Tuesday saw a little more life injected into me, and I was up pretty early whilst the rest slept in some. Breakfast was at a juice bar, where they made a great milkshake with exotic fruits whose names I have no hope of remembering, or spelling even if I did.

Anyhow, deciding that wasting two hours to move to a hostel a few doors down in order to save three dollars was a bit daft, I did a sightseeing tour of the city with the guys.

The old city is still surrounded by the thick, colonial walls of its past, and inside are narrow streets with colourful buildings, beautiful plazas and interesting artworks. Street vendors sell drinks and food, making lunch on the move an easy job, although with hindsight, maybe I should have been a bit more careful where I ate, as I suffered from a bad stomach for the next five days.

 

In the evening, we went out for dinner with Fabian, the Captain of our boat and his wife. Having had a good trip, we had arranged to pay for their meal as way of a tip. If we had all done this, it would have amounted to somewhere between six and seven dollars each, which in the grander scheme of things, is pretty insignificant for such a wonderful experience at sea.

However, as the night went on, the girls decided to back out, and I could sense that trying to settle up the bill in the restaurant was going to be both time consuming and make us look retarded , so I intervened and put it on the mastercard for us to settle up later at the hostel. Back at the hostel, an amusing moment for me came when a couple of them wanted to use their 400 dollar ipods to work out if they should be paying an additional fifty or sixty cents with tax. As it was, it took two hours of fucking about until everyone had settled.. Come on people!! Now, I understand we had a mix of ages and cultures, but I really didn’t understand what the problem was with chipping in for the meal with Fabian. It wasn’t going to break the bank, and its not as if he left the docks in a Ferrari. Maybe they never worked a job where they received tips, or have never been on the receiving end of friendliness and generosity themselves. I guess after 16 years of travelling I jut have a different perspective, and realise that in this world, you have to give to receive.