent horses for a few hours and take them to the coffee plantation and that only is available on the weekends so we got some sandwiches and crepes and manned up and went to rent horses. It was sooooo fun. I love horse back riding. The views were spectacular too...we were gone for about 2 and a half hours with our guide and I think the poor horse Anton was riding nearly croaked. He was drenched in sweat. The guide was a nice guy even though we couldn´t communicate very well...when we went by this one farm we spotted a baby pig and the guy got the owners to come over and we held the pig and then the lady showed us her other pigs which were MASSIVE and it was exciting. Anton likes pigs.

2 and a half hours on a horse is a long time and we were pretty pooped afterwards. We had a couple beers and this homelessy guy selling bracelets tried to sell us some and he was wearing a Slayer shirt and then he showed us his shitty tattoo. It was very amusing.

We went back to the hotel and showered and napped for a few hours and then ventured out and ate chicken on a stick and hot dog and got wasted at a locals bar. It was good times, we ended up with this group of about 6 or 7 locals and yelled and stumbled around for a couple hours. Two of the people were older, and then a couple of their kids, and then some other random punks that Anton bought (the best so far) cocaine from. It was definitely the easiest communication so far, they actually realized the necessity of speaking slow and pronouncing dramatically so we were all on the same page. It was rad.

We slept yesterday (Monday) until 4PM. Hahaha. Well I was up around 2:30...but Anton was even sleepier. It was impressive. I got lots of reading done though, I´m reading the book City of Joy which is about the slums in Calcutta and is SO DEPRESSING but really good too. Good book to read traveling, it makes the bums here look like royalty.

We tried to go to the only ATM in town and it was, of course, broken, so we found a restaurant that took cards and got some fish and sausage with fries and a steak guy and drank a few beers. We took some beers back to the hotel and sat on the curb and drank them. We tried to get stray dogs to drink but they weren´t interested, and I tried to get the obese orange cat at the hotel to hang out but he wasn´t interested. He was so fat, even bigger than crooky bear. We also watched some young kids play a kick the can like game and the littlest one had an infaltable hammer and was beating all the other kids with it. Sweet, I used to have a hammer like that. It made me nostalgic for it.

This morning we woke up at 5:15 and caught a bus back to Armenia and then a minivan like shuttle thing to Cali. Goin back, back, to Cali, Cali! It was only a couple hours which was nice...we found a decent hotel for like 18 bucks and then went and ate at a yummy Mexican food restaurant. Anton had a burrito the size of his head and I had a taco and we shared some nachos. Pretty good, but expensive. Another of Lonely Planets fuck ups...which have been numerous.

Now we´re at the internet. There is a cool zoo here we want to go to but I think that´ll be tomorrow since it´s already 2 and we think the zoo closes at 5. Tomorrow night we´re taking a 12 hour bus to the border of Ecuador and then Thursday morning we´ll be arriving in Quito, which is like a 5 hour ride from the border. We´re going to party it up Thursday, Friday, and Saturday in Quito and then take a THIRTY HOUR bus ride to Lima, Peru on Sunday. Should be hardcore. I guess Quito is really high up so it should be cold again...Salento was perfect weather but it´s a little hot here. Time for more freckle explosions.

In other news, the diarrhea has been very relentless the past week. There have been many near sharts and close calls. It´s very attractive...and smells of roses.

Oh, and one other funny story that I wanted to remember that happened in Nicaragua was when this military guy was searching my bag after we left the Corn Islands and he opened a pocket that was full of tampons and was pulling them out all confused and examining them and showing his other military friend and they couldn´t figure out what it was. I almost burst out laughing but didn´t want to get machine gun whipped, so I was like...uhh...for girls...uhh...and they just kinda shrugged and must have figured it wasn´t cocaine because they let me go. Sweet Central America, Pads as far as the eye can see!

More Bogota

We ended up being unable to find anything cheap that looked interesting so once more we ended up at a pizza joint. I couldn´t handle anymore pizza though so I got some pretty bomb vegetable lasagna. I hadn´t had lasagna in forever. We bought some beers and then went home to lounge in our food coma and read. Then we went to a local bar that had Peroni on special for $2000, (little more than a dollar) and tequila shots for the same price. We hung out there for awhile and got stared at alot which is pretty usual.

Then we went to a place that had two for one cocktails (of course these two for one cocktails are 16000, like 9 bucks) but we got long beaches and they were tasty. In the bar there were these two irish people fighting and it was absurd. The chic was going apeshit and the guy was getting more and more infuriated by the minute and ended up storming out. A bum tried to get us to give him money and tried to get Anton to give him his hat but we told him we needed the money for drugs and beers and he seemed to understand. We were speaking his language.

Side note on the prevalence of mullets-
THEY ARE EVERYWHERE. I think it´s basically the coolest style of hair a boy can have. When we were in Medellin eating mexican food there was a moment where I could have captured two healthy mullets in the same camera frame. I was tempted, but it was going to be very hard to conceal. Last night we saw a dude that had a mullet and the long part of it was dyed flourescent purple. So absurd!

Anyways. Then we went to a club that was dark and had black lights and was playing good electronic music and hung out there drinking Agua Diente (better than the shit in Cartagena, thank god) mixed with Ginger Ale. It was tasty enough. They served it with a weird lime orange hybrid fruit that we´ve seen in a few different countries.

We bought some blow from the dude at the club and I got his facebook email so I´m going go add him as a friend just like I added the guy that got us cocaine in Medellin. Sweet.

We went home and I smoked pot and listened to music and Anton passed the F out after some sweet xanax and I took a striking photograph of his butt which he wants to make the silvermine background (bahaha).

This morning we woke up and layed around and showered and headed out to go to this Mexican restaurant we had tried to go to yesterday but was closed and we got tacos and burritos and it was so good. They only had mozzarella cheese which is annoying but at least it´s not the super shitty white cheese that was the only thing to get in Nicaragua. I miss cheddar though, quesadillas with Mozzarella are kinda lame.

After the restaurant we wandered around some little shop stands and I got a bracelet and anklet and mittens (it´s really that chilly, we can see our breathe) and some postcards...tweezers (two months since plucking eyebrows, mad ridiculous). We also found a miniature magnetic chess set and Anton is going to teach me how to play (he was in the chess club so I´m sure I´ll totally win and stuff...) Then we went to an indoor market place that was cool but super expensive. That was annoying because they had funny stuff but fuck off to anything over 5 dollars. Seriously. What the fuck do you think this is, America?

