good talk

What's with these "Hate Crimes," there's "Love Crimes"? I hate Daylight Savings Time, gets dark at 4:30. A year ago this past spring I flew into Lima, Peru for the 2nd time on my trip to South America, where I hadn't been in 17 years. Lima is real interesting, the Cathedral, the bullring and its museum, the Presidential Palace, etc., but today very dangerous, you don't walk around past the city center. I then took 4 buses to get to Quito, Ecuador, buses are cheap and you don't see too much flying from one sterile airport to another. It's good to look around and the buses are real comfy---but I like any kind of transportation, say the "chicken buses" in Central America so called because somebody might get on with live chickens. I had a nice, big hotel room in Quito for $9, find a bunch of taxi drivers and ask them and then one can drive you to it. Everything in this country costs too much, in South America they have those cheap prices that we like so good. The Equator runs just outside of Quito and I had my picture taken with one foot in the Northern Hemisphere and one foot in the Southern Hemisphere. Quito has beautiful churches and the Cathedral, it's at high altitude so cold at night. Took a bus to the Colombian border and then another to Cali which was interesting, then to Bogata which has a bunch of good museums (I had a private tour of the Police Museum where they proudly showed me a roof tile stained with the blood of Pablo Escabar). Everything in Colombia is very good. Took a long bus winding through the beautiful green mountains to beautiful Cartegena on the Caribbean, the finest example of 17th Century architecture in South America, one long street hasn't changed at all since then. I paid $17 for a nice room across the street from the beach, that water was good, nice warm calm clean saltwater. It felt so good that I just stayed in for an hour and a half without coming out, such a wonderful feeling. After 3 days I took a bus to the Venezuelan border and then yet another to Caracas. This was towards the end of my 47 day trip and I had traveled unimpeded throughout but now the bus was being frequently stopped by soldiers who wanted to see your passport. By the 7th time we were stopped I was tired of this and glared at the soldier who was asking to see my passport. The soldier didn't like my attitude and made me get off the bus saying to the busdriver, "Who is he?" With the busdriver replying, "A Gringo who came from Colombia!" I'll resume this story later, Little Ones.