They Say It's (My) Birthday!

(I'm) gonna have a good time!  For those of you not into Rock and Roll that's a quote.  Sort of.

Slept in, drinking my first cup of coffee.  I have breakfast included in my room rate so I'll head down for the buffet after a shower.  Yesterday I got in here around 11am.  The drive up in the military shuttle wasn't bad.  We passed by a recently happened wreck, and drove on by even though it was a shuttle full of medics.  I'm pretty sure the guy was already gone.  Traffic was just driving by.  I am still pondering that in my mind.  Got to the airport, and it wasn't the jungle of humanity that it seemed to me when I arrived a couple  of months ago.  That made me feel better.  I walked out to get a cab rather than wait an hour for the hotel shuttle.  A woman who spoke English was just getting out of a cab, so I asked her if I could use her cab.  I told her where I needed to go and she talked to the driver and 70 lemps was the fare, less than I had expected.  I got in, and since I don't speak Spanish well, I just spent my tiime looking at the city.  We started off in the right direction near as I could tell, but nothing looked familiar after a bit.  I've never gone to the hotel from the airport, so I just hoped that the Bible on the console was a good sign.  He started to pull up to a building that sounded like Intercontinental, but was no place near my hotel.  I tried to tell him where I really wanted to go, but he gave me a blank puzzled look.  I pulled out a keyfob I have with the hotel name on it.  He put the flashers on, grabbed his cell phone, and walked across the street to other cab drivers standing around.  He came back, we turned around and in a few minutes I recognized the hotel/mall area.  I gave him 100 lemps ($5) which was almost a 50 % tip, and he was happy.  All's well that ends well, and I saw more of the city.  I also realized just how much I need to memorize landmarks in Tegus.

Lots of napping and internet surfing yesterday.  No swimming yet.  After breakfast maybe.  Guess I needed the naps because even with 2 long naps during the day I slept well last night.  I think the hotel must have Skype blocked because I have internet but can't log into Skype.  So, it lights a fire under me to go get a Tigo stick - cell based internet - to cover for these times when my main internet source doesn't cut it.  You can buy the internet in increments of days, such as a week or even a day at a time.  I need to see if a week's worth of internet is 7 different days, or if it's consecutive.  I will use 3 days here, and would have 4 'in the bank' if it's based on 24hrs per use.  Things like that are different down here.  I also want to get my cell phone down here able to call the States.  There are just times I want to call and not Skype.

I hear that shower calling.  And breakfast.  I'll take my camera over to the mall later and get some pictures for you.