que lastima, pero adios

we fly to ny at 8pm tonight.

so, this is goodbye to south america. and goodbye to argentina. and goodbye to spanish. and goodbye to: crazy landforms, endless busrides, strange animals, new foods, palm trees (even where they dont belong), street protests, catholic holidays, missing home, aguardiente, learning history, soy de los estados unidos (pero de nueva york), tour groups, shared bathroom hostels, our tiny freezing happy apartment, cafe cortado, frescito, my godfather Cesar and his wonderful family, almuerzos, foriegn exchange students, trying to read the newspaper, trying to understand the history, big steaks, mangy dogs, long scary hikes, altitude, blue blue water, random diarhea, internet cafes, mistranslations, sony channel, itoitoito, siga no mas, relying on the kindness of strangers, big beers, the inevitable lack of loose change, daily parades, $3 gourmet meals, wondering about the euro, dutch girls traveling in pairs, bus fumes, cobblestones, colorful sweaters, feeling cold, hammock time, reading a book a week, leather jackets, feeling lost, chifas, counting money, wierd plants, snowcapped mountians, learning 10 new things every day.....

so, bye.

if only there were a cat to crazy glue myself to.....

¿podria ser???

so, as fantastic as the food is here, buenos aires suffers from a serious dearth of non argentine/italian/spanish restuarants. what it does have, however, is numerous peruvian retsurants. one fantastic one is in our neighborhood, 2 blocks from our house. since we are lazy gluttons, we like to go as often as possible. but so does everyone, and there is always a line outside. sometimes we are deterred by this, since its kinda cold here these days, and waiting outside is no fun. but last night we made a pact: we were going to go no matter what. we would go later than the other times, at 1130, and if we had to wait, we reasoned, we would buy a beer from a nearby almacen and make the best of it.

so we went, as planned. and of course there was a line of 8 other parties waiting ahead of us. so we executed our plan, and were rather contendedly waiting outside sipping from a can of quilmes, planning our menu for the evening, when i saw all the mosquitos. they were flying around, bouncing off the window, attracted by all the ceviche i guess. i should have left them alone, but lately ive been on a mosquito killing kick. see, even though it is winter, there is an invasion of mosquitos occuring now in buenos aires. its really bad, some people are getting dengue, and i dont want dengue. so, i had just finished killing 48 mosquitos in our apartment when we left for dinner. therefore, when i saw more mosquitos, a part of my brain switched off and i began to swat at them menacingly. the fact that they were sitting on the window of the restuarant did not deter me and i began, rather like a maniac, to smack the window in hopes of killing the mosquitos.

well, i didnt kill them, but i did attract the attention of the party seated close to the window. they were a part of 3 seated at a table for 5, and when i smacked the window for the fourth time, one of them stood up and waved maniacally at us. we waved back, but then realized they were waving us to come into the restaurant. we entered with our can of beer and they invited us to sit at the 2 vacant spots at their table, thus helping us to skip the line entirely. what luck!! we sat next to them and exchanged a bit of small and not so small talk. for example, they asked where we were from and if we liked buenos aires, and then the old man talking to us the most pretended like he was a cannibal. it was cool, he was very funny, if not a little bit drunk. but, by that point, so were we and we appreciated the company and the fact that we got a table quickly.

as we were seated i noticed 3 things:
a) we were sitting at a table marked "reserved" in a resturant with no other reserved tables.
b) people looked at us a lot. one guy who had been on line with us looked at me and shook his head with an ironic smile which indicated that he thought we were lucky. but, i attributed this to the fact that we had skipped the line. also a few people said good night to the man at our table when they left. but, you know, the people here are pretty friendly like that. so i didnt think much. and:
c) the waiter, who is a good waiter but always very busy, was especially attentive. how nice, i thought, he must remember us from other times weve been here.

