bucaramangering!

Sunrise over Central America, I think. This is hour 12 of our 16 hour ride from Portland to Medellin. The plane does land and we do not crash and burn, the wine is free...Chilean! This Juan Gabriel our couchsurfing host in Medellin, the other guy is me, note that I haven't slept in three days. Juan Gabriel is a great guy, a computer programmer and engineering student. He lives above a rock bar and 24 hour copy shop so night 2 brings no sleep.

This is Medellin, Escobar is gone and so to is Pepe his hippopatomus who escaped to the Rio Medellin (a large concrete torrent) and was murdered by the government. Look it up! Medellin is clean for a South American city and bears reminders eveywhere that the people of Medellin are concerned with the environment. The people are so friendly and the weather is like being in a sauna. The midday sun grinds upon me like cassava upon a tin grater.

This is a view from the Metro. The Metro is a light rail very similar to the max. It costs 1500 pesos to ride. 75 cents roughly The metro zooming by. In these stops there are auxillary police, 16-17 year old young men with batons who keep order but by no means are menacing. This gives jobs and other to otherwise wayward youth. The force is quite large. One of them told me to get my feet off a concrete block, I obeyed as to not be met by his truncheon.

This is an image a giant space worm

Along with the growing environmental conciousness, there is a growing sense of community and well being and the government holds free fitness classes throughout the city. We saw three going on and one was quite large with several hundred people rhythmically moving their hips to electro beats.

You can translate this yourself! Tomas was a muy famoso colombian poet.

"Happiness, so long as we create it, is not outside, it's inside ourselves, sensory or however you call it. We must be quiet as so not to scare it, as it's a bird that flies away at the slightest noise. Let it repose within us, so that it might emerge when we least expect it. It's true that happiness that does not always rest in any soul, but the souls have their summers, and the swallows return; they have their spring and the roses open."

The graffiti is rad. There are alot of octupus themed diddies and as some you might now that is sort of my mascot. Viva cephelopa! This one seems to have "problemas con su pelo."

Holy shit! This is our apartment in Bucaramanga, la ciudad bonita. It is really, really nice. 2 bedrooms lotsa furniture. I don't own furniture, some of you may also be aware of my furniture phobia. I own no furniture of any merit, I am proud of this fact. I do enjoy having a couch looking out over the city though. The apartment is really sweet and i feel very fortunate to have it as most people here struggle to make 500,000 (250 bucks) pesos a month and live in communal situations with extended families. I am insanely fortunate to be so free, I thank the universe for my current prosperity. This reminds me of how much educated,intelligent, free people owe to the other billions. We have a different debt, maybe two, discovering the nature of our debt (not monetary) and finding the bravery to begin to repay.

This next image is the leaf cutter and which seem to really like red flowers to chop up and grow their fungus on. They are ubiquitous.

These are crazy little pollinating wasps. They come back to the paper-tube hive in a manner that looks like they are being sucked in the hive. You can see the pollen on their legs as they come back, they are not bees.

A main street in Buca, lotsa trees and hot as hell down in the center of the city.

Up near La Floresta (paradise) in the hills there are many tall condo buildings and huge arboreteum that called La Flora , it's like a big maze...

Your host with the most.

Making jugo de pina from fresh pineapple and drinking Aguila cervesa. The pineapple was 1.50 US and was amazingly sweet and fresh. It was from the hills about 30 minutes from here. This pineapple was hard as a ****ing rock and the knife was as dull as a bleeping stone.

The virew from our balcony. At night hudreds of murcielagos(bats) gobble up the mosquitos. It's a great sight at they whip back and forth at eye level.

Yo prepare' un vaso de jugo de pina. Pineapple is my favorite fruit...i love it.