Magpie's Flight: June 2011

First off, please excuse all of the typos in my blog- between barely seeing what i'm writing on my iphone screen, and the autocorrect demon, there are several, and they drive me nuts! Just not enough to go in and correct them all. Okay, now that i've got that OCD moment off my chest, Hola! Welcome to Columbia...airport that is. I have a nice fat layover here before heading to Portugal.

A couple of travel funnies (mostly for me because I was there):

Getting out of the taxi at the bus terminal in Sucre, I slung my bag over my back in the ever so awkward manner that you have to with a huge, way too heavy (somebody just cant wait til the end of the trip to buy souvenirs!) mochila, I got my bracelet caught in the straps that are at my waste level. By the time that I realized that it was really caught bad, and looked up, Stef was long gone into the terminal. So, me and my deformed T-Rex arm (super awkward position, and pretty painful), took off after her. The bag was so heavy, and it was only half-way on, that I couldn't really run- it was more of a trot, with a pained expression on my face, top side of my wrist firmly fastened to my side, elbow out. Elbow out also worked wonders, as the terminal was PACKED with people, that were oh so happy about my elbow spear jabbing them as I trotted by. I started to get desperate as I lost circulation in my wrist, and started yelling "Stef!"- the locals were certain that I was mentally handicapped at this point. Low and behold, Stef did not pause a second until she stopped at our bus entrance, roughly a mile away, and looked at my sweaty, borderline in tears, face and asked what the crap I was doing. She managed to pull the bracelet open and free me, and then after throwing my bag to the ground in disgust, we laughed, a lot, and the marks went away from my wrist.

Stef's turn: we rented bikes in Cochabamba (poop town), and mapped out the bike trail that began a short distance from the rental office. Unfortunately, that short distance involved some intense traffic. We were going slow, tryin to be really careful, as we approached an area that had four lanes of traffic (just going our direction). Stef was in front, and I could see her frantically looking left across the lanes of traffic. We needed to turn left, but I knew it wasn't for awhile...sure enough, she thought we needed to turn and darted crosse the four lanes of highway speed traffic. I freaked. There wasn't anything I could do, and as soon as she got across, she realized that we weren't turning. She tried to get back over, but there was too much traffic. She was trapped. This little 100 lb blond was riding a pedal bike in the middle of huge trucks and speeding vehicles, in her little shorts, tank, and dorky helmet (thank god helmet). I, once again, started yelling "Stef!", though I knew she couldn't hear me. The vehicles were pissed- they were all honking their horns and swerving all over the place, and Stef just kept pedaling, at about 10mi/hr down the road.It doesn't seem like a funny scenario, and it wasn't at the time, but I bust up laughing now, everytime I think about her calmily riding down the middle of the freeway like a complete crazy person, and me almost plowing over empanadas stands because I'm having a heart attack, screaming at her and not watching where I'm going.

Met a guy named Willie in Cochabamba, that proposed to me so that he could get US citizenship and move to Miami. At least he is sort of trying to do it legally? Aside from that, he was a really funny guy that walked us to the one cool hang out that Stef and I experienced there- not quite enough for me to accept his proposal.

In La Paz, our hostel room would get so cold at night because it was a really old (and amazingly beautiful) building, with no heat in our room. So in the mornings, we would dread getting out of bed and have a stare down of who would get out first. Stef had a genius idea that we wouldn't have to go downstairs if we just used hot shower water to make instant coffee- ducha cafe!...not so much. It kind of had a weird taste or maybe just seemed like it because I was weirded out by it being shower water.

Sucre is a nice city. It is pretty clean, nice parks, and has a huge market, with delicious $.50 fresh fruit smoothies and yogurt fruit bowls.

Stef and i went rock climbing just outside the city. It was great- we climbed for four hours and then ate a picnic lunch. Our guide invited us to go to his home and climb on his indoor wall, and since we were enjoying climbing so much, we went, and climbed our arms into noodles late into the night- a bit sore, but super fun.

The next day we went to the cemetery- it's huge. There are rows and rows of these window cases, stacked on top of eachother- over three stories high in places. The little cases have displays in them of flowers, pictures, toys, beers and colas...all the persons favorite things. Some displays even played music. People carried around wooden ladders to get to the top cases and put fresh flowers in them. There is a huge statue and flower garden display for three young athletes that died at one end of the cemetery. There are also lots of large family tombs that are like small churches. I feel really peaceful at cemeteries. I think it's because nobody there is thinking about work or money or day to day life stresses; It's just slow paced, flowers everywhere, and people thinking about loved ones.

One evening we went to Mirador, a viewpoint over top the city. We took the long route, getting lost a couple of times, but we made it for the sunset. There was an outdoor restaurant there, where we had some wine and picked at a cheese, salami, olive plate. The weather was perfect, and the wine and food werent bad.

Aside from a couple of sight seeing outings, we spent most of our time in Sucre enjoying lazy afternoons in the sun drinking coffee, listening to music, talking to other travelers, reading- it was lovely. Then we made the mistake of going to Cochabamba; I am not a fan. It is a large, filthy city, with unfriendly people. It's warm temp, but unsafe, littered, polluted, and all around unappealing. Maybe I just had a bad experience, but I suppose that's what a blog is for, writing your opinion, so Cochabamba = Poop!

Headed back to La Paz...again.