Saturday, July 2nd, 2016

It turned out to be another interesting day in Colombia.

Laura wanted to go to Parque Lleras to meet gringos so Teresa and I left the apt about 11:30 and took a taxi to Mercado de Sanalejo (a flea market) that meets the 1^st Saturday of every month in Parque Bolivar (Calles 54 - 57, Carreras 48 – 49).  Traffic was a little heavy and it cost 18,000 pesos for the taxi.  This is the same park I walked thru a few times with “she who will remain nameless” when I first arrived in Medellin 3 ½ years ago.  This is where I saw what looked like a few beautiful women from behind who turned out to be men – transsexuals.

The first part of the north end of the park had a lot of old stuff (antiques?) – I saw albums for Boney M and Bonnie Raitt and a number of Coca Cola signs.  After that it was basically all handcrafted items.  Teresa bought a necklace for 40,000 pesos and 2 rings for 2,000 pesos each.  I heard a woman tour guide giving information about the Simon Bolivar statue in English.  I was wearing my Florida Tech Panthers t-shirt that I bought somewhere in Medellin and a man made a comment about it.  He had lived in Florida and New York so we chatted for a minute.  

After about 90 minutes Teresa spent some time talking to one of the merchants and instead of standing in the sun with her I told her I would wait in the shade.  I headed over to a concrete seat surrounding one of the large trees but 2 guys carrying beers barely beat me to it.  I sat down a little closer to Teresa, further from the street and basically alone.  After about 10 minutes Teresa came over and while showing me the 2 rings a young man in a Real City Tours t-shirt came over and told us that someone heard that the 2 men with beers sitting behind him were targeting us (or maybe just me).  He suggested we follow him back to his group which we did.  We walked about half a block and as we approached I could see a bunch of foreigners standing together.  I asked him where we could get a taxi and he sent us a block away.  We quickly caught a taxi but Teresa was still nervious.  As usual I had my window down and she told me I should put it up because this is a dangerous area and someone could just grab my sunglasses off my face while we were sitting in traffic.  I took them off and held them instead.

As we drove past Parque Poblado Teresa saw another market and asked the driver to stop.  I said no, let’s keep going; they have those markets there all the time and I’m hungry.

We had the taxi driver drop us off at Carbón de Leña where I had a Caesar salad and Teresa had the special of the day – Ajiaco.  The taxi this direction was 15,000 pesos.

Afterwards, she went back to Parque Poblado to check out the market and I went to the park to play chess.  After walking around twice checking the other games a dirty shoeshine guy (not sure where the dirt ended and the black shoepolish started) came up to me and motioned toward another guy.  I understood he wanted to play.  I had observed his play on my trips around and I didn’t think he was very strong.  I won the white pieces, we started a game and very soon he asks me if I want to play for 2,000 pesos a game.   On my next move I was going to win a piece for 2 pawns so I said sure.  I won the next 2 games, he paid me 4,000 pesos and I tried to convince him to play the last game not for money but he didn’t want to do that.  In the last game I checked his king all over but couldn’t quite mate him.  I then blundered and lost my queen but I still beat him in what turned out to be a close game.  He paid up the additional 2,000 pesos.  He said we’ll play again another day.  (I remember playing a guy sitting in a park in Russia for a few rubles and he crushed me but that’s another story.)  The shoeshine guy came up to me as I was walking away and I tipped him 2,000 pesos.

The park had set up a bandshell and a woman started singing – I thought the music was too loud but that’s just the old fogey in me.  I walked back to the apt but no one was there.  I left a note explaining what time I arrived and that I was going to Exito to pick up a few things.  I had to stop and wait my turn for a couple minutes at Bancolombia to take out some cash.  In Exito I picked up a few things and while the two express lines were fairly long I found only one guy ahead of me in one of the other aisles.  I got out pretty fast, remembered I forgot to pick up milk so I stopped at the local tienda and picked up a bag of 2% (or maybe it’s skim) for 2,200 pesos.

A minute after I got back Teresa buzzed from downstairs.  She got my note but missed me in Exito.

I received an email from Facebook that someone in Russia tried to access my account.  I logged in and changed my password – the person was logging in from Chita, Russia – never heard of it.

Every month I backup my music, document, and photo files from my laptop to my 1GB external hard drive.  Today, when I tried that, as soon as I selected “paste” I got the message “Windows Explorer has stopped working” “Windows is looking for a solution to the problem” “Windows is restarting”.  The same thing over and over again!  I don’t know what to do now except maybe wait and try again another day.

Well, I reset my account with Chess Magnet School.com and started going through the lessons again.  That’s when I felt like a strong player – when I was going through their lessons.

Tomorrow we’re supposed to go to Guatape with Vicky’s family in her car.  Teresa says we have to get up at 6am in order to shower, have a quick breakfast of cereal and meet them at the Metro South (not sure exactly what they mean by that but I guess I’ll find out).

T-shirt of the day: Never look back.