St. Agustine

We arrived in St. Agustine at night, and our cab driver/tourist info guru/local profe/sketch ball convinced us to stay in an apartment called Apartamentos Diana with our own bathroom and tv for 20,000 a night. That's around ten dollars which is what a bed in a six person dorm will cost you per person in some hostals. Sketchy but sweet. Bright and early the next morning we woke up ready to see the main attraction in St. Agustine which just so happens to be ancient statues. Some nearby volcanos got busy and had somehong like a shot putting contest five thousand years ago with volcanic rock. The locals decided to take advantage of this phenominon and got artsy. The often grotesque and sometimes straight up silly statues that resulted wee used to gaurs man made hills where the two local tribes buried their dead. We split our day into two parts. The morning was spent stretching our legs in the hills of St. Agustine. Los people do this leg of the journey on horse back, but when we heard we could save fifteen dollars each on the horses let alone what we would have had to pay for the guide and his horse by doing it on our own we jumped at the chance to avoid soar butts and empty pockets. Instead we had soar legs but we got to spend the morning and mid day wandering around looking for adventure and silly statues that no longer guard anythng and stand awkwardly together under protective rooves and fences.

getting silly with ten second time and some statues

As promised by our brand new Lonley Planet, the scenery is much more interesting than the statues encountered alone the way. As I puffed up hill after hill and my almost atrophied legs burned, I repreated: it about the journey, it's all about the journey, under my breath. And what a journey. Seeing the way people live outside cities has been one of my favorite parts of our jouney and this did not change that. As with the gold miners in Boliva, the poorish farmers (by US standards) of the mountains live surrounded by intensly colorful flowers that people in the States pay good money to import. The front porches were just filled with pots hanging from the ceiling or sitting on the floor just dripping with flowers. And nearby are their coffee or lulo plants and always always a banana tree or two or one hundred. We checked out what a coffee bean looks lime before roasting and by the way, it's white and slimy. Who the hell figured that one out. If anyone knows more about the history of coffee I'd love some comments about it!
After hiking back to town we had lunch and fruit juice at El Folgon and a conversation with Alexander from Switzerland And then headed to the archiological park. The entrance fee is 1500 but worth as the path is nice, they've got a lot of the good statues, and there is a museum exaining everything making our decision not to get a guide a good one.

by far the silliest of the faces

After the park my legs are dunzo but it was great to get out and hike again, something I hope to do more of in the future. We also tried some of the local fruits and fruit juices. The lulo was my favorite even though I'll always be a sucker for limonada. Josh also liked his maracuya juice and his mango juice was a bit watered down for me but tasty none the less. This morning we left St. Agustine and arrived in Cali in time to catch what for us is the new movie Date Night. It's the best movie I've seen in a long time and I think you should all go see it asap. I can't wait to be back in the states thougt for US comedies. Our rediclous slang just doesn't always translate and I'm just always laughing way louder than everyone else. Yes, I'm that girl. But I can't help it. Tina Fey is just so funny. And not to ramble, but besides this movie the high point in my day was eating good tuna fish for the first time since leaving the States. It was amazing... Ok enough for now... I'm just giddy with free wifi!

and back by popular request: pictures of Josh with exotic fruit: