Today's Schedule (with pictures)

6:30 Get up after third night where I wake up disoriented and feeling the motion of the boat. Sweating already.
7:00 Breakfast at El Gato Negro, whose staff are my Colombian buddies. I’ll miss them, and their cat too.
8:15 Shower, ask staff about odd insect bites that have showed up around my torso and give him a calm “bullshit” look when he says mosquitoes, pay room, walk to bus stop zone.
8:45 Step onto bus/sauna, dripping sweat.
8:46 Smile apologetically at girl sitting next to me.

9:00 Arrive at airport for 10:50 departure, learn of 2 hour delay. Sudoku.
10:50 Scheduled departure time comes and goes.
11:00 Go through security to waiting room.
12:00 Getting a bit hungry, eat the free “snack” offered by airline as apology for delay, snack is the smallest corner of bread ever to be called a sandwich, features 1 sliver colorless bolognaesque “meat” and melted-at-room-temperature “cheese.”

13:50 Board plane, 3 hours behind schedule.
14:10 Pilot announces additional 40 minute delay, passengers laugh.
14:50 Take-off, 4 hours behind schedule.
15:30 Seeing juice box on beverage cart finally learn what mora is (blackberry).
16:20 Land in Bogota, pilot announces the airport has no available gates so they’ll drop us off outside, where a bus will pick us up to take us to the terminal, passengers laugh again.

16:40 Get a taxi to my chosen hostel, chatting amiably with driver. Pre-set price for 15km ride into town: 20,400 Colombian pesos.
16:50 Arrive at hostel to find it is an abandoned building full of shattered bricks, can just make out the painted sign on the wall. Ask driver to take me to tourist district a couple kilometers away, he says he’ll charge me additional 3,000 pesos. (Thus: 23,400 pesos.)
16:55 Arrive in tourist district, driver says I owe 46,000 pesos.
17:00 Starving hungry, headache, poorly rested, yelling match with asshole driver on the streets of Bogota.

17:10 Enter nearby hostel whose description sounded good to find that there is a Platypus (hostel which I was looking for) and a Casa Platypus (restored colonial house 3-4 times as attractive as any place I’ve ever stayed in my life). The prices are at least twice what I wanted to pay, but I am so tired, the lady is so friendly, and K is arriving tomorrow so I book a dorm for myself for tonight, a double for tomorrow.

17:20 Stomach is digesting itself, go looking for food in a neighborhood that is unexpectedly Bohemian, cool street art, and nice restaurants…all of which seem to only serve breakfast.
17:40 Walk around in daze saying “where the f*** am I?! Only breakfast? Is that Krishna in that graffiti?” out loud to myself until finding a little café/bar run by Colombian abuelo.
17:50 Eat “Combo Mexicano” which is unlike anything I ever ate in Mexico. BBQ sauce, hominy, and French fries?
18:20 Finish eating and go for a short walk around downtown B….where am I?…Bogota. That’s it. Trying to take it in while looking bored and familiar with it so the hustlers don’t bug me.

18:50 Back to hotel, type this. Add pictures to try and make it interesting and cuz Cartagena was just so damn beautiful.
Next: take badly needed shower.
Shortly there after: sleeeeep.