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.
Sunday, August 31, 2008
Saturday, August 30, 2008
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.
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.
Thursday, August 28, 2008
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.
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.
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
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.
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.
Monday, August 25, 2008
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.
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.
Saturday, August 23, 2008
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!
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!
Friday, August 22, 2008
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.
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.
Thursday, August 21, 2008
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.
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.
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
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?
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?
Sunday, August 17, 2008
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...
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...
Thursday, August 14, 2008
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.
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.
Sunday, August 10, 2008
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.
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.
Monday, August 4, 2008
Nothing too exciting happened on Big Corn after my last email. I wasn´t feeling all that super so we just slept and slept and went out of the hotel like once a day and slept some more. And ate ice cream. I think one day we were only awake for like 7 hours...pretty awesome. The island is really cool though, there just isn´t all that much to do but relax.
Thursday morning we woke up at 5:00 or so to catch the boat back to Bluefields. It was not great, but I guess it was a lot better than it usually is! We had to sit on the side of the boat on a bench as the inside cabin was completely full of small children and luggage. Very annoying and smelly. The guys sitting next to us told us that when they took the boat out there they got just drenched because of the waves, but we lucked out and it was pretty mellow seas. We stayed pretty dry except for our butts from water running down the bench from the front, but that was tolerable. It took like 5 and a half hours though, which was a drag.
We had decided to stay in Bluefields Thursday night due to the bus schedule and timing and stuff... It is an alright city. We found a hotel that was pretty cheap and went out to eat. When we came back I was delighted to find that our bed was covered in ants! (I realized this as I was reading The Godfather and an ant started crawling out of the pages.) Luckily I realized before we got in...oh man. We switched rooms which ended up really nice because our new room had two outlets so we could have TV AND Fan, which our first room lacked, and our bathroom was far less dingy and scary. Though it was still extremely dingy, don´t get me wrong.
We had to wake up on Friday at like 4:45 to catch the speedboats back to El Rama. It was so terrible. By far the worst part of any traveling up to that point...(more on that later). The first boat we took was covered and less overloaded and higher up from the water, this time around we were in an open boat that was extremely overloaded (the water was like 6 inches down from the top of the boat) and I just had to white knuckle it the whole time. I was so sure that we were going to flip, and it didn´t help that Anton told me that it´s not totally uncommon for that to happen. Oh. My. God. We survived though, and besides a butt that ached like the dickens we were alright. When we got to El Rama we caught a bus back to Managua and then a bus to Rivas. Our goal was to make it to Costa Rica but I was so so beat and so we stayed in Rivas. We found a pretty decent hotel (we splurged and spent 20 dollars, as opposed to the usual 10ish) that had fairly clean looking inside and a TV and a nice fan. It also had a German Shepard outside our room which I liked. We went and had hot dogs and fries and tacos at another restaurant (we´d grown quite sick of the standard meat and white rice and fried plantains that you find EVERYWHERE) and had some beers and it was alright. We went to one other bar that was pretty absurd (mad pounding music and strobe lights, plus it was empty which made it even dumber) and went back to pass out.
Saturday we woke up at like 5:30 and caught a bus to the border. That was a pretty quick ride, and we passed into Costa Rica (town was Peñas Blancas) without incident. Then we got on a bus to San Jose. This was at 8:30 in the morning, and the bus was supposed to take 5 hours.
We arrived in San Jose at 9:00 PM. PM. Twelve and a half hours later.
1. First, a wasted guy was on the bus. We´d drove for like 15 minutes when they went to collect fare, and he started argueing and being all disruptive. He ended up throwing his empty beer can at the bus driver, who then stopped and had two police officers get on and forcibly eject the guy. And it was VERY forcibly. We were in the very back row and he was like 2 ahead of us...there was luckily a back side exit because this guy was clinging to anything he could reach to fight the cops. One of them even drew his gun and I was thinking they were going to pìstol whip him but it didn´t go that far...it took them like 2 or 3 minutes to get him off though. He was like clinging to the bus door frame and flipping out. So that was exciting.
2. The bridge that crosses a main river got all screwed up (we still haven´t found out exactly what happened) but we were going to have to go the long way around, which entailed turning around and taking a different path, adding like 3 hours. Okay, that´s fine. Whatever.
3. The bus driver got lost. Like extremely lost. Like adding multiple hours lost. I think he ended up doing 3 U turns within the space of a few hours, it was so frustrating.
4. We got to San Ramon, which was only an hour or so (maybe a bit more) from San Jose. There were two buses broken down completely blocking one road, and the other road was only for cars, not for buses. So we had to wait for like an hour for that to get cleared and figured out.
