No reply to my web form about booking plantation tour yet. I doubt there ever will be. What's wrong with an e-mail address? At least I'd have confidence in the message ARRIVING, though I'm sure it would be ignored anyway.
Am wandering vaguely north and vaguely east up Av 8a Oeste in the hope of finding the town centre. I have no map. It's pretty hot.
Have stumbled on a small restaurant so have popped in. They have no menu but (the waitress speaks some English anyway) they do fish, chicken and beed, so I've ordered beef. I am not that hungry but after sustaining existence solely on hazelnuts biscuits and coke yesterday it would be good to eat something decent.
Beyond the coffee daytrip and just maybe a trip to some hot springs at Carmel (though they sound a little hard to locate to be honest), I have no major plans here. The guide book says the one attraction in town is a modest museum and I forgot to note its address, so unless I stumble across it I shall just potter around today.
12:35. I am underwhelmed. A small, slightly tough and rather fatty steak, a decent sized portion of slightly undercooked brown rice and a small salad. I suppose it's food within the meaning of the act, but still. I just hope it isn't expensive.
The service is good, at least, and the restaurant being a largeish terrace (I said 'small restaurant' above in a kind of "it's not very fancy" way) covered with some kind of sloped, thatched roof is all you could wish for in picturesque terms. But I'd take breezeblocks and better food given the choice. :-)
Oh, I also got a small chunk of either banana or plantain coated in some thick brown 'gel' (it was almost too thick to count as a sauce). That was OK, if not a taste explosion. I am so adventurous with my food. :-)
13:00. Just got the bill, at USD2.50 that's not too bad. I'd rather have paid more and had a better steak, but at least it's not a rip off. They haven't even made a fuss about changing my 20.
18:00. It is just starting to rain and I have come to 'Billar Discoteca Cervantes' on the main square. I had one beer an hour or so ago at some frighteningly local and nearly empty place, then had a half roast chicken and chips and have come here for a few before I go home. It is quite busy here really, especially for a Monday. USD0.70 for 330ml of Atlas, which isn't bad at all. I think it was this cheap in the scary local bar but there was loud music and the woman seemed a bit surly. I started handing over a dollar and then thought 'hang on' and asked her again and she gestured at the dollar.
A nice change from Panama City in that sense anyway.
There is a 24h 'casino' called IIRC 'Fanstastic' just off the main square. Noticing it looked a bit less imposing than a typical casino and pining for a bit of air conditioning, I wandered in - a quick scan with some hand held gadget from one of the security guards and no problem.
It was basically just an enormous room full of fruit machines and similar arcade-style gambling games. They did have a few tables at the back where you could eat and possibly some waitresses serving drinks to customers, though I am far from sure about the latter. Without having a clue what I was doing except on the electronic roulette table, I doubled my initial stake of USD0 .50 up to a dollar and decided to quit while I was still ahead. :-) I actually got up to USD1.25 at one point I think, then plummeted down to USD0.50 at the low. Living on the edge baby.
Obviously you will lose in the long run but I was surprised at the amount of 'play' you got, so to speak.
I wandered over most of the town centre for lack of anything obvious to do. It's not particularly elegant (though the main square and the church on it are not bad) and the pavements are rather ratty but it's OK and it doesn't feel unsafe. It also doesn't feel like the city centre of the second city should do. :-)
Wow, new song just come on AND FUCK IS IT LOUD.
I went into an 'everything a dollar' shop on a whim and saw they had some CDs (including "Sounds of London", which seems to be classical stuff performed by the LSO) and DVDs of probably naff old films. I bought two CDs and a DVD and it came to USD3-and-a-bit. WTF? Maybe they charged me for the carrier bag (which nas no holes to use as handles, for whatever reason), I didn't get a receipt so I don't know.
I saw another place called 'everything for a balboa' (well, 'todo a balboa' actually of course) which is the same but sounds a bit more exotic. :-)
No end of cheap shoe shops here. I am vaguely tempted to replace my collapsing pair right now in advance, but on the other hand I want to see how much longer they will last. (Well, it's only the right one which is falling apart, the sole is coming away from the leather at the front left.) If they do give up the ghost in the middle of nowhere I can always duck tape them up until I get to a shoe shop. As far as I'm concerned, "place with no shoe shop"="place where no one has the right to be sniffy because I'm wearing shoes mended with duck tape". :-)
18:55. The rain is picking up quite heavily now (I have come out onto the covered balcony to look). No big deal as there is cover (possibly from this balcony) on the street so no matter how long I have to wait for a taxi (probably not long, there are loads going past, though they may not be free) I will at least be dry while I wait.
There is sheet lightning too, although I haven't heard any thunder yet.