Now we´re here...we were planning on going up the cable car but it´s been raining all day so I think we´ll do that tomorrow. This city is pretty cool, I liked Medellin more but it´s still pretty rad. We´ve both decided that we would like to move to Colombia someday. The people here are all rad and it´s good music and great clothes and good food and yeah...Colombia is my favorite place so far. Medellin is definitely my favorite city I´ve ever been to.

Anyways. Hopefully tonight we can find some Brahva (the 5.3 percent beer, far superior to all the other ones (Aguila, Pilsen, Club Colombia) that have like 4 percent) but it´s hard to find so that is annoying. We found it in a little coffee shop where we got cappuccino´s with brandy earlier so maybe we´ll just have to go back there.

The homeless dogs are back, the area we were in in Medellin was too posh, but we´re in the more ghetto here. There have been some super cutie ones. Also lots more bums. The best bum we´ve seen was in Granada, Nicaragua that had his pants pulled down and his ass fully displayed (we managed to photograph that one) and the bum in Panama that was sleeping under a phone (waiting for the call that would never come) but we found the best placed bum on the cab ride to our hostel yesterday. We saw a bum that was sleeping in the little two foot plant area that runs along side the highway. Like, a foot from a fucking interstate. It was so ridiculous. There was also a really good crazy bum in Medellin...last night anton gave a bum 100 Pesos (which is like a nickel) and then he kept following us and rambling in Spanish and it was very annoying. They´re pestering fuckers here, they don´t understand no. I keep pretending to not speak Spanish and I have tried to convince Anton to just start yelling at them in Russian but I think he likes talking to them so he hasn´t obliged.

That´s all I can think of for now. I want to marry Colombia.

Bogota

Sunday night our dinner was a great success...we had Prosciutto wrapped green apples, Mac N Cheese w/ hot dog cut up in it, and boiled corn on the cob. Besides accidently using some sort of non melting cheese/butter hybrid instead of regular butter in the mac it was all good. Even that didn´t fuck up the taste, it was just confusing.

Monday we layed around in the morning and ate leftovers (and I found a bagel ahhh deliciousness! they are very hard to find here) in the early afternoon but finally got our butts in gear and took the metro down to a cable car thing that went up the side of a mountain. It was so cool. You could see for miles and miles and see the whole city and towards of the top we went through some sweet shanty towns and I took lots of pictures. We went down on the cable like halfway and then walked the rest. Anton got a really yummy meat on a stick that had a potato and a pita bread thing that was so retardedly good.

That night we ate a pizza and Anton found ranch and was weeping with joy and he had some beers and I had some boxed wine and it was good times. We talked for awhile to this Italian guy named Francesco and this WASTED colombian 54 year old guy that had been at the hostel for a month but claimed to have 23 Million Dollar and wanted to find woman to love him for not his money and told us he was the devil and then proceeded to read our hands. Anton was going to live to be 87, but then the guy dropped it to 72 later for unexplained reasons. Probably because he was wasted and kept telling Anton he was going to STEAL HER. I am going to live to like 78 or something like that. He was all nervous when I asked him to keep going on the hand reading because Anton ran upstairs and he was like "Oh don´t want to make boyfriend jealous!"...yeah...he´s really concerned.

Tuesday we were planning on leaving in the morning but once more we were too lazy and layed around, ate some more pizza (I found popcorn, mmm) and then we took a night bus to Bogota. On the way to the bus terminal we saw a dude pissing off the overpass and the cab drive was BUMPING queen. Very amusing.

Now we´re in Bogota. Bogota is even colder than Medellin, we just got here this morning on an overnight bus and slept
all day (difficult to sleep on cramped ass bus) and now we´ve ventured out of our hotel and are using the internet before we go eat and explore. Our hotel is alright, it has hot water in a private bathroom, double bed, and a tv which is good. We got it for $35,000 Pesos (like 18 bucks) which is pretty good considering the few hostels we went to before were trying to charge us $38,000 for a single bed, no private bathroom, and no tv. Suckers.

Time to eat, I´m getting in trouble.

Medellin is SO FUCKING TIGHT

God dammit, this city is so much fun. Yesterday and today have been two of my favorite days of the whole trip. This city is so god damn cool! AHH!! We are having a hard time leaving...

Anyways.

Yesterday we (and by we I mean Anton, though I did toast the bread) made over easy eggs and bacon in the hostel kitchen. It´s like the nicest kitchen ever, which I am pretty sure I already discussed. But seriously, it´s like nicer than my kitchen at home (not parents casa, obviously, but that mystical non existant place that I refer to vaguely as home which implies condo, mesa house, cameron creek, rape cave, wherever I´ve lived or live or whatever I don´t know what I´m even talking about).

It was delicious. We were rocking breakfast beers like it was going out of style and I had like 5 and Anton had like 8 I think and we were nice and tipsy and talked to the hostel owner Natalie for a long time (she is from NY but has lived here for like 15 years so she answers all our confusion) and I played with her mini dauchsun Ramona for awhile. We had grand plans to go ride the cable car and the metro and check out the city center but we were too drunk and ended up passing out around 4 for a couple hours. When we awoke we layed around more and decided to go get sushi and go get wasted so we got pretty and I did Anton´s mohawk (which is getting absurdly big, btw) and we were off! We spent $124,000 on sushi, which is about 60 dollars, and it was SO good. Retardedly good. One of the rolls was a tempura lobster and eel, one had mozzarella cheese on it, which was weird, and we got a bunch of nigiri and other shit. So bomb.

We had a few beers and the bar area here is like Mill on steroids. There is a small park and then just SURROUNDING it is bar upon restaurant upon bar upon bar upon bar. There were just hundreds and hundreds of people, everything was packed. This was more of a posh area though and everything was expensive, so we walked a couple blocks to the bigger park and bought some beer and drank in the park (which was also ridiculously packed with people). It´s so sweet being able to drink wherevr, there are just people all over with liquor bottles and beer and it´s ridiculous. People here are wealthy and hot and wasted. So tight.

We found a little dive that had shots of rum and took like 4 shots each and then staggered around from bar to bar taking shot after shot. Anton almost got his head taken off by a low ceiling fan which caused great amusement amongst one bar. We were wasted and found a guy that spoke english that took us to find blow for SIX FUCKING DOLLARS A GRAM and Anton said it was okay (i didn´t do any because I wanted to be able to move today). We were up till like 5 all wasted and goofy and it was good times.

Today we woke up and decided to cook again, so we walked about half a mile to this MASSIVE store that was like super walmart but it also had a huge food court and when we saw a Mexican food place...well...cooking went out the window. We gorged on mounds of food (quesadilla, curly fry, corn, bbq meat, lemonade) and then wandered around deliriously full attempting to shop. It was very fun. We got some necessities and got food for dinner (mac and cheese, corn on the cob, hot dog, prosciutto and green apples, milk for the mac, etc.) We came back and layed around and showered and now we´re just getting dinner together and I have to go buy anton more beer while he makes food.

I cut my toe pretty bad walking back from the store which was bad but otherwise today was super funny. Anton farted on me so bad that my eyes almost watered and he laughed until he was crying. It was very bad.

We´re going to try and be productive tomorrow so we can leave by Tuesday, this city kicks so much ass but it´s expensive and we like it too much. We need to get to Bogota.

We found a nude beach in Argentina that we´re going to hit up, bahahaha. I´m so excited. It´s going to be all old men and shit and it´s going to be fucking hilarious...unfortunately no photography is allowed.

I´m getting in trouble, must go purchase beer.

Medellin, Colombia

We left the cool little beach town yesterday, it was kinda a shame because it was such a cute little town and everyone was really nice and there were like NO tourists there but we just didn´t have time to lollygag...we saw a GORGEOUS sunset Thursday night though, it was wild. Thursday morning we had breakfast in bed (we´d bought a bunch of hardboiled eggs and salt the night before, it was VERY fancy) and Thursday day we just explored around and read our books and enjoyed our air conditioned room...for dinner we found a place where we both ate soup, rice, potatoes, and meat and had two bottles of water and one iced tea for under 10 dollars! Mad sweet! Then, as per usual, we took my chicken bones and found the skinniest street dog to feed them too. The one this time was so bad, poor little guy.

After the sunset we took Xanax and passed the F out. Our hotel room was so dark and I was delirious so when I got up to pee (in the sweet toilet-seatless toilet) I ran into the wall and had to feel my way around the room. It reminded me of Trevors story from his Grandma´s but the difference is that I found the hole to the bathroom and he gave up and peed under the bed.

Anyways.

Yesterday we got on the 7AM bus to Medellin. It was 70,000 pesos! That´s a little under $40, which is BY FAR the most expensive bus we´ve taken. Plus it was FREEZING, but luckily the bus to the town had been cold too so we were prepared and brought jackets and wore long pants and shoes and such. We´d bought cans of tuna and nutri grain bars (odd find! first time I´d seen those, I was so excited..though they are a little different here, firmer or something) and had those to snack on and I finished another book and we drove through this GORGEOUS area that was huge canyons that were completely green and there were big white clouds laying in the bottom of them...I took like 20 pictures...It was through a window so most of them are ehhh (and none of them do it justice) but there are a few that are actually pretty good.

At one point I fell asleep and the malaria pills were fucking with me again and I dreamed that I was on the bus but the bus was different and it was an open aired top and the seats could fold down and there was this big group of kids tour grouping and we went down a waterfall and then on the bus I could close my eyes and hallucinate whatever I wanted (kinda like the night I took too much ecstasy and thought my eyes were open and Andrews socked feet flew away as doves made out of biscuits) so I was kinda dreaming within a dream and it was all fucked up and way too realistic. Fuckin WILD.

Also at one of our stops I saw these two little dogs that were so wrapped up in eachother they were both half on top of the other one snoozing away. It was very cute. Like cats.

We got to Medellin around 7 (10 hour bus took 12 hours, naturally) and had to walk for frickin MILES and MILES with our bags up and down hilly streets and finally found a hostel. We share a bathroom with one other dude but it´s okay...It´s a dorm room with two sets of bunk beds but we pushed them together and so long as the hostel doesn´t fill up we can have it again tonight as a pseudo private room, since
we don´t really want to share. If it fills up though we might have to switch, which would be annoying. This is probably one of my favorite places we´ve stayed, it has a little Mini Dauschsan (however that´s spelled) running around and free internet and a fully equipped kitchen...hot shower...it´s nice. This morning we´re going to go to the store across the street and buy eggs and bacon and tomato and bread and make breakfast! First time cooking in a looonng time!

I think we´ll be here 2 more nights...seems like a cool city. Nightlife was pumpin last night when we went out, though we were more or less too tired to enjoy it much.

At one point this skinny dude in a suit and tie comes up and starts mumbling to us in Spanish and showing us a binder and we figure out he´s trying to get money for a CHURCH for street kids and we´re chilling eating a pizza and drinking beers and he´s like "Blah blah blah we need 100,000 pesos for landscaping...blah blah the Lord blah blah" or whatever and Anton is like "We don´t have much money, but do you want a beer?"

The guy stops and looks at us and shrugs and asks, "Can I have a piece of pizza too?"

Then he took said beer and said pizza and went across the street and inhaled it. It was so funny. We almost fell out of our chair, this suited up preacher man accepting beer off the street. I´d be tempted to say it was a con but I´m pretty sure it wasn´t.

There is a Pablo Escobar tour that we might do, other then that we don´t have many plans. There are lots of cute stores around here so I want to go shopping, even though I´m probably not allowed to buy anything, haha...maybe if I find a cute dress or something. Last night I had like 3 dreams where I was mad at Anton and they´re so damn realistic with the malaria shit that I woke up this morning and it took a few minutes to remind myself that he wasn´t in trouble. I´m cracked out, man.

Oh, I guess also in interesting news Colombia is considered one of the plastic surgery capitals of the WORLD, just behind Brazil. I believe it too, a lot of people here have that creepyish perfection that only comes from collagen injections and too much botox. I guess even lots of guys get butt implants here. If I was on a date with someone and they told me they had butt implants I would politely excuse myself to go to the bathroom and then climb out that fuckers window and run, run, run, and never look back. WHAT THE FUCK.

Time for breakfast.

I forgot a very important part of my hungover Monday morning in Cartagena, that Anton so lovingly reminded me of right now.

Hungover Alecia was in such full effect that the loudness of her vomiting caused the hostel maid to come to our door to make sure everything was alright. AHhhhhhhhhh hahahahahaha. I am god.

Last night we ended up going back to our hotel with a bottle of Agua Dientes ($3.50 for a fifth) but I was too tired and Anton was devouring his sci fi and so we didn´t really drink much of it. The alcohol is only 20%, but for $3.50 it´s hard to complain. It´s not the best for hangovers though, I think we´ve decided to spend a little more in the future. Even Anton feels it´s shitty alcohol inducing effects, which is quite the rarity...

Anyways I slept for almost 12 hours and felt much better. Today we have wandered around a bit, the town is cute and sleepy and beachy, more Caribbean life mon. So far we´ve seen 4 other tourists, 2 groups of 2. There are lots of bars and stuff though, we were talking to one of the food stand guys last night and he said that in December and January it is pretty packed with tourists here. We don´t really care either way, less people to get in our way dammit!

