Cartagena Masquerade

This weekend a group of us from Barranquilla headed to Cartagena to attend a semi-formal masquerade ball hosted by the teachers at the American school in Cartagena. This weekend there were also elections in Colombia so the sale of alcohol was prohibited throughout the country from 6 pm on Friday until 6 this morning. Don't think that stopped us, we planned ahead.

100 Aguilas

We had an exuberant one and a half hour drive to Cartagena. We stopped in a town mid-way to have a snack and a sing along.








In the car we also got to rehearse for the masquerade:






I teach a swimming elective every Friday and so Friday afternoon I told the kids to forget the pool, that we were making some Halloween masks. We clipped leaves from around the school to make our masks, but one girl came late and had to use a plastic plate and construction paper, which is how we have Brad's mask.



I'm pretty sure that today the Cartagena people are talking about how glad they are that they invited us to the party. We really livened up the place.


It took Frank's mom two days to make this costume

Sadly, by the end of the night the suit was stained (Frank fell behind the air conditioner) one of the sleeves was ripped off and he had lost three rhinestones.

We brought our own music




and danced





We also climbed onto the rooftop of this church, but we were warned that the priest was coming after us so we had to get down.


That night we didn't really have a place to stay, but a girl we met at the party said we could stay in her apartment. She just gave us the address and the keys, told us where we could find the drinkable water and sent us on our way. We didn't realize until the next morning that she had this view:


We waited around for the owner the next morning, but she never showed up. Then we faced the task of finding our Barranquilla friends, who were staying at another person's apartment. So we told a taxi driver to drive us around until we saw something familiar. For only 5 dollars he drove all around the city pointing out objects and places of interest along the way until we finally recognized the apartment building. After some breakfast we headed home, sure that we will never be invited to Cartagena again.

Mac vs. PC

I just realized from looking at the blog on Brad's computer that macs show the blog differently than PCs do, the captions don't match up with the pictures. I don't know how to resolve this except to say to all of you mac users, and you know who you are, you should go find a PC, and look at this blog the right way!

La Mina and Cabo de la Vela

I'm sorry it's taken me so long to get this up, it's been busy here at school and as you can see this post is a whopper.

We left for La Mina, the town where Susana grew up, at 9 o'clock Friday morning. That is, I guess, we were supposed to leave at 9, but our ride didn't show up. So, we stepped out into the pouring rain and hailed a taxi. We should have known right then that the trip was going to be a semi-disaster, but we were still had that beginning of vacation optimism that couldn't be weakened. The taxi headed straight into an arroyo, where we had to wait for about 20 minutes until another, bigger arroyo subsided. This arroyo was by far the biggest I'd ever seen. It looked like a river, a river that I wouldn't want to be in on a boat.




Once we got to the bus station we had a pretty easy five hour ride to La Mina. Although people from roadside towns were constantly hopping on the bus to sell food like grilled plantains and goat meat steaks the bus still made a 30 minute stop to get food. We passed the time by taking pictures:


It cost 25 cents for a square of toilet paper









We made it to the mine around 4, an hour late, so we missed getting picked up by Susana's mom. Susana was flying in from Bogota and wasn't due to be there until 11, so we were in town, without much a clue what to do. We found the hotel, which wasn't hard since there was only one and watched tv until Susana found us.

The next morning we left La Mina early to go to the beach. We hired a truck to take us on the three hour drive. The five of us me, Brad, Amber, Susana and her boyfriend Beberto all rode in the tailgate. We managed to have a pretty good party going before 8 in the morning.









After an hour or so we stopped in the last town before the desert to buy supplies. There, Amber bought a pineapple that later saved our lives.




We didn't buy this meat








The goats in the picture are alive. I don't want to talk about it.

Finally, we made it to the beach and I ran into the ocean. We were hot, covered in desert dirt, and we smelled like goats. We slept in hammocks, there was a restaurant that served fish and had some other supplies, one really icky toilet and a bucket of water for showering. There wasn't any electricity, but we did have a thatched roof over our heads.









Later we hiked up a hill to watch the sunset.


The next morning we woke up and said goodbye to our beach to head to another. First I bought some dresses made by the Indian tribe (Native Colombian, but people here aren't that politically correct) that lives in the area. Here is a woman making bags and hats:



This is Cabo de la Vela


After spending two hours in some intense sun, we climbed back into the truck to return to La Mina. Feeling hot, sunburned, sweaty, nauseous, and cranky we spent about an hour bumping along the road in a desert on the equator.




Just as I started thinking I couldn't possibly be any more miserable, the wheel fell off of the truck.



The truck thudded to the ground, but the wheel just kept on rolling. The driver finally caught up to it, but about that time Brad slid out of the truck and started puking all over the side of the road. Fortunately, Amber appeared with the life saving pineapple.



This is my "I'd rather not be here right now" smile

Eventually, the tire got fixed and we were on our way, but we still had a good three hours to go. We did eventually make it back to La Mina, where we stayed at Susana's parents' house. There we had showers, a nice home-cooked meal, and access to satelite tv. It was wonderful.

The next day we had a relatively easy bus ride back to Barranquilla. We were pretty happy to get home.

Thinking about it now, we did have a great time, it was just really rough traveling. Next vacation we're staying at the Hilton.

We're alive....but only barely

Brad is recovering from sun stroke, I have flea bites all over my back, we both have cuts on our feet, we are sunburned and really tired, BUT we survived our "vacation" more or less intact. I have pictures and stories that are only just now starting to be funny that I'll post later this afternoon.

Extreme Home Makeover

Brad and I went shopping over the weekend and bought seven plants for the apartment, and they have made such a difference. Our apartment had been very empty. It's nice to not be tied down by possessions and all, but the apartment was bare and bleak. Seven plants were just what we needed. I feel like their are children. We walk into the apartment now, happy to see them at the end of the day. We discuss their growth over dinner and our plans to have a few more in the future. Plus, I think we have a chance at being successful parents as Brad is an experienced plant grower and just about anything would grow in this climate.