Karaoke en Español? Hmmm...
Having been blissfully undisturbed by my non-existent room-mates, I had my first real proper lie-in for a while, before heading back into town. Like many of the micro drivers, this one had customised his vehicle somewhat, in this case by having 13 different stuffed-toy birds (mostly parrots) across the top of his windscreen! I had lunch at one of the rough-and-ready food stalls in the central market, which was as noisy and disorientating at times as you might expect, before heading on towards the plaza again. My initial plan had been to look around some of the colonial centre of town, maybe going to the Casa de la Libertad (Liberty House), the museum in the building where the declaration of independence was signed, but the onset of a crazy thunder- and hail-storm drove me into the shelter of an internet cafe, which I was delighted to discover possessed a DVD drive, allowing me to upload some of my second disc of backed-up photos to Facebook. The storm kept going for a while, but it turned out I needed most of the afternoon to upload those photos I managed anyway, as the stupid site decided to hang twice whilst uploading large numbers of pictures, forcing me to start those from scratch again.
Since it was now too late to go see the museum, I checked around some of the agencies in town about possible tours for the next day. I had been thinking of maybe going horse-riding or something, but as there were no other riders lined up, this turned out to be going to cost a lot more than I had thought, and so I gave up the idea as a bad thing. Instead I went back to Florin for dinner, where I ended up chatting for a little while with a Welsh couple, Hefin and Emma, who were headed south, trading tales and recommendations. I then headed over to the Joy Ride, where I had a beer, read back through my notebook starting in Brasil (actually quite an interesting exercise, reminding myself of quite how much I've seen and done on this trip so far!) and then got chatting with some of the other gringos in there.
The first were three fellow Brits, Trif, Cecily and Pete, with whom I arranged to meet up the next afternoon and watch the England football game which Florin was going to show. Then there were a couple of Irish lads, Donheh and Eoin, who'd been in the previous night and regaled me with stories of quite how crazy it had all got after I left. They were both quite determined not to have a repeat performance, as they were planning to go to Potosi the next day - in fact, they had been planning to go for the last four days, and, for reasons largely due to alcohol, had mysteriously failed to do so on each occasion. We were then joined by two Irish girls, Nadia and Jenny, who had also been central participants in the previous night's high-jinks (with Nadia reportedly dancing on tables at one point...) and were even more determined to have a quiet night. In fact, they weren't even going to have a drink. Oh, all right then, just one. You can probably guess roughly how this all ended. We were politely ejected from Joy Ride at 2am when it closed, and then ended up in a little grotto of a subterranean bar and club (with cave-like alcoves for tables) where the activities included Karaoke (mostly in Spanish) and dancing, much of it of the salsa variety. I finally got a cab back to the hostel at 5:30am. Oops. Though I did at least wait at the correct door this time....
Since it was now too late to go see the museum, I checked around some of the agencies in town about possible tours for the next day. I had been thinking of maybe going horse-riding or something, but as there were no other riders lined up, this turned out to be going to cost a lot more than I had thought, and so I gave up the idea as a bad thing. Instead I went back to Florin for dinner, where I ended up chatting for a little while with a Welsh couple, Hefin and Emma, who were headed south, trading tales and recommendations. I then headed over to the Joy Ride, where I had a beer, read back through my notebook starting in Brasil (actually quite an interesting exercise, reminding myself of quite how much I've seen and done on this trip so far!) and then got chatting with some of the other gringos in there.
The first were three fellow Brits, Trif, Cecily and Pete, with whom I arranged to meet up the next afternoon and watch the England football game which Florin was going to show. Then there were a couple of Irish lads, Donheh and Eoin, who'd been in the previous night and regaled me with stories of quite how crazy it had all got after I left. They were both quite determined not to have a repeat performance, as they were planning to go to Potosi the next day - in fact, they had been planning to go for the last four days, and, for reasons largely due to alcohol, had mysteriously failed to do so on each occasion. We were then joined by two Irish girls, Nadia and Jenny, who had also been central participants in the previous night's high-jinks (with Nadia reportedly dancing on tables at one point...) and were even more determined to have a quiet night. In fact, they weren't even going to have a drink. Oh, all right then, just one. You can probably guess roughly how this all ended. We were politely ejected from Joy Ride at 2am when it closed, and then ended up in a little grotto of a subterranean bar and club (with cave-like alcoves for tables) where the activities included Karaoke (mostly in Spanish) and dancing, much of it of the salsa variety. I finally got a cab back to the hostel at 5:30am. Oops. Though I did at least wait at the correct door this time....
posted by Pat at 12:00 pm
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