i noticed these things, but i was really hungry and concntrated on the absolutely delicious parihuela that i had ordered, as well as anthonys ceviche and the rest of the beer from our can. at one point the man next to me looked at me and said, "you must be very hungry". i was a bit embarrassed by the way i had been eating. see, argentines are very blunt, and wont hesitate to tell you if you are eating like a pig or getting fat. i have been hearing about my incredible appetite a lot lately from my surrogate argenitine family (cesar and his family), and im beginning to get embarrassed. so, to detract attention i offered the man some of my parihuela, and anthony offered his ceviche, and the man dug into both with gusto. the he looked up at us and said, "you dont know who i am, do you?" we said no and his friend said "hes charly garcia!" to which we smiled politely and shook our heads. all 3 burst into laughter and we shrugged and ordered dessert. they left and wished us luck and we thanked them and marveled to each other about our luck in finding a table. then we went home.

today there was a big lunch with above mentioned surrogate family. we asked my cousin (ok not my cousin at all, but for lack of better word lets just call him my cousin) axel if he had ever heard of charly garcia because we had eaten dinner with him the night before. axel dropped his fork. turns out this charly garcia guy is the argentine equivalant of mick jagger. extremely influential and famous and all that. who knew???

was it really him?? well, we arent 100% sure, but i googled him today and whoever we ate with looks exactly like him, and this guy seemed a little famous or something. but then, people always think my father is eric claption and he doesnt exactly deny it, so maybe this guy was playing off the fact that he just looks like charly garcia. who knows thought. if it was, we must have looked like such assholes, sitting there with this big time famous rock superstar and drooling over our seafood. but it was really good....

anyway.

theendoftheworld; otherwise: engaged!

so, we got here to buenos aires and looked around and ate some steak. its really good here, and unbelievably cheap. we also drank a ton of wine, also startlingly cheap. we met up with my godfather, cesar, who hooked us up with an apartment right in the center of town, a block away from the congreso, if you know BsAs. its a great location because its busy and convinient without being touristy. we were very happy with it all and spent 2 weeks strolling around and drinking cafe con leches and whatnot. glorious after those endless month of horrid nescafe.

but then the weather turned bad, like torrential storms every day, and there were all of these annoying little biting bugs all over the place. one night i found 1578300057399 on our ceiling, and i killed them all, which anthony thought was crazy, but it felt good. on the 5th day of the downpour, we decided to get out of town. we went to the bus station and bought a ticket to mendoza: wine country. we figured we´d only stay a few days and come back, but in a moment of foreshowdowing, i packed 11 daily vitamins. sometimes i think i know things, without really knowing them.

so we got to mendoza, which was pretty. after a few days, however, we realized it was awfully boring. but for some inexplicable reason, we stayed on for 5 nights. 4 of those nights were spent in an intolerable hostel with a broken bathroom and absurd backpàckers. they listened to sublime and hopped around, drinking mate and headbanging. no really. most of them talked about how they were traveling forever, never going home. whatever. and to think, i used to actually like sublime.

but we went on a wine tour, which was cool. and to a pretty park. oh, and they sell wine in their mcdonalds.

anyway, for some reason we decided not to go back to BsAs immedeiately, and we went to bariloche, in the lake district of patagonia. 19 hours away by bus and completely worth it! it was the most beautiful place ever. the weather was chilly and sunny, like nice late fall, and we climbed little mountains, took gondolas, and ate ice cream. at night we cooked stews and hung out in our cozy, heated hostel. it was really great, and insprired us, after 4 nights, to see more of patagonia.

so we went to puerto madryn, but realized there was nothing to do in the town itself. so we booked a tour of nearby peninsula valdez and a bus ticket out the next morning. the landscape, though, was incredible. all flat, with a low, horizontal sky. the sun was weak and it felt like winter, but in the best way possible. and the tour was cool, we saw penguins and a whale and ostrich like things and a million other animals i didnt know existed.

then we took an extremely fancy bus back to BsAs. it had been 2 weeks since we had left and id run out of vitamins. the buses here are glorious, i actually look forward to them. so we got back here and the weather was still grey but we were happy to be back in our little apartment. we joined a gym and made a pact to get diesel before coming home.

