Ok, someone’s won but I’m not telling who and I’ll hold off on publishing the comments for now, just because I’m curious to see if you can follow the trail.  And the good news for me is that the censorship issue is now manageable so I can finally add pictures as I go along.

So this morning my friend, Doris, arrived and we headed off on the next leg of the journey.  We’ll be together until the end now unless one of us kills the other.  This is a test of two people traveling together for the first time.  It’s started out well and our new location is interesting.  We arrived without incident and then got in a cab to get to the hostel.  We could see the city in the distance but it took forever to get there.  It seemed to close and yet so far when stuck in traffic and spending 5 minutes in one intersection.  Eventually we arrived and headed out for the afternoon to check out our surroundings.

“Industrial” is the word that immediately comes to mind: everything is under construction, reconstruction, in disrepair, getting repaired.  Lots of new towers going up, lots of sidewalk work but oddly not a lot of roadwork.  This is more of what I’ve been looking for.  It’s also not nearly as safe as the last city, signs are up in every restaurant warning of pickpockets, my favourite sign so far is “Let’s careful. Robbers”.  Apparently people try to get into the hostel posing as plumbers or construction workers and we’ve all been warned to kick them to the curb.  It’s not the safest place to be out after dark so we are tucking in early after being up at 5am this morning.

Tonight Doris and I went for dinner to try the local fare.  The sun was setting and as we left the restaurant we walked straight into a gazillion tiny flies.  You could see their wings clearly in the setting sun, if I didn’t know better I could have hoped they were tiny fairies coming to sprinkle their fairy-dust on our heads.  Instead they dusted us with their carcasses as they died on impact.  I looked down at my shirt after 10 seconds and was covered in the things so I could only imagine what my hair looked like.  We took refuge in a mall and tried to brush them off ourselves but the icky feeling remained and we were itchy even though we got most of them off.  Apparently this phenomenon only happens once in a blue moon and this is the first time anyone has seen it in ages.  It’s gross and I’m pretty sure I ate at least 10 of them for dessert.

Then we stopped at a grocery store to pick up some water.  Apparently standing in a checkout is great if you love people crawling up your backside.  The woman behind me was so close I think she was examining my colon.  With her head.  You know my thing about people in my personal space, at least she didn’t try to hug me, or maybe that’s what was going on with her arms…

Then on the way back to the hostel I stepped on something, thought it was a stone and tried to wipe it off on the pavement.  Then I felt something jab me in the foot and it turned out I had picked up a 3 inch screw.  It took a bit to get it out, a Philips screwdriver would have been helpful.  Checked my foot once we got back, nothing was pierced and my tetanus is up to date anyway so no worries.  Weird start to this part of the trip though.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m still having a blast and I think this is going to be a great adventure.  Tomorrow we’re heading out into the wilderness for a few days and I’m looking forward to the potential of seeing more than 2 stars in the sky at night and meeting the locals in whose house we’ll be staying.

That’s it for now, more to follow once we’re back on the grid.