It´s pretty fucking hot here, even though it did rain all morning. Still excited to get to Medellin.

I had pretty wacky dreams last night, two characters from the book I just read (Bless Me Father, some mob coming of age book) (oh, and Killer Angels fucking RULED) were in it and one was a crazy crack head and the other a boxer and they were driving me around smoking crack and doing lines after we´d just escaped a robbery of a furniture store? Or something? Sweet malaria pills, I woke myself up again because I was talking out loud.

this Tolu keyboard sucks my balls

Well we were planning on flying from Cartagena to Medellin but the 80 fare anton found
ended up being a special, as when we looked next it was 160. So we decided to break up the bus trip so we wouldn´t be on a bus at night (the road between Cartagena and Medellin is supposedly the most dangerous for buses, especially at night), and took a 3.5 hour bus ride today to a small town between Cartagena and Medellin called Tolu. It´s on the Caribbean beach and seems cool, we have been wandering around the center for the last couple hours eating street food and drinking cervezas. We got a hotel with AC here, thank god, but no TV still. Owell, we have lots of books. We booked it for tonight and tomorrow, then the next day we´ll take the 11 hour bus ride to Medellin.

We did some good city walking yesterday, and it was pretty fucking hot. Thank god for the snowcone vedors on the street everywhere, plus they put condensced milk on top which makes it super good. We went to (what i imagine is) the most expensive hotel in the city at $300 per night and had $10 bloody mary´s, which definitely weren´t the price, but the lobby inner garden thing had a fucking TOUCAN flying around in it. WTF!! I was so excited, I took pictures and i took a video because it was making a very amusing noise. It made my day.

We ate at the same restaurant again as the day before (sweet chicken soup) because it was like 4 dollars and everything else was mad tourist trappy and like 10 dollars a plate but that was fine because it was delicious. We wandered around more and eventually ended up at the hotel where we drank with a couple Australians named Dan and Karla and talked about drugs and travelling and they didn´t hate us and think we were offensive like most people so that was cool.

Before the bus today we got a repeat hot dog that was equally delicious and street food ceviche with crackers. We both agree that Colombia has had the best street food so far. The steak on a stick we got here was served with potatoes and was all juicy and it was pretty absurd. We´ve also been digging into a lot of hardboiled eggs, which are popular here as well as in Panama.

Nothing beats meat on a stick though, that´s for sure.

Anton just had to go back to the pharmacy to return the Morphine we bought, which ended up being medicine for type two diabetes. A little girl followed him all the way back trying to sell him lottery tickets, and when he finally refused for final she pulled his hair and left. It´s bizarre how much kids fucking love him. Wherever we go they just STARE. It´s so cute.

Anyways, tiempo para salir.

Cartagena kicks my ass.

Saturday night we ended up at a rooftop bar (on like the third story) that was right next to the water playing pounding electronic music and had a wild light show, so we took our pills from home (which ended up being pretty weak, didn´t last long at all) and took it easssy. Afterwards we wandered the street looking for a sketchy fellow, which didn´t take long. We had him fetch us some goods to ski with and THE WEIRDEST SHIT HAPPENED. It happended to the first stuff too..

It dissolved! We poured it out and within 10 minutes it was turning into a liquid! The second stuff we did fast enough because we´d learned better but the first stuff we just left there and after it turned liquid within an hour or two it was like a clear glue...so bizarre. I don´t know what the fuck they put in it here...it´s been decent stuff...but dissolving/melting? wtf?

We were up till like 8 AM and finally managed to sleep for awhile...wandered around a bit during the afternoon and then got way way (well i did anyways) wasted sitting around one of the picnic tables that is in the central outdoor hall thing of the hotel we´re at. We chatted it up with a few of these other dudes that were staying there...one 23 year old australian, a 38 year old from great britain but had lived in india for a lot of his life, and a 55 year old dude from Indiana. The 23 year old girl from Utah and the 28 year old guy from the Ukraine and we were an odd bunch. It was good times though.

This morning was NOT good times, NOT at all. Hungover Alecia was in full effect from the two days of boozing / drugging / not eating or drinking water. The lack of air conditioning made it all the more lovely, but a couple cold showers helped. I finally managed to go to sleep for a few hours and felt a lot better around 3 when I woke up. We then went hunting for the meat on a stick guy (people sell thinly sliced steak and onions and green peppers on long long toothpicks at little stands around) but failed because they´re only at night and Anton ate a really good hot dog that had potato flakes and cheese and stuff (we´ve had a hot dog in every country, hahaha) and then found a restaurant that was pretty busy and ate there, and it was fucking good. I had a huge Chicken/potato/rice soup and Anton had fried liver...we were very happy. Those two big plates and 4 bottles of water for about 12 dollars. Not bad not bad. Although I guess I should be straight and admit that by bottles of water I really mean a glass with a bag of water in it with a hole cut in the bag and a straw sticking through. We really are a fancy pair.

We found a stray dog to feed my chicken bones to, which was happy. So far every town has had stray dogs except maybe San Jose...though I think Guatemala and Honduras probably had the most. By Lake Aitlan in Guatemala there were just PACKS of them. I bought some taco meat for a dog and like 10 more were there instantly. That was just absurd. Here you actually have to wander around and look for one, whereas in Guatemala they were as popular as pregnant teens and cripples.

The pregnant teen amount went down slightly in Panama and Costa Rica (very slightly), and is down again in Colombia, but I expect the ratio to increase as we hit bigger less developed cities. One can hope. The cripple amount was also highest in Guatemala and Honduras...farther south we saw dudes with their hands cut off or missing legs but in Guatemala and Honduras you saw dudes with like no legs at all and one eye and one arm or something terrible and they just kinda scooted along in the dirt and yeah...SWEET LIFE.

