The Big Rock

I am a bad person. I had completely forgotten about working on Geneva Light Opera Stuff. G had called me and left a message, but because I changed sim cards, I didn’t know it was there. Luckily she wrote me a good email with her questions and concerns in it. Which means, I now have something fun (yes, I like playing with computer and internet stuff) to do this evening and tonight after I get back from my excursion. I want to address her concerns and I need to build a banquet graphic and some tickets – only four – and do some tweaks to a couple of web pages. Easy peasy! And fun!

Woke up early and spent an hour doing Duolingo and various other things. For some reason I had trained myself to do some things at midnight and was last night year’s old when I realized that I didn’t have to do that. No need to stay up till midnight if I didn’t want to. All those daily things would still be there in the morning. (I remember the reason, actually: Bunny.)

After posting last night, I went back to Animal Cocina for dinner. I sat at a table near the cash register and had some pleasant interactions with the manager. I like the place and the food. I sent the fries back because they were cold and got lovely hot fries in return! And I had their house gin cocktail which was good but not great. I will probably stick with a beer if I go back there. Which I probably will…

Ok, time to shower and get dressed and head off to Guatape, or as I like to think of it – the big rock!

Turns out Guatape is a place and the big rock is called the big rock of Guatape or something like that. I have no clue. I just discovered that the rock was not the final stop of the bus. But I am getting way ahead of myself, again.

My mental plan in place, I left to try to execute it. I didn’t take into account that the bus ride to Guatape took over two hours. Each way! I guess some more planning and research would have been beneficial. Will I learn this lesson? Hell no. I really do prefer having an outline of a plan and then filling it in as I go. As some military person said, I’m paraphrasing, any plan turns to shit once the enemy is engaged.

So my plan was to take the metro to the bus. Take the bus to the big rock. Climb the big rock and then come home. The metro to the bus went well. And even getting the bus ticket went well. I asked for a seat up front and next to a window and the ticket lady obliged! But when I got on the bus, I misread the ticket and thought she had given me a seat in the back of the bus. Sigh. That ended up being ok. Not as bouncy as I had been led to believe. A nice Canadian couple came and sat in the back row too. And let me keep my seat. Tory and TJ from Calgary – Oil Pipeline worker (not sure exactly what she does) and a Mid Level Hockey coach – working in Eastern Washington State. They were traveling around South America for three weeks. Later, a young woman sat down in the back. She turned out to be 20, from Berlin! So I got to try some German with her, that didn’t work so well since my brain is being Spanish squished. She is traveling for three months between graduation high school and going to college. She had a really cool bracelet on – and a few other cool piece of jewelry.

We arrived at Guatape and went our separate ways. I had been surprised the the final stop (for me at least) wasn’t the big rock. It was the town of Guatape. Nice little town. Heavily touristy. I walked around a bit, taking in the sites. Bought more water and an ok empanada. Then I took a tuktuk like vehicle to what I thought was the base of the big rock. Turns out it was the base of the hill upon which the big rock sits. Sigh. When I got to the base of the big rock itself, I decided that was good enough for me. After my many climbing steps yesterday, I just wasn’t in the right frame of mind to climb the 650+ steps just to have a cool view. I will survive.

Back to Guatape and then the bus to Medellin. I lucked out since there weren’t assigned seats. I sat in the front of the bus next to a window. I had a seat mate. But we didn’t speak until the trip was almost over. Turns out that Ashley,, who is still at University, is wanting to become an English teacher. And is going to be visiting NYC and then working at a camp out in Colorado for the summer. Good for her! We had a nice chat. And we bought some peanuts off of a bus vendor.

That’s a thing here. The buses are sort of a combination of Greyhound and Local buses, with people jumping on and jumping off. And at some stops a vendor of some kind got on. Heading out we had a rapper. Heading back we had the peanut guy and a guy selling CBD oil from what I could gather. Weird.

Now I am back in my room. Not sure what I am going to do this evening. Besides write some postcards. I finally found some! I bought ten. I will buy the rest in Panama. Oh, and do some work for GLO. And maybe go get a beer at the Animal Kitchen. If they have small plates. I don’t recall seeing any on there, but I haven’t memorized the menu.

Ok, that’s about it for now. I am going to eat some dinner and then decide if I want to go out again or not. Maybe I will just stay in, drink my last couple of beers and do the web/GLO work. That’s probably the wiser plan.