then, a few nights after we got back, we went out to a famous cafe, cafe tortoni. nice place. then we decided to go eat steak and drink wine in a restaurant. on the way we had to cross the widest street in the world, 9 de julio, with 16 lanes and green walkways with statues and fountains. out of nowhere, as we were crossing, anthony insisted we sit down under a statue of a disembowled horse. i couldnt understand why, but it was actually a nice night and a pretty view, sitting there in the middle of the street, with the lights of cars whizzing by and the fountains and trees and all. BsAs really is very pretty, in a city sort of way. so we were sitting and anthony was acting funny, shifting around alot. we got to talking and anthony said some stuff and then took out a little black box, the velvety kind, the kind that all women, no matter how un girly they try to be, love. inside was a beautiful white gold amythest ring, and with it anthony proposed. nice guy. i, of course, accepted in .01 of a second and he put the ring on my finger and we felt very surpised and new and giddy. we sat a bit and eventually waltzed off to call parents and eat steak. life is good.

out of ecuador, with a little help from our heavily armed friends and the entire town of puerto inca (seemingly)

so, as we crossed the rocks fell all around. like, the second we stepped forward rocks fell in the exact spot in which we had just been. at one point in the crossing, we had to jump off of a newly made ledge into an abyss of red mud (all of this must be very hard to picture. its hard to explain - i really wish i had taken pictures, but at that precise moment in time, the act surely would have been life threatening and percieved as insane. plus i never post pictures on this blog, because blogger is such a bitch about it). wearing and holding all of my luggage, i was certain i would break both knees. somehow i didnt, and we made it across. but by this point i was feeling that things, in general, were very uncool. i began to whine. anthony was pretty symapthetic and understanding. he is used to seeing me utterly freak out and regress when in life threatening natural disaster type situations. but he was nice, and we had made it to the other side, and all we had left to do was beg a ride, somehow, to puerto inca. it turned out there were none of the entrepeneurs our nice friend had promised us (refer to part 2). we went running, bags and all, up to a police car that had started its way down the mountain to puerto inca and asked for a ride. they told us to ask this elderly couple with a pickup truck filled to the brim with steel rods. we asked them and they said no, then changed their minds and said yes. so we hopped in, or i should say on, on top of the steel rods and clung to the sides of the pickup as it careened down the mountain. the fog, at this point, was blinding, and we could hear little landslides all around us, and we were so precariously perched atop the steel rods, not really inside the truck at all, and the road was bumpy and slippery...it was really one of those dont-know-if-ill-make-it-out-alive situations that are becoming all too familiar. but at one point, 3 minutes into the ride, we began to laugh. i dont know why, but we laughed and laughed the whole long way down. it made the ride fun, and by the time we got down to sea level puerto inca, the weather had turned hot and humid, we were inappropriately dressed in layers of muddy fleece, and we were still laughing.

we hopped off the truck and tried to give the couple $10, which they refused to take, which was really nice. anthony got them to take $5 of it, and then we stood on the only street in the town, asking a million people a million questions about the ormeño bus that supposedly passed through the town on its way to lima. we gathered that if we went to the piaje, tollbooth, there was a chance we could flag it down as it passed. we had 2 hours to spare though, so we sat down and drank 17 cokes each. something about jumping over landslides and almost dying makes you want to drink coke. i dont know why. mr. coca cola should really consider this for his next advertising campaign.

then, wearing our layers of sweaters n fleece, we carried our bag to the piaje, which was not too far but not near either. as we approached the booths a few heavily armed guards looked at us curiously. we explained that we needed to flag down the ormeño when it passed. they looked at our muddy clothes and sweaty faces and nodded knowingly. i dont know what they knew and how they could possibly have known it, but they were nice. they offered us some pepsi but we declined, having just drunk many cokes. we threw our bags down and sat on the side of the highway, across from the tollbooth. the bus was late.