I think this is the first country that we haven´t seen a McDonalds in. Here are American Fast Food places ranked by popularity:

1. McDonalds is by far the most popular. It is in most cities, and there´s usually more than one.
2. Subway is not hard to find either, but it´s mainly in big cities and capitals, whereas you can find McDonalds in slightly smaller places (though all of the islands we´ve been to have had no American fast food). There were tons of Subways in Panama City, for whatever reason.
3. Burger King is third, and is in most capitals and huge cities, but there will be like 2 burger kings to 8 McDonalds, and you don´t see it at all in any non capital cities, basically.
4. KFC. This is a weird one because every restaurant in every city in all of Central (and it is beginning to appear) SOUTH America as well sells fried chicken. A lot of the time that´s ALL they sell. It´s everywhere. It´s absurd. So I don´t know how KFC manages to have a market considering you can´t walk five feet without finding 8 different chicken joints, but maybe the mashed potatoes really are that good. Note: The KFC´s here do not have KFC bowls, which Anton was going to make me try. Owell.
5. Dunkin Donuts. This has been around with Burger King alot, but sometimes it is not there and sometimes it stands alone. Anton ate Dunkin Donuts in the bus terminal in Panama City. I don´t really like donuts.
6. Wendy´s has been found a few times...I´ve probably seen like 6 Wendy´s total. We ate at one in La Ceiba, Honduras which was weird because that town was pretty barren of, well, anything.
7. Taco Bell. Only one Taco Bell siting, and I think that´s all we will find. It was in San Jose, Costa Rica which had TONS of American fast food and stuff.

I´m sure that´s all very interesting.

Once we leave equator we are going to be below the equator (woo never been there!) which I´m excited about. The farther below we get the cooler it will be...hopefully Peru will be nice since it´s slightly south and at a higher elevation. I want to have brought long pants for a reason...so far they´ve only been rocked in Guatemala and San Jose. Annoying. Though Argentina at least will be cold for sure, and maybe Northern Chile too. I don´t know about Equator though...I don´t really know squat about that place.

Tomorrow or the next day we´re going to fly to Medellin. We were going to take a bus but it´s like 16 hours and 40-50 dollars and the flight is one hour and 80 dollars. Maybe in another country we´d still suck it up but you´re not really advised to take buses at night here because they get stopped and robbed, which doesn´t found fun. But here we are in the mindset of just waiting to get robbed, so it won´t be too bad if it happens. When I carry my camera I always have my sim card in my small inner pocket so even if they take my camera I still have the pictures, so it wouldn´t really be too bad.

Oh man Anton just told me it´s 59 degrees in Bogota. THANK SCIENCE.

After Medellin is when we´re going to Bogota, then Cali (which is by the border) and maybe one other smallish place in Colombia. There´s supposed to be a cool zoo in Cali. Mad excitement.

Enough rambling.

Cartegena, Colombia

Wooooooooooo!!

We finally made it to Colombia! And without incident, no bribe or onward ticket or anything necessary. Smooth sailing.

The flight was fine, they gave us a little snack box that had cheese and ham and fruit and stuff, it was pretty real.

Cartegena is hot, but not as humid as other places so it´s far more tolerable.

Interesting sites so far:

-Homeless dudes sharing a bottle of liquor and using mini plastic shotglasses to shoot with while laying / stumbling in the street.
-Booths that sell the use of a cell phone, 200 pesos (it´s between 1650 and 2000 pesos per dollar). First time we´ve seen that.
-Purchasing a gram of cocaine and actually have it look like a gram, not the 4-6 line baggies that were claimed as a gram elsewhere.

We are in the older area of Cartagena. It´s pretty cool, lots of bright colored buildings and narrow streets and colonial esqu architecture and such. Flying in was really cool because there is a little tail that sticks out with all these high rise buildings on it...that´s the newer part of the city. Here a couple pictures I found:




You can see the little tail in the bottom one. Our hotel is in the area right before the tail gets really skinny. It´s an alright place, the bathroom is called a water closet and it actually is one. It´s one small rectangle with a shower at the far end, the toilet right next to it, and the sink next to that. No division, just one little box. Pretty amusing.

The beaches here are pretty too, all white sand and such. Not as pretty as some of the other ones we´ve seen, but good.

I guess the nightlife here is crazy and late night. We´re probably going to get wasted tonight since we haven´t been wasted since last friday. And we have to try out our first taste of Colombian cocaine, ahhhhhhhhhhhh!

Last night in Panama City...finalmente

I forgot to say that yesterday when we went to mail the tube package the post office was closed.

We have an ongoing joke that whenever something is closed it´s like "Only restaurant in town is closed wednesday, errybody know dat!" because that´s pretty much how people respond when we´re confused about something being closed. And things are always, inexplicably closed, generally when we need them the most.

As in when we went to the Starfish beach in Bocas Del Toro (prettiest beach i´ve ever seen, btw) and the only restaurant was closed on tuesdays. Annnddd it was a tuesday, of course.

ANYWAYS. Why was the post office closed on a Thursday?
Because a Panama dude won the gold medal for long jump. Really. I guess Panama hadn´t won a gold medal in 60 years, so I´ve got to give them props, but close down the whole government because of it (banks were also closed)? I guess any excuse is a good excuse for not working here...damn mexicans...just kidding.

Today we were going to try and go to this cheap zoo that this richard gere-esq american dude told us at a bar last night but when we went to mail the package and catch a bus to said zoo it was fucking POURING again. Even with an umbrella we were taking a pounding from the sideways rain. omg. Sooo needless to say we went back to the hotel and amused ourselves and waited for it to stop raining.

We were afraid it would start raining again so we decided to go to the bus terminal because it had a dunkin donuts and a dairy queen and then we were going to catch another bus to the movie theatre we saw batman in but when we got to the terminal we realized there was a massive mall and movie theatre next door to the terminal! So we went and saw Wanted (new angelina jolie film) and...it was pretty badass. Totally unbelievable but SUPER badass. Very entertaining.

Afterwards we ate sushi and nachos (sweet combo) in the mall food court and headed back. Now we are doing this and figuring out some flight stuff and then going to take a sleeping pill since we have to wake up at god-forsaken o`clock in the morning. By that I mean like 4 or so.

I´m now reading Killer Angels which is about the Civil War. I tried to read this book called `The Scorpio Illusion` that Anton read (and hated) that´s by the same guy that wrote The Bourne Identity and I literally couldn´t get through it. I was making any excuse possible not to read, including and not limited to watching reruns of Made, True Life (love mtv), old 80´s videos on VH1, hours of CNN, reruns of Seinfeld...movies that i didn´t understand because I started watching halfway through...part of a hallmark movie....oh man. Yëah. So for one of the first times in my life, I gave up. I actually intentionally stopped. I´ve certainly failed to finish books before, but it´s out of lazyness and genuine intent to oneday finish them, not pure pure hatred.

It was that bad. Robert Ludlumm should rot in hell. I guess after Matt Damon makes one of your books into a famous movie you can, as Anton says, "Shit on a page and make it a bestseller".

