Monday, May 11th, 2015

I slept well and woke up at 6:30am.  I took 2 Excedrin Migraine and went back to bed finally waking/getting up at 8am.  (It only took about 15 minutes for my sore back to start feeling better.)  I woke Teresa at 8:30.

I just remembered what Albero, the one from the finca, told me a couple weeks ago.  I asked him about the “indians” I would see sitting on blankets in El Poblado begging for pocket change.  He confirmed they are Colombian indigenous people but added that their man takes their money to buy liquor.  I guess that explains why I never see any men sitting there.

Well, I thought we were leaving about 10am for Envigado to wait for a doctor’s appointment for me followed by Teresa’s massage appointment about 4 or 5pm.  She talked to the masseuse and now we are going to Envigado tomorrow because she has her massage appointment at 2pm today.

I thought I was going to receive $1500 for the sale of my old townhouse but now I understand that isn’t going to happen.  It turns out the prospective buyer only wanted to purchase it for investment purposes and then rent it.  But the condominium association only allows owners to live in the townhouses so the sale won’t go thru.

I posted an email followed by a couple of attached URLs from David Lee, the author of Medellin Living.  Unfortunately I posted them in the reverse order in which you should read them but that shouldn’t detract from what they have to say.

Before that, the Colombia: Sam Zell May be Onto Something Here posting is from another gringo on Expat Exchange.

We left the finca at 12:35 and 2 of the killer dogs challenged us at the trail.

We only had to wait 5 minutes for a direct bus to El Poblado where we took a taxi to the “spa” for Teresa’s 2^nd massage.  We were 20 minutes early so we walked into the small mall across the street where we found a Cosechas fruit drink store.  We each had a large smoothie with banana, mango, papaya, yogurt and milk for 12,800.  Teresa went across the street for her 2^nd massage and I waited in the food court and read more of my book. 

I finished James Michener’s 1,069 page book The Source and downloaded the 457 page book Enigma: The Battle for the Code.

Teresa paid another 100mil for her massages and I paid her back later.  She came back at 3:45.  We took a taxi to San Diego where Teresa talked to someone at Bon Bonite about her purse but I understood it didn’t help.  I took out some cash from the mall’s ATM and then walked outside and at a Gana store I added 20mil to my cell phone.

We stopped in their Exito store where we bought a few things including ribs and ground beef.  I asked the butcher if he spoke English – no.  I asked a young lady waiting for us to finish if she spoke English – yes.  I told her my concern that we are buying meat and it won’t be in a refrigerator for probably another 2 hours.  She said she understood because she has lived in the US but she said it should be okay.

We took a bus to Envigado where we visited her tailor for a few minutes and then took a taxi to the highway.  After only about 5 minutes we got on a TraTam bus but there weren’t any seats so we stood most of the way until someone else got off.  Without any delay we got past the spot where 3 of the 5 lanes are closed.  

We were surprised when we started up the sideroad when Tony was there to greet us.  Teresa was not happy about that; maybe now we’ll have to lock up Peter and Tony before we leave the finca.  We walked up and down the hill and the killer dogs were waiting for us but they didn’t enter the path until we had passed.  We were back at the finca by 7:35, 2 hours and 20 minutes after the meat was taken out of the Exito refrigerator.

I received an email that I have more “documents” waiting for me at MBE.  That totals 2, I hope one of them is my new credit card and the other is probably my Chess Life magazine for May.

T-shirt of the day: Let’s make some noise.