19:00. Just heard first thunder. So maybe the storm or whatever it is exactly here in the rainy season is moving closer.
Oh, the casino was surprisingly busy, given it was a week day after 3pmish when I was there. I may be imagining it but a lot of the people there did seem oldish so maybe they are mostly retired. It wasn't absolutely heaving but I'd say 50-75% of the machines were occupied. (All had seats in front of them.)
Ah, just saw an actual bolt of lightning and the intensity seems to have picked up further. There's a slightly fresh breeze blowing now, which is quite nice. (Though it's airconditioned inside, so I could be in there if I was finding the climate problematic right now. But it's OK out here and it's quite cool watching the storm.
I don't know why, but my phone has developed the habit of unlocking and turning itself on in my pocket (I normally keep it off to save battery). This makes no sense. At least it can't call anyone by accident as an inadvertent side effect of the tortuous procedure for even attempting to call while roaming.
The music (coming from inside and hence fairly quiet) has struck an English vein. "Red Red Wine" before and now "Don't dream it's over". Not a brilliant English vein, but it could be worse.
Re-reading Mark Twain's "The Innocents Abroad" and I am struck by just how well I've been managing to keep up this "diary". I guess it's being a bit anal-retentive that helps, but I think the big thing has to be the ease of waffling away on my phone while I'm out and about. I don't claim it's particularly fascinating, but it does at least exist. :-) If I could only write it up on my netbook back at the hostel I think I would be writing far less and there would probably be periods where I just shoved in a summary after three or four days. The same would apply, but even more so, if I was keeping it the old fashioned way with pen and paper. I find writing so much effort that although the Treo keyboard is annoyingly intrusive on my efforts to express myself at times, even this is far far less effort to me than handwriting would be.
Plus I guess it helps that I know I am unlikely to lose my notes on the blog, whereas anything on paper could fall victim to a luggage handling accident or robbery. Knowing I will almost certainly get the chance, even if I never have the desire, to look back on what I've written helps.
I doubt anyone else is reading this but maybe the knowledge that the odd random post may be read by a friend also helps keep me going. But don't let that stop anyone reading. :-)
20:50. I am staying a bit longer than I intended but what the hell. Having just paid for my last beer with three quarters and feeling compelled to examine them closely to check they *were* quarters (most 'editions' of the coins here have no large digits on, which is difficult for me - though my memory suggests the UK coins are the same, but of course I am familiar with them) I noticed, as I already had read, that both US 'dollar' and Panamanian Balboa coins circulate freely here. I believe they are made from the same blanks in fact. I suspect Panamanian coins are not strictly accepted in the US, although for all I know they may be, and I do wonder if anyone would ever notice. It's a bit like - and nowhere near as bad - the way some country whose name I perpetually forget, but which might be Swaziland, uses (used?) the same blanks for one of their coins as the UK pound coin, despite their coin being worth (at the time I picked this trivia up) about one fifteenth of a pound, and you do
occasionally get palmed off with those in your changed without noticing. I strongly suspect US vending machines take the equivalent Panamanian coins without noticing, in any case.
21:55. Contemplating the trip ahead and my impending birthday, I calculate that assuming no catasrophe intervenes, when I return to the UK I will have passed just over 1% of my life so far in Mexico. I am oddly chuffed with that.
"YMCA" playing now...
Apropos of nothing, during my earlier wanderings, when I finally (mapless) stumbled across the main square, I went into some cafeteria-style place (pleasantly air conditioned) and had a coffee. I don't think it was particularly great coffee but it really hit the spot. I finished it in about five minutes. I am not enough of a connosieur to be sure, but I think it came out of a machine labelled Nescafe and I had it white with sugar as well, and I am certainly not going to ramble on about the local coffee, which I could have done and no one would have known I was probably full of shit. But it was one of those rare times when I didn't realise I particularly wanted something, then when I got it I realised it was exactly what I needed. Life needs more of those moments.
22:30. I am going to have one more and hopefully one more only. I am slightly apprehensive about the hostel but it claims 24h reception and in any case I have my key and suspect the gate to the street doesn't lock properly anyway. Plus it's not like I intend to be getting back at 1am or anything. I need to be up earlyish either for the coffee plantation trip if they have got back to me (as if) or to try and call them and maybe to make the complex trip to the hot springs vaguely near here, but it really isn't that late and I'm not particularly drunk and, well, sod it.
I half suspect I will not manage either the coffee plantation tour or the hot springs, both seeming to require a little too much organisation, but we will see. I hope I manage at least one, I think I have just about exhausted 'walking about the city'. I guess if I am free tomorrow due to idleness or difficulties I will try to spend the day organising stuff, ideally including the springs or the coffee plantation for the day after (my third and last full day here). I also need to try to sort out the damn canal trip as well.