5. THEN if all of this wasn´t bad enough, like all of the passengers of one of the broken buses came on OUR bus. It was absurdly packed, like wall to wall people, and of course the lady with like 8 frickin kids sits next to us. It was so terrible and cramped and packed, I was freaking out. But then after awhile the whole situation was so absurd that we just had to laugh at it. It was like out of a movie, everyone was against us!
But we prevailed! And twelve and a half hours after leaving Peñas Blancas we arrived in San Jose. We took a cab to one hotel and it was like 30 dollars with no private bath, so we wandered around and found another one that was 20. PLUS it´s by far the nicest hotel we´ve stayed at on the whole trip. It doesn´t have air conditioning but it´s really cool here so it´s not necessary, it has hot water, a nice bed with a big fluffy comforter (we´re used to getting one sheet...one place I used a towel for an additional blanket) PLUS it´s the handicapped room so it´s pretty big. The shower is literally the size of a horse. It´s so amusing. And it has a lovely ramp to get into the bathroom, hahaha. But there´s not many bugs, etc. Plus Anton has taught me how to kill mosquitos so the ones that are there don´t last for long. They get clapped!
Saturday night we manned up and got cleaned up and went to El Pueblo. El Pueblo is a group of bars and restaurants and such, It´s all one area though (kinda like Mill) but way more compact and there´s actually a wall all around it and everyone gets searched to come in. We had a good meal (Anton had bacon wrapped steak with mushrooms and mashed potatoes of which I stole bites from, I had steak and chicken and bacon tacos. They were so fatty and delicious, haha.) Then we set out to get wasted after our ridiculous day. All of the bars (save like 2 or 3) were playing just POUNDING music, to the point where we would have to scream to hear eachother, which isn´t our style. We went to the few in which you could hear yourself think. Anton had his mohawk done (and he had the sides reshaved so now it´s even more ridiculous looking) and this old couple at one of the bars just loved it. They were freaking out, and talked to us about it for about 20 minutes. Muy funny.
After having like 6 tequila shots and a couple beers and still not being drunk we began to grow suspect. Then we ordered more tequila shots and closely examined it. We estimate that at the MAX there was a 50 50 ratio of tequila to water. It was half clear, didn´t smell very strong, and was super easy to drink (i was just thinking i´d finally gotten good at not pulling a ridiculous face after taking shots). We asked a few of the bartenders and they´d get really offended and stuff. From then on we ordered ¨Tequila y agua, por favor¨. It didn´t really matter though, if you drink enough of them you still get drunk. Anton saw some guy try to get in a fight and nearly fall over from being so drunk, which I guess was pretty amusing.
We stayed till it closed at 3AM and then cabbed it back home. We´d drank like 5 vodka and red bulls each (though they use an energy drink called MAXX that we think is even stronger, as we were just nuttily wired) and so we were up stupidly late (although it also had to do with the 4 line bag of blow we bought on the way home) and the neighbors were pounding on the walls cause I can´t control the volume of my voice, as per usual.
I didn´t feel like a million dollars yesterday, but we slept till like 2 so it was okay. I demanded pizza and we found a really good by the (massive) slice place and I had two ham and mushroom slices which made me feel infinitely better. Sweet grease. We went to another bar and I watched Anton drink some and eat dinner. I was not feeling like drinking at all, so we went to a 24 hour pharmacy and got pain killers and muscle relaxers and had a nice cocktail. It was pretty sweet, I felt much better and also just like floaty and talkative and dumb. We returned to the same bar and I had a few beers and we talked to this guy that is from Seattle for like 2 hours. He was okay, kinda lame but we tolerated it since he spoke english. Then we went to sleep in the wonderful bed of comfort.
We were going to only stay 2 or 3 nights but I really like it here so we´re going to stay 4 now. Not only is the hotel nice, but San Jose in general is just a really really cool city. It has a lot more of a NY San Fran vibe going on, especially in the area we´re in. There´s a big pedestrian mall area and lots of people and bars and restaurants everywhere. It pretty much hasn´t stopped raining since we got here, but it is really nice and cool so we don´t care. Plus we have our trusty umbrella that we got for like a dollar in Guatemala. This afternoon was pretty ridiculous though, there was so much thunder and it was like a bucket being poured on the city.
We found a book exchange on Big Corn and got 4 more books...I read one and it was SO BAD. So bad. It was a murder mystery thing and it was just horrid. Now I´m reading one about Anthrax and small pox and germ warfare which is pretty good. I finished the Kite Runner (which was really sad but good) and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (which was decent, Anton didn´t like it at all) and I also read The Godfather (which was AWESOME). I can´t even keep track how many books we´ve gone through. We just came from a book store and I got a Sherlock Holmes book that Anton said is really good, it´s called The Hound of Baskervilles. Its so small though, I´m going to read it in like 3 hours. Owell.
