Moving up the chain

Thursday, August 24th

Last night after doing blogging we realized it was about 7PM. The circus function starts at 7:30PM!! So we quickly got moving and even though my body still did not feel any better, we walked to the circus quickly. This was the circus of the Hermanos Gasca which every child born in the last 30 years must recognize by name. Raul Gasca, grandson of the original Gasca, was basically a one man show.

We saw everything from elephants and tigers to a woman who could bend in the most awkard positions.. Amazing! Then the juggling knifes while standing on top of a galloping horse, four motorcycles running at full speed on a sphere smaller than a typical bedroom and other oddities came about. I wish we would have seen some sort of four legged woman or something more esoteric but no such luck.

The performance ended with Raul singing a sad song in front of a mirror while he took his clown make up off his face. This was a very, very emotional moment and you could see a virtual tear coming down Alexey´s right cheek. But it was time to move on and after walking back accross the bridge, we went into the old walled city once again, had dinner at this local hangout and then went to sleep hoping that my sickness, whatever it was, would go away.

Moving on to today´s activities.

We walked around the city once again after having gone for breakfast at the same place where we had dinner last night. They have awesome fruit shakes or Aguas con Leche as they are known here in Colombia. After this hearty meal, we decided to walk to the famous beaches of Cartagena.

The closest beach is called Boca Grande is is about 20 or 25 minutes by our trusty good method of transport as of lately, namely both of our legs. We walked there. It must have been shortly after noon. The beach has black sand and we saw tons of locals hanging out there and bading. Women here are really very beatutiful even though they have no effect on me as of June of this year :) Alexey was pleased, however. We sat down at a bar/hut on the beach and had fresh orange and lime juices to quench our thirst. It was really cool just to be there drinking juice and watching people at the beach on the burning sun but sheltered under the hut´s roof. There was good Colombian Vallenato playing in the speakers. Really cool feeling to it.

We then decided to call our friend Mauricio since he graciously agreed to be our host in Bogota. We did this somewhere in an establishment close to the high rises of the Boca Grande beach. Then we walked back to the hotel, picked up our bags that were in the hotel´s storage room and run for the local Metrocar Bus. This bus took much longer than expected to reach the bus terminal. On our way in it had taken us about 45 minutes but it was already 1 hour and this bus kept taking side streets to pick up more people. We arrived to the bus terminal with just enough time to pick up some motion sickness pills (for me) and some food for the long trip (for both).

The tickets were expensive (original $103K but $77K after student discounts) but we took the best bus there was, the Brasilia which takes about 20 hours to reach from Cartagena to Bogota through Barranquilla. We both stocked up on reading materials in Panama knowing they would come in handing in Colombia. So we simply hope that the trip is pleasant and there aren´t any security issues. It is freezing in here! These buses compensate for the heat outside by cranking the AC or perhaps they just want us to freeze so as to not feel the pain of sitting for this long on a bus. Roads seem to be ok so far.