Rubber Ducky...

I bet you are all thinking this is a strange title for a post from Colombia. Let me introduce you to the "Rubber Ducky"... I don't know how I have survived 40 years without him. He is essential here in Monteria, Colombia! As you can see from the pictures he makes a great bath tub for Ruben. He also has a second and third job. This duck not only quacks, and bathes Ruben, he works off hours as a laundry machine and in his spare time a dishwasher. The hot water here at the Hotel Sinu is very spotty at best. I have cut back on the need for coffee due to the cold showers that come out of the "hot faucet". We did have hot water on two occasions. Our friends from Boston across the hall have a theory on this. There is a conference going on as well here. We think due to the conference that the water furnace got turned on. The picture of the roof tops has what looks like large garbage cans that have small white pvc pipe running down. Our interpreter validated what i thought. this collects the rain water, and also supplies shower and water in the buildings. Lets just say we are showering "all natural" here in Monteria. We don't drink the tap water for obvious reasons. We go to the local market and buy 5 liter jugs for drinking water.

We signed one more document today, which we thought we were going to have to wait until Monday to do. this means we can travel. We have a college student who speaks english that is going to ride the bus ( 5 hrs) to Cartagena tomorrow. the student (Mario) is then going to ride the bus 5hrs back to Monteria, then come up on Tuesday and ride back with us on Wednesday. We are paying his ticket ( 43,000 colombian peso's) 1$ = 1800 colombian pesos roughly. As well as compensate him for his time.

We ate at what turns out to be our favorite place again tonight. Italia piccolo's pizza pub. I find it very ironic that we are deep in S. America with almost entirely spanish speaking people in the Italian restaraunt, listening to American Music. Journey's Wheel in the sky, and Faithful" were blasting in the pub. I think we were the only ones that could understand it. However, the pizza is great and fairly reasonable. I had pasta (alfredo), and Tracey had a personal greek pizza and two coca cola lights ( that is diet cokes) for only $33,000 colombian peso's. Well better stop for now. We are going to leave our main luggage here at the hotel, and just take one checked bag and a carry on and stroller for our 4 day trip to Cartagena. Let the road trip begin...