Colombia Continued!

Friday was probably one of our more boring days, if only because most of it was spent traveling. I woke up at nine, and Marta had already been out for nearly 2 hours working on getting her passport. She was supposed to call the hostel at 9:30 to let me know when she'd be back, so I had to hang around there a bit. I packed up a bit and went downstairs to use the internet. Around 10:15, she hadn't called yet, so I figured she'd be pretty busy. As such, I went back upstairs and finished packing and got ready to head out for some breakfast. When I got downstairs, the lady at the front desk told me that Marta had called and that she should be back soon. So, instead of breakfast, I hung out a bit more. She got there right around 10:30, passport in hand.

We called the bus place and had them reserve a spot for us on the 11 a.m. puerta a puerta bus to Santa Marta. This was the single most expensive thing I bought on the trip at just under 20 bucks (37000 pesos). We had breakfast at the same place I ate the day before.

Then we hit the road. The bus was nice. It had air conditioning (thank GOD) and was pretty roomy. I got the back row, aisle seat so I had plenty of leg room too! The bus ride was REALLLLLY long, and boring. They did have a t.v., and we watched The Changeling, the Angelina Jolie movie where her son gets kidnapped and then the LAPD replaces him with another kid who isn't hers. Unfortunately the sound was really low and, in the back of the bus, I couldn't hear parts. Luckily, there were Spanish subtitles, which I was pretty consistently able to translate.

The total trip was about four hours. We finally got to Santa Marta. Then we had to take a taxi to Bello Horizonte, which is a beach just a bit south of Santa Marta/el Rodadero. We got to the beach and found the tourney HQ, but Alfonso, the TD wasn't there. While we were waiting, we happened to see Mikey Marshall, Cathy's (from my frisbee team) brother, whom I know fairly well. It was crazy, and totally unexpected. Cathy's family is from Santa Marta, but we had no idea that her family would be there. Cathy was coming two weeks later, but the rest of her family was already there. It was just really crazy because Cathy obviously knew that Marta and I would be in Santa Marta for the tournament because we had told her about it, and she knew her brother would be there, yet she never told us, and we still managed to run into each other. Small world.

A bit later, we found the TD and our team captain, Chile. She was really nice, but we found out that they had already played their game for that day. We also found out that they only had 3 girls, plus two random pick-ups they found at the beach that day. So, the following day, we would be playing savage, pretty much. We went and watched the boys team from Maracaibo that came with our team. After that, we went back to the apartment that the teams were staying with and kind of made ourselves at home on the floor of the apartment on mattresses.


That night for dinner, we went into el Rodadero, and went to a restaurant called PailaNaki, which is "cocina fusion" whatever that means. Basically, it was this cute restaurant that serves dishes cooked primarily on the big open girll-top that is kind of like a japanese steakhouse without the show. Instead, there is just one, and tables all over, and a bar right in front of the cooktop. Marta and I naturally opted for the bar to watch the cooking. We each ordered rice dishes. Mine was rice, chicken, pork loin, veggies and chicharrón, which is basically like porkrinds, but more delicious. It's really common in Latin America, and is often served as a snack or part of other dishes. The cook was named Salvador and he was really nice. He knew a little English and he practiced it on me, and I got to practice my Spanish with him. That dinner was really fun, and the restaurant was really nice (easily the nicest we went to during the trip). We took several pictures of the place, which I've posted.
xoxo,
A