Here is one choice review on Amazon, "somebody already beat me to it", says Anton.
"I've never thought Ludlum was a great writer (I've never bought one of his books new, at full price, either) but I have to agree with Ronin - this one is simply a joke. It's hard to believe this was actually written by Ludlum. Nothing is believable about the plot or the action. No, intelligence and military personnel are far from perfect and very human, but if they were as poorly trained, as witless and unprofessional as they and the allegedly brilliant and sophisticated terrorists in this book are - the world would have been blown to hell and back a couple of hundred times since WWII. The dialogue is absurd, and Ludlum "padded" the book by at least 100 pages with pointless "explanatory" parentheticals and asides that detract from the dialogue and narrative flow.

I've always treated Ludlum books as light, fluffy beach or airplane reading and they've always served that end well; this one is almost like reading the text on the side of a toothpaste tube. I can only assume Ludlum either needed money badly or found himself with a contract obligation to fulfill and turned out this piece of bilge in as short of time as possible with as little attention paid to it as possible. "

Now I´m onto Killer Angels. Thank god.

We also picked up a few other books that look good. One is by the guy that wrote The Beach, another one is a comedy, and some other weird sci fi action book that Anton wanted. Hopefully it won´t be as barf inducing as the Scorpio Illusion.

Anyways, I can´t wait to get to Colombia.

STILL Panama City

There is so much pollution here. Its actually giving me something that I very very rarely experience, ALLERGIES. You can see the black smog just billowing out of like half the cars here..so sweet. Ive been having sneezing fits like its my job.

Anyways.

Yesterday we woke up at 430 in the morning and actually managed to get out of the hotel by a little after 5. That is unprecedented. Usually we require at least an hour...well...I would claim that I dont require more than 15 minutes, but thats another story.

The train left at 730 and was pretty badass. It was only like an hour though, which was annoying. We got free coffee and it went along a really pretty lake and the sky was blue and it was perfect weather for the whole shebang. At the end they also gave us a little box of snacks...jerk offs...wait till the END in hopes that we buy their ridiculously overpriced food. Three dollar can of tomato juice anyone? Luckily we didnt buy into the scheme, as we brough our own snacks.

We went straight to Zona Libre, which is the second largest duty free zone in the world. We wandered around aimlessly, looking at sunglasses and shit that was like half price but still way too expensive.

THEN, we spotted the liquor store.
And inquired about a handle of Stoli Vodka.
And wept and wept and wept when we found out the price.
TWELVE DOLLARS.

TWELVE. Are you fucking kidding me? Weep weep weep. Unfortunately there was no valid reason to purchase it, considering we will be flying soon and havent been drinking at all because of respective cruds.

We then went to Colon 2000, which is a touristy little complex with restaurants and stores and such, most of which were closed because it was still pretty early. And, as per usual, none opened at their advertised opening times. You usually have to count on it being an hour to an hour and a half later than what they claim. So we ate subway breakfast subs, which are bomb, and then caught a cab.

We asked the dude to take us to the bus station so we could go to Panama City, he told us cincuenta, which is 50, and anton asked if it was a dollar total? The driver said yes, and we were like oh sweet must be close. He then drove for like 15 minutes and was getting pretty outskirty...we asked him how much longer.

Hour and fifteen was his reply. WTF?, we asked. He was taking us to PANAMA CITY and was charging us 50 DOLLARS. Fucking retard. We told him to take us to the bus station in COLON, and he was like oh oh oh...oh....

When we got back we asked him how much he wanted.

Twenty Five.

So we laughed in his face and told him to fuck off, Anton yelled at him as per usual and we ended up giving him 3 dollars and telling him he was an idiot. Yeah, 25 dollars because you are retarded.

Whatever.

The bus back sucked because it was slow and hot and my cold is kinda in my head now and is annoying and sneezy and runny, but when we got back we froze our room and watched some tv and felt better. We ate hard boiled eggs (best street food) and subway again and wandered around and didnt do much the rest of the day. wow, i just figured out how to make parenthesis. And !. There should have been a lot more !!! but this keyboard is backwards and I just figured it out. Exclaim where necessary.

Today we woke up and showered and then it started FUCKING POURING, there was like a river running down the street. After it stopped, we worked on getting a box to mail a poster in, which took awhile and resulted in us at a hardware store having some guy saw through a cardboard tube. Random. Now we have finally figured out colombia, (flying out on Saturday, AT LAST), and yeah. I got some new books today. That is exciting.

Oh, the people working at subway here may actually be retarded.

Medio en Blanco Pan..
Blanco?
Si...blanco.

Dude slowly turns to look at menu behind him, slowly turns back, AH, Blanco!
Si...

Then proceeds to take 10 minutes to make a sandwich. I was freaking out.

Now Im out of time.

´Bahhhhh, I saw Singapore like no one else could SEE Singapore...bahh...High on CRACK!´

more panama city boohoohoooooooo

The back is fixed! Sleeping on cardboard does wonders it seems...

Everything is good to go now. We're both over our respective cruds at last. Now we just need to get out of this damn city...definitely not cool enough to warrant the week we've been here. Whatever, we're lazy.

Yesterday we went to see the canal, which was mad tight. I had vague ideas about how it worked but seeing it in real life was bomb diggity! We also went to an awesome seafood place and had clams, calimari, fish, and a spicy mixed seafood with boiled potatoes and drool...it was so good. Then we were lazy more. As we have been for the last few days. This kind of travel definitely agrees with me.

Today we were going to take the train to Colon but we got too lazy last night (we'd have to wake up at 4 or 5) and plus it's POURING fuckin rain today so it worked out i guess. Hopefully tomorrow. We're going to go get FOUR dollar footlongs soon...haha.. so sweet. It's kinda retarded because 6 inches are like 3.50 and footlongs are 4 dollars. I love subway!

I don't know anything else. We switched hotels (thank god) and our last one was the most destroyed yet. I extensively photographed it...the garbage piles, the bed off the frame covered in cardboard, etc.

The new hotel has good AC, hot water (REAL hot water, not the stupid electrical showerhead that electrocutes you), and a firm bed that doesn't destroy my back. And it's clean, no ants or anything! Oh, and an elevator and free internet! We're living like KINGS i tell you, KINGS!

I really want to drink, we haven't drank in like 4 or 5 nights due to illness. Last night we had one drink (I had a pineapple juice and vodka and anton had a watermelon juice and vodka (his was better)) and it left me wanting more. Owell.

Colombia in two days? Hopefully?

Panama City and Pain.

