Tuesday, July 28th, 2015

I had another bad night.  I slept for an hour from 11pm to midnight.  I slept a few more hours from around 4am finally waking/getting up at 9:15 still feeling tired.

I immediately took an Excedrin Migraine to relieve the discomfort in my head and soon was feeling much better.  I’ve recently discovered that for me taking one tablet usually works as well as taking two.

My son sent me his flight itinerary.  He’s arriving on Friday, August 7^th at 7:30pm.  If his flight lands on time he’ll probably be through customs and baggage claim by about 8:15.  (We’ll probably have him withdraw some cash from an ATM while still at the airport.)  We’ll take a bus to Medellin and arrive about 9:30 (estimating a 15 minute wait before leaving the airport).  We’ll take a taxi to the hotel and drop off his suitcase.  If he isn’t too tired we can head to Parque Lleras so he can begin exploring the Medellin nightlife – it will be Friday night so things should be jumping.  Fiesta de las Flores will be going on so there will be more people in Medellin than usual; and probably more partying.

His friend Michael is arriving several days earlier and Jim told me that he has a friend here so maybe we won’t be seeing him until we take Jim to his hotel.

Teresa told me she really liked the quality of the ground beef (carne molida) that we got at Carulla.  It’s probably also more expensive than Exito or Merkepaisa but that’s okay.

I saw a couple butterflies outside with wings that looked like leaves.

We left the finca at 3pm and got past the killer dogs undetected.  We only had to wait 5 minutes for a Tratam bus.  Teresa said this is the 3pm bus out of Amaga so I guess they come by every hour or maybe half hour.

The taxi driver dropped us off at Todo Drogas where I bought a package of Isoklon for 60,900, a package of Imodium for 12mil and 8 Dristan tablets for 4mil.  The total came to 76,900 ($27).  

I think we took a different route to Exito than ever before because first we saw a Cosechas juice store where Teresa had a nice juice and I had the special juice to treat colds which contained ginger, honey, lemon, and orange juice.  Boy was it bitter!  I tried to tell myself that it’s for medicinal purposes.

A little further away Teresa stopped and looked at some costume jewelery.  Next to it was a store called Almacen Borneo – Borneo Warehouse and it advertised Accessories for Men.  There were a lot of knives and things.  I was very surprised to see a large container of pepper spray for 42mil ($15).  I wonder how much it will cost in the US; I asked my son to bring 3 bottles from the police supply store in Chicago.

Teresa walked further between the two stores, I followed her and found it was the entrance to a small mall.  There were some interesting stores including one selling Super Nintendo cartridges.

We walked a couple more blocks and then entered what I can only describe as a Hookah store.  They were everywhere with prices from 30mil ($12) to as much as 170mil ($68).  Teresa found 3 little bracelets she liked which I bought for 24mil ($9.50).

We walked a few more blocks to Exito where we bought packages of granola, a bag of powdered milk, Raid for cockroaches & spiders, a bar of soap, 2 packages of arepas, hot dog buns, and a loaf of bread for 60mil ($24).

We stopped at the tailor’s (maybe seamstress would be more appropriate) where Teresa talked to her for about half an hour.  I gave her 20mil towards blouses she’s making for Teresa.

We took a taxi down to the Envigado metro station.  Teresa walked across a side street to a Coltejer warehouse store.  I saw a lot of what looked like sheet sets for beds, Teresa asked them a question, didn’t apparently get the right answer and we left.

After a short wait we were on a Fredonia bus back to the finca.

Unfortunately, the bus made a stop at the bus stop in Caldas.  They usually stay there for about 10 minutes and a lot of people get out and buy snacks in the store.  Teresa asked me to go in the store and buy her a Coke Cero.  I did but they didn’t have one so I got her an apple juice drink with zero calories and a small regular Coke for myself.  When I got back on the bus she wasn’t happy with my selection.  I told her next time she should go buy the drinks.  She wanted me to return hers but I had already partially opened it.

Thankfully tonight there was almost a full moon so I didn’t need my cell phone flashlight.  We got past the neighbor’s house before the killer dogs knew we were there.  We returned to the finca at 7:30; still plenty light in the US but its already dark here.

I took my sleeping pills at midnight and went to bed.