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Rolling thunder all night last night. Cristina finds it disturbing but i love to hear it. We never got much thunder in California so i find it exciting. Was a bit worried we'd have a stormy day but woke up to perfectly fine weather, as usual.

Things have gotten into a bit of a routine by now, get up for breakfast around 7-7:30. They make a good omelet though they seem to think it's fine to serve cold toast. But seriously it's amazing how many places don't know how to make an omelet so that more than outweighs cold toast. Then we encounter the crab amd lobster man on our way to swim, who hasn't ceased to be optimistic that we'll buy his wares. I like to imagine it's the same lobsters amd crabs he's been trying to sell all week, amd in the evenings they crawl around his house.

Anyway then while we're swimming, thus far it has always happened that someone has come to offer us an excursion somewhere amd we've never gotten around to talking to the hotels excursion-man who is on duty 10-11, apparently. Well this time no excursions came to us before then so we went to find him ... amd it turns out he's the guy we went with yesterday! (The one who didn't scam us). It turns out we've done most of everything. There just remains an excursion to the nearest mainland (Baru), but Cristina had read there's lots of scammers there, or the mangroves. Which as mentioned Cristina thought sounded boring but I've always wanted to see mangroves (well I've seen them once or twice before, a boardwalk through them in Zanzibar comes to mind, but i still find them interesting). Anyway so we chose to go to the mangroves for 100,000 (for which he accepted us$25). So off we went. First just along the edge of them and i was concerned that if this was all there was to it it was kind of dull, though we did see a large iguana in one of the mangroves. Then we entered a circular inlet only connected to the sea by a narrow channel and nosed into a tunnel-like passage in the mangroves a short distance before he shut off the engine. It was peacefully quiet with just the sound of insects like crickets amd various bird calls. After awhile i asked if i could swim amd he said sure. Cristina thought i was crazy to want to swim in the mangroves amd joked I'd have to sleep in the other bed after this. I swam up the channel amd around the corner. The channel seemed to just keep going amd going. I climbed onto a mangrove root to see further amd saw some tourists coming along from deeper in the channel in a little canoe they were paddling. So i sat on the root. As they came by. The greeted me bemusedly amd then asked me a question, to which i could only respond "no hablo Español" amd they continued on laughing. I imagine they must have been very confused to randomly find someone by themselves in the mangroves.

Then i swam back to Cristina and our driver, amd the canoe came back past going the other way, the occupants now apparently saying "oh good you got the American!"

Then we returned. It was nice but if i were to do it again I'd insist on being able to either kayak in or get on this canoe deal. I'm sure the people at any hotel on the island would know where to send me to get on a kayak for it. Then i could have thoroughly explored the mangrove tunnel.

An occurrence when we got back shed some light on currency exchanges here. Cristina amd i were going to buy some souvenir little carved items from a guy amd it came out to 130,000 pesos, so i was going to give him $30 US plus 10,000 pesos. He said that wasn't enough, i said that was 4,000 pesos to the dollar which is less than the official exchange rate. He said maybe in cartagena but here it's 3,500 to the dollar. I only had about 6,000 more pesos though so i added that, said it was all my money, amd he accepted it. (And it was indeed all my pesos but i still have about $180 US on me for when the card doesn't work)

Among the recent arrivals on our island is a woman with three 8/9 year old kids (twin boys and a girl), she reminds me of a friend of mine who despairing of finding a good husband had the sperm bank knock her up amd had triplets. Hearing her speaking English to her kids i asked her in English where she was from amd she said "I'm from the Estados Unidos" which was such an unexpected bit of Spanglish i had to ask her to repeat it. Then i said "oh I've heard of that place" amd she looked at me like i was being a smart ass. Anyway it turns out she's from Los Angeles.

Amd then we swam a lot the rest of the afternoon, watched the sunset as usual amd that brings us to just now.

Tomorrow we plan to leave here for Santa Marta though we're still working out the details amd don't have a hotel reservation yet.

Monday August 28th - again we were doing our after breakfast swimming when a man in a boat came along to offer adventure. In this case since we'd already been to the snorkeling reef he offered to take us to the aquarium for 100,000 total. As we didn't have anything better to do amd 100,000 is an imminently reasonable price, literally the price everything seems to be, we agreed. He noted aquarium admission would be another 80,000. As i was by now running low on pesos i brought my pesos, dollars amd credit card.

A Brazilian couple joined us on the journey. They appeared maybe late twenties or early thirties, the guy Redondo, was a journalist, and i enjoyed their conversation, a clearly intellectual examination of Latin American politics. He said that when the current Brazilian president, Lula, came into power, because he's a liberal ("thank God") all the conservatives were saying Brazil was going to "become like Venezuela." They were interested in Cristina's take on how things are in Venezuela, Cristina later said she felt like she was being interviewed.

The aquarium turned out to be on a little island at the opposite end of the main island. The boat driver dropped us off saying he'd be back in an hour, amd took the Brazilians to snorkeling.

A man on the dock sold us two tickets to the aquarium for 80,000 as expected. I handed him $20 US. The peso right now is 4096 to the dollar so technically 80,000 would be $19.53. He said no if it's USD it's $24, which is a notably bad exchange rate of 3,500:1 but whatcha gonna do. At least he was able to make change in USD.

The aquarium mainly consisted of raised platforms around enclosed areas with various interesting local aquafauna in them. Sea turtles, sharks, various large fish. There were some dolphins performing tricks. We were encouraged to pat a small pelican, though i felt bad because it was shaking. But altogether we enjoyed the aquarium.

Then our driver retrieved us, with the Brazilians still along. We stopped by to see the famous resort Bora Bora and a boat came up to us there trying to sell us little plates of lobster already prepared. Amd then we went around the back side of the island to return to our own hotel, thus completing a circumnavigation of Grand Rosario Island.

Then we returned to our hotel. Our boat driver accepted my US $25 for the 100,000 peso trip.

While swimming in the afternoon we met a young woman from Italy here by herself. If i understand correctly she had come to Miami on vacation amd then just decided to come to Cartagena. There must be some killer airfare deal from Miami to here (recall the two vapid American women on the dinner cruise were also from Miami).

Watched the sunset as usual.

Sunday, August 27th - one big unanswered question in coming to the Rosario Islands was would there be inter/intra island transport. Ie the expensive excursions to the islands from the mainland, could you also do them all from a base in the islands as well? Amd we were thinking of maybe changing hotels after a few days to another island, would that be doable without returning to the mainland? I bet my money on yes though it wasn't certain. Amd having arrived here it seems that yes it's fairly easy to get from place to place here, various boats either making regular calls around or willing to go wherever for a fee ranging from reasonable to unreasonable.

One excursion i wanted to do was to go kayaking among the mangroves. Cristina doesn't want to because "i used to do it all the time it's boring to me." I was about to make a joke that that's how they go shopping in Caracas when she added "that's how i used to go to the store." It seems her mom has a place on the coast and when she lived there she didn't have a car so it was easier to kayak to the store than walk.

Every morning a man comes by the a bucket of lobsters and large crabs looking to sell them to people for lunch. We've declined because i don't really like either, Cristina is possibly allergic to lobster, she likes crab but "i don't want to eat it if i saw it alive." I appreciate this sentimentality.

As we were doing our morning after-breakfast swimming a guy in a boat came along amd offered to take us both snorkeling for 70,000 pesos (about $20). That sounded like a good deal amd the island dog seemed to like him. Then he offered to give us a tour all along the island for 350,000 pesos ($82), which sounded acceptable if it was a really good tour but you don't know until you've had it right? Though due to a communication error (this going from him through Cristina to me) i didn't realize until some time later that it was 350,000 EACH, which i would not have agreed to as that's all out of proportion to what anything costs around here.

Joining us to the snorkeling was a Latino couple consisting of an attractive young woman and an older (50ish) man. They didn't seem at all affectionate though they were clearly traveling together. Usually she was to be seen snorkeling around our hotel by herself.

Anyway the snorkeling was really nice, there was lots of different kinds of fish among the coral in the area he took us.

Then he took us to a nice public beach on the island while he ran the other two back to our hotel. When he came back amd picked us up he took us along the coast of the island pointing out the various resorts, famous people's houses, amd other interesting things. There was a floating bar that seemed to be doing a booming business with boats that came by. There was a house belonging to Shakira, another to a famous baseball player amd another famous Colombian singer Carlos Vives, whom I'd never heard of but apparently it's a thing. But most interesting to me was two ruined palatial estates that had belonged to Pablo Escobar. One all white plaster and arches like the palace of some Barbary sultan, palm trees already growing from the arches amd out the vacant windows, amd the other with falling in thatched roofs. Nearby was the additional ruin of drug lord El Chapo's place, but he appears to have had no style, his place blandly modern. Across from these drug palaces was a smaller island on which Escobar had a small airfield, which is now maintained by the Colombian navy. In the water nearby there was a sunken airplane, our guide said was a crashed drug plane. It was 6 meters down. Our guide gave us snorkels amd masks again to dive around it. I was able to dive down and touch its slightly raised wing but going just a little bit further down to try to look into the cockpit i felt afraid the pressure would do something to me.

Then we were going to stop at a nearby restaurant our guide said was really good, and at first i believe he said he could spot us the payment but then after we ordered he said he'd need to take me back to our hotel to get my credit card and come back, which would add an additional 200,000 ($50) to what he'd have to charge us, amd i didn't fancy paying over $50 for lunch so we asked if it wasn't too late to abort the order amd fortunately it was not. It should be noted when he'd fist picked us up from the beach I'd been about to run amd get my card amd he'd told me there was no need. I kinda suspect he'd intentionally baited us into ordering before telling us we'd have to make the costly card retrieval.

So we returned to our hotel. From somewhere he conjured a friend with a credit card scanning machine amd ran my card for 908,000 pesos ($227!!), which made me feel faint. But if that's the only time I'm scammed here i suppose it could be worse.

Spoiler alert but the next day we went on an excursion of a similar scale for 100,000 ($25).

We decided to extend our stay in this hotel until the 30th.

As usual for lunch we i had a chicken dish amd Cristina had a fish dish. We've both come to love a kind of berry juice they have here called corozo.

Once again watched the sunset, the weather was clearer this evening.

Saturday August 26th - in the morning headed to the same dock the previous day's dinner cruise had departed from, at around 7:30. Many others were queueing up there to head to other hotels / resorts in the Rosarios either for the day or overnight (i think most just make day trips though). While waiting i was able to inspect the nearby barque Phantom, it's a steel hull ship with interior pretty well optimized for use as a party boat (which is to say lots of space blandly cleared to make open space for dancing).

Most of the trips to the Rosario Islands advertise that it will be via traditional vessel, which sounds exciting, especially for a fan of "traditional vessels." So it's kind of amusing to find the traditional vessel of transportation to the Rosario Islands is a long powerful fiberglass motorboat with two 250hp motors on the back, amd rows of seating for passengers. The captain often has a con raised up above the canopy over the passengers, though not in our case. I suppose heck if this is the kind of boat they've been using for the last fifty years it's not a lie to say it's traditional.

It took about an hour to get to the islands, i had expected we'd go out through the Caribbean but we actually went around through cartagena Bay for most of the journey.

Our hotel is actually on the easternmost (closest to cartagena) point of the Rosarios, except for two tiny islands just offshore from ours that appeared to have resort facilities built on them but not currently in use.

Pulled up to the dock and we all (about a dozen?) disembarked. Smallish welcome drinks of uncertain variety were provided. Tried to check in but were told we can't till 3. Somehow i don't remember this being such a problem on any previous vacation. But we could stow our bags behind the check in counter till then. Amd in the mean time we went swimming!

The tour-booking lady at our hotel in cartagena had tried to steer us away from this place because it "doesn't have a beach," amd while strictly speaking yes it doesn't have an expance of sand descending into the water, it is surrounded by ample shallow water simply reached by descending steps. Though there's sharp coral in places amd after three days (spoiler alert) I've got some cuts on my feet.

Of the others that got off the boat with us the one guy i briefly talked to, who was traveling with a few friends amd seemed to speak very fluent English, said he was from the Netherlands.

At lunch time the staff started bringing out identical plates of grilled fish amd i began to panic, but it turns out the "day people" all get the same thing and those few of us staying on get to order off the menu.

Cristina has liked the food, I'm still mildly suspicious portions of it (the fries amd vegetables) seem like standard sodexo (generic restaurant supplier) fare. But the main part of my every meal here has been good so i can't complain. I've had mostly various forms of grilled chicken (their menu doesn't lack for variety), while Cristina has been going through the seafood dishes. Though she usually gives me the calamari rings which honestly are a bit rubbery here amd not quite a joy to eat.

