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.