I decided I wasn’t going to do anything today. I obviously did lots of things but I didn’t want to go do any of the touristy things. So I worked out and then went for a dip in the pool (this is becoming a daily ritual). Made some breakfast, eggs and some leftovers from last nights dinner. I started watching the second season of a Tv show, Sons of Anarchy. It’s a one hour show on FX about a motorcycle gang. It really is good, check it out if you get the chance. So I layed in bed watching movies for a good 6 or 7 hours.
Decided I would go out for a bit and took my camera with my to the old city and take some photos. Rewarded myself with an ice cream from crepes and waffles. It was expensive but looked and tasted amazing!( mad at my self for not taking a photo when my camera was on the table next to it) Walked around a bit more to try and maybe even catch a sunset? Nope still cloudy. Came back and everyone was drinking, making out like it was going to be a crazy party night, but it wasn’t. I talked to a girl from California for a while then just went back to bed. I started to watch an episode of the show but fell asleep before the last week recap was done…
Woke up about 6am and did a bit of exercise. It is way to hot here to do much of anything I was almost dying afterwards… I managed to recover and spent a little time in the pool; that helped a lot. Was talking to a guy in the pool about what to do and we came up with going to the old fort.
I went with a guy from Ireland on a year long trek around the world, his name was Kearn(sp?). The fort was really less than a ten-minute walk from the hostel. It is massive, the scale is hard to imagine, especially considering how many cannon holes and turrets there are. Here is the problem it costs 15,000 pesos, that is about $8 US. That doesn’t sound like much but that’s what I spent on all of my meals Saturday. So it really isn’t backpacker friendly. All of that aside, if you are a history buff, or really like castles/forts, then this will be something to see. I spent about two hours there just walking all the walls and through all the supply and firing tunnels. It is really impressive. About an hour into our time there a minor torrential downpour began… we hid in the tunnels until we found a protected area outside to wait it out. It rained heavily for about 15 minutes. The rain is a double edged sword, it does cool things off for a few minutes but then it does the impossible, it makes it more humid. I am pretty sure the only way to get more humid is to be underwater. Once the rain stopped we finished looking around the rest of the fort. On the top level I was looking out at the storm that had just passed us and noticed a waterspout over the bay. I had seen a few before but Kearn hadn’t and it was really interesting. The photos don’t do it any justice. Not long after that it started raining again, this time I didn’t seek shelter we finished walking around in the rain and then walked back in it.
Back at the hostel I changed out of my wet clothes and put on my board shorts and got in the pool, out of the pan and into the fire right? It was nice, just sat around and talked to people for a while. Went back into the old city to café del mar to watch the sunset, but the clouds stole it again. One of these days it will have to work. Last night looked like it was going to be a big party night but everyone seemed to run out of gas… at least I did. Everything was pretty relaxed and didn’t look like it was going to get a lot better so I figured I would see what tomorrow had in store for me.
Today four of us decided to not take the tour and find our own way out to the mud volcano. A friend of mine had done this a few months ago, and made it sounds a lot easier than it was. We all started walking towards old city, thinking we could get the bus at the downtown bus station… nope we had to go out to the edge of town to get the bus. So we had to take a taxi, I love the taxi rides, you fear for your life at times, but the rest of it is like being in the back seat at a nascar race( only with traffic coming at you as well as going with you). We made it to the bus terminal ( now normally I would picture a big building with spots for busses and people waiting for busses… here it is a parking lot by a gas station and the big empty lot on the next block. You just wander around asking bus drivers where they go). We soon found our bus and found out we had a 45 minute wait. The bus had seen better days, it might have been a great bus 20 years ago, sounded like it was going to fall apart a few times, we stopped all the time to pick up new passengers and one of them had this huge dresser or china cabinet??? A couple guys crawled up on top of the bus and a few on the ground lifted it up to them, it was nuts. Same way they got it down two hours later…
We got off the bus and felt a bit pressed for time so we decided to get the motorcycle taxis that were there. Four of us on two motorcycles… did I forget to metion the driver? So three per motorcycle, it was a new experience for me. Bad news for the third person is there are no foot pegs and the exhaust pipe is hot!!! No real burns for me and it was actually a lot of fun… about a ten minute ride later we see the volcano. It really is a bit anticlimactic. It had been raining all day so everything was a muddy mess (ironic considering that’s what we were there for). We changed clothes and headed up the steps. When you first see this small mud pot at the top of the hill its teeming with people and looks ridiculous. I was like this is it really??? But I was the first one of our group in and it was crazy, cant really explain how it feels. It really is as close to weightlessness you can feel without space or flying. You cannot get your self all the way under unless you get out and jump in, the buoyancy of the mud is so strong. And it is very difficult to swim, you flail about but get now where fast. There are lots of locals there, more than willing to help you out with whatever you need; cameraman, bag holder, beer runner, they will also give massages and scrape the mud off you when you get out.
After you get out you walk back down the hill and go out to this river/ lake just down the road. You walk up to the shore and there are several ladies there with bowls and buckets. They take you in the water and proceed to bath you, it was another new experience for me. Especially when they want you to take off your swimming trunks. I did and she got them relatively clean as well… Afterwards we sat at a café like place and they had a beer. Only bad part to the whole adventure was one of the guys with us had his shoes stolen… who steals shoes??? The problem for him isn’t the expense of buying new shoes, its that the biggest size in central and south America is like 10 maybe 10.5, he needs size 13. So he will be without shoes for the next four months.
The return trip was the same three people motorcycle followed by not one but two rickety busses and another speed racer taxi. Had a blast!!!
All in all it made for an interesting way to spend the day, if we would have taken the tour it would have cost us about 10000 more pesos and we would have only been gone 3 hours. This way we saved some money and spent most of the day having an adventure… this is what its all about!!!