have you ever hung out at a tollbooth for a few hours?? if not, i wouldnt necessarily recommend it. especially not when its horribly hot out. or after a landslide. its just not that entertaining, not nearly as much as you think it would be. but there was a man with a suitcase full of sandwiches who was oddly hanging out there too. we talked to him for a bit, and then he jumped onto a moving bus headed for huaquillas. nice man. we also met a watermelon seller, who sold us delicious watermelon and later became an integral factor in getting us here to argentina.

finally, after 46 years, the ormeño bus pulled up. as practiced, we jumped to our feet and started waving our tickets around, jumping up and down like lunatics. the lady at the ticket booth might or might not have mumbled something to the driver about picking us up. the guard stood up. but: the bus didnt stop. luckily, our new guard friends sprung to action, running towards the bus, waving their machine guns. it stopped. the bus drivers assistant got out irritably, and motioned for us to move quickly if we wanted to get on the bus. anthony grabbed his bag and went running ahead. i tried to do the same, but my bag felt like leaden bricks, and my left hand was holding a huge chunk of watermelon. i struggled with it, trying to run, tripping over it and getting nowhere, growing desperate. suddenly my i felt one end of my bag rise, and i turned around, and there was the watermelon seller. he had easily picked up my bag and was running towards the bus with it. he got it on the bus and i barely had time to thank him as the bus began to move again. i just waved my watermelon and hoped he understood.

we sat down in our seats, crossed the border, spent the night in lima, and caught our smooth flight to buenos aires just in time. and that is how we got to argentina.

out of ecuador, with a rumbla (2)

so, yeah, we were pretty stuck. the landslide, from the bus, looked like it had formed a small hill in of red earth in the middle of the road. we couldnt tell if there were any machines working to clear it, but it looked like not. so that sucked. plus we were still stuck on the crowded, stinky bus, and im clausterphobic. not great. the man who had jumped out the window was nowhere to be found, not that we could have looked for him. we waited and fretted.

finally, the bus driver wandered back to the bus for a pee. we made some noise and he attempted to open the door. after a few minutes he got it open and, liberated, we ran towards the landslide to see what the deal was. never wise. by this point it had grown extremely foggy, and the landslide had created yet another precarious precipice. so, though we got close, we couldnt tell what was going on. we joined a mass of spectators on a small hill on the side of the road. we stayed there for awhile, and though we couldnt see much we felt relatively safe, just screwed. we passed the time by talking to a very drunk tour guide, who told us continually that there was no way we would catch our bus. we fretted a bit. after some time, a cheer went up through the crowd, and we squinted and could just barely make out the yellow of a road clearing machine (or whatever). this was progress, but it was 10.00.

then, from somewhere in the foggy nothingness, we heard a terrible sound. rocks tumbling slowly and then very quickly, alarmingly quickly. we were on a hillside and therefore, for the moment, relatively safe. but it seemed to me that the entire road would eventually be covered with boulders, and i began to feel as though we should do whatever possible to get away. many, many people seemed to have the same thought at the same time. after the second landslide, we began to see people being transported via yellow machine to the other side of the landslide. we asked around and learned that a few entrepenurial people had come from the nearest town on the other side of the landslide to pick people up. there was hope, but we would have to cross the landslide with our bags, which were:
a) locked in the bus
b) too heavy to carry to begin with, let alone to jump off of steep embankments of mud into more mud with, which is what crossing would entail.
but we met people who located our bus driver and told him we needed our bags. on the way we learned that our bus to lima passed by, but not in, the nearest town, approximately 1.5 hours after it left guyaquil. it was still possible to catch it! so we grabbed the bags and started off to cross the landslide, with the help of a possibly drunk man we met, who was very kind but made a general announcement to the spectators on the hill that "he was off to marry the gringa", meaning me, which made my cheeks burn.