From here we´re going to go to Puerto Viejo and hopefully see some cool animals on the way. We are still having a great time, I´m not homesick in the least which is weird since I was dying to get home after 3 weeks in Europe. I guess that says alot about the company, and the less frantic travel pace. Plus with email it´s pretty alright. I can see how people do this for a year or two at a time and can´t wait till I have enough money to do that.
Thursday morning we woke up at 5:00 or so to catch the boat back to Bluefields. It was not great, but I guess it was a lot better than it usually is! We had to sit on the side of the boat on a bench as the inside cabin was completely full of small children and luggage. Very annoying and smelly. The guys sitting next to us told us that when they took the boat out there they got just drenched because of the waves, but we lucked out and it was pretty mellow seas. We stayed pretty dry except for our butts from water running down the bench from the front, but that was tolerable. It took like 5 and a half hours though, which was a drag.
We had decided to stay in Bluefields Thursday night due to the bus schedule and timing and stuff... It is an alright city. We found a hotel that was pretty cheap and went out to eat. When we came back I was delighted to find that our bed was covered in ants! (I realized this as I was reading The Godfather and an ant started crawling out of the pages.) Luckily I realized before we got in...oh man. We switched rooms which ended up really nice because our new room had two outlets so we could have TV AND Fan, which our first room lacked, and our bathroom was far less dingy and scary. Though it was still extremely dingy, don´t get me wrong.
We had to wake up on Friday at like 4:45 to catch the speedboats back to El Rama. It was so terrible. By far the worst part of any traveling up to that point...(more on that later). The first boat we took was covered and less overloaded and higher up from the water, this time around we were in an open boat that was extremely overloaded (the water was like 6 inches down from the top of the boat) and I just had to white knuckle it the whole time. I was so sure that we were going to flip, and it didn´t help that Anton told me that it´s not totally uncommon for that to happen. Oh. My. God. We survived though, and besides a butt that ached like the dickens we were alright. When we got to El Rama we caught a bus back to Managua and then a bus to Rivas. Our goal was to make it to Costa Rica but I was so so beat and so we stayed in Rivas. We found a pretty decent hotel (we splurged and spent 20 dollars, as opposed to the usual 10ish) that had fairly clean looking inside and a TV and a nice fan. It also had a German Shepard outside our room which I liked. We went and had hot dogs and fries and tacos at another restaurant (we´d grown quite sick of the standard meat and white rice and fried plantains that you find EVERYWHERE) and had some beers and it was alright. We went to one other bar that was pretty absurd (mad pounding music and strobe lights, plus it was empty which made it even dumber) and went back to pass out.
Saturday we woke up at like 5:30 and caught a bus to the border. That was a pretty quick ride, and we passed into Costa Rica (town was Peñas Blancas) without incident. Then we got on a bus to San Jose. This was at 8:30 in the morning, and the bus was supposed to take 5 hours.
We arrived in San Jose at 9:00 PM. PM. Twelve and a half hours later.
1. First, a wasted guy was on the bus. We´d drove for like 15 minutes when they went to collect fare, and he started argueing and being all disruptive. He ended up throwing his empty beer can at the bus driver, who then stopped and had two police officers get on and forcibly eject the guy. And it was VERY forcibly. We were in the very back row and he was like 2 ahead of us...there was luckily a back side exit because this guy was clinging to anything he could reach to fight the cops. One of them even drew his gun and I was thinking they were going to pìstol whip him but it didn´t go that far...it took them like 2 or 3 minutes to get him off though. He was like clinging to the bus door frame and flipping out. So that was exciting.
2. The bridge that crosses a main river got all screwed up (we still haven´t found out exactly what happened) but we were going to have to go the long way around, which entailed turning around and taking a different path, adding like 3 hours. Okay, that´s fine. Whatever.
3. The bus driver got lost. Like extremely lost. Like adding multiple hours lost. I think he ended up doing 3 U turns within the space of a few hours, it was so frustrating.
4. We got to San Ramon, which was only an hour or so (maybe a bit more) from San Jose. There were two buses broken down completely blocking one road, and the other road was only for cars, not for buses. So we had to wait for like an hour for that to get cleared and figured out.
5. THEN if all of this wasn´t bad enough, like all of the passengers of one of the broken buses came on OUR bus. It was absurdly packed, like wall to wall people, and of course the lady with like 8 frickin kids sits next to us. It was so terrible and cramped and packed, I was freaking out. But then after awhile the whole situation was so absurd that we just had to laugh at it. It was like out of a movie, everyone was against us!
