Sunday, February 17, 2008

Xanax And Alcohol More Drug_interactions

Bogota, how cold!

Finally we arrived in Bogota. It 'was like oxygen to breathe again after being were in a hole claustrophobic. The air was cool, the little airport, taxi drivers more relaxed, and even the space in front of the airport green and inviting. We left behind the danger of large Brazilian city to immerse ourselves in the old colonial town (small colored wooden houses, narrow streets on a human scale, to the board, but put a little 'hill). The old town is called La Candelaria, and all taxis have trouble reaching our beautiful hostel because apparently there are two "calle novena! A little 'as in NYC with streets and avenues, even to the streets of Bogota Candelaria calles are divided into high (vertical) and Carreras (horizontal).



Our lovely hostel opens onto a patio Greening of plants and hammocks, some shower-bath stone, and large rooms with wooden beds and a fireplace. Three tires on the beds, because Bogota is high and is quite cold at night! Finally, a large room with kitchen, cooking with tea always hot for the people, and a single computer on the network (wireless but the rule!). The hostel was a very quiet, perhaps too, a sort of quiet oasis to escape from the outside world, sometimes threatening, and the inhabitants there were often long-term projects or learning. An American was actually from Columbia (You could tell by the fact that he wore a rather obvious in the plush of the "Columbia," to be recognized)! At home there was even a game typical of Colombia, of which I forgot the name:



is to challenge an opponent in the launch of the rings. If it hits the frog, the more points you make, otherwise you're trying to hit the other holes. This game is typically located in pubs or on the premises of billiards and bowling, and is a favorite pastime of Colombians. If the streets are neat and pretty old, down past the Plaza Bolivar (where the super-protected Palace of the President), there is the part more messy and less attractive of the city



Here there are shops on several floors, a little 'as in China, selling everything at ridiculously low prices for a Westerner. $ 1 is equivalent to almost 2,000 Colombian pesos (nearly € 1 to 3000)! The problem is that there is little that is interesting: many junk, useless items, clothes a little stylish. On the other hand, if you read English, can go to literally immerse themselves in the books, hoping to find what you look for ...



If there really is a problem finding something, Well these are the postcards! IncrediBBoli seems that there is a place where it is difficult for tourists to find simple postcards, maybe even ugly, but always postcards, you can send to your friends before returning home. The search for the course takes place cards for me in my last morning in Bogota before taking the plane back home. After an hour of questions to sellers of tours and stalls, we find that the only place that sells postcards of Bogota is a stationery and books in the center.

the second floor.

Down the hall.
In a hidden corner.
In a cardboard box.
In postcards among other places in Colombia.

Puff, that effort! After a complex process paperwork (calculates the price, it brings a package below, please line up, pay, go to pick up a receipt showing the product wrapped), not content, I decided to look for the stamps. It was a Saturday morning.




Plaza Bolivar was still a veteran of the military parade in the morning, a few national awards ceremony (perhaps the promotion of the officers) that loved to participate in some of the many stray dogs in the area .. . Jason and I we will wander around in search of the post: the only place that sells stamps. We meet on the road agency DHL, but they are not concerned for any reason shipment of postcards (!!!). In front there is a post office, a huge building in communications but did not realize it ... and apparently even the locals, who direct us around the large building. In a glass smashed and the other, we see a sign that invites us to turn around the building, and finally found the entrance and the answer to my question Hamlet: stamps or not?



Zipaquira Salt Cathedral, near Bogota.

Please! Give me the stamps before they come up, please! The answer is inside you, and yet ... Wrong! In short, the answer is NO. The stamps are sold only is true that the post office and anywhere else, but we can not wait for it to sell for mica came on the weekend! Ridiculous! The fracobolli are sold in Colombia * only * and * only * the post from Monday to Friday from 9 am * only * 17. Well, if someone wanted to buy stamps, if it has found the postcards, these are the conditions! Even the dogs know it.

On the stairs of the monastery on Mount Monserrate, Bogota, at 3,150 meters.

But back to the beautiful Bogota. A favorite destination of pilgrims and visitors is the monastery of Monserrate. To get to the cable car, it makes a nice walk through the narrow streets, day percorriBBoli without problems, more and more towards the green thicket. Above us, Mt. Behind the city.



At the top, a feeling of peace and tranquility, even if the priest is saying Mass in a sermon and other things that need to forgive all, but I do not think you should forgive corrupt politicians, drug dealers and all those who contribute to this country, every country, poor and dangerous. Jason Buy souvenirs, and I enjoy the afternoon breeze fresh, pure oxygen and pleasant, the sun set behind the Christ on a nearby mountain.



the evening we decided to go bowling center, as recommended by some fixed hostel. The peculiarity of the bowling of Bogota is that ... is automated so entirely human. How do you explain this concept in a world in mechanized Fordiani depicting him as Chaplin years ago? Well, there is an exception to all this ... Seeing is believing ...




Have you looked closely? Have you seen what happens behind the pins? Magically they are in their proper place after the two attempts to beat the ball. It was my first game of bowling. The rules seem complicated (given the need to calculate the points in a certain way depending on whether you throw down all the pins or less), but in the end despite a degree in communication and perseverance in the humanities, I've caught. In fact, I made friends even with all the people around, and each taught me his method to throw the ball, bend your legs, swing arm, position fingers in the balls and so on. In short, a confusion exaggerated! In the end, I developed my method, though ridiculous, and the ball hit the pins, tie '!



After the fun, the first night in Bogota was hibernating. Not accustomed to very cold temperatures were also frozen in the meantime New York, I did not know how to protect themselves from the cold, and the only solution found on the first evening was simple: the water bottle! One of the nice kids who works at the hostel at night now know that if I return to Bogota must always prepare a hot water bottle before bed, like an old lady! The gentle the hostel manager, a woman with soft features, a lover of India, with gray hair tied in a ball on his neck, but the watchful eye and practical, taught me some other method the next day to defend myself from the cold:

1) hot water bottle!
2) develop one of the blankets on the mattress, under the body, so as to block the cold air from the floor.
3) not be too dressed in bed, but the tire in contact with wool.
4) Cover with a thick woolen ponchos in the morning to go to the bathroom, and maybe even a scarf.
5) hopefully not, but if the emergency kit is disponiBBoli (touch wood!)



short, there are several ways to avoid ending up stiff with cold as the moths on the mountain, which remains attached to the walls waiting to breathe ...







Pinky After The Weight Gain

Sao Paulo, do not love you!

After Rio, break in Sao Paulo. E 'was for me the worst moment of the trip. We arrived in the middle of the night. Dangerous neighborhood full of homeless people who wandered aimlessly through the sidewalks. I forget my precious part of the favelas in the taxi. In the hotel we were not having booked the room ... and so on until 8 am waiting for you some free room single, for then join the room for four, equipped with sofa, telephone and television.

HATE THE HOTEL.


the evening can not come out: it is too dangerous. The people look at us threateningly, as if we were barrels of gold (and you can not be seen with three Asian in tow!). I can not sleep, and the bus to Sao Paulo we had no time to sleep. They are angry because the man at the reception can not find a solution to his injury, and because it tells us to come out, walk one block, and go see if the other hotel site. But exit equals being robbed or worse! How can you not realize a room?! And why he is not planning to use the phone?! Mah
I also pissed with my mates, who are calm and in my opinion too kind to those who are