but: as we started to cross the rocks began to fall near us, and it soon became obvious they were going to fall onto where we were standing. anthony began to run back towards the bus, screaming at me to run also. "i cant" i screamed, "the bags are too heavy!!"
"you. have. no. choice. RUN!!"
so, somehow i ran, bags n all. im no athelete, but i guess the boulders dropping around me were motivation enough to shape up.

we got back to the bus and stood there a while, waiting to see if it was safe to cross over the (now many) lanslides. it wasnt, but the rocks were falling all around us. so we crossed, jumping over piles, falling on our knees, and all that fun stuff...

more later....

out of ecuador, with a rumbla, part 1

the land of ecuador is in love with us, and it never wants us to leave - i have proof. first time we left, it had a temper tantrum and volcan tunguragua erupted violently, causing much distress to many people (kindly reference out of ecuador, with a bang). second time we left, ecuador sent an untrustworthy dog our way, while we were on the precipice-y lake quilatoa path, and the dog led us astray and damn near into lake quilatoa itself, where we would have remained for quite awhile if we hadn't met a belgian who led us to safety (ref. high and scary) this time, ecuador must have known that we were leaving for good, because it threw one hell of a shit fit and almost caused us to not be able to leave at all....

our plan for getting here (to argentina (lake district of patagonia at the moment)) was not flawless, but it was pretty good. flights from ecuador to buenos aires are $859720771 each, but from lima they are only $250. so we, in our grand tradition of making decisions to take interminably unbearable bus rides, decided to take the bus from guayquil to lima. 27 hours. subsequently, we made the decision to leave ecuador for good and take all our stuff with us on our way to argentina. prior to this, however, we had made the decision to stay in ecuador until we went home, and therefore had sent for a labtop and 5 jars of peanut butter, and 767 tubes of sensodyne, all of which we cannot live without. obviously, our decisions are not to be trusted, as they are usually not very well thought out. but, this is all background.

so, in order to catch the bus to lima, we needed to be in guayaquil by 1030 am. no matter, we thought, we will stay up on our last night in cuenca, take a 3am bus to guayaquil, get there by 7am, 730 latest, go have breakfast near the malecon, and hop on our bus at 1030. none of that ever happened.

on our last night, we packed frantically, realized we had so much stuff that neither of us could effectively move while wearing our backpacks, threw them down, and set off to our favorite cuencan restaurant - moliendo's. (yum. i miss moliendos.) after moliendos we went to our favorite cuencan bar, where we were joined by some friends from cedei for a farewell drink. after they left and we finished the last of the canelazo, we decided, feeling sleepy and hungover from our despedida the night before, to go home to take a nap afterall. so we did not stay up all night.

we slept and then awoke at 2am with that yucky feeling you get from taking a nap in the middle of the night and then waking up to move to argentina for an undefined amount of time. i felt very sad as i kissed and patted fatfat and schmeeberq, and i could barely manage to say goodbye to them around the huge lump in my throat. so i threw them out the window onto the patio, closed the window, strapped on my 10ton backpack, staggered backwards for a few steps, regained my footing, and left. we got to the bus station, no problem. we boarded our stinky bus, no problem. we fell asleep within minutes, no problem. all was going well, and we were on our way, our long way, to argentina.

but...

at 5am i woke up because the bus had stopped. i stretched and went back to sleep. i woke up again at 6am. we were still stopped in the same spot and i thought, *good thing we took such an early bus*. however, i did wonder why we were still stopped. only mildly curious. i heard someone mention something about a rumbla, but i didnt know what the hell that meant, because i cant speak spanish. i watched a batty old lady run to the front of the bus and slam the door which seperates the bus driver & assistant from the passengers, screaming something crazy about all of the mosquitos that were biting all of us. there were no mosquitos at all. i went back to sleep.

i woke up at 7am. we were still there, except the bus driver wasnt. it turned out that the door locked when it closed, and none of us could get off the bus. i watched with very mild interest as a male passenger opened one of the windows, jumped out, landed on his back, stood up and went rumming, screaming something about going for help. everyone nodded briefly and glared at the batty old lady. peoples cell phones rang.

