Sunday, May 3rd, 2015

I slept well until getting up to use the bathroom at 4:20.  I was still awake when the alarm went off at 5:30.

I heard that Floyd Mayweather Jr. won the fight last night and took home $180,000,000 and Manny Pacquiao took home $120,000,000.

I put on my sandals, shorts and a t-shirt, the 3 of us left the finca at 7:20am and got past the killer dogs undetected.  We took a bus to La Estrella metro station, took the metro 15 stops north to the Caribe station, walked a block and arrived at Terminal Norte at 8:30.  We paid 39mil for 3 tickets at window 19.  The bus left exactly at 9am, we had seats with extra legroom just behind the driver, I stretched out and was quickly asleep.  I slept for 30-45 minutes and we stopped first at San Jeronimo and arrived at Sopetran by 10:15.  It was hot but I felt pretty comfortable in my summer clothes.  We walked around, finally found a store Teresa was looking for and we bought meat and some vegetables for about 20mil.  As soon as we walked outside we stepped into an old private car which took us on a 10 minute ride to the finca for 8mil.

Let me describe the finca.  Inside the first fence there are a few cows walking around.  Not the kind we are used to seeing in the states; these look like what you see walking around freely in documentaries of India.  Inside the next fence they have the main building with what look like chicken coops behind it.  There are a few chickens and at least 2 roosters and occasionally you hear them competing with each other.  They also have 2 dogs and at least 3 new kittens.  The 2 story house was nice and is filled with a lot of old black and white photos.  In the front of the house is a large swimming pool with shallow and deep ends but without any water inside.  There is also a small gazebo in one corner.

We were greeted by Teresa’s friend Elda (she’s about 70), her housekeeper, the housekeeper’s son, and a woman of about 30 who doesn’t speak but mainly grunts.  I’m not sure if this was Elda’s daughter or granddaughter but she’s obviously part of the family.  It appears she can’t move her tongue and the closest to words I heard was something similar to mama and bebe, which she repeated many times.  She gave me the thumbs up numerous times with occasional fist bumps.

We had lunch of beans, beef, and salad.  As usual the beef was pretty tough.  Elda’s 72-year old brother Albero finally arrived.  He speaks English having studied in England years ago.  His English was very good despite not having spoken it for what he says is 30 years.  He says he sometimes watches movies in English.  He told me Colombia is still a dangerous place to live.  He thought the previous president, Uribe, did a better job for the country than the current president, Santos, but he’s already served the maximum 2 terms.

We left about 5:15 and at the bus stop I saw a sign that showed the last returning bus leaving at 6:30.  After a wait we finally had tickets but Teresa explained that while we had tickets we might not have seats.  At 6pm we got seats on the minibus and it left at 6:15.  We moved quickly until we got close to Medellin and then there was bumper to bumper traffic.  We finally got back to the bus station at 8pm.

We took the metro to Envigado where Laura left us to spend the night in her grandmother’s apartment.  We had a long wait at the highway and finally got the last 2 seats on a minibus back to the finca.  We got past the killer dogs undetected and were back just before 10pm.

I took my sleeping pills at 11pm and we went to bed.

T-shirt of the day: This is the beginning of anything you want.