moving mud

Having trouble getting the debate to stream live on this computer in...where am I right now?...seriously, I can not remember. Mendez to Limon. I am in Limon, tiny mellow jungle town with an internet cafe packed with teenagers on a...what day is it?..Tuesday night.

I am in a non touristy part of the jungle right now, which means few hotels, zero pizza and plenty of attention for the gringa. Sometimes when I start talking to people (slowly, carefully and clearly), they just stare at me in seeming disbelief that I can talk and that I am talking to them. The men like to ask each other if I am their wife..ha ha. They find it hilarious when I enter that conversation.

Today I must have seen 800 huge trucks and tractors. The whole southern Oriente seems to be crawling with them as they push huge boulders and piles of mud into more piles that promise a future of better roads and bridges. There is nothing delicate about their work. Today my bus broke down in the mud just a few minutes before we had to stop for an hour to watch said trucks grunt and crawl across the hillside. Adding hours to all transit plans for the next few days.

At this point, I am quite accustomed to seeing pigs in bus stations, chickens in town squares, people boarding buses with machetes and toddlers wearing rubber boots. My own rubber boots have been nicely broken in, worth every penny of the 7 dollars I spent in Coca.