I’m still tired from yesterday’s events. I’ve found a nice hostel right across from the bus station - it’ll be handy when I leave. It’s more like a hotel than hostel - when I arrived at reception at about 4 am. the guy didn’t seem to have a clue what a dormitory was.
The next day I met a young guy from Denmark, Max, and both of us explored the streets of CCB together. We noticed some smallish protests going passed as we were having our second breakfast. They were asking the local government for drinking water, seems reasonable to me. Later, I dragged
Max round the streets looking for the local cinemas, I’m keen to see War of the Worlds and Batman begins. It looks like neither film is currently showing in town. As I dragged Max out to the edge of town looking for the BIG cinema (two theatres! Whoo hoo!) the sun started to go down. This cause Max to go into a bit of a panic - dodgy part of town, getting dark, lots of strangers around. I tried not to laugh too hard. He also complained about how far we’d walked, these young ‘uns aren’t what they used to be.
We got back to town, tired and set off looking for food. With a stroke of luck we found a nice Chinese place near El Prado - the nicer part of town and we both stuffed ourselves. Max was keen to find some beer, music and girls, I really just wanted to go back to the hotel and sit in front of the TV for a few hours - out here TV is a REAL luxury. Anyway, I didn’t do that. We settled in a quiet bar and listened to what the locals like to call music. As we were about nearly finished our beers an hombre called us over to talk to him. A bit uncertain we wandered over to see what he wanted.
For the next two hours José bought us both beer (to stop us from leaving). My Spanish was better than Max’s so I ended up discussing how hard it was to be a Latino, how José missed his sick mother, now being looked after by his sister in the states. José quite drunk would grab my arm, give it a squeeze about once every five seconds. I didn’t mind, I could sympathize with his pain. When we’re all done talking about sad things, José starts telling me about his old friend the druglord, who owns lots of the best cars in town. Apparently, he wanted me to meet him, cos I was him new best friend. By this time Max, bored and drunk, and me, just drunk, are ready to leave. Another round of drinks (or was it two?) later, we start making for the door. After many more hugs, consoling we manage to escape. And a lucky one at that, I think.
