Tunel de Manglar
Rolling thunder all night last night. Cristina finds it disturbing but i love to hear it. We never got much thunder in California so i find it exciting. Was a bit worried we'd have a stormy day but woke up to perfectly fine weather, as usual.
Things have gotten into a bit of a routine by now, get up for breakfast around 7-7:30. They make a good omelet though they seem to think it's fine to serve cold toast. But seriously it's amazing how many places don't know how to make an omelet so that more than outweighs cold toast. Then we encounter the crab amd lobster man on our way to swim, who hasn't ceased to be optimistic that we'll buy his wares. I like to imagine it's the same lobsters amd crabs he's been trying to sell all week, amd in the evenings they crawl around his house.
Anyway then while we're swimming, thus far it has always happened that someone has come to offer us an excursion somewhere amd we've never gotten around to talking to the hotels excursion-man who is on duty 10-11, apparently. Well this time no excursions came to us before then so we went to find him ... amd it turns out he's the guy we went with yesterday! (The one who didn't scam us). It turns out we've done most of everything. There just remains an excursion to the nearest mainland (Baru), but Cristina had read there's lots of scammers there, or the mangroves. Which as mentioned Cristina thought sounded boring but I've always wanted to see mangroves (well I've seen them once or twice before, a boardwalk through them in Zanzibar comes to mind, but i still find them interesting). Anyway so we chose to go to the mangroves for 100,000 (for which he accepted us$25). So off we went. First just along the edge of them and i was concerned that if this was all there was to it it was kind of dull, though we did see a large iguana in one of the mangroves. Then we entered a circular inlet only connected to the sea by a narrow channel and nosed into a tunnel-like passage in the mangroves a short distance before he shut off the engine. It was peacefully quiet with just the sound of insects like crickets amd various bird calls. After awhile i asked if i could swim amd he said sure. Cristina thought i was crazy to want to swim in the mangroves amd joked I'd have to sleep in the other bed after this. I swam up the channel amd around the corner. The channel seemed to just keep going amd going. I climbed onto a mangrove root to see further amd saw some tourists coming along from deeper in the channel in a little canoe they were paddling. So i sat on the root. As they came by. The greeted me bemusedly amd then asked me a question, to which i could only respond "no hablo Español" amd they continued on laughing. I imagine they must have been very confused to randomly find someone by themselves in the mangroves.
Then i swam back to Cristina and our driver, amd the canoe came back past going the other way, the occupants now apparently saying "oh good you got the American!"
Then we returned. It was nice but if i were to do it again I'd insist on being able to either kayak in or get on this canoe deal. I'm sure the people at any hotel on the island would know where to send me to get on a kayak for it. Then i could have thoroughly explored the mangrove tunnel.
An occurrence when we got back shed some light on currency exchanges here. Cristina amd i were going to buy some souvenir little carved items from a guy amd it came out to 130,000 pesos, so i was going to give him $30 US plus 10,000 pesos. He said that wasn't enough, i said that was 4,000 pesos to the dollar which is less than the official exchange rate. He said maybe in cartagena but here it's 3,500 to the dollar. I only had about 6,000 more pesos though so i added that, said it was all my money, amd he accepted it. (And it was indeed all my pesos but i still have about $180 US on me for when the card doesn't work)
Among the recent arrivals on our island is a woman with three 8/9 year old kids (twin boys and a girl), she reminds me of a friend of mine who despairing of finding a good husband had the sperm bank knock her up amd had triplets. Hearing her speaking English to her kids i asked her in English where she was from amd she said "I'm from the Estados Unidos" which was such an unexpected bit of Spanglish i had to ask her to repeat it. Then i said "oh I've heard of that place" amd she looked at me like i was being a smart ass. Anyway it turns out she's from Los Angeles.
Amd then we swam a lot the rest of the afternoon, watched the sunset as usual amd that brings us to just now.
Tomorrow we plan to leave here for Santa Marta though we're still working out the details amd don't have a hotel reservation yet.
Things have gotten into a bit of a routine by now, get up for breakfast around 7-7:30. They make a good omelet though they seem to think it's fine to serve cold toast. But seriously it's amazing how many places don't know how to make an omelet so that more than outweighs cold toast. Then we encounter the crab amd lobster man on our way to swim, who hasn't ceased to be optimistic that we'll buy his wares. I like to imagine it's the same lobsters amd crabs he's been trying to sell all week, amd in the evenings they crawl around his house.
Anyway then while we're swimming, thus far it has always happened that someone has come to offer us an excursion somewhere amd we've never gotten around to talking to the hotels excursion-man who is on duty 10-11, apparently. Well this time no excursions came to us before then so we went to find him ... amd it turns out he's the guy we went with yesterday! (The one who didn't scam us). It turns out we've done most of everything. There just remains an excursion to the nearest mainland (Baru), but Cristina had read there's lots of scammers there, or the mangroves. Which as mentioned Cristina thought sounded boring but I've always wanted to see mangroves (well I've seen them once or twice before, a boardwalk through them in Zanzibar comes to mind, but i still find them interesting). Anyway so we chose to go to the mangroves for 100,000 (for which he accepted us$25). So off we went. First just along the edge of them and i was concerned that if this was all there was to it it was kind of dull, though we did see a large iguana in one of the mangroves. Then we entered a circular inlet only connected to the sea by a narrow channel and nosed into a tunnel-like passage in the mangroves a short distance before he shut off the engine. It was peacefully quiet with just the sound of insects like crickets amd various bird calls. After awhile i asked if i could swim amd he said sure. Cristina thought i was crazy to want to swim in the mangroves amd joked I'd have to sleep in the other bed after this. I swam up the channel amd around the corner. The channel seemed to just keep going amd going. I climbed onto a mangrove root to see further amd saw some tourists coming along from deeper in the channel in a little canoe they were paddling. So i sat on the root. As they came by. The greeted me bemusedly amd then asked me a question, to which i could only respond "no hablo Español" amd they continued on laughing. I imagine they must have been very confused to randomly find someone by themselves in the mangroves.
Then i swam back to Cristina and our driver, amd the canoe came back past going the other way, the occupants now apparently saying "oh good you got the American!"
Then we returned. It was nice but if i were to do it again I'd insist on being able to either kayak in or get on this canoe deal. I'm sure the people at any hotel on the island would know where to send me to get on a kayak for it. Then i could have thoroughly explored the mangrove tunnel.
An occurrence when we got back shed some light on currency exchanges here. Cristina amd i were going to buy some souvenir little carved items from a guy amd it came out to 130,000 pesos, so i was going to give him $30 US plus 10,000 pesos. He said that wasn't enough, i said that was 4,000 pesos to the dollar which is less than the official exchange rate. He said maybe in cartagena but here it's 3,500 to the dollar. I only had about 6,000 more pesos though so i added that, said it was all my money, amd he accepted it. (And it was indeed all my pesos but i still have about $180 US on me for when the card doesn't work)
Among the recent arrivals on our island is a woman with three 8/9 year old kids (twin boys and a girl), she reminds me of a friend of mine who despairing of finding a good husband had the sperm bank knock her up amd had triplets. Hearing her speaking English to her kids i asked her in English where she was from amd she said "I'm from the Estados Unidos" which was such an unexpected bit of Spanglish i had to ask her to repeat it. Then i said "oh I've heard of that place" amd she looked at me like i was being a smart ass. Anyway it turns out she's from Los Angeles.
Amd then we swam a lot the rest of the afternoon, watched the sunset as usual amd that brings us to just now.
Tomorrow we plan to leave here for Santa Marta though we're still working out the details amd don't have a hotel reservation yet.