El Nino Cumpleano...

Too bad you can't write a tilde, an ene, or an accent on an American keyboard...or those killer upside-down exclamation points that signify not only a point that needs to be made but the saucy fact that the writer has access to a more culturally diverse keyboard than you do, gringo! Verily unto American keyboards I say boo...anyway, I decided that rather than try to cohesively string together some stories from this most recent trip I would post things as they came up, and as I took a shiteload of photos and videos (some underwater...bet you can't even wait!) and as captioning is somewhat quicker than full stories (especially when you obsessively edit the way I do), we're going to be starting with those.

Here goes:

This young boy's mother approached me in a marketplace in Cartagena and shyly asked me to remove my hat. As I did, I naturally asked why, to which she replied that her son had never seen a grown man with blonde hair before and that for his birthday she wanted to give him something he would never forget. Flattered, I shoved her aside and put my hat on the child's head, stuck an edify sticker in his hand, and squeezed off several photos. Unfortunately, he dropped the stickers without me noticing so all I was left with was this shitty picture of him in my stupid hat with stupid balloons. No, you all know I'm kidding...it sort of happened like that but without any sort of ridiculosity or shoving. Isn't he darling? And isn't my hat badass? Too bad I left it on the Tranquilo...hopefully one of the brothers Munson will retrieve it for me...

As for the video below, it was shot near where I encountered the birthday boy. It is of Bolivar Square inside the old walled portion of the city. The square is named after Simon Bolivar, the famed Colombian leader of the South American rebellion against the Spanish. The large white building is the city's center of government. I took a couple of movies of other, possibly more interesting areas inside Cartagena, most notably the market (super vibrant, lots of color), we'll see if I get around to posting them.