Human trafficking, sea breezes, & ants

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This will be a short entry, I promise.

Last night we took an over night bus from San Gil to Santa Marta, and then a taxi to Taganga. We were told that we´d have to ¨change buses¨in a town called Cienaga (literal translation: Swamp). All of this was arranged with the owner of our hostel in San Gil and a guy named Eduardo at the Berlinas window of the bus terminal. It all seemed easy, smooth, and carefree... but guess what?! We got pimped out again! We´ve started to realize that ¨changing buses¨really just means that one bus company that is NOT going to your final destination will, at some point, be selling you off to another bus company that is. Apparently this is common here, locals do it all the time, and it´s the way to get the cheapest fare. This time this human trafficking experience was much easier than our 1.5 hr long ¨layover¨in Barbosa. This time we literally ran across the street from one bus to the other with all our stuff, hopped on our new bus, and off we went! 45 minutes or so to our final destination and we were sold for a mere 4000 pesos each (only $2!!... aren´t we worth more than that?!). 😊

So, the overnight bus was as good as it could be. I read that they keep the AC blasting on the long-haul buses, and it´s true. It was probably about 50 degrees the whole time. I also heard that they play movies really loud the entire time... this proved to only be true for the first 45 minutes or so, then it switched to Latin hip-hop/club music videos, then they finally turned it off about 2 hours into the 12 hour journey. So we had a good 10 hours of only the sound of the air conditioning blasting away. I took a Benadryl and was pretty much out the entire trip. Ryan had a bit more difficulty getting comfortable but these buses are seriously as comfortable as a bus can be. The seats lean practically all the way back so you´re almost laying down, with the exception of your dangling legs... but there is a foot rest!

Taganga is an interesting town... very hot, very windy, nice beaches, and LOTS of hippies all over the place. We´ve already been offered marijuana a few times. Needless to say we´re turning it away because neither one of us would particularly like to end up in a Colombian prison or getting blackmailed by the locals. This isn´t Jamaica, ya know. It hard to tell who the locals are and who´s just passing through like us, because there are a lot of white people our age here, but most of them have long dredlocks and are selling stuff along the beachside. It´s a unique place, for sure.

We spent the day at the beach, Playa Grande, which you have to walk about 15 min along the mountain cliffs to get to. It was nice there but there are a lot of people trying to get you to buy stuff. We figured out that if you stay in the water, you can avoid them.

Trivia question: What do you do when you buy a package of grapes, leave them in your hostal for the day, come back and they´re covered in ants? Rinse ém off and eat them!! Although they eat toasted, roasted, and fried ants here anyway, so I guess we could´ve just left them on....
Food for thought.

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Comments

[Mom]

Ants just a little extra protein
Sounds like you and Ryan are having a wonderful time - - would hope you'd turn down the weed on principle alone, rather than fear of ending up in jail, but if that works -- yeah! Love you! Mom