But we prevailed! And twelve and a half hours after leaving Peñas Blancas we arrived in San Jose. We took a cab to one hotel and it was like 30 dollars with no private bath, so we wandered around and found another one that was 20. PLUS it´s by far the nicest hotel we´ve stayed at on the whole trip. It doesn´t have air conditioning but it´s really cool here so it´s not necessary, it has hot water, a nice bed with a big fluffy comforter (we´re used to getting one sheet...one place I used a towel for an additional blanket) PLUS it´s the handicapped room so it´s pretty big. The shower is literally the size of a horse. It´s so amusing. And it has a lovely ramp to get into the bathroom, hahaha. But there´s not many bugs, etc. Plus Anton has taught me how to kill mosquitos so the ones that are there don´t last for long. They get clapped!
Saturday night we manned up and got cleaned up and went to El Pueblo. El Pueblo is a group of bars and restaurants and such, It´s all one area though (kinda like Mill) but way more compact and there´s actually a wall all around it and everyone gets searched to come in. We had a good meal (Anton had bacon wrapped steak with mushrooms and mashed potatoes of which I stole bites from, I had steak and chicken and bacon tacos. They were so fatty and delicious, haha.) Then we set out to get wasted after our ridiculous day. All of the bars (save like 2 or 3) were playing just POUNDING music, to the point where we would have to scream to hear eachother, which isn´t our style. We went to the few in which you could hear yourself think. Anton had his mohawk done (and he had the sides reshaved so now it´s even more ridiculous looking) and this old couple at one of the bars just loved it. They were freaking out, and talked to us about it for about 20 minutes. Muy funny.
After having like 6 tequila shots and a couple beers and still not being drunk we began to grow suspect. Then we ordered more tequila shots and closely examined it. We estimate that at the MAX there was a 50 50 ratio of tequila to water. It was half clear, didn´t smell very strong, and was super easy to drink (i was just thinking i´d finally gotten good at not pulling a ridiculous face after taking shots). We asked a few of the bartenders and they´d get really offended and stuff. From then on we ordered ¨Tequila y agua, por favor¨. It didn´t really matter though, if you drink enough of them you still get drunk. Anton saw some guy try to get in a fight and nearly fall over from being so drunk, which I guess was pretty amusing.
We stayed till it closed at 3AM and then cabbed it back home. We´d drank like 5 vodka and red bulls each (though they use an energy drink called MAXX that we think is even stronger, as we were just nuttily wired) and so we were up stupidly late (although it also had to do with the 4 line bag of blow we bought on the way home) and the neighbors were pounding on the walls cause I can´t control the volume of my voice, as per usual.
I didn´t feel like a million dollars yesterday, but we slept till like 2 so it was okay. I demanded pizza and we found a really good by the (massive) slice place and I had two ham and mushroom slices which made me feel infinitely better. Sweet grease. We went to another bar and I watched Anton drink some and eat dinner. I was not feeling like drinking at all, so we went to a 24 hour pharmacy and got pain killers and muscle relaxers and had a nice cocktail. It was pretty sweet, I felt much better and also just like floaty and talkative and dumb. We returned to the same bar and I had a few beers and we talked to this guy that is from Seattle for like 2 hours. He was okay, kinda lame but we tolerated it since he spoke english. Then we went to sleep in the wonderful bed of comfort.
We were going to only stay 2 or 3 nights but I really like it here so we´re going to stay 4 now. Not only is the hotel nice, but San Jose in general is just a really really cool city. It has a lot more of a NY San Fran vibe going on, especially in the area we´re in. There´s a big pedestrian mall area and lots of people and bars and restaurants everywhere. It pretty much hasn´t stopped raining since we got here, but it is really nice and cool so we don´t care. Plus we have our trusty umbrella that we got for like a dollar in Guatemala. This afternoon was pretty ridiculous though, there was so much thunder and it was like a bucket being poured on the city.
We found a book exchange on Big Corn and got 4 more books...I read one and it was SO BAD. So bad. It was a murder mystery thing and it was just horrid. Now I´m reading one about Anthrax and small pox and germ warfare which is pretty good. I finished the Kite Runner (which was really sad but good) and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (which was decent, Anton didn´t like it at all) and I also read The Godfather (which was AWESOME). I can´t even keep track how many books we´ve gone through. We just came from a book store and I got a Sherlock Holmes book that Anton said is really good, it´s called The Hound of Baskervilles. Its so small though, I´m going to read it in like 3 hours. Owell.
From here we´re going to go to Puerto Viejo and hopefully see some cool animals on the way. We are still having a great time, I´m not homesick in the least which is weird since I was dying to get home after 3 weeks in Europe. I guess that says alot about the company, and the less frantic travel pace. Plus with email it´s pretty alright. I can see how people do this for a year or two at a time and can´t wait till I have enough money to do that.
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