Friday we both woke up sick. We had sore throats, i was mad upchucking, and we were both just exhausted and weak. Needless to say, we didnt do anything at all. Our fevers came and went all day...Anton braved the outdoors, as he was the slightly less sicker one, and brought back vitamins and water and bananas and such. Yesterday was slightly better, we ventured out for a couple hours and got some food and stuff, but still didnt feel very good. Yesterday in addition my back started killing me, as it is also today, so Ive been on Tramadol so Im able to move slightly. Thank god you dont need a prescription for that stuff here. I dont know what the deal is, but this is the worst its ever been. I´m going to have to get an MRI or something when I get back, it´s absurd. Without tramadol I basically cant move.

We just went and bought a sheet for 2.99 though, so I´m going to sleep on the hard floor tonight and hopefully that will help slightly. Our bed is terrible, it´s all saggy and thin and about the worst thing. Sighhhhhhhh. At least today my sore throat is almost gone and Anton is all better, he just about drowned me in water and vitamin C, various multi vitamins, fever reducers, etc. Just about anything one could think of. He´s a very good caretaker.

Anyways, enough complainin. I read an entire John Grisham book yesterday (the summons) and was not really that impressed. I don´t think lawyer books are for me.

I read abother book by Tim Dorsey (i think) called Florida Roadkill which was pretty funny. Anton was less impressed, but I think everything is funny so I liked it.

Next Im going to read the Killer Angels (which is about the civil war) which I picked up at a book exchange today.

The plan now is to go to see the canal tomorrow, take the train the next day, and then hopefully fly to Cartegena the day after that.

I don´t know much else considering we barely left our hotel room the last couple days.

I´m excited to get to Colombia, Bocas Del Toro was really cool but Panama City is kinda lame. There is a ton to do in a USA sense, and seeing Batman was cool, but the food sucks and it doesn´t really have a cool vibe. Just lots of drunks and homeless dudes undressing me with their eyes and fat chics and yeah...whatever.

I´m hungry for something other than fried chicken. We´ll see...

Bocas Del Toro, Panama City

Our plans got detoured a bit. We were planning on going to Colon to take the train yesterday, but I guess there are no direct buses to Colon from the Almirante (the mainland city that our boat from Bocas brought us to, (probably cuz nobody wants to go to Colon because it is a dangerous slum)) and pretty much everything goes to panama city. So we just went to Panama City and got a hotel. It took a few hostels slash hotels but we found one on the third try. Lots of hoofin´it! Our current stay is okay, really dingy but there is AC and TV that gets like 4 channels but we have been watching the olympics on mute so it´s all good. So far only swimming and mens gymnastics (i don´t mind either, obviously) and of course, michael phelps is awesome.

Our last day in Bocas Del Toro was good, we found a place that had sushi (we hadn´t had it since we left) and had a couple rolls, then we went to an indian restaurant and had an overly priced and rather lackluster meal. It was pretty tasty, but the portions were ridiculously small and we spent like 50 dollars. Muy caro! (very expensive)

So anyways, yesterday we took the 10 HOUR train to Panama City (plus the 30 minute boat ride off the island) and it was a fairly rough day. We were both fairly sleep deprived and grumpy, but we pushed through. We bought mini M&M´s and those proved to be a high point.

Today we went mad city walking. We probably walked about 5 miles...we went from where we are staying in Casco Viejo (the old town colonial area of Panama City, where it was originally founded) into the main city part. It looks like Miami-NY-Chicago-San Fran but everybody speaks Spanish. There are all these big buildings and it´s rather cosmopolitan. Definitely not what I was expecting. We wandered, ate
subway, and then went and saw The Dark Knight. It was so good! Now we are both extra depressed that Heath Ledger is dead. What a bummer, he was so good in it.

Now we´re just hoofin it around, we are trying to book a flight to Cartegena for Tuesday at this internet cafe. It would be about 160 dollars, the boat there is like 350 and takes 5 days so we definitely want to fly. Then the pseudo plan is to maybe take another flight from Bogota to Quito, Ecuador and take a bus to Peru. The buses from Columbia to Peru are sooooooo loooooooong, and plus we don´t want to
take any buses there when it´s not day, so we´re working on that predicament right now. So I think we´ll be here for this weekend and Monday, we like our hotel okay right now but we might upgrade and go downtown where there is more stuff going on and we could get hot water and cable tv. 5 channels of fuzzy spanish are getting pretty old, even after 2 nights.

Don´t know much else. There were some shirtless hippies juggling in the middle of a highway offramp red light, which was pretty funny. At least the bums here work for their handouts.

Although one of the funniest things I forgot to mention was in Nicaragua on Big Corn Island. We were in a cab and the two twenty something dudes in the front seat were singing along to Britney Spears´ "I´m Not A Girl, Not Yet a Woman" very passionately. Awesome.

Everybody here is pretty bored slash dumb slash doesn´t want to talk to us, or at least gives us that impression.

Here is a conversation (translated to english) with a hotel clerk
today.

Me: Do you have rooms?
Her: No.
Me: For tomorrow?
Her: No...yes.
Me: How much?
Her: Fifty.
Me: Fifty?
Her: Thirty.
Me: Wait...thirty or fifty?
Her: Yes.
Me: Which?
Her: Yes.
Me: Thirty or fifty, WHICH?
Her: Thirty.

So exhausting.

We have had a few big beers and finally found a less than shitty internet cafe...since we have to be here this weekend we´ll probably take the E we brought or buy lots of cocaine or something fun. We want to have cable tv though before that happens, nothing worse than coming down from Cocaine in a dingy room trying to watch Hannah Montana in Spanish.

San Jose was by far a top favorite for me. It was a really cool city. After my last email we took it pretty easy for the rest of the day. In fact, I believe that
we didn't leave the hotel again until the next morning. It was lots of laying and laying and book reading and tv watching and enjoying the fact that we actually had a comforter and it wasn't sweltering. And hot showering. I took like three hot showers a day in our horse sized shower because it was such a treat.

Tuesday I was feeling pretty good, we woke up pretty early...as in like ten...and went to this argentina steakhouse and had steaks with baked potatoes and bread and butter and oh man...it was so good. I missed hot bread and butter and baked potatoes so much. I think when I get home I'm going to live on baked potatoes for like a week. They are so damn good.

Afterwards we did a lot of wandering. We tried to go to the top of the Holiday Inn...nicest hotel in San Jose FYI...but of course you needed a key to go anywhere cool in the elevator. There was a restaurant but it was closed and out of our price range...we could kinda peak a view of the city through like three windows but it was
only the 17th story so it wasn't that cool. We went to a bar called NASHVILLE BAR and took pictures of confederate flags and old white guys and laughed and, as per usual, the people hated us. We're not very popular wherever we go.

