Saturday, September 5th, 2015

I got up once at 4am then was awakened by what sounded like my cell phone at 7am.  By the time I got up whoever had called had given up.  (Later, I found that for some reason my alarm was set for 7am.)

The three of us left the finca right after lunch at 1:45pm, got past the killer dogs undetected, and were on a bus after a 5 minute wait.  We got off at Aguacatala and took a taxi to Santafe CC.  I got them to Zara and then I left, walked across the street and down a couple blocks to Office Depot Express.  The first man I spoke to knew a little English and I told him I wanted to send 45 pages to the US by fax.  They had a much better fax machine than the one in Envigado, it took 25 minutes and it only cost me 45,500 pesos (about $15).  They charge 1,500 COP for the first page and 1,000 pesos for each additional page unlike the 3,000 COP per page I paid in Envigado – a real bargain.  I even got a final “Ok” page that showed 45 pages had been sent.

Back at Zara, Teresa had found a pair of jeans she liked for 169,900.  I tried to put them on my debit card but for some reason it was rejected so I paid cash.  Laura wasn’t around so Teresa called her on the cell phone to find out where she was.

We went upstairs to the food court where we each had a banana sundae for a total of 19,200 pesos.   Shortly after we finished Laura showed up with a Forever 21 bag and she showed us the 2 pairs of shorts, 4 t-shirts, and a pair of sunglasses she bought with money her grandmother had sent her.

We took a taxi to Mu and arrived at 6:05 and got a table downstairs.  Teresa had a Coke Zero, I a regular Coke and Laura a mojito.  We ordered the large order of ribs.  Again, I thought a couple of them were a little reddish in the middle and could have been cooked a little longer.  I thought they would also be better if they had browned each of the sides besides the tops and bottoms.  They charge 48mil for a small order and 58mil for a large order.  We had 2 ribs left over which they packaged for us to take with us.  There was some discussion between Teresa and the waiter over the tip and she told me not to leave one but I went with the suggested 7mil tip and the total was 85mil.  Not bad, less than $10 per person for ribs, fries and a drink each.

We took a taxi down to the highway and after a 5-10 minute wait were on a Tratam bus.  Teresa, Laura and I each had seats in separate rows.  I was seated next to a young black woman.  A man came on the bus with a large plastic bag from which he handed everyone a small bag of peanuts and a large box of wafer cookies that he was selling.   My box of cookies was lemon flavored and when the man came back to collect, I understood the lady sitting next to me wanted my lemon flavored cookies so we switched.  After she paid the 2,500 pesos she offered me some of her peanuts which I respectfully declined but I told her she was very kind to offer.

On the way up the last leg of the sideroad Malu joined us and I gave her a dog biscuit.

The killer dogs came out and gave us a hard time as we walked past Guillermo’s house and I had to use a shot of my pepper spray on the black dog.

We were back at the finca by 8pm and were surprised to find … there was no electricity.  I think it’s time to explore purchasing some hurricane lamps for those times when we lose it.

We went to bed at 10pm.