at 9am it became clear that we werent going anywhere. the bad news was that we were going to miss our bus to lima, which left at 1130 from guayaquil, from which we were still 2 hours away. the good news was that we had improved our spanish vocabulary slightly, by learning the definition of rumbla -- landslide...

leaving again

ok, i know its been awhile since my last blog, but, whatever. there´s a lot that i havent blogged about that i would like to one day blog about (the rest of colombia, the jungle, carnaval, visits from ant´s folx and carly, and many other things). in the meantime, however, is that we are leaving cuenca. were off tonight on a 3am-er to guayaquil. then tomorrow at 1130 we will board an ormeño bus to lima (27 hours, if all runs smoothly). we´ll get into lima sunday afternoon, and maybe go chill in miraflores (starbucks there.) and then go sleep in the airport. on monday morning we will catch our flight to buenos aires, via santiago, if all goes well, BA being our intended destination.

so. so cuenca is a strange city to say goodbye to. we came here for the first time on july 7, and have been returning to cuenca again and again ever since. its not that cuenca is so great - its really quite flawed in inpardonable ways - but that its easy to make a life here and still feel like you are living the andean experience. meaning, yes in some ways it does cater to your average american trying to live with the comforts of home (coffee) (theres even a place here that has coffee TO GO, in paper cups and everything - anamoly) but, theres tons of markets and churches and low clouds and cooked guinea pigs. anyway, so i guess thats why we chose to come back and live here. as you probably know, we found a job here which started last september, left in mid december to travel to colombia, then begrudgingly dragged ourselves back here to spend 2 1/2 more months. its been good in many ways, and it has become home. but there are other, bigger, places to go.

but here we have cats, students, friends, favorite cafes and restauarants, and a coffee pot. these things can be hard to leave, and in all the last minute craziness and goodbyes im reminded of how it felt in july when i left ny. i know i want to leave, im leaving for many reasons, i cant wait to get to where im going, but part of me wants to crazy glue myself to one of the cats and stay. the truth is that sometimes even now, 8 months into it, i am scared to be here in south america, so far from my family and friends. but here in cuenca im never scared. i know where to go and what to do, i recognize people i see in the street and even say hi, and when i get tired i go home and bother the cats and brew some coffee. its home, and i want to stay.

but i wont. and when i get to buenos aires, i´ll let you know how it is. i mean it this time.

dontcallitacomeback

bloggy bloo.

so, on christmas day we went to taganga, a fishing village 15 mins away from sta. marta. the ride there was pretty, a camioneta thing took us over a hill and we saw the deep blue bay of taganga from above, set against brown scrubby hills. not bad. when we descended we hopped out of the camioneta, bought a bottle of Medellin Rum, and made for 1 of the 9000 juice stands. in taganga they put lots of ice in their fruit juices which, though refreshing, dilutes the taste somewhat. no matter, we had the rum to make up for that. ant ordered a juice made from grenadina, which is an interesting fruit of pomegranate-like seeds. makes a brown, mildly sweet kind of juice. i stuck with maracuya (passion fruit) - mandarin. we found a table and sat there in our bathing suits for a while, drinking our juice-cum-cocktails and taking pictures. after a while, we decided to go for a swim. the beautiful bay was actually not such a great beach, mainly because it was overrun with urinating children, and there was a supposedly magnificent beach a hike or boat ride away, but we felt lazy and spoiled by all the great beaches we had been spending time at, and opted to run quickly in and out of the urine/saltwater and go eat a christmas lunch of giant fried fish with patacones (tostones at home) and panela (raw sugarcane) rice and beer. it was lovely and followed by more juice. we spent the rest of the day watching people dance drunkenly in the fried fish restaurants and a guy throw up. a nice day in taganga - merry christmas!

