Thursday, March 3rd, 2016

We left the finca at 10:45.  Guillermo was outside his finca removing oranges from his tree.  I gave each of the black dogs a dog biscuit.  We saw Don Carlos and a young man (his son?) working on leveling one of the curves by the sideroad so cars could park there.

We only had to wait a couple minutes for a bus.  We got off at Aguacatala station and took a taxi to Rio Sur CC.  It’s on the same side of the street (Avenida Poblado) as Santafe CC but across the street from Oviedo CC.  

We took an elevator up to the 6^th floor where there was a Body Tech health club.  We checked in at the desk and then we entered our Cedula numbers at a turnstyle that let us in the back.  There was an office called Qu Rin Ka Zan where Teresa got her free massage treatment.  It was very warm in the room so instead of waiting there I went down to the main level where I took some cash out of their Citibank ATM.  Instead of the usual 700,000 peso maximum it only allowed 500,000 but it was all in 20mil bills.  They take up more space but they sure come in handy when making small purchases. 

I found a restaurant/bar right by the entrance called La Bolsa that looked nice and had some daily specials for 17,900.  I found a free newspaper and spent some time trying to read some articles in it.  Back upstairs Teresa came out just after I returned and we went downstairs.  Laura joined us a minute later.  We went into La Bolsa.  It was a nice looking restaurant with a large bar on one side, Avenida Poblado on another side, and an area with a lot of tropical trees and plants on the other.  They had about 20 tables on the ground level.  We sat on the Avenue side which had a waterfall next to the building and occasionally the breeze would throw a few drops our way.  I certainly didn’t mind and no one else mentioned it.  

I had a bowl of tomato soup, a Coke and their chicken fettucine Alfredo, Teresa had mushroom soup, chicken, and juice and Laura had filet mignon and a coconut lemonade.  The total came to 101,283 including tax and tip.  I would have tried Laura’s beef but it was so rare I didn’t want to touch it.

When I made a visit to the restroom upstairs I noticed they have a disco bar with a few dozen tables.

We walked a block away to Santafe mall where Teresa and Laura did some shopping in Zara, Forever 21, Bershka, and Ragged.

I finished Robert Heinlein’s 204 page Tunnel in the Sky.

Teresa went up to shop in another store and Laura and I visited iShop, the Apple store.  We looked first at the iPhone 5s, 6, and 6s phones selling for millions of pesos.  We looked at a mini iPad and I went to Tripadvisor.com and searched for 61Prado to show Laura one of my reviews but they were all in Spanish.  I went to Settings and changed the language from Spanish to English and then showed her my hotel review.  We looked at a couple of iWatches (isn’t that what they are called?).  Some looked expensive and others looked cheap.

Teresa came back and we had frozen yogurt at a place called iogu.  It was nice to sit near one of the entrances and take our time enjoying our yogurt with toppings.

In Jumbo we picked up some things including 2 boxes of Kraft Macaroni & Cheese that I found and I paid the Une and epm bills.  While waiting in line I noticed popcorn flavored Tic Tac for sale.

We waited about 10 minutes for a taxi to take us to Poblado station and we dropped off Laura on the way.

We quickly were on a bus back to the finca.

I downloaded Laurence Krauss’s 183-page A Universe from Nothing.

T-shirt of the day: What the world needs is a good nap.