Today is a restday. We sleep better than expected, the windows of our room have solid wooden shutters on the inside that block out most of the traffic noise. Only the occasionally loud truck or honking horn gets through. But we have been travelling long enough to block most of that out and sleep soundly.
The hostel serves a nice breakfast for an additional fee, including a good real cup of coffee. During breakfast we talk with Dan and Susan from San Diego travelling around Colombia for a couple of weeks. They are avid photographers and we had seen them at the Italian restaurant yesterday when they were waiting for a table. Since they are headed back to the States Patrick asks them to take home a 128GB memory card full of recent photos and send it to our friend Bob who backs the photos up. We have mailed most cards home ourselves, but had good luck meeting other travelers who were willing to take the cards home to countries where the mail services are more reliable.
After updating our blog we head back to the Italian restaurant for a set lunch, the almuerzo. It comes with soup, entree, dessert and fruit juice. Very good value for about $4. We walk around the historic center for a while, take photos and watch people. It is interesting to observe how people behave on the narrow sidewalks in South American countries. At home when you see somebody approach you start thinking about "how to pass" early on and either move over, or if you walk side-by-side get behind each other. If you do that here the oncoming people will not change course and take advantage of your preemptive move. They will just slightly twist their shoulders if needed to avoid contact. So if you want the passing maneuver to be equitable you need to wait until the last moment to give space. Or, what we have started doing just to point out the issue is not to move at all and just stop in the sidewalk and let them figure out how to get around you. It is not that the people are not nice, they just prefer not to move over at all. We guess it is better than the behavior of the Indians who would just run over you if given the chance.
The one decision left today is where to have dinner. It might end up being a Chinese restaurant again. Anything but fried chicken!
Miniature horses to have your photo taken on or with. We have seen these all over South America, not sure what the appeal is.
An arts and crafts fair has lots of gaudy plastic religious yard ornaments. Some are so ugly we want one! Amidst all this is a little black guy watering the flowers, akin to "manneke pis" is Brussels.