23:00. I have not finished this one yet but I think I may have one more because, well, sod it. :-) Some guys just came onto the balcony and (admittedly fairly politely) made a big hassle moving a table and three chairs past me towards the door to the balcony at the right hand end. I wondered if the bar was closing but clearly they are just customers. Why the fuck they simply couldn't sit at one of the three or four tables further up (all free, I was out here alone) I don't know.
Oh, I am sure it won't be necessary and I certainly don't want to, but thinking about the possibility of walking back, I just dredged my GPS out and I am exactly 2km in a straight line from the hostel. Vaguely amazing, though of course I came over here in such a roundabout way I had no real idea, but I assumed it would be closer.
23:10. The 'removal men' just went inside. So that was worth all the performance I'm sure.
I just went in and got another beer which I think will be my last. The woman at the bar didn't even wait to be asked this time, she just served me...
I am not obviously drunk (I make it less than six pints equivalent including this one, which is obviously too much but all the same not enough to render me blatantly pissed) but I do need to get back and be up earlyish tomorrow etc so I will try to be strong after this one.
23:35. About to leave. Fingers crossed for cabs, cab drivers who know my hostel and being able to get in.
23:45. No problems with the cab or getting in. Some - admittedly friendly - guy at the hostel who I hadn't met before said he/they were worried they hadn't seen me all day and that it was 'like a family' here. (This all in Spanish, which was something - he probably speaks English, but didn't resort to it.) He didn't really seem to be reproaching me so I am not quite sure what to make of it. Am I supposed to tell people when I go somewhere?
Just got into my room and there is a fair-sized cockroach scuttling around the floor. I am not exactly bothered and given the climate and the way the rooms all open to the outdoors it doesn't really say anything bad about their cleanliness. But I also sort of don't like to leave it scuttling around. (I am glad I overcame my slack tendency to leave my bags open, though I suspect they would not be too tempting a target for occupation.) I believe it has now disappeared behind a sort of big flowerpot in the room. I am sufficiently softhearted and/or squeamish not to just tread on the bugger even were it exposed (or when it was). But I also don't feel inclined to try and entice it onto a book or piece of paper so I can chuck it out, partly as I don't really like the idea of 'handling' it that closely and partly as I half imagine someone would spot me doing it and tread on the thing themselves and I'd therefore both look pathetically weak and have practically squashed the thing myself.
I think I'll end up leaving it. It isn't a spider and while I don't like the things, even on first seeing it I wasn't all "WTF?".
Not entirely sure what's best re this heartening yet weird concern about me with the staff. I haven't yet checked my e-mail but if as I suspect I have heard nothing from the coffee plantation, I will want to call them tomorrow morning and this gives me a perfect excuse both to ask at reception if I can use the phone and tell them I plan to go to those springs. It wouldn't hurt for someone to know where I've gone.
I think I can hear the thing behind the plant pot, scrabbling around. Though normally they seem so silent I may be imagining it.
I do remember going to the toilet at about 3am when I stayed with that family in Cuernavaca and being a bit instantaneously shocked at turning the light on and seeing one in the bathroom. But it's about the shock of suddenly seeing a big insect, not about inherent fear. It sucks a bit but as per the above I think I will have to leave it to its own devices. Broad chemical species-side in the form fumigation would not bug me too much, and I eat meat other people have killed, but for various reasons (including squeamishness, it's not pure humanity) I'm not even attempting to kill the thing in here. (And, if this isn't obvious, I don't really like the idea of the squished remains on the floor for the rest of my stay.) Hell, even when I get a spider in my London flat, unless the fucker is enormous and/or inconveniently placed, I attempt to chuck it out rather than launching my chemical weapons at the bugger. (Though I gather chucking it out may effectively kill the bastard, given the dist
inction between indoor and outdoor species.)
I can still hear something behind the flowerpot despite having spent some time writing this crap. But sod it, there's not much I can do about it. Perhaps oddly, this is the first time I've ever had anything like this in my bedroom while travelling. I could happily ignore the cockroach in the bathroom in Mexico as once I'd finished, it wasn't my problem any more. Sigh. I could give it a blast of my insect repellent (though given how ineffective a repellent it seems, I suspect it would do nothing) but that would be a bit inhuman on a one-one level somehow.
Man, that scratching sound is annoying though. Can I really be imagining it? No, I am not. It may be something other than the cockroach, though I suspect not, but there are definitely noises. Oh well. Just try to ignore it I guess. (Last night at maybe 1am while I surfed too late, I could hear some weirdly unlocatable music which sounded like it was coming from a radio. That was odd too.)
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