Tuesday, January 19th, 2016

I fell asleep quickly and didn’t wake up until 5:30.  I unconnected the recharged cell phone and brought it back to bed.  We got a call at 6am.  I understood it was Une but they called for a different reason than our lack of internet.  I finally fell back asleep about 7:30 and woke/got up at 9am.

Still no internet.

We left the finca at 11:25, got past the G-dogs undetected and were on a Fredonia bus after only a 2 minute wait.

Today I saw that they are working on the roadway on this side of the new bridge.

We got off at Poblado station and took a taxi to the Guayabal neighborhood.  The business is called Tecnoquímicas and is at Carrera 51 #14-249 but it was 12:30 and they were closed for lunch until 2pm.

We stopped at a small restaurant just down the block where I had their pork plate with a glass of juice and Teresa had Ajiaco soup and juice.  When we finished it was only 1:20 so we killed some time by sharing a slice of carrot cake (prepackaged) and a glass of milk.  Everything came to 19,500 (about $6).  Incredible isn’t it?

They had 2 televisions and I saw that the Colombian Peso closed at 3,295 to the US dollar.

At 1:55 we walked back up the street and Teresa stopped at a tent set up by the police.  They were stopping all cars entering the area and checking their trunk even looking under the mat.  They did let all motorcycles through without checking them so they must have been looking for something relatively large.

Inside their office we gave the receptionist 8 empty boxes of my Isoklon sleeping pills with their purchase receipts.  She asked the name of my doctor who prescribed them but I couldn’t remember his name (even though I had it in my cell phone).  After about a 5 minute wait a lady came out and gave us 8 new refilled boxes.  What a deal!  So we saved 63,900 pesos * 8 = 511,200 or about $160.

We took a taxi to the Exito on Calle 10 in Poblado where I picked up a couple pairs of shorts.  They had t-shirts but they were charging 49mil for them (about $14) so I told Teresa I could get t-shirts a couple blocks from the Hotel Golden Palermo for about 15mil.  We picked up some food items (including BBQ sauce and sweet relish for me) and while we were waiting in line Teresa decided that what we had would be too heavy so we left the shorts behind.  Huh?

Once outside Teresa proclaimed it was too early (4:30) to be in the hot sun and she wanted to wait a couple more hours.  We stopped at Mimo’s where we each had a Banana Royal sundae for 10,300.  When we finished it was 5:15 and she said she was ready to go.  We took a taxi to the highway and after a 10 minute wait were on a Fredonia bus back to the finca.  Traffic was very heavy and it took 55 minutes to get past the u-turn back to Medellin.

We waited about 10 minutes in Caldas before continuing on to Salinas (the name of the area for the fincas).  We were met by the black dog and I gave him 2 dog biscuits.  We got back to the finca at 6:40.  It took us a total of 90 minutes from the Poblado station to get back to the finca.

We still don’t have an internet connection so we’re going to have to call the hotel tomorrow to make our reservation for the first 2 nights for Teresa and I.

On Direct TV we saw that the peso closed at 3312 to the dollar.

I took 2 sleeping pills with my Tamsulosin at 10:30 and went to bed at 11pm.

T-shirt of the day: Darling never let me go.