We went to a second bar and had another beer, but the third bar was the true treat. We ended up talking to, get this, a guy with one hand and one eye, and ADDITIONALLY he was deaf. He'd been taught sigh language by an american, and Anton took sigh language at ASU for 3 years so he was able to communicate "mas o menos", more or less. But the guy spoke spanish naturally, so when he spelled things (luckily i
know the sign language alphabet) I'd have to translate from crazy screwed up deaf guy to Anton and it was just a big triangle of mess. The guy was really nice though, we bought him quite a few beers and he brought some of his buddies over and we were all having a good time attempting to understand eachother. I danced with the crazy one handed one eyed deaf guy for a couple songs and I think it made his life. He was so happy, it made me feel pretty good. I was going all out, spinning him and holding onto his stump...definitely something that alcohol made possible. It was incredibly fun though, as weird as it sounds, haha. After we left our amigos we went to the bar we'd been at a couple nights before and ran into the same dude we'd talked to awhile, and he was even lamer this time. He was actually seriously talking about servers spitting in food, about the sense of first class tickets, about how DANGEROUS everything and everyone was, etc etc. He was just a lameo to the max. The servers spitting in food thing really got to me, I was arguing with him and he's like "oh what do you know?!" and I informed him of my years of restaurant work and he was like, oh well I guess people just don't talk about it because I know it happens. Yeah...right. Maybe at frickin Denny's, bro. What a
fool. He also had been to Europe once or twice so he considered himself a "TRAVELER", which was also annoying when he was arguing with Anton about travelers. He liked Prague though, which was his only high point for me.

Anyways, he was bald and kinda a loser, but he talked to us so that's okay. Whatever. Besides Antons triumphant fall in the shower (and a large cut on his hand) the rest of the night was uneventful.

I felt like shit the Wednesday, needless to say. We had planned to take the 10 AM bus to Puerto Viejos but we were both too lazy and while we woke up at 8 we layed in the bed and watched TV and complained about my hangover and his injured hand and foot. We caught the 4 o'clock bus to Puerto Viejos and then I almost pissed myself on the bus but we stopped just in time. We found a shittyish hotel for 18 dollars a night that has cold water and no AC and no TV but whatever, cause stuff is frickin EXPENSIVE here. 5 dollar drinks, anyone? We're used to people throwing rum at us, we were paying like 2 dollars MAX for a pina colada, here it's 5 or 6 dollars. We needed to get out of Costa Rica. ASAP.

Puerto Viejos was pretty cool though. I didn't feel too great even in night wednesday so Anton found me some weed (which isn't hard with every other person throwing it at you...definitely the most drug infested town we've seen) so that was better. He drank and I was a bit high and my stomach didn't hurt so it was great. The weed here SUCKS though. I imagine that this is completely unrefined weed that
would grow naturally in somebodys yard. It's so bad, but whatever. Once a month I guess shitty weed will still get the job done.

Thrusday we slept late and went and got some good food...we had the BEST appetizer I've ever had. It was baked garlic bulbs with a yummy green sauce and pieces of bread to dip. So ridiculously good, I was weeping.

Friday we went to a national park in Puerto Viejos, it was SO COOL! It was a 8.5
kilometer walk from one end to the other, and at the far end you just caught a bus back. We saw lots of weird insects and crab looking guys, a sloth, a toucan (woohoo! it was really far away, though, boo), and lots of monkeys. The sloth was so absurd, they really do not move at all. He was just hangin round....haaannggginnnnn rouuunnddddd. We saw two monkeys at the start and then none to the very end when we saw like 15 monkeys! It was awesome. They made lots
of funny noises and were jumping around the tree tops and such. Very cool.

We came back and showered and went to an Argentina Steakhouse. We ordered a mixed plate for two...oh my god...what a mistake this was. For me, anyways. It had two kinds of steak which were okay, chorizo sausage that was okay, ribs that were okay, but Anton made me try...oh my god...blood sausage, chicken kidney, and sweet bread which is some sort of gland in a cow! I got SO nauseated, I couldn´t eat anymore
and he had to finish 2 peoples worth of meat. It was so absurd, I really almost threw up. It was not a ginger friendly meal.

He liked it though, of course. Weirdo, haha. I ended up eating a slice of pizza and some ice cream an hour later after my stomach was settled. I think the description of blood sausage is what really put me over the edge. GROSS GROSS GROSS. The texture was revolting too...I can definitely cross that off the things to try list.

Yesterday we made our way to Panama, which was rather uneventful. It was only a few hours on bus, and 30 mins on a boat to get to where we are now, which is Bocas Del Toro on Isla Colon. This island is really cool. It´s still slightly more expensive than we´re used to, but cheaper than Costa Rica so it´s all good. We found a hotel that´s brand new (we´re literally the FIRST people to stay there) and we got it for 105 dollars for 4 nights, which isn´t bad considering it has air conditioning and hot water showers. And it´s super clean since it´s never been stayed in, PLUS we have big pillows and a nice warm blanket to hide under since our room is basically freezing cold with the air up full blast.

We went and partied it up last night. Drinking 50 cent beers and two dollar margaritas all night ´mon. All the bars closed at like 12 except ones where there was a cover, and I was already almost blacked out so we bought some meat on a stick and went back to the hotel to pass the f out.

I actually felt pretty good this morning, we woke up and had pizza AND we even bought some ranch at a grocery store so we had ranch for the first time since leaving the states. We´re so fat.

After that it was diarrhea diarrhea diarrhea. The crippling stuff is back in full force, but what else is new. We were just at the hotel taking turns...needless to say we´ve grown fairly comfortable with eachother, hahaha.

Today I bought a cute little bag so I won´t have to have my pockets stuffed all the time, which is exciting. I think that will help my pants from being absurdly stretched out and falling off when I wear my backpack for very long.

We´re going to go enjoy happy hour soon (more fifty cent beers!) and then continue exploring. We might stay a whole week if it continues to please. Then we´re want to see the Panama Canal, and take a train between Colon and Panama City. (Different from island colon). I guess Colon the city is extremely dangerous and you´re not even supposed to walk around there during the day, but you can take a bus in and take a cab directy to the train and be just fine. It´s supposed to just be a town of squatters, which might be interesting to see. Then it´ll be on to Panama City and then a flight to Columbia, where the cocaine will REALLY start flowing! Here all the coke so far has been pretty lame, plus it gets all clumpy from the humidity. I hope Columbia delivers as is promised.

I really like Panama so far...the travel book lists tons of things to do. I guess there´s a snorkeling area with tons of starfish off the coast of this island which I can´t wait to see!

Time to get drunk.