Thursday, June 30th, 2016

I was awakened at 7:30am by the road workers removing the wooden forms for the sidewalk they had most recently poured across the street.

I forgot to mention I went to the health club yesterday.  In fact with the help of an instructor I was able to set the treadmill for a cardio workout.   Actually, once he told me what button to press to start a “program” the following instructions were all in English.  

I checked the MBE website and I see I have some more documents on the way from Miami – probably my Chess Life magazine.

We left the apt at 9:15 and got to Mall Laureles by 9:50.  We reported to the store that we wanted to go to Santafé today.  I understood a van had just left 10 minutes before.  While we waited for another driver Teresa looked at clothes in the shops and I went down to El Comedor de Chava where I found Lucas.  We talked for a bit and he told me they have a 2^nd restaurant in Envigado at City Plaza CC, local 218; telephone 366 5311.

I picked up a copy of the Laureles edition of Gente newspaper.  The cover showed a picture of a couple of those rental bicycles with their seats missing and the title: The Last Straw: Even the Bicycle Program isn’t Safe from Thieves.

Another article was about the 1^st phase (actually phase 1A) of the new river park that was supposed to be completed in January then April then June, is now 96% complete.

A side column noted that with Google Street View now you can see the inside of the Stadium without leaving home.

An upcoming schedule noted that Tuesday, July 5^th there will be afternoon chess in the Theatre Pablo Tobon at 2pm (239 7500).  That’s real close to the center of downtown Medellin so I’ll probably skip it.

We left in another van at 10:15, which we had all to ourselves.  We made the usual stop 30 minutes later at the roadside restaurant.  The driver was in a hurry to get going again so I wolfed down an almojabana and a café con leche.

On the way I saw they have just completed a metro cable from one hilltop to another.  We passed right under it.  

When we were driving through the usual tunnel I was wondering how long it might be.  I saw that the speed limit was 60 km/hr which is 40 miles/hr.  If felt like that was about the speed we were going and if I assume the van was going the maximum speed (speed limit was 60 km/hr) then 40miles/hr = 40 miles/60 minutes which equal 4miles/6minutes so I assume the tunnel is about 4 miles long.  Later when we got to the resort I read in a tourism book that the Tunel de Occidente is 2.88 miles long.  I guess we were going a little slower than the speed limit.

Teresa spent most of the afternoon lying in the sun trying to get a tan while I swam in the pool whenever I felt overheated and read my Tourism book otherwise.

We had a very tasty lunch of soup, salad, chicken breast in some type of sauce, spaghetti in another type of sauce, juice and a small dessert.

Late in the afternoon we moved to the other more popular pool.  There were 2 very nice looking girls with 2 very nice looking young men.  Teresa moved over near them and at one point motioned me over to join her.  The girls were obviously Colombianas and the men spoke English.  At one point I heard one of the men say “fresh meat” which happens to be a line from my favorite movie The Shawshank Redemption but I have a feeling he wasn’t referring to the movie.  He even translatted it into Spanish for them but it probably has a different meaning in another language.  He also spent a few minutes trying to help the girl pronounce “better” in English.

Once again we left the hotel a little early – about 6pm.  This time there were another 5 women with us.

Traffic was slow because now there were trucks on the road that were probably loaded and couldn’t go any faster and we had to wait our turn to pass them on the winding roads.

The driver stopped again at the restaurant and I understood she wanted to get going again soon so we just bought a dozen almojabanas.  While we started eating them we saw one of the other women in our party buy a bowl of hot chocolate so I knew we had some time so I had a café con leche.

We got back to Mall Laureles at 8pm.  I wanted to run into Exito and look for Cheddar cheese.  Teresa said something about finding it tomorrow in Las Vegas but I didn’t believe her.  I left her waiting for me at the curb and I went into Exito.  I found the deli counter and had a man cut me 10 slices of cheddar cheese which cost me 5,000 pesos.  A total of 10 minutes later I was back outside.  

We took a taxi back to the apt for 15,000 pesos.

T-shirt of the day: Berlin.