Estoy Solito

So first of all, i forgot one little thing about playa blanca. one day there was a big local fisherman-beach party kind of thing, for the local people on their end of the beach, not the tourists on our end. i walked down to check it out and it was a pretty cool scene, music blasting, people dancing; overall it seemed to be an enjoyable expierence. a hour or so later im reading and people start running past where we were posted up, locals and a few gringos who quickly duck into the saftey of hugos place. apparently there was a bit of a fight down there with some guys that came from another town, and they must have run our direction because it kept up. a couple guys with big sticks were beating the crap out of some other guy. people were all gathered around sort of yelling and doing this and that--kind of a mob scene--until someone fires a shot. it turns out it was a cop and he shot up in the air. it had the desired effect and people seemed to disperse. at this point we were all huddled in and around hugos watching from about 30 meters off and a couple guys come towards us half-carrying their friend with blood all over his shirt. this is apparently how the fight started--or at least why one guy was beaten about the head with sticks. some guy from one place stabbed some guy from another place in the shoulder, the beating commenced, the crowd gathered, the shot fired, the bleeding continued, the people dispersed, the gringos went back to reading and playing cards and the tourist boats left. at least something to that extent.

hannah left for bogota yesterday morning. our last couple days were spent checking out the sights (always more sights) of cartagena. she took about a thousand pictures, and im not kidding, i think the total was something close to 935 for the trip. had a couple nights out at a cool bar that played a little too much salsa but did a couple michael jackson songs when we asked, and a kid jumped up on the bar and danced as similar to michael as almost anyone ive ever seen. hannah has video. we ate dinner in a fancy-ish resturant overlooking a plaza, and went out later and found some americans and an israeli. we went into the club with them (the one that played MJ) and danced around till almost 4, at which point we walked around town till past 5, went back to the hostel and hannah got her taxi to the bus station for her bus to bogota to catch her plane. i finally got to bed, slept the next day, moved into a room with 3 norweigan girls who are leaving tomorrow (yes! room to myself) and then 2 isrealis showed up...hoo-ray! which is fine, it just means i dont get the room to myself.

i walked down to the docks today to put up a notice that i want to go to panama when a guy appoached me and asked if i wanted to go to panama. i said yes he said come look at my boat, i want to leave in the next couple days. he ownes it with his 2 friends--the 3 of them french. sounds like they already have a passanger list of 7, i make 8, they make 11, should be a fun trip. i have to bring my passport by tomorrow and hopefully we´ll be off the next day. less than 3 weeks left, thats a trip in itself.