after taganga we felt we had had enough of the humidity of the coast and decided to go into the santa martas, the largest coastal mountain range in the world, whatever that means. we had planned to go to this place called minca, which was in lonely planet. but then we found out, through our hostel in santa marta, about this other place in the mountians that is not in lonely planet. seeing as we are making every effort to not use lonely planet (its colombia edition was unforgivably abomidable and misleading. actually, we traded it in for the footprints guide to south america 2006, also pretty bad. there is a serious dearth of decent travel books - somthing must and will be done about this), we opted to go to the other place. which was good. getting there was interesting. since it is not in lonely planet, and therefore not on the lp loop, it gets less tourists than other places, and therefore there is no transportation infastructure. so we took a local bus to a rndom point 20 mins outside of santa marta. we had been told to then round a corner, walk 2 blocks, and look for a taxi stand where we could find a taxi that would take us directly up the mountain to the finca we were staying at. we rounded, walked, but all we found were 2 guys standing in the shade of an overhang with motorcycles propped up against them. we asked them where the taxi stand was and they replied that they were the taxi stand. of course. by this point, i should have known. unfortunately, i hadnt accounted for a motorcycle ride and had brought all of my luggage with me, instead of leaving my bigger backpack at the hotel as i should have done. the "taxi" driver was unphased. i would simply have to wear both bags on the motorcycle, he told me (i tend to travel utter-dork style, with my bigger backpack on my back and my smaller one on my chest. dumb. but i like having my hands free). i really couldnt understand how that would work on a completely uphill ride, with my backpack weighing, well, alot, and having never ridden a motorcycle before, not knowing where exactly to hold on. i envisioned disaster, and convinced the taxista to prop up my bigger bag between the handlebars. not the safest, but better than my other option. and all this sans a helmet. i was glad my mom wasnt there.

the ride turned out to be quite pretty, actually. it was straight up a winding dirt road, but then, what isnt? i didnt fall off, and my bag did only once. after 25 minutes of dirt blowing in my eyes, we stopped in front of this small house. this was our finca. the small family who lived there came out to greet us, sat us down and gave us orange juice. we called after our taxi drivers to please, please come and pick us up 2 days later, in the morning. they nodded unconvincingly and sped away. we shrugged and sat, drinking our tasty juice and sort of shooting the shit with the nice man of the family who sat with us conversationally, but was seemingly too out of it for conversation. after a little while, the family showed us to our room, we dropped our stuff off and set out for a walk.

the surroundings were very beautiful. half a step away was a clear narrow river with a strong current. i know it was strong because i nearly died walking across it repeatedly to get to the other side where there pruportedly was a natural jacuzzi. and there sort of was, except it small pool created by a waterfall splashing down the surrounding high, smooth rocks. it was cold, not hot, but that was fine because it was colombia. we entertained ourselves for three days by sliding down the waterfall and using it as a shower. oh, and drinking strong colombian coffee in hammocks, served to us by the nice family of the finca. yum. truly the antidote to 5 months of nescafe.

so, it was a great time and very beautiful and after 3 days i felt quite ready to leave this nice family and get back to cartagena, where there is a bit more to do. on the morning we were supposed to leave we were ready and waiting for our trusty motorcycles to come and get us and take us down the mountain to civilization (read: juice stands), although i knew, somewhere in the back of my mind, that our motorcycles should not be relied on. and i was right. we waited for them for over an hour before accepting the fact that they were not coming and we would have to walk back to santa marta. really, it wasnt as far as it seemed, and it was all downhill, but it was HOT and we had all of our luggage with us. with our backpacks strapped to both sides and no protection from the sun (well, we had caps on) we trudged down the mountain(s?), silently sweating through our shirts. it wasnt all that bad until we got lost at the end. eventually we made it to a main road, and hopped a local camioneta which took us to the santa marta boardwalk where we chugged another juice and crammed into another camioneta, packed beyond maximum capacity, which took us to the bus station where we boarded a big, cold (air conditioned) bus heading back, again, to cartagena....