Miraculously I awoke to find my feet feeling refreshed.  Sad to say though, the first cute guy and the only other female both left the room and now I have two more males in the room.  Back to the regular type I’m used to, the kind who are slightly disheveled and make me sad when I survey the shared bathroom.  I made sure they’re ok with me being the only female in the room, you never know if you end up with sailors who see women as bad luck.

After a later breakfast Andres and I headed out for another day of foot torture.  We looked for a Citi bank in the upscale neighbourhood rife with Rolex, Pandora and other stores before leaving to seek solace in something a little more ethnic.  We found a shopping street with alleyways twisting in and out, tiny stores with tacky nicknacks, and streets packed with pedestrians, people carting goods on bike, and laundry hanging outside to dry.  The temperature is perfect, about 27 every day, sun high in the sky, slightly toned down by the grey haze of pollution hanging overhead.  It is a dry enough heat that being outside all day is tolerable and welcome after our short summer at home.  People basically ignore us and we’ve been able to get by with the map from the hostel.  But if we need help they will definitely do so.  Whatever English they do speak is pretty standard, and sometimes I have to figure out if they’ve said “Excuse me” or “Kiss me.” Even if they said the latter you could just blame the Western movies for bad influence and ignore it.  After the shopping street we ended up at another one of the magnificent parks that blend in with the city.  We sat in one of the heavy tourist areas and guessed where people came from based on the way they dressed, after which we headed north to check out some bird thing and the bath it’s close to.  Eventually we made it back to the hostel around 8:30 and stayed in for dinner.  I’ve finished half my nightly sleeping cocktail and plan to tuck in once I’m done writing this.  Need to be up early tomorrow as I’ll head north of the city around 6am to meet the lovely lady from my flight the other day.  She got in touch with me during the day to offer to take me to one of the biggest sites outside the city so we’ll spent the day together.  She’ll translate and make sure I get to see everything I want to and spending time with a local in a place like this is a true blessing.