We pretty much spent the afternoon swimming. Around three the day people left and it suddenly felt a lot more tranquil. Our room is essentially half a very large hut, divided by a wall down the middle amd the other side having a door on the other end. Lying in bed we look up at a thatched roof, which i find charming but Cristina has a bit of a fear of a snake falling on her. Though i didn't say so, this sounded like a silly fear to me but she said it actually happened to a cousin once.

In the evening thunder rumbled in the distance amd later could be seen snaking horizontally across the sky, sometimes lasting long enough for one of us to say "look, lightning!" and the other to look up in time to see it still going.

Having been flummoxed at seeing the sunset from cartagena due to a building being right in the way we were eager to catch it here ... amd it turns out there's another small island RIGHT where the sun sets! Such sauce

Friday August 25th - there didn't seem to be any more particular excursions to do around cartagena so we took it easy by the rooftop pool all day. It was pleasant.

We finally resolved to book a place in the Rosario Islands, the Isle del Piratas. Amd i realized I'd been looking at the price for two nights on the hotels.com website rather than per one. So while for example this place at $160 was just beyond what i felt quite comfortable with ($140), i realized it was actually only $80 a night! Wish the app would just show the nightly cost, the way i plan relates more to what i think is an appropriate price per night, amd how that relates to the overall budget I've already figured out. More easy knowing i can afford X per day than being told this block of five days is Y now what am i gonna do with that but extra math dividing it to find out how it relates to the daily budget.

In the evening Cristina and i went on an evening dinner cruise about the bay on a not-terribly-large boat they fit a surprisingly large number of dinner guests on to that i seem to have neglected to take a photo of.

While we were waiting i noticed a silhouette barely visible except for the lights it blocked behind it as it crept in like a phantom. A tallship silhouette. The barque Phantom!

I don't think i mentioned "Barco Phantom" here yet. During the city tour i had noticed with interest at traditionally rigged sailing ship at the dock. It appeared to have all its rigging in place and functional masts and spars (as opposed to the surprising number of pretend "pirate ships" that just have essentially a caricature of masts and spars), but no sails bent on (ie attached, ie not about to sail as it would take an experienced crew more than a day to bend them all on). When I'd gotten back to the room i googled it amd of course g0 advertises itself as a "pirate galleon" (a galleon would have a comprehensively different hull shape and very specifically a lateen sail on the mizzen rather than a gaff and spanker (hey i don't make up the names). Amd then ship seems to make evening motorings around the bay whilst playing party music for its guests. It made me sad to see a ship with all the rare accoutrements to be a functional tallship working instead in a capacity a motorized barge could just as easily do but i guess you gotta do what you gotta do, the hustle is real.

But then as i watched this Phantom emerge from the dark i counted only two masts. What! I joke that I'm bad at basic arithmetic but this is too much. Had i posted to facedown about a barque that was clearly just a brigantine??? The shame! I quickly pulled up my pictures from the day before but no yeah no there were definitely three masts.

I remained absolutely hornswaggled until a few minutes later another sailing ship silhouette began ghosting across the distant city lights. This one with the three masts. So the identity of the brigantine remains unknown.

Anyway we boarded our boat, which was modern amd elegant. We were seated on the top level near the con. The on either side of us were pairs of women though i don't think they were couples amd/or romantically involved. To my left they were latina, to my right young African American women with ridiculous fake lashes (together they may have averaged an average weight by being at opposite ends of the scale). Can i just say in my humble opinion ridiculously huge fake lashes never make you look like anything other than completely vapid. Anyway all the conversation i overheard was very vapid. Amd they complained about jet lag because God forbid Miami is an hour ahead. But hey i guess good for them cartagena is a brave choice for what sounded like a practically first trip abroad, but my guess is they were to naive to even realize it was a brave choice.

Oh and when their food arrived they picked at it and then declared they didn't like it (food quality as far as i could tell was excellent. They appeared to have spoken no Spanish so may have not known what they were ordering). They asked the waiter if they could send it back amd get something else amd were then shocked that they could not ("how long does it take to cook something else!") apparently they didn't notice this was a small vessel filled to the gills with diners, I'm surprised the galley could meet the capacity, amd they took our orders before launch I'm sure specifically to only take on board what was actually ordered.

Anyway OUR food was delicious, amd the captain took these adorable photos of us goofing around at the con. (Which he didn't do for anyone else, clearly we're special)

Taxis to amd from the dock, indeed all taxis except that first one, charged us in the area of 15,000 [$3.75) amd 20,000 (at night) for journeys of the similar length, so it seems only it was that first taxi driver who thought he'd take advantage of dorky tourists from the airport.

Amd just a comment about "amd," i think I've mentioned it before but my phone spellcheck for baffling reasons defaults to amd rather than and so rather than fight it every single time we'll just have to live with amd.

Thursday, August 24th - this morning we went on a city tour of Cartagena. Around 8:30 the open sided tour bus picked us up, we were apparently the first, and then it spent an hour picking everyone else up. The main tour coordinator was apparently Venezuelan but he didn't do the talking and i think actually he disappeared at some point. Of the other passengers, one couple was from Los Angeles, and one man traveling alone was from New York. I asked that man what brought him here and he apparently just likes to travel, he mentioned he's been to over thirty countries, which is more than me but not by a lot (i think I'm at around 25. Amd hey 6 in the last two months alone). We agreed that Zanzibar and Tanzania are lovely. If i was more extroverted maybe I'd have befriended him but though we got along very well during the tour i didn't get any social media information from him. Everyone else was once again Latino &/ Caribbeano. Very conveniently the tour group had two guides, one who guided most of the group in Spanish, and one giving commentary in English just to myself, the guy from New York, and a Brazilian woman who apparently speaks no Spanish, though she appeared to be traveling with two Argentinian women. She asked Cristina to translate something into Spanish to tell them but Cristina couldn't understand her English ajaja. It's funny how she and i have literally no trouble communicating but anyone else more or less can't communicate to us in the other's language.

Cristina and i were by now down to our last 20,000 pesos so we were rather desperate to find an ATM (there was none near our hotel). We wanted to buy Cristina a hat and new sandals or flip flops as the only pair she'd brought had broken already.

They told us a bunch of stuff i don't remember offhand except that Cartagena was founded in 1533 and has a population of 1.5 million.

Our first stop was some apparently iconic shoes:

I didn't catch the significance of these shoes.

Next we went to the castle, which was an impressive edifice of layers of slanted walls heaped up on a hill. I felt going here was a very apropos bookend to having last month visited first interior slave camps in Ghana, then Elmina Castle from where they were despatched, to this castle on the other side of the sea that overlooked the major slave receiving city for Spanish south America. Though this castle unlike Elmina didn't actually have the slave dungeons within it.

Here Cristina and i were mainly separated on our separate language tours. Castle was neat, i like castles. It differed from most European castles I've seen in that it made significant use of the hill it was on and what looked from the outside as walls were actually reinforced side of the hill, so on the inside you were never behind really tall walls. There were some tunnels into the hill including some that just wound around and around to eventual dead ends just to fool intruders and waste their time. Here in the castle Cristina saw the perfect hat but we didn't have money for it!

We were also told of various times pirates sacked the city (before the castle was built) amd the English unsuccessfully tried to take the city (after the castle was built).

Next we went to a big "CARTAGENA" sign amd took pictures in front of it.

Amd then finished in old Town, which consisted of a lot of adorable narrow streets with colonial era buildings lining them with bougainvilleas reaching up to balconies.

After the tour ended we were given the option to take the tour bus back to our hotels or stay here amd we chose to stay. We found an ATM just outside old Town amd were finally able to get money (300,000 pesos, about $75, is the maximum they'll disburse. Which is weird, even in the most impoverished African countries i can usually get the equivalent of at least $100 even if i need a wheelbarrow for all the notes), so we walked up amd down the cute narrow streets looking for sandals amd a hat for her.

Finally i succeeded in getting a picture of her with a bowl of bananas on her head like the Chiquita woman ajaja

We succeeded in the sandals but not the hat. The perfect hat she'd been teased by in the castle could not be found down here.

Just as we were getting tired amd hungry a woman selling tours spoke to us, amd as soon as Cristina opened her mouth the woman was like "ahh Venezuelana!!" Turned out she was herself Venezuelan from Margarita Island. So we talked to her a bit about that amd our ambitions to go to the Rosario Islands, amd then mentioned we were hungry amd did she have any recommendations, amd she took us a few blocks to a place she recommended as cheap amd good, amd it didn't disappoint. Cristina got her on whatsapp if we do go on a day trip to the Rosario Islands or something i think we might use her she was nice, i liked her more than the one in our hotel.

Then we returned to the hotel. Went swimming on the rooftop pool at sunset. Was amused to note we were one of four similar couples all doing the same thing.

Amd that was it for today, all caught up again! No idea what we'll do tomorrow. Amd i feel cured of my brief illness, though the doctor says she can still smell flu on my breath 🙈

Tuesday, August 22nd - finally were given a room around 13:00, slept for a few hours and even after that i was definitely feeling a bit sick. Dr Cristina has declared i have the flu, but no the bright side somehow flu sounds adorable with her accent.

Our hotel here in Cartagena is comfortable but mostly soullessly generic. But the breakfast are at least very good generic food, and there's a very elegant restaurant on the roof and a pool. Though unfortunately you can't see the sunset from up there as it's right behind another big hotel.

The neighborhood around the hotel I'd probably feel fine walking around in if this wasn't Colombia. But this is Colombia and we're paranoid about unsafe situations. A big consideration when booking the hotel was to be near the beach, but the nearby beach is a dark clay-y sand with no palm trees for shade or aesthetics. Just the grey sand between the waves, a highway and the mountains entirely non dodgy neighborhood. So we aren't exactly hanging out at the beach here. Which means when we're relaxing back at the hotel we're usually just holed up in the room, which isn't my favorite thing.

At some point we saw a United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees car let someone out at our hotel. I'm used to seeing such things in Africa but didn't quite expect it here. Are they here about Venezuelan refugees?

Wednesday, August 23rd - after breakfast we went to talk to the tourism person in the lobby. I mentioned I wanted to go to the mud volcano, since i was still feeling very subpar and it sounded like the most relaxing option. We were told the tour bus to the mud volcano was leaving in 5 minutes! We quickly paid (300,000 pesos? /$75 for the two of us i think), ran up to the room to change into our swimwear and grab what we'd need, and ran back down just in time for the bus, which was already mostly full. We picked up one more batch of passengers, one of whom sat in a fold out seat in the aisle just beside me, who was literally obese, and not the way back had a wailing baby on her lap. Of all the passengers there was one couple who might have been from the US, everyone else appeared to be from the Caribbean or Latin America.

We drove like 45 minutes to the mud volcano. Just before we arrived our tour guide advised us that the locals provide several services for extra charges: keeping our towels and sandals for us; taking pictures with our phones; massaging us in the mud pool; and washing us off in the lake afterwards; all of which is a 5,000 peso ($1.20) charge.

Okay so we arrived to find a volcano shaped mound by a lake. I was a bit disappointed, i had assumed it was some kind of naturally occurring phenomena. I hope it's at least mud from the lake and maybe harkens back to some traditional practice, but if so they never bothered to explain.

So one hands one's sandals and towel to a man with a big bag by the start of the stairs up to the top. Then when it's your turn to go in hand your phone to the guy who takes pictures, then descended down into the square mud pool. It's smooth, a homogenous fine grain, a pleasant temperature. And of course one finds oneself much much more buoyant than one's experience with water would lead one to expect. Wallowing helplessly for a moment i was expertly grabbed by a local in the mud pool and maneuvered to the side, where he immediately proceeded to massage me. I was never asked if i wanted that, though i didn't mind. Cristina apparently told them she didn't want a massage and thus escaped it. She told me she just doesn't like massages but i kind of wonder if not a few women were reluctant to be massaged all over by strange dirty (literally at least) men in a mud pit -- it was only men working there. After a few minutes of massage i was shunted to the side near the exit ladder, where Cristina and i bobbed for another few minutes (we were in the mud for maybe ten minutes?) before climbing out.

Then we descended the mud volcano and proceeded to the lake maybe 50 meters away to wash off. Here the local women were waiting to pour water on us. It seemed so entirely unnecessary that i tried to wave them off but this was ineffectual and it being only $1.20 I just gave up and let them pour water on us.

By and by when everyone was done it was time to leave. We were (finally) given our cell phones back and then it seems we needed to find the specific person who provided each service to us (they all came and thronged us looking for the specific people owing them). Altogether this was chaotic and there were a few recriminations about what was owed to who before it was all sorted out. Considering this was all over absurdly small amounts of money i really think they should just include it in the original price and pay those people in an organized manner or something. The payment process left a bad taste in some people's mouths i think. Amd all over a few dollars! And it's fortunate i had even happened to shove some pesos in my pocket before leaving, it would have been really disappointing to, after paying $75 for the experience to then have a second class experience for lack of having brought the equivalent of a few dollars.

Anyway from there we proceeded to a hotel right on the beach not far from there. Here we had lunch (included in the original fare) and lounged around for two or three hours. This beach was actually nice, though the weather was a bit overcast.

Then we came back to our hotel. The tourism lady called out to us as we crossed the lobby, asked us how it had been signed us up for the city tour the next day, and tried to sell us on day trips to the Rosario Islands for subsequent days. We have ten more days here and i don't want to spend them all holed up in this hotel or on $200 day trips to the islands every day -- I had seen hotels on the islands that looked nice in the $140/night range which seems acceptable to me (edit! I only just realized (Friday) that iwas looking at the two night totals. These nice hotels are under $100 a night!). The tourism lady tried to tell us there were no cheap hotels on the islands and then when i opened the hotels.com app and showed her one i was looking at she said it wasn't on the islands, so i clicked the map and it was on one of the islands she'd just mention. In general it'd found travel agents to be useless for anything other than booking specific local experiences. For anything else they're trying to push the packages they get the biggest kickback for on you whether it's best for your interests or not.

Anyway, relaxed a bit, swam in the rooftop pool around sunset (though as mentioned it itself was hidden), and had another pretty good dinner at the rooftop restaurant.

(Might add more pictures -- or might not! -- we're quickly taking an overwhelming number of photos that it may take some time to pick through)

Monday, August 21st - we checked out of the hotel and Alejandro, the driver who had originally picked me up from the airport (a friend of cousin Anthony), took us to the town of Zipaquira about forty minutes north of Bogota. Outside of Bogota the road median seemed to be jungle but on either side it was relatively small plot cow pastures and lots of rural buildings, and then the town of Chia took up half the distance, and then we were in Zipaquira, which was actually a really cute town with lots of narrow streets and old colonial style buildings.

Our destination here was the "Salt Cathedral" in some old salt mines. Alejandro dropped us off at the entrance on the side of the hill overlooking the town. I think admission was 100,000 a person, everything seems to be 100,000. We got audio tour audio players. The English one it took me a moment to pin the accent but i realized what it was was someone with a thick Irish accent who was trying really hard not to sound like they had an Irish accent.

Anyway we descended into the mine along a tunnel at only a very shallow grade. Once we were 80m or so underground there were "sculptures" of the stations of the cross, but every single one practically seemed to just be a single large stone cross and the commentary explained in a different manner how some indiscernable detail of this specific cross fit that specific station of the cross. I was feeling a bit annoyed that the commentary watched entirely about interpreting these nearly identical crosses and explaining these contrived interpretations rather than actually talking about salt mining which i was far more interested in. Finally though we came to some vast cavernous chambers that were there cathedral itself and these were a lot more impressive and interesting.

After the cathedral chambers we came to an area where there were shops in every alcove, which, with their neon signs i thought was kind of a funny gaudy contrast to the cathedral section. Cristina bought a rocksalt Virgin Mary.

There was also this cool reflecting pool.

And there was an Egyptian exhibit which seemed a bit strange but i suppose the replica Egyptian iconography looked as impressive in the stone surroundings as the catholic stuff.

And there was a movie theater that played a short film explaining the history of the site and the salt extraction. It seems there's native people had collected the salty water from the local springs and boiled away the water to get salt they then traded to neighboring tribes and were relatively rich due to this resource. Then the Spaniards arrived and set the local native people to mining in effectively slave like conditions. Over the years physical mining progressed with better machinery but most recently they're rather back to the original original method, pumping water into the ground and pumping out the brine, then distilling away the water. The movie had some well-made parts and then for some reason this transformer-like rock monster narrator would address the audience between segments.

Took a "train" out, actually just a motorized vehicle with normal tires pulling three passengers carriages, though i did kind of wonder what the base for their "locomotive" had been as no motor vehicle i know of is driven from the back like that.

Just beside where the train let us out the city tour bus was about to leave, our admission had included this city tour so it took us down and through and among the cute narrow streets of town. After maybe half an hour it returned us to the mine entrance.

Cristina then called Alejandro, and the way she gasped and habla-ed with him with emphatic concern i thought he'd been robbed. Being as all our luggage was with him i was extremely alarmed about this. As it turns out it wasn't that, it was that someone had bumped his car, nothing terribly serious but he's now got a dent in the side and unsightly scratches. I asked if he could get compensation from the other driver or insurance but Cristina said no it was just his bad luck.

Since Alejandro was dealing with that and we were hungry (it was just after five now and we'd never had lunch) but town was a bit further down the mountain than we quite felt like walking we got on the city tour bus again to ride it down, expecting to go with the normal tour but the driver volunteered to just drive us directly to this good restaurant and so he did.

The restaurant had a nice atmosphere, on the corner of a block and open along the two street facing sides. The waiter casually asked where we were from and then brought a little flag holder to the table with an Australian, Colombian, and Venezuelan flag in it, we thought that was really cute.

I had pork loin with passionfruit sauce and it was delicious. Cristina had a mixed grill platter. Alejandro was presently able to park on the street just beside us and joined us. I offered to buy him dinner but he'd already eaten so he just had a beer. Total i think came out to like 100,000 like everything else.

Then we visited some of the picturesque plazas in town to take some photos and then headed back to Bogota. We'd have to get up at 3am for our flight to cartagena, so we'd stay at Cristina's cousins place this night and Alejandro would drive us in the morning.

It was as always fun to see the cousins again. It was Cristina's 34th birthday this day (she was 28 when we met! It's crazy that since then this is the third time we've been able to spend time together, so many missed years 😢).

Yineska had made Cristina a birthday cake. Alejandro, recall, his a good friend of Anthony's so he joined us for our little birthday party. Carlota (9) had made a cute card for Cristina and gifted her some sort of hamster sized little plush toy thing. In an apparent Colombian tradition Cristina had to take a bite from the whole uncut cake before it was cut and distributed. And Carlota made simple pinata by somehow getting candy into a balloon and inflating it, and then Cristina popped it after the cake.

We had a good evening sitting around talking, some beers were had. I only had one and am a bit concerned the glands on my neck feel swollen which usually means I'm getting sick. So i thought I'd consult a doctor. And now not only has she declared i have the flu but she won't kiss me!

It wasn't till after midnight we got to bed (Cristina and i in Carlota's room, she with her mother which is apparently a common habit of hers anyway)

Tuesday, August 22nd - we got up at 3:00 after three hours of sleep. Alejandro came to get us at 3:30 (we paid him 169,000 for yesterday and 49,000 today for a total of $50.47us) check in at the airport went quickly and we found ourselves at the gate by four thirty thinking hey we could have slept another hour and a half. Flight was uneventful. Arrived in cartagena to find it very tropical. Raining but the air warm and humid.

DiDi doesn't seem to work here. Looked up taxi fare to hotel, should be 14,800 ($3.59). Took a taxi. He insisted on charging us 30,000. But on the bright side it made me smile to hear Cristina tell the driver i was her "esposo" (husband) at the beginning of the journey.

Okay so after getting three hours of sleep and feeling slightly unwell and all that we could surely use a nice relaxing nap right? Yeah well checked in to the hotel and they won't have a room available till three (and we arrived around nine!). So until then we're condemned to the hotel lobby couch.
As of now it's 11:37 and we're still in this hotel lobby purgatory. Altogether not the best start to our time in cartagena.

[Will be adding pictures]

[Originally posted September 14th]

I only just realized I never posted about August 20th, which was weird because I distinctly remembered writing it. I was afraid livejournal had somehow eaten it but then I realized, having grown distrustful of livejournal eating things I had written it in the notepad function no my phone and apparently never got around to actually posting it.

This is the second day in Colombia.

Sunday, August 20th - having had a late night we took it easy until around noon (got up for breakfast at 9:00 since it's only served till 10:00, i was barely able to eat, and then we went back to bed).

Took a DiDi to the cable car station for Montserrat mountain. This was about half an hour across town and as with the day before cost $2-$3 on DiDi. Not only did our driver speak good English but it turned out he was himself Venezuelan. He was very nice, we got his number for future use though we didn't end up using it.

Cristina's cousin (Yineska) and Anthony were already there and had bought tickets for us all. It was a bit hard to find them in the crowds. Apparently tickets are half price on Sundays so many locals fancied going up there. Line to board the cable car was very long (there was also a funicular that also had a long line). Just before 14:00 we finally got into the cable car, which ascended the mountain at a steep angle. The city of Bogota sprawled in the valley below us, the view was impressive and dramatic.

Took only about five minutes to get to the top. After some initial pictures we decided to get some food as we were all hungry. We headed up past the large church into a gauntlet lined with shops selling tourist souvenirs. As with before i found the shop attendants pleasantly non-insistent. Past the shops the same narrow walkway was lined with little restaurants. We selected one and had a classic Colombian chicken soup (ajaica de sopa?) and a huge platter of mixed grill the windows faced away from Bogota across a forested valley. The bill came out to around $25 which Cristina and the cousin's thought was a rip off (100[,000] pesos. Official exchange rate is 4,100 pesos to the dollar, though the ATMs and currency exchanges give more like 3,800. So prices for everything is in the thousands but in speaking about prices people usually just leave off the thousands, and the currency notes don't even prominently display the ,000 portion of the numbers. On the subject of the money though it didn't happen in this case several times I've been 1,000 short of correct change and so handed them another 10,000, but rather than make change they've said the 1,000 short amount was fine. Very chill about sales these Colombians).

When we finished with food fog was starting to drift in. We perused the shops and i actually bought some things - a cool bottle made from a cows foot (or rather probably in one), and a traditional woven hat, for 105,000 and 120,000 respectively, I'm thinking for my friend Mick and coworker Thomas, respectively.

Then we spent some time exploring the mountaintop. By now the fog was thick and Bogota couldn't be seen at all but things picturesquely faded in and out of the fog in the near distance. There was some beautiful colonial style architecture and gardens and flowering plants.

There was a long line for the funicular to go down, which snaked along a walkway lined with statues of Jesus on the stations of the cross. It began to rain, which developed further into a downpour. Anthony ran off to buy ponchos and umbrellas, but we were pretty well soaked by the time we got into the funicular building. The funicular of course being a sort of bus sized carriage on a cog-wheel track, at a fixed steep angle and so inside it one rides on a series of platforms situated like steps to one another.

Down we went. Took another DiDi back to our hotel and as far as i can remember we just took it easy that evening.

[Originally posted September 12th]

After only three days I've gone through all the pictures ... from the first day. There are nearly 1600 pictures from my phone alone for the whole vacation (which was 16 days so nearly 100 pictures a day).

Here's the pictures from the first day (August 19th), in Bogota with her cousins.

In other news today (September 12th) my baggage finally arrived. They delivered it to me at work. The delivery driver didn't know anything about how or why it was missing but according to the tags attached to it it looks like it did indeed miss the original flight and flew here from New Zealand yesterday.

Saturday, August 19th - in the morning we strolled around the Zona Rosa by daylight. There were some upscale malls just there. But we didn't get anything.

Around noon we went to the old part of town to meet up with Cristina's cousins. Apparently the rideshare app of choice here is DiDi, which I'd noticed google maps automatically recommends these days but hadn't heard of anyone using before. With this driver and all subsequent ones here they insisted one of us sit in the front passenger seat. Some cultural thing? About not getting hijacked from behind? Because in the past in other countries when catching a rideshare ride by myself and hopped in the front passenger seat I've had them act like that was really weird.

Our driver dropped us off at the end of a pedestrian-only boulevard thronging with families. There were street performers and people selling things from little tables. As with the night before people would address us to hawk their wares but immediately desisted on the slightest expression of disinterest. The effect actually being that while in countries with annoyingly persistent shopkeepers i'd be careful to never look directly at their wares and at best briefly side eye for anything worthwhile, in this case one felt free to examine items as much as one wanted without fear it would work the shopkeep into a mania of persistence.

We examined the strange (to me) fruit one man in his cart, he happily told us about them and cut open two different fruits to give me samples, though now i forget what they were called. Cristina bought a bag of lychees from him.

Presently we came to a broad plaza with a cathedral on one side and old colonnaded buildings on the other three sides, and a large statue of Simon Bolivar on a pedestal in the center. Many families were strolling or idling on the plaza.

We took some pictures and presently Cristina saw her cousins approaching. They consisted of her cousin (whose name i actually haven't quite learned because we always refer to her as "your cousin" / "mi prima"), who is 42, her son Anthony (23 but looks 16-18), and her precocious daughter Carlota, who came running to give Cristina and jump hug. The cousin's husband is an engineer currently working for a petroleum company in Gabon in West-Central Africa.

Anthony spoke pretty good English so he mostly acted as the translator between me and anyone else. Carlota was also enthusiastic to piece together questions for me from words she knew, and she was very good.

We proceeded up the side street beside the cathedral and went into a very nice restaurant there to introduce me to traditional Colombian food. I had the "Bandeja paisa" Which was kind a a sampler of a bunch of different things. It was very deliciouso

On our way back to the plaza we bought some [???] from a lady selling it from a cart. She a large a bowl of fruit simmering and poured this hot juice into little cups and added a tot of rum into each. It was a bit like mulled wine.

Rare encounter with English speaking tourists at the drink cart as a young couple from Holland who didn't speak Spanish were trying to order. Anthony helped them translate. They were friendly, the guy was wearing a Dropkick Murphy's shirt which is a band i like a lot.

After that we bought little satchets of corn kernels to feed the pigeons on the plaza, which Carlota had been particularly looking forward to. After feeding the pigeons we attempted to fly a kite Carlota had but we never succeeded in getting it to stay airborne.

"You are mortal" Anthony said to me sincerely. "What?" "You are mortal" "well yes but why are you telling me?" "You are more tall maybe you'll have better luck with the kite " "ohhh" (but no luck)

And then parted from them to rest a bit in the hotel, with plans to meet up again with Cristina's cousin and Anthony that evening to go to a "roomba" in the Zona Rosa, going clubbing basically.

And so we did. They met us in front of our hotel around 22:00. Once again i took the minimal amount of things with me lest i be relieved of them during the night. We walked around the Zona trying to decide where to go in. Finally tried the place with the mariachi-dressed staff but that seemed more along the lines of like a Mexican hofbrau house. Second place we tried turned out to be just ideal though, just kind of contemporarily cozy and elegant. Cost us i think around $25 each to get in and then we had to buy a bottle (we chose a Venezuelan rum) for $70 to get a table on the second level. I don't think I've been clubbing in like twenty years. Anyway we just had fun dancing amongst ourselves. Here on the second level we were level with the elegant globular lights hanging over the second level, half the time there were live musicians down there. It was altogether very nice. I found myself i thinking I can't believe I'm here dancing with my gorgeous fiancee and her relatives, _our_ relatives in BOGOTA of all places. <3

At one point the MCs were hyping up the crowd and asking where people were from and the cheering when he called Venezuela was almost as loud as for Colombia.

At 03:00 the club closed down, we walked back to our hotel and Cristina's cousin and Anthony took a DiDi or taxi home.

[Originally posted August 22nd]

Friday, August 18th - picking up after Cristina and i got to our hotel in Bogota now. Hotel is a bit small, with narrow winding corridors, feeling like it's been jammed into some space in a building it barely fits in, but the room is a decent size. My only real complaint is it has no AC _and_ the bed only has a thick blanket, no sheets.

no title

After some unpacking and catching up presently we found ourselves wondering about food. We both looked out the window at the street four floors below asking eachother "do you think it's safe to walk out there?"
We could see people casually walking about but then there were also people rummaging through garbage cans. In the end we went downstairs and asked the receptionist, who encouraged us to go out.

As a precaution i emptied my pocket of everything save enough money for dinner, and one ID, not even taking my phone.

The hotel it turns out is not the edge of a few blocks known as the Zona Rosa known for its clubs and night life. What we saw from our window was just a side street just on the edge of the district, the main streets were thronged with people lined up outside clubs or walking between them dressed for a night out. Right in the middle of these crowds, which swirled around them, there'd be beggar women sitting on the ground with a blanket on their lap and sleeping child. But i found neither the beggars nor the club promoters were particularly insistent, desisting after a simple dismissive gesture.

We found a little restaurant that was a step above street food, i got a pork sandwich. Cristina got a churro which came cut into pieces in a bowl and accompanied with some chocolate dipping sauce. She declared it wasn't very good but i thought it was worlds better than churros I've had in Australia or the US, so there must be some amazing churros out there.

At the table next to us were three or four guys dressed like a mariachi band, i later pieced together there's a Mexican themed restaurant/club next door.

We walked around the district a bit more. I saw "I ❤️ BOG" on an illuminated sign which amused me. Normally i don't go in for "i heart [city]" paraphernalia but "i ♥️ bog" is funny. I might have to find a shirt or hat.

And then we returned to the hotel. I was thinking it was like 21:00-22:00 but we realized it was actually around 02:00. Jetlag will do things like that to you!

[Originally posted August 21st]

Thursday, August 17th - actually did most of my packing the night before. Left work at 16:00 (an hour early) so I'd have two hours for final packing. Took the car across the street to the mechanic and left the key in their mailbox, they'll fix it up while I'm gone so it can get the roadworthy certificate.

Actually was all packed about half an hour early so spent half an hour pondering if I'd forgotten anything. Naturally didn't think of the thing i ended up forgetting.

18:30 set out on foot to walk the mile or so to the train station to catch the last train of the day to Melbourne

19:13 train arrives. Nice and peaceful journey. When the conductor came by and i was going to buy a ticket, he could only accept cash ($10), which i actually had none on me at all, so he just shrugged and said it was okay.

21:07 arrive southern cross, the main station in Melbourne (there's actually a station called main and maybe it once was but ironically now it carries the name but is not the main anymore. Ten minutes later caught a metro train headed north. Rode that for a half hour (was able to pay this on my Melbourne transit card) to a station called Gowron or Gowrie some such Klingon name. Walked half an hour further north to my hotel. Since i have to be at the airport at 6:30 and live three hours away i had decided to stay in a hotel nearby. All the hotels closer to the airport than ten minutes were over $200 a night. This one just 11 minutes away was $140, more expensive than any of our hotels in Colombia (one of which is five stars!) and looked like a prison cell:

Friday, August 18th, 06:00 - woke up to messages from Cristina that they'd just had a 6.1 magnitude earthquake in Colombia (she arrived the 16th and was staying with cousins). She had been concerned about earthquakes before the trip and i'd been telling her the danger from earthquakes was overblown, and here she immediately experienced a very strong one! She said she was very afraid. There was only one death from the earthquake -- a 26 year old Venezuelan woman who had also only arrived in Bogota the day before panicked and jumped out of a 7th floor window to her death.

06:30 - uber arrived within two minutes of calling it. $25ish dollars for the 11 minute ride to the airport. Uber has a new function where you can schedule ahead, I'd looked at it the night before but it costs twice as much, such sauce! Anyway my driver was a nice Iranian fellow who said he's been in Australia ten years. I took him to be about fiftyish but when i asked what he did in Iran before coming here he said he was a student (studying Persian language) so maybe I misjudged his age in the dark.

As i walked into the airport i realized what I'd forgotten and it was a real face-palmer -- as ALWAYS i forgot one of the _four_ travel pillows i already have and had to buy a fifth one. They're outrageously overpriced at the airport ($34) but do make trying to sleep on the plain a lot more practicable.

Flight originally scheduled to depart 9:30 didn't depart until 10:47. Apparently a lot of passengers were freaking out about their connections because the head flight attendant went on the announcement system several times mentioning that there are 151 passengers with connections so none of them are alone in their situation and United will reschedule their onward flights if they miss them. With a 3.5 hours layover in LAX myself i wasn't terribly concerned.

My seat neighbour inexplicably disappeared an hour into the flight and never reappeared.

In Flight Movie Reviews:
Total Recall - hadn't seen this Schwarzenegger classic so i thought I'd give it a go. Other than a bit of campiness inherent in 80s movies i felt like it was pretty good. Schwarzenegger is/was a fun action star. One big difference i noticed compared to modern action movies is it had random civilians dying in crossfire all over the place. That really doesn't happen in modern movies. Altogether a solid B+
Wick series - I'd been hearing a lot about this series so i thought I'd give it a go. It indeed is kind of fun for an action movie. Lots of big well choreographed fight scenes. And somehow no bystanders were ever injured! In fact frequently fighters get murdered right in front of crowds and people just keep walking around them as normal. Plot is kind of dumb, it seems literally like every fifth person in the world is part of an _extremely_ regimented guild of assassins, but hey it is what it is, which is a vehicle for lots and lots of fighting. I give it a B in general for dumb plot, but if you're literally just looking for lots of fighting it's an A for that.

Landed after 13.5 hours at LAX. at 7:35 am August 18th, ie three hours before i left (but 00:35 Melbourne time the 19th), to learn that Cristina had experienced another earthquake, presumably an aftershock. And southern California was facing its first ever tropical storm warning. So i got right out of there?

Actually got through passport control and baggage in LAX very quickly, took off again at 10:23 (03:23 origin time)

Three hours later at Houston just enough time to make the connection (just over an hour). It was 93f and i was still wearing all my Melbourne layers so on the interterminal bus and our plane before it took off i was roasting.

My strangely good luck at having a vacant seat next to me all the time failed me this time and i was seated next to a guy who wasn't particularly fat or anything but just seemed to think nothing of not only taking the arm rest between us but letting his arm invade my airspace a bit, even if it meant being in contact with my arm he was undeterred, ugh.

This flight had the Banshees of Inversherin so i was able to finally finish it, though i think i reviewed it last time.
Watched another action movie called Operation Fortune. I had liked Jason Statham way back in the Transporter but in this one he was more along the lines of just boring hyper-macho guy. Been hanging out with Vin Diesel too much perhaps. But Audrey Plaza was in this movie too and i love her craziness. Altogether the movie was alright, i give it a B

Arrived in Bogota on time. Cristina was coming with a taxi so i awaited her in the baggage claim so i wasn't just waiting outside. Didn't realize my half hour of free internet from the airport had expired as i was waiting so i turned on my US phone to active the $10 a day service while abroad, was then alarmed to discover i had missed calls from Cristina from ten minutes earlier. Scampered out and met her outside at the top of an escalator. I wanted to run up to her but that would have been difficult with my luggage so i arrived as many steps ahead of my luggage as i could get without letting go of it, as if straining against something holding me back. It had been 3 years, 11 months, 12 days, 9 hours and 25 minutes since we had last been together.

Our taxi driver was actually a friend of Cristina's cousin. It took maybe 45 minutes to get to our hotel. When we arrived there it had been 43 hours and 42 minutes since I'd left my house.

And we've had many fun adventures since then but I'll save that for another entry!

[originally posted August 20th]

   So I just finished reading It Can't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis in which a demagogue takes power in the United States in 1936 and quickly brings fascism to the United States, complete with the police state, concentration camps, and aggressive invasion of its neighbors (Mexico) in 1939 after staging false flag attacks by Mexico. I assumed this was all written after WWII with the benefit of hindsight but was surprised to realize after I finished that it was written in 1935, before Germany had concentration camps much less had invaded Poland in 1939!! (well okay google just now informs me German concentration camps began in 1933, but still it seems like it was pretty prophetic.)

   Altogether the book was very good and had one constantly thinking both about what it would have been really like to live in Nazi Germany at that time, and what the Trump administration almost turned into / what a new Trump administration would certainly be like. But before we get into those points I want to discuss three decisions of the author I felt distracted form his main goals.
   (1) almost immediately he has the new fascist administration completely, and I mean completely, overhaul the institutional framework of America, there are no longer fifty states but (a dozen) administrative sectors, with different subdivisions than our current counties and such. Maybe the author did that so he didn't have to concern himself with adhering to actual political considerations, but it seemed both very implausible, and it robbed the whole story of a great deal of verisimilitude. Ie it would have been much more poignant if the American fascism was more recognizably American.
   (2) for some reason the author chose to make a major plot point that the protagonist doesn't love his wife and is having an affair. This seemed completely unnecessary to the main thrust and personally I have these chivalric ideas of romance that find such things extremely distasteful. Sure I understand that in real life people are up to such shenanigans but why does it need to be in this book where the protagonist having an affair does not have anything inherent to do with fascism in America? I could see how it could have been worked in as a corruption of an institution or something but its not, its put in like something we should be totally okay with, and I'm not.
   (3) I thought it was funny how at pains the author was to ridicule and discredit communists at every opportunity. It makes sense at the time, I suppose the author was anxious to make sure their anti-fascism wasn't labeled as communism but reading it from the modern perspective you can't help but notice how much he shoehorns in the communists being laughably ridiculous and no good to the resistance or anything else.

   But more generally on the it-can-happen-here-ness of it. It had me thinking of a moment in Ms Lesowitz' English class in 9th grade. I don't remember why it had come up in English class, or what she had even said specifically, I just remember that the teacher had just said something about Nazis, and the entire class was loudly expressing their disapproval of nazis. And yet, and yet. I remember looking around and thinking, feeling quite definitely, that everyone was expressing their hatred of nazis not because they understood and hated nazis, but because they knew that they were expected to hate nazis and therefore they did. It was a slightly surreal moment for me, because of course getting groups of school kids to hate broad groups of people on principal is exactly what the nazis DO, and here, unironically, all my classmates were doing exactly that. Nevermind that nazis ARE hateable, but I felt I was the only one there who hated their beliefs from actual examination and understanding of them. It was at that moment i realized in fact how very easily it could happen here.

   And/or fast forward to another memory from high school, this during summer school (I had to take summer school every summer to make up classes I'd missed during my year abroad in Sweden), English class again, and our teacher asked us to write what we would have done if we had been in Germany during the rise of fascism. I'm sure most of my classmates wrote they would be partisans or something heroic like that. Probably in fact most of them would have been nazis but that's not the point of this paragraph. I wrote that honestly I probably would have just left the country at the first sign of it all and moved to Brazil. Sure I'd like to think I'd be some heroic partisan but to think about it really really realistically its hard to feel that would mean anything other than a death without accomplishing much. Thinking about that now, in light of the Trump administration and not-completely-implausible future Trump administration, its hard not to see what I had written as coming true -- I have indeed left the country, and if Trump gets back in power I don't exactly see myself rushing back to the states to become a partisan.

   Anyway, it was a good book, it does do well at driving home the point that it could happen here and while reading it one will be constantly thinking about how it almost did. Really I think we were only saved by Trump's colossal incompetence, he so almost got away with it and if he'd just had more coherent cold blooded pragmatism we'd have been living in the world of It Can't Happen Here. I think someone could write a really good book updating it to modern times and inserting the elements of things we actually saw happen ... and reworking that affair plotline please.

Current Music: Dave Stamey - The Land Where Cedars Grow

Thursday, July 20th - Returned from my two and a half months abroad. Recall that on my way home from the airport I got pulled over and told not to drive my damaged car again, that he wasn't going to ticket me but would if he saw me driving it again.

Friday, July 21st - So I was going to return to work this very next day but after the run in with the copper I called in to work and resolved to buy a car this day instead. I, as I've mentioned, absolutely hate everything that involves thinking about cars. I feel like one _ought_ to spend a lot of time searching for the perfect car, maybe even visit and test drive more than one of them, yadda yadda, but the idea of doing so filled me with such dread and loathing I resolved instead just to go to take the train to the same used car salesman in the nearby town of Colac that had sold me my last car and just buy whatever most suitable car he had. Assuming all his cars are listed on his website this would probably have been a 2009 Ve Berlina for AU$9990. I've never heard of a Ve Berlina before but its a cheap sedan I don't know anything _bad_ about and that's all I'm going on.
   I had it planned out, I'd take an 11am train to Colac and do so. On my parents urging I looked at the listings on facebook marketplace, but all the cheap cars there appeared to have something wrong with them and I was feeling very much like even and especially if there seemed to be a good deal on facebook marketplace I wouldn't be able to discern if there was something terribly wrong with it they weren't disclosing to me and it would all be bad. This used car salesman, even though the last car he sold me the dashboard immediately permanently stopped working, at least has a general interest in not selling crap cars. And really I wish I had given him an opportunity to address that issue but my dad had talked me out of even bringing it up to him at the time, saying he sold me the car as is its on me now.
   But then my best friend Billie who, unfathomably, loves cars, got involved. She called me and told me to wait just a minute she'd call around all of her (deranged) car loving friends and see if someone had something. And soon she had something (due to jetlag I was up around 5, I forget what time she got up but she's an early riser, so we had many hours in the day before the 11am train) -- the father of her former housemate is a retired mechanic and addicted to buying cars at auction, he (Paul) currently has 13 of them and is trying to unload some. Specifically he had a 2003 Mitsubishi Lancer with 180,000 ks that had been his wife's for the last 20 years, that he'd sell me for AU4,500 (US$2,993). I talked to him on the phone and was struck by how much he genuinely seemed almost more concerned about me getting a good car for my needs than trying to push a sale on me. Oh and here's a funny thing, when my parents first suggested I talk to Billie I had complained that she is overly obsessed with four wheel drives and will inevitably try to convince me I need one when it's not what I'm after right now -- well when I first got on the phone with Paul he almost immediately set about trying to convince me that I didn't need a four wheel drive, because his brief from Billie clearly had been that I needed a four wheel drive. Took a moment to get a word in edgewise to protest that I don't _want_ a four wheel drive (in an ideal world with unlimited money a four wheel drive landcruiser would be my dream car but right now my priorities are to just get four wheels under me). Altogether it sounded more in the price range of what I wanted to spend and I felt very convinced this guy had well maintained the vehicle and wouldn't be giving me a car with some terrible secret faults. He's way out in Traralgon 300 km east of me so it was resolved I'd go over there on Wednesday to check it out and presumably buy it.

   Weekend was cold, house is kind of a mess, and I had only bought a few groceries on my way home from the airport (and its lucky I did that!) so it wasn't feeling spectacular to be back. Like this place is freezing and I can't go anywhere and I've got nothing good to eat. Sat around fondly recalling the last two months of wonderfully warm weather, freedom of travel, fresh mangoes, etc. Among the most prominently missing things was coffee!

Monday, July 24th - To take the train to work I have to leave the house around 7:24am, walk the 1.5 km to the train station to catch the 7:43 train into Geelong town. Ride that train through the frosty morning countryside for 54 minutes -- I was happily reading Bill Bryson's - A Walk in the Woods, though unhappily the carriage I was on also had about a dozen-and-a-half school kids on it for some reason who were irritatingly rambunctious, I resolved to in the future to more carefully choose which carriage to sit in. Anyway, 8:37am arrival at Geelong central station, half an hour wait for a bus (standing in the cold, difficult to read, all around unpleasant), 29 minutes on the bus (also hard to read as one is contantly looking out for one's stop / distracted by all the coming and going), to finally arrive at work around 9:36am, a journey of over two hours and causing me to miss half an hour of pay.
   To get back home again I could conveniently take a 17:14 bus from the bus stop just outside of work. As I was walked up there at between 17:00-17:02 I saw a bus go by. Surely that wasn't it right? I waited at the station as the appointed time came and went. I became more and more convinced the bloody bastards had actually come ten minutes early. At 17:26 I texted my boss asking if he'd give me a ride to the train station, but the very moment I hit "send" I saw the bus coming. From there the bus took me to the nearer train station (Marshall station), despite the bus's lateness I was still able to gcatch the train and get home at 19:17. Altogether taking the train meant I was spending four hours in transit every day. I tried to console myself that I could spend a substantial part of the time reading which I'd be doing anyway, but other than on the train one can't read or otherwise relax while waiting for or riding the bus. And this still allowed me no opportunity to hit up a grocery store!

Tuesday, July 25th - Managed to avoid a car full of children on the way in this time. On the way home the bus almost didn't stop for me at my bus stop, the bus coming to a halt a bus length further on and the driver apologizing that he hadn't seen me there. Arriving at Marshall station the station attendant informed me there'd be no train coming due to a fault in the tracks and I'd need to take a bus to Geelong central station to catch a train-replacement-bus. Waited ten minutes for a bus to central, hoping I wouldn't have missed the train-replacement due to these shenanigans. Arriving at central station was informed I'd need to take a bus to Waurn Ponds, which was frustrating because Waurn Ponds is the other direction from Marshall, I had just traveled the wrong direction. But there were many would-be passengers of the train here at central and they bussed us to Waurn Ponds station where the train was waiting for us. Got home at 19:44, ie 2.75 hours after I left work. Definitely looking forward already to ditching the train and getting back to having a car. I'd been riding the train only two days and already had been dunked into a chaotic kerfuffle.

Wednesday, July 26th - Caught the same 07:43 train out of Birregurra. This time there was about a hundred (!!) primary school kids on the platform chattering shrilly like a tree full of lorikeets. I interrogated a chaparone, it was apparently all the primary school kids of Birregurra and two other nearby villages, headed down to spend a few days in Melbourne going to museums. I gathered they were going to board the first car or two and so I got the literally furthest back seat in the train. This time I just stayed on the train past the Geelong central stop (recall this is the day I am to go to Traralgon to buy the car), and was able to sit undisturbed in the same seat, peacefully reading, for two hours. At one point the conductor came through and commented to all of us in the car "you guys are really lucky! There's a hundred primary school kids in the front car!!" ahaha.
   Arrived at main Melbourne station "Southern Cross" at around 10:00, and departed twenty minutes later on the Traralgon-bound train, which I rode for another two and a half hours, arriving in Traralgon around 12:48
   Billie picked me up from the train station, she's currently living an hour east of Traralgon but had come in to see me (she's currently between jobs, as she's been working for a pipe welding contractor so they work intensively on a project for a few weeks and then have a few weeks off, though her boss was her ex so I think it's not entirely clear if she'll be hired on next project). We proceeded to Paul's place, where she had been chainsawing some fallen trees for him while awaiitng my arrival.
   He showed me the car and told me some things about it, while I "uhuh-ed" along as if any of this car mumbo jumbo meant anything to me. But I did get the strong impression he'd taken good car of the car and was genuinely concerned that I be happy with it. The one thing with it is he'd replaced the standard wheels with "mag wheels" that appeared to be wider and lower-profile. As far as I could gather, having never heard of these things before tht moment, their only advantage is that they "look better," but they have the disadvantages of lowering the car's clearance over the road and being wider scrape on the sides of hte wheel well if turned hard-over. He said he'd give me a set of standard wheels and I resolved to change them over as soon as I got a chance. He remarked more than once that I might not want to do this because the mag wheels "look better," but frankly a wheel's a wheel to me, and if I really really strained to the point of having an opinion about the aesthetic properties of the circles of rubber under my car I don't think I would agree they look better, but I suppose one could go round and round about that.
   He encouraged me to take it for a test drive so Billie hopped in with me and away we went. He lived just about five min out of Traralgon so we drove into town, took a few turns, parked nose in, parallel parked, blasted the AC and heater in turn. Yep, it functions like a car. Good enough for me. Got lunch at this burger place Missin Link Billie had been on about. Yeah it was pretty good but I still think Aussies don't know how to make burgers. In this case the taste was fine but it had no structural integrity at all, was quickly becoming a hot mess. Visited one of Billie's other car enthusiast friends at his place of work and he came out and looked at it and agreed it seemed to be in very good condition. He said we could come by his place after we made the purchase and use his hoist to change the tires.
   Headed back to Paul's bought the car.

   From there Billie and I headed back in to town. She needed $100 to put down as a deposit on a touch up on her tattoo (a wedge-tail eagle on her back) which I cheerfully gave her as she didn't have her wallet. We're good enough friends that she needs $100 its hers without any discussion of repayment. Then we went to get insurance on my new car. I signed up for $576 / year comprehensive insurance on the car because twice in the last four years my car has been totalled and I havne't been at fault and I'm fucking tired of it. But on further reflection that's probably exorbitant payments for the value of my car and I suppose I'll cancel it and just get third party like a normal person. It was cute when I stepped out of the insurance office Billie was on the phone pretending to be me to get a quote from a different insurance company for comparison, complete with saying she was a beekeeper and then she was having to answer their bee related questions, which she did impressively well. We also determined this insurance place (RACV) seems to have given me a bad deal anyway. But also I signed up for RACV (Australian AAA) coverage, which will soon be pertinent.

   We had talked ourselves out of immediately replacing the tires, as I have an appointment Monday morning for my local mechanic to inspect it for the "roadworthy certificate" (a thing one must get to change ownership of a car here) and since they'll have it up on blocks and all at that point it would be easiest just to have them change the tires at that point. So now there was nothing left on the agenda except celebritory beers Billie suggested -- which, I'm not a big fan of having even one beer immediately prior to driving my new car in the evening through a major city and across hundreds of kilometers but I didn't want to seem like a total wet blanket so I had a Guinness with her. And then I was off!

   Drove home without incident, arriving home around 21:48

Thursday, July 27th - At 10:30 I had an appointment with a lawyer in Colac to discuss legal action against the farmer's insurance company that is denying liability for the cow in the road I hit. Unfortunately the lawyer didn't sound very encouraging, not that he thinks I don't have a good case, just that there's not a lot of money involved and he warned that the insurance company could just throw money at it and if they were to win I'd be liable for their legal fees. I still think they've gotta be looking at it like sure they could possibly win but objectively its gotta be overwhelmingly more likely I will and especially with such a small sum at stake they'll hopefully think its not worth gambling a bunch of money on when they can just settle for a few thousand. But anyway that wasn't super encouraging.

   Then I proceeded to work in my new car. And about a kilometer from work (which is 53 kilometers from my house) the car seemed to begin to wobble a bit. But maybe it was just the road? Arriving at work I examined the tires, one appeared flat but it could just be sunk in the soft mud there. Having already missed work that morning, and the entire previous day, and been late due to the train the previous two days, I didn't feel like further shirking work by attending to the car so I left it until after work. Paul called to ask how the car was going and was concerned to learn about the apparent flat.
   17:00 drove the car just onto the concrete pad in front of the honey warehouse and confirmed it was definitely flat. Fortunately I happen to have a car full of spares! And fortunate too this happened at work and not by the side of the road somewhere in between or during last night's drive through Melbourne. Though I was immediately pretty frustrated to have yet another car problem on my hands.
   So I set about replacing the wheel ... but what's this, the mag wheels have special hub caps that the lug-nut-wrench that came with the car doesn't fit on!!! I cannot get the lug nuts off!! Aughhh!
   At this point I was cursing the entire concept of cars and exclaiming to my friends how utterly mind boggling I find it that some people actually enjoy completely voluntarily thinking about and even working on the god damn accursed things.
   Fortunately I had re-upped my RACV membership. I called them to have them dispatch a technician out to help me, whom I was told would be out "within the hour."
   Meanwhile being as its winter in the southern hemisphere, it had gotten dark and cold. Also presently my boss came home (he'd been out somewhere), and set about looking all around for any lug wrenches / tire irons he could find. There's a lot of stuff around work so he was able to find a variety of them in various places but none of them were fitting.
   At 17:45 the RACV technician called to say he was across the street but couldnt' find us. Upon being told which side of the street we were on he said "oh sorry you're not in my zone sorry I'll have to ask them to dispatch someone else." (!!!!!) I gave it a few minutes and then called RACV back and as I suspected it had not been redispatched, but they did say they'd put me right to the front of the queue.
   Meanwhile we continued trying different things and finally found a tool that worked (a "13/16th spark plug socket" for those of you following along at home), to remove the lugs, and then I had the tire replaced in a jiffy. Called RACV to call off their dispatch. Finally at 18:55 I had the tire replaced and was good to go. Stopped at the small town halfway home to grab just a few things I'd been urgently missing (coffee, finally!!!!) from the small grocery store there, and finally got home around 20:00. Thinking jesus christ in the week since I've been back NOT ONCE have I been able to get home at a decent hour without transportation related shenangians.

Friday, July 28th - So now I've got three mag wheels and one standard wheel on the car. Drove it to and from work today (without incident for once!!), I plan to just lay low over the weekend and first thing Monday morning I have that appointment with the mechanic and I'll have them switch out the other three mag wheels. And then I also have to sell said mag wheels, which is just one more car related chore, and as well need to call scrappers to see if I can get money for my old car. God I hate cars.

   Anyway, I need a name for my new car. Usually its inspired by the letters in the license place, my old car was USS Trilobite because the letters in the plate were TRI. This car's plate is SCC642 so any ideas for a good name for a car that prominently features SCC???

   The other day I watched a movie I've been wanting to watch for awhile, Punk's Dead. Which is the sequel to SLC Punk.

SLC Punk - Let us begin by talking about the original. I saw this movie in 1999 or 2000 and it literally changed my life. The movie is about punks in Salt Lake City, and more generally, it is about the punk rock movement in general, what it means to be a punk and such. It's not a documentary, though sometimes it adopts an overtly mock-documentary style for a scene or two. The story is beautifully scripted to balance between mockumentary and the story arcs of the characters involved. The acting is great, the characters all memorable and interesting. Through its storyline it really gets at the essence of of punkishness in a way that an essay about it or serious documentary just couldn't.
   And basically it immediately launched my friends and I into punkishness ourselves. Previous to the movie we were nondescript teenagers wearing jeans and forgettable t-shirts, with no particular music taste. Within months we were wearing spiked (dickies) jackets, band shirts (usually mostly black), and well in the case of my friends dickies shorts and black converse though I personally rebelled at being quite THAT much in a form of uniform. It wasn't all pretense, we did find we did really like the music (I personally drifted more towards the Irish-punk of Flogging Molly, Dropkick Murphy's etc), and going to shows was always fun. I definitely felt very much like we were all secretly "posers," and early on wrote "POSER" really big with black acryllic paint across a white t-shirt and would wear it to punk shows, I enjoyed the irony of it looking like a punk thing to do but I was I felt secretly telling on myself.

   For years I felt like I was secretly a poser at being a punk more or less until I realized I was drifting into post-punk and in retrospect I had totally been a punk. And I think really it's not as embarrassing as I thought it was to be so inspired by a movie. One has to get into it somehow, if not from the movie it would probably be by what, knowing some older punkish kids at school and idolizing them and getting into it that way. No yeah no we saw a movie that thoroughly laid out what the movement was all about and we looked at eachother and said fuck yeah that seems rad. And it was.

   But then, like I said there's this even harder to define thing that is "post-punk" which is kind of a combination of starting to feel like you're getting too old for it and you've been rebelling against society enough and questioning everything enough that you come full circle and question what you're questioning and just, its complicated and vaguely zen.
   And so when I discovered there was a sequel to SLC Punk that was made 17 years after the original I was excited and naturally assumed it would address this kind of thing, how are all our main characters adapting their formerly punk rock rebellious worldviews to having careers in the real world?
Punk's Dead - Well, in short, it wasn't really that and it was very disappointing. It focuses on some characters who were very minor characters in the original (guess they couldn't get the original protagonist) and some new characters. Basically the sort of gothy but very uptight son of one of the original movie's main characters and two friends of his. The plot is practically as simple as can be -- a girl breaks this kid's heart so he goes on a roadtrip with two friends to go see a band. During the trip he gets drunk and does drugs and loosens up a bit. The legacy characters from the original meanwhile spend a lot of time just talking about how conerned they are for him. In the end spoiler alert he has a sudden romance with his female friend that feels supreeemeely forced as they didn't have chemistry and seem very unlikely. The only philosophizing that goes on is just a bit of parroting of some things said in the original but in this case it comes across as unoriginal and not supported in context. In short the whole movie was very disappointing. I give it a D. But I definitely receommend the original as an A+++ movie you neeed to see.

And here's a better picture of the mohawk I had. I absolutely unreservedly do not regret having the mohawk, it was awesome and I loved the way it effected how people treated me (either like I was dangerously deranged or among any punk-inclined person instant friendliness)

Current Music: Against Me! - Baby, I'm an Anarchist!

July 18th, 22:54 - I was writing that last entry starting while waiting at the gate and finishing literally as we began to taxi down the runway. So it was a bit rushed at the end and didn't include some pictures I've since added.

   Flight was with United, direct from LAX to Sydney. It looks like they'er building a monorail or at least light rail connection at LAX, that would be pretty rad if they actually connect it to the national rail network. I was surprised there was no passport control to leave the United States through the United terminal. Flight was mostly full, but got lucky, had the window seat with an empty seat next to me! 40ish woman on the aisle and I high fived when they closed the door and the seat between us was still empty. Place to dump all our junk! / I totally made use of sticking my feet under the seat in front of that seat for added room. Dinner was a cheeseburger, which I thought lol how very American of United, but it was actually very good. Seatmate remarked on it being surprisingly good. She was a paramedic from Florida, headed to Australia for the women's world cup, was going to potentially visit whichever cities the team she was following (USA?) was playing in.

In Flight Movie Reviews
The D&D Movie - you know, it was actually quite good. I'd heard it was good, and I'd gotten in to D&D the other year, but I was put off from seeing it any sooner because that actor Chris Pine seems extremely hateable to me. I just have this uncontrollable loathing for him. He looks so punchable. I can't even say his acting was bad, I just can't get past how much I hate his appearance. Anyway, I think part of what made this movie so good is that, very much like D&D characters, almost formulaically so, they gave each of the main characters as basic backstory-motivation. I say almost formuliacally because it really seemed like each one had the paragraph one writes when creating a character, almost down to being like the pre-written suggested ones, but it totally worked in the movie and it had me thinking that most movies don't really bother to do that with anyone other than the one most main protagonist. And each of the characters had a meaningful character development story arc. Plot was interesting and had a lot of clever references to D&D things without seeming like it was awkwardly trying to jam them in or in danger of boring people who weren't familiar with the game. In fact I think someone unfamiliar with the game would enjoy it perfectly well purely on its merits as a fantasy movie. I might have given it an A if it weren't for Chris Pine but god I hate him. B+

Avatar: Way of the Water - So the original Avatar didn't exactly have a mind blowing plot, everyone roundly made fun of it for being "dances with wolves with smurfs." Well this one somehow had a worse plot. At the end of the previous one the bad human colonists have to leave the planet Pandora. This one establishes that after (10 years?) another human expediiton arrived with greater force and established a bridgehead on the planet called... Bridgehead City. Our protagonist has been leading guerilla partisan warfare against these colonists, which has been successul in being a huge nuisance to them but not stopping them. It's now (5?) years after the return of the humans. Okay here's where it gets mind bendingly dumb. The colonial authorities want to kill Protagonistface because he's the leader of the resistence, so what does he do? He stops fighting, but leaves his tribe because he fears the colonials will strike his people, and he joins some other tribe, which immediately becomes the target of colonial strikes. Like, what did that accomplish other than the obviously intended meta goal of changing to an ocean based setting? But in universe, why would he stop fighting? Why would the colonials necessarily know where he specifically is? How would he justify really making some other tribe the target for persecution, considering he's supposed to be such a Good Guy and just causing a different innocent tribe to suffer instead of your own doesn't seem like good guy behavior.
   None of this is really spoilers btw, its pretty much established as exposition as soon as they can. And then what I thought was really lame is they have the exact same guy as the bad guy. They're just like "lol look we cloned him before he died!" I think that's a pretty piss poor excuse just to make the same movie again in a different setting. And then, spoiler alert (but really its too lame to be much of a spoiler) they make it clear that the apparently defeated main antagonist has survived, clearly setting up to have him once again reprise the same role (groan) in a third installment. I give this movie a C-, it would be less but I do like all the cool CGI animals they've made and some of the humantech vehicles too.

Banshees of Inisherin - The official plot summary of this movie is "Two lifelong friends find themselves at an impasse when one abruptly ends their relationship." Which doesn't actually sound that exciting but the movie is actually very amusing. There's a subtle humor to almost every line and it moves along quite well. Unfortunately I only started the movie near the end of the flight and we reached the gate when I had just about exactly half an hour left of the movie. Now I'm quite wrapped up in wanting to know how they resolve their plot arcs! It's apparently on Disney+ but I was getting Disney+ through my former roommmate Trent and it appears he has changed his password. And after he moved out he started being kind of a dick to everyone and only hanging out with his 18 yr old girlfriend so I'm not terribly inclined to beg him to give me his new Disneyplus password. Guess I'll need to fly on United again so I can finish the movie. (But note to self its literally on the 30 min remaining mark I left off!) A-

/End In Flight Movie Reviews

   At Sydney in the baggage claim I had some confusion, because as I had checked my checked luggage the handler had said it would go through all the way to Melbourne and the luggage tag I was given reflected that, indicated pick up at MEL, but conventional wisdom would be that I'd have to retrieve my luggage on arrival from international flight, go through biosecurity/customs, and recheck for domestic, and an employee I asked said yes I would have to collect it here. Aggravating things was the fact that it continued to not come out onto the belt until I was really starting to wonder if it wasn't coming out here at all and had indeed continued on automatically. But then finally it came out. By now I had an hour to catch my connecting flight (only half an hour till boarding!), deja vu of the JFK debacle!
   Emerging from international arrivals it was entirely unclear where to go for my domestic flight and I couldn't even find an airport employee, until I asked someone at a currency exchange desk who pointed me in the right direction for the inter-terminal shuttle. Arriving there a airport staffmember was advising us that if we had a tight connection to make it would be faster to take the train, so I rain in the direction indicated, down the two flights of stairs to the subway. Train came within a minute (unlike th NYC JFK train that took ten minutes to arrive!), at this point it was only about half an hour to departure (8:30) and I was afraid they wouldnt' check me in but they did, got through security and arrived at the gate just in time to board the plane.

   Once again had a window seat with an empty middle seat behind me. This time the woman in the aisle seat was matronly and threw her purse into the middle seat in what felt like an unfriendly hostile manner. We never spoke. Looking out the windows as we flew over the mountains of the Great Dividing Range there was an impressive amount of snow.

   Stepping out of hte Melbourne airport it was indeed coold! 9c (48f) "feels like 4" (39f). I had just missed the earlier Gull shuttle bus to Melbourne, would have to wait an hour for the next (which was the one I had expected to catch anyway). Changed into some more layers in the restroom while waiting. Bossman picked me up from the shuttle stop in Geelong, filled me in on some of shenanigans that had occurred while I was gone, sounds like an eventful two months!
   Kind of expected the car to need to be jumped but it started right up. Went and got lunch at the schnitzel-wrap place nad then some groceries since I obviously have no perishables from before I left. Then headed home.
   Just on the edge of my village I pass a police car, which I see promptly do a u-turn behind me. Which isn't a normal place to do so so I was bracing myself for what came next which was the reds and blues behind me. Remember my car? Having collided with a cow on the road? Well, I was waiting for their insurance to pay me for my damages, finally finally after taking seemingly forever (literally 7 months) they emailed me while I was in Africa saying they (the insurance company) found their client was not at fault because the fences were in good order and a cow jumping over a fence is an "act of god." I responded by sending the photo of the numerous cows on the road, and reminder that the farmer had admitted to owning the cow I hit, and they responded that it was unprovable that those other cows were also the farmers, which in my opinion stretched credulity beyond reason. So now that I'm back I've made an appointment with a lawyer to sue them for the damages. But long story short my car has not been repaired yet.
   The copper, who it turns out is the local Birregurra copper, was relatively friendly, said he wasn't going to ticket me or condemn my car with a "canary" (yellow ticket making a car officially unroadworthy), but he would if he saw me on the road with it again. Soo I was going to go to work tomorrow but I think I'll instead take the day to buy another car. As I've mentioned before I hate hate hate hate hate shoppinig for cars. But I think, though I innately feel like one "should" shop all around for the best car, I'm literally going to buy the first reasonably priced reasonable car I find because did I mention I absolutely haaaaate shopping for cars?
   Anyway, welcome home ey?

   Arrived home at 15:45 local time, which I think would have been 22:45 July 19th back in California, ie right on about 24 hours after my flight took off from LAX.

   My neighbor who i left my house key with wasn't home just yet, which presented a bit of a pickle. But weirdly, considering I recall having a hard time finding a house key to lock the house with at all before I left, on this occasion I went to where I felt my spare key should be and lo there was a key tehre that opened the house. I don't know why I couldn't find that key before I left? Or maybe I knowingly put it there at the time in addition to giving one to my neighbor and have simply forgotten.
   Anyway, the end.

Monday, July 10th - In the early evening we drove from my brother's place on Alameda Island in the Bay Area to Davis, about an hour inland to the northeast. I noted the mothball fleet at Suisun Bay which had been dozens of old Navy ships all moored up in lines when I was more regularly traveling that route 15 years ago, now was reduced to just three or four vessels.

   Our first stop was noted Davis pizza place Woodstocks Pizza. Which... was not where I left it. It had just move down a few lots down the same block, though during Covid that street itself (G Street) had been turned into a pedestrian only street and from the looks of it may remain so.
   Since we were getting the pizza to go, I led the way to the Davis Beer Shoppe across the street to get accompanying beverages. As remembered, they had a great selection. There were two delicious beers I wanted to get for $18 and $15 respectively but dad scoffed at the price so I was shamed into getting a cheaper but still delicious one. I was covetous to sneak back there and get them later but never got around to it, rather to my regret. Yes that's a high price when you're thinking beer like "bud light," but compared to a bottle of wine that's not outrageous and a beer of this quality is imo more than comparable to a good wine -- it's rarer, takes more skill to make and I like it a lot better.

The Mad River" one didn't excite me much but the other three! the one on the right is the one I got in the end

   Anyway, we then proceeded to my aunt and uncle Ben and Bev's place. Inside the house it smelled vaguely of popcorn, which I didn't put together until the next morning, when Ben was talking about how he had roasted the coffee beans the night before -- he has a coffee roaster in the garage. They had already eaten but sat with us on their nice outdoor patio while we ate the delicious pizza. The Woodstocks pizza was indeed as delicious as I remembered, as was the beer I'd gotten.

Tuesday, July 11th - In the morning I checked off another eatery from my list. Met up with my friend Casey "the wizard" at Crepeville. Case tutors in physics and is rather a recognized character on campus due to his penchant for wearing capes and such, and hence commonly known to one and all as "the wizard." I had the "hawaiian crepe," a crepe stuffed with ham, pineapple, and teriyaki sauce. It is delicious.
   While we were eating I noted yet more e-bikes go by. America seems to be in the grip of a plague of them! Casey mentioned that electric scooters have been around for awhile, but somehow that doesn't offend my notions of propriety the same way. A scooter is for hopping on and off and scooting about, it is fitting and inoffensive for it to be electric. But gosh darn bikes are meant to be gosh darn peddled!!

   Around mid day my parents and I set out with uncle Ben to go on a short day hike a bit out of town at Lake Berryessa. As we were driving through town Ben told us about a shocking set of knife attacks that had occurred in Davis only two months ago at the end of April / beginning of May. Very sadly, the very first victim was a local Davis character known as "The Compassion Guy." The Compassion Guy, Davis Breaux had graduated from Stanford, but, to quote wikipedia "After a breakup with a girlfriend, Breaux became dejected and began "searching for inspiration", according to the New York Times.[1] He discovered the work of Karen Armstrong, who argued that "compassion was inherent to peace".[1] He gave away his possessions and moved to Davis in 2009.[1] Breaux typically carried a notebook with him, and asked passersby to contribute to it by writing their definition of compassion.[1] Local residents and workers at businesses in the area considered him "a communal therapist of sorts", according to the Times.[1] He was known as "the Compassion Guy"."
   The knife murderer was a former UC Davis student who had been expelled just a day or two prior and murdered Breaux on the bench he was known to hang out around, already known as "the Compassion Bench" (I had noticed it and its current covering in flowers earlier on my way back from Crepeville).
   While this crime was still unsolved and not yet known to be the beginning of a spree, two days later a promising young computer science student was attacked in a park, also with a large knife. One or more passersby intervened and chased off the attacker but the victim died of his severe wounds.
   Two days later he attacked a homeless woman in her tent, she was wounded but she escaped and managed to call 911.
   As you can imagine by now the whole little town was in fear. Apparently the suspect was sighted at one point but the police took over an hour to arrive at the location and by then he had walked off. Then he was sighted the next day near the park of the original attack, and once again the police took 40 minutes (this is a small town something of this priority should take mere moments) to arrive. The police have claimed they were inundated with erroneous tips at the time, which I'd imagine is somewhat true but it still seems like they should have been able to respond more quickly. Especially since something like 15 people called him in when sighted at this park before the police arrived. You'd think by the third or fourth call reporting someone matchign the description of the suspect at the same park he'd attacked at earlier the police would send someone pronto. I have a generally dim view of the Davis police due to their declining to do anything about some guys who jumped me in a park there in 2002 and left me unconscious, even though my own investigation came up with their names, where they worked and lived. But police said it was "just a fight." Knocked unconcious begad.
   This all makes Davis sound really unsafe but I swear it really is a very peaceful little town it just has someone lose their marbles once every 20 years.

   Anyway so we drove about an hour west and went on a hike up by Lake Berryessa (famously a site where the Zodiac Killer did some murders in 1969). It was a bit hot and dry, but it was fun because both mom and uncle Ben are pretty keen on identifying plants and animals.

   We got back from that around maybe 14:30, hung out at Ben and Bev's place for a bit, but then were off again, to the swimming hole on the American River in Sacramento, about half an hour east of Davis.
   Despite the temperature pushing 100f (38c), the river was very cold. Too cold for me! But dad went swimming, he's never deterred by cold water. I did wade out up to my knees. There were a number of other people wading about in the cold river as well. And we marveled that there were about two dozen lifejackets on the bank that appeared to be just there for people to use and no one had run off with them or recklessly tossed them in the river for the fun of it. Sadly it seems shocking that no member of the public was so badly behaved.

   Back and Ben and Bev's that evening one by one more relatives got invited to dinner, until finally it was Ben and Bev, myself and my parents, Bev's mom (88, recently widowed), my cousin Chelsea (Ben & Bev's daughter), her husband and their two boys (10 & 12?); my cousin Sylvan (brother of the recently married Linnea), his girlfriend, and his mom Sherry (mother of the recently married Linnea). So it was about as many as sometimes one gets together for thanksgiving, though the dinner was much more simple. The primary entertainment was recounting the wedding, which we had all been at. Ben having been the "official photographer," with the nice DSLR and well and truly good photography skills, he showed us a slideshow of the photos he got after dinner. It reminded me of days of yore when the family would gather around for a slide show (actual slides!) of someone's vacation abroad.

Wednesday, July 12th - It was time to head back south! Except my brother Tobin had gone up to somewhere further in the foothills on the American River to camp with his son Kestrel, and we decided to go visit them there before heading back south. He was about an hour east of us near the town of Plymouth California. This is up in classic gold country, rolling rugged golden (with dry grass) hills covered in oak forest. Beautiful country. Through location sharing (on facebook?) we had a "last known location" for Tobin but kept coming up against locked gates and eventually gave up. As we'd find out later he was indeed actually behind one of these gates and there was a gate code, but at the time he'd gone out of cell phone range we hadn't yet resolved to go see him there and so this hadn't been communicated.
   But it wasn't a waste because we saw some beautiful country we hadn't seen before, and we had stopped in a little mexican restaurant in a small town on the way that was actually really delicious.

   Familiar drive down the length of California once we got back on The Five. When we stopped for gas at a place with a particularly large refrigerator of drinks I noticed some interesting ones I'd never seen before. What is "COca Cola Ultimate?" And "Dr Pepper Cream Soda?" I was curious about these but not in the mood for a soda at the time. And I noted Snapple has gone to a more rustic looking label?

   Got caught in traffic in LA in which we were at nearly a standstill for an hour. Apparently there was an "officer involved accident" just ahead and the whole freeway was closed off while it was investigated. There was an exit cars could get off the highway on but it was totally insufficient for the volume of cars on the freeway and in the hour we only moved .5 miles. Then it was cleared all at once and we went on our way, arriving home around 10pm.

Thursday, July 13th - Most just relaxed at home. Got doughnuts this morning. Got doughnuts for breakfast (as mentioned earlier they don't really do doughnuts in Australia). In the afternoon went to the beach. Again as usual I found the water too cold and just got my feet wet but dad swam about two kilometers, from one beach where we dropped him off, and mom and I drove to the next beach where dad came in after coming in past the pier, to emerge at the beach seemingly out of nowhere from the local beachgoers perspective. Many people were out enjoying the beach.

   From there we proceeded up the coast just a bit to Dana Point, where beloved tallship I used to volunteer on, The Pilgrim, had sadly sunk at her dock in March 2020. I of course haven't been back here since. I didn't know if there'd be anything left of her but we found some of her spars, anchors, and one of the tops (what you'd call a crow's nest but really its just called a top) and other bits. And then a little bit later after we'd walked to the breakwater and back we found some more pieces that had been more intentionally set up as a memorial of the ship. Somehow I feel like the pieces sitting cut up and seemingly discarded fit more with the general impression I'd had of the organization's ownership's general neglect of the ship. When she sank there was a lot of muttering that it was directly through the ownership's neglect that she sank.

   After that we had an early dinner at Pedro's Tacos, another classic local establishment, delicious burritos and tacos. While we sat there eating I noted many e-bikes going by, and also rather laughed to myself at the very California lingo of the surf dudes who walked up to the window to order, lots of "dude" and "bro" and words connected with "like."

   And now this is caught up! I can't believe my return to Australia is quickly approaching now, next Tuesday the 18th! At which point I'll be going right back into the heart of winter which I'm NOT excited about!

Current Music: Stan Rogers - The Marie Ellen Carter (Will Rise Again!)

Friday, July 7th - we drove up to Northern California along The Five. Of note, i thought The 5 was remarkably wide near home where it's six lanes on a side, but they're actually expanding it to eight per side.

Anyway so the drive takes one through the urban sprawl of OC and then LA, then up into the mountains north of LA until finally abruptly one descends into the broad flat Central Valley. Which is the bread basket of California and much of the US, but most of the south half is just a flat plain of tumbleweeds.

As is tradition we stopped at Kettleman City for In N Out for lunch. Place was a madhouse with a line out the door (it was 13:30 though, so still in lunch rush) but our food actually came pretty quickly. Faster than we could cycle ourselves through the bathroom line. Place needs to double in size.

Anyway the In N Out double double burger is a divine thing, it's only downside being that while eating it one is haunted by the bittersweet knowledge that one will not always be eating it. Also it's just slightly too small to thoroughly satisfy me. In N Out being endlessly customizable you can order a "3×3" which i did on this occasion but i think the divine proportions are off with that. It's still a damn good burger but you don't hear the angels singing while eating it.

I've been up the Five countless times but usually I'm headed all the way up to the Davis/Sacramento area or beyond. On this occasion we exited the central valley towards the south end of the Bay Area via the 152, through rolling golden hills. Little valleys of garlic farms gave way to the South Bay town of San Jose, we proceeded to the western edge of it, a cute little (expensively cute looking!) town called Saratoga, where we had a hotel for the night as it's the last civilization before the Santa Cruz forests.

Most of the restaurants in town were extremely pricey but we found an affordable fish and chips place and had a very nice meal. I had shrimp tacos and sangria :d

I remarked that it seemed like 60-70% of the cars driving by or that we'd seen parked were electric cars, and dad pointed out we were literally in "Silicon Valley," just beside Cupertino in fact. Later at the somewhat scarce parking around the wedding venue picnic site in the red woods i notice two of two illegally parked cars were teslas (i don't think they belonged to anyone attending the wedding).

Amusingly a historical plaque said this town was once a notoriously rough logging town noted for its drunken brawls at its many saloons. Now it seems mainly a place to drive your trophy wife date in your tesla to casually drop $100 per plate on a meal in a cute leafy place with quaint village charm just outside of the big city.

Saturday, July 8th - "continental breakfast" at our hotel was the better sort of individually wrapped mass produced pastries and yogurt cups. Then we drove up into the mountains, the road immediately becoming very curvy.

For all our collective lifelong interests in hiking in California wilderness areas neither my parents nor i really knew much about this immediate area so we were looking with avid interest at the forest valleys we passed and taking note of the busy trailheads.

The wedding location was seemingly as deep into the forest as one could get. In about the middle of it, and yet at the end of the long winding road so one felt not in the middle but at the far end of the back and beyond. The road finally descending deep into a narrow valley full on the giant redwoods. I had assumed Linnea and Pascal, the betrothed, had chosen this place because they'd become familiar with it while students at nearby Santa Cruz and knew this was the specific best redwood grove for a wedding -- but i learned they actually hadn't been here yet when they booked it (six months ago)!

Apparently there's a bit of a general grumble about the current booking system for national parks in California -- because there's no cost and no penalty for not showing up and intense competition for sites, people book up sites quickly six months in advance, then there plans change but they don't unbook and the site goes unused. We saw this first hand as we (my parents and i) almost couldn't get a spot. Finally got one at the furthest end of the campground due to either a last minute cancelation or some finagling amongst other family members with bookings, but then on arrival we found heaps of empty spots. (But you can't just take one because for all you know the rightful owners will show up at 9pm righteously irate at your squatting)

Pictured: Pascal attempts unsuccessfully to get through his vows without sentimental tears

Wedding ceremony was delightful. Aunty Bev (my aunt as well as the bride's aunt) officiated in her capacity as someone who had also married her highschool sweetheart. Linnea and Pascal had met in junior high, begun dating in high school. Ten years later now they've survived periods of attendance at different grad schools and all the other trials and tribulations of the first decade of adulthood. Linnea recently got her doctorate in neuro biology and Pascal in climatology.

In the evening "the younger crowd" of the bride and grooms college friends and us cousins who don't yet have small children wiled away the time around a big campfire. All their friends are climatologists, oceanographers, geologists and such so there were many interesting conversations and certainly a generally conservation minded world-view pervaded among all (incidentally my brother Eric, who was a Trump supporter, along with his immediate family, was not in attendance. He has cut all ties with me and a number of other family members).

I had turned off my phone when it got dark, having 10% left of the battery at that point. Even though there was no reception I'd been using it to take pictures until then, but wanted to save some to get back to the camp site. Just after midnight the group began to break up so i started heading back, turned on my shoes .. it displayed 0% for a moment before shutting off. Tried turning it on again in case that was a fluke but it immediately died!

I thought I'd see if i could find my way via what distant campfire and moonlight might exist, and got about 50 meters until i got to an area between the group camp where the wedding party's friends were and the main campground, and here there was no campfire light, and essentially no light from the moon or stars filtered down through the towering trees. Even after standing there for my eyes to adjust until i imagine they were round as saucers and entirely dilated, there was literally nothing to be seen. Literally not my hands in front of me. There was no way I'd be able to proceed like this no matter how persevering and can-do my attitude might be. My only hope would be maybe someone would loan me a flashlight or something if i returned whence I'd come. There was the faintest flickering of the distant dying campfire so i was able to shuffle back that way, bouncing off the burbs of the road like a ping pong ball.

As luck would have it i ran into my cousin Sylvan (literarily one night note his name means "of the forest" so he's the most appropriate rescue in the situation), brother of the bride, who was just getting water before bed with his girlfriend Marlee and they volunteered to walk me all the way back to my campsite. During the walk we reflected that it really was a long and convoluted way and i never would have made it. And i was lucky i suppose, my phone had died immediately when i could still return to the start, if it had died halfway it would have been a real pickle!

When we arrived at the campsite, where i had a tent and my parents were sleeping in the car, i was anticipating just quietly skulking into my tent but the light came on in the car and my parents greeted me. As i would find out later, to hear my mom tell it it sounds like she suffered more than i did, unable to sleep in anticipation that i might get lost on the way back, at one point suggesting they go look for me though dad was sure i was fine.

Sunday, July 9th - after a rather tasty camp breakfast prepared by my cousin Chelsea and her mom Aunty Bev, we headed out. Once again this took us through winding mountain forest roads before we entered the Bay Area urban expanse. Did you know there's a town in the bay area called "Alameda de las Pulgas," sounds all well and good until you've been studying Spanish and see that and realize it is "Grove of Fleas." 😳😳😳😳

Arrived at my brother Tobin's place on the island of Alameda (this grove unrelated to fleas). His wife had gone home early, not spending the night camping, to prepare a birthday party for their 3 year old Kestrel (I will once again note this name was shamelessly stolen as the name I've been saying for many years i intended to use). I had only met Kestrel for the first time at the wedding yesterday. So there was a pinata and several other young couples with similarly aged children came. I mostly read my book because I'm boring like that. (Currently the Flashman book where he participates in the 1868 British expedition into Ethiopia -- i had picked it up from the library)

Monday, July 10th - having just missed a ferry and Kestrel being asleep in the back, my parents decided to give me a bit of a tour of the former Alameda Naval Air Station. It was a weird mix of revitalized and derelict, a checkerboard of boarded up barracks and hangers which have turned into trendy breweries. It was a funny vibe, looking like a run down industrial area, you see people in front of a building expecting riffraff and it's invariably successful looking tech bros. We saw the former location of the Google X project Tobin had worked on --Makani, giant kites to generate electricity. That project had closed down as not quite economically viable. It had been based in the air base air traffic control building and they'd used some of the hangers for construction of their kites.

Just offshore off the airbase several fully autonomous drone sailboats bobbed at anchor.

Then we caught the ferry across the bay to San Francisco, which was quick and easy and fun. Spent two or three hours tooling around the embarcadero, had some delicious Mexican food at a recommended place, and returned on the ferry.

And now we're about to depart Tobin's place and head to Davis. My uncle Ben (Bev's husband, my mom's brother) was going to prepare us dinner but i interjected into the plans that much as i love a home cooked meal, and Ben is very good, there's several restaurants in Davis I've literally been day dreaming salivatorily of eating at for years. So i think we'll get Woodstocks Pizza :d

Tuesday, July 4th - After spending a pleasant morning in "my new office" my grandfather's enclosed porch, we went to my uncle Kim's place for lunch. He's just "across town" in another suburb of Rochester, similar to Irondequoit, beautiful old houses surrounded by lawns without fences and enough large trees to feel like a forest, with a literal forest just behind the backyard lawn. Houses have a 19th century look but without the ornateness of "victorian" styles, actually quite elegantly simple architecture really, often as simple as the basic shape of a gingerbread house, boxy with peaked roof.
It was nice and sunny but not too hot, maybe upper 70s f (20s c). Uncle Kim barbecued hot dogs on the porch, classic Americana. I sent a picture of our meal to my Australian friends, along with the previous home cooked meal -- what I thought would be funny and remarkable to them is both times we had sausages/hotdogs in buns which is very contrary to Australian tendencies (which is to put them in an ill shaped flaccid piece of cheap white bread which will immediately begin to fall apart). What they were all most shocked by was not what I expected.

The fruit salad on the same plate apparently shocks and scandalizes them! That sure caught me by surprise.

It reminds me of a story from my brother Tobin. He was living in Germany and asked if there were any food combinations you could not do. The local he was talking to said of course not you can do whatever. "So i could have chicken schnitzel with sauerkraut?" he asked, combining two of the most common items of German cuisine. His listener was horrified --- "well of course you wouldn't do THAT!"

After lunch we returned to the house for a bit and then dad took me for a bit of Rochester sightseeing. It turns out Rochester actually has a very impressive waterfall:

We had hoped to go to the Genesee Brewery brewpub which has a great view of the waterfall but they were closed -- on the fourth of July! Seems like it would have been a booming business day had they been open. Irondequoit Brewery was also closed.

From the Brewery we crossed the river on an old railway trestle that has been turned into a pedestrian bridge. On the other side there was a "historic district" it looks like Rochester spent a lot of money revitalizing in the 90s that has since devitalized. It looked like several of the most prominent positions being occupied by out of business restaurants. We did enjoy reading informational signs about the many former mills that had been located here to use the water power that was available. Of particular note was a waterwheel that had been discovered when an excavator broke through into a previously unknown underground wheelroom.

As we drove back to Irondequoit i reflected that Rochester itself seems a lot more down on its luck than its suburbs. Rochester itself is full of boarded up and derelict buildings, while Irondequoit are i mentioned seems like the paradisiacal ideal of the nicest a suburb can look.

Part of Rochester's downfall of course was the implosion of Kodak, which is headquartered there, and despite inventing the digital camera first, locked away the idea to preserve their film sales. Then others independently invented digital cameras, which of course took off and Kodak was left holding an empty bag of film. Numerous Kodak buildings in Rochester have now been demolished as the campus of the surviving company shrivels.

Visited the grave of my grandmother. She died when i was eight and i barely barely remember her.

That evening we didn't go out to see the fireworks. We could see snatches of them between the trees and it sounded like a war zone with all the booms.

Wednesday, July 5th - Uncle Kim came to fetch us to the airport at 05:30. My grandfather got up to bid us goodbye and was surprisingly wakeful and bright eyed and bushy tailed. While saying goodbye i was acutely aware that he being 96 this could very well, odds probably more than likely, that it might be the last time i see him alive. Though i did really enjoy my brief stay in Rochester and wouldn't mind coming again next year if he's still kicking around. And he said in a very heartfelt manner that he really enjoyed my visit.

Got to the airport without incident. Flew about an hour to Chicago. Chicago is obviously a bigger airport, and seemed pretty nice. Only an hour or so layover and we were back on a plane.

Flying United. There were no free meals on this four and a half hour flight. There were seatback television screens but we weren't provided earphones, though they did say we could request them. The screen as far as i could tell couldn't be turned off and left at its default it just played the previews for the "EIGHT FREE MOVIES!" on option over and over again plus an ad for the United credit card. And i think it had a bunch of television channels one could live stream but i had a book and none of the movies sounded good so i didn't request earphones and it looked like hardly anyone else did either. Being accustomed to airlines that offer literally over a hundred movies to choose from United's "eight free movies!" seemed pretty laughable.

Arrived at "John Wayne" (Orange County airport) around 11:30. Mom picked us up. Got In-N-Out burger on the way home (divine food of the gods!).

Coming from such lush green places as upstate New York and the African tropics before that Orange County seems very very dry. I found myself kind of squinting at the rows of bedraggled palm trees thinking "why do so many people think THIS place is paradise?"

Thursday, July 6th - one little thing that i noticed has changed is the kids all zip around the neighborhood on electric "e-bikes" now. Strikes my old fashioned crotchety self as thoroughly lazy. "In my day, you had to PEDDLE your bike!" Soon they won't believe me. We went walking along one of our favorite nearby walking trails in the evening and several adults went by on e bikes too. Yes go for your evening bike ride without having to expend any calories whats the world coming to. I haven't seen these things yet in Australia but they seem pervasive here.

Had American pizza for dinner albeit only from Little Caesars.

Today (Friday) we're driving north for my cousins wedding but that'll be it's own entry.

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The Agrinautica

Tales of a Beekeeper Errant

Recent Entries

Tunel de Manglar

The Aquarium

Pirate of the Islands

Isla del Piratas!

An Evening Boat Cruise

Cartagena City Tour

Mud Volcano

The salt cathedral, Cristina's birthday, and journey to cartagena.

Lost in the Fog -- The 20th of August

Colombia Day 1 - Picture Dump!

Plaza de Bolivar y the Roomba

In Bogota!

The journey to Cristina

It Can't Happen Here

Welcome Home, Ugh

Punk's Dead

End of the Road

Traipsing About California

Linnea & Pascal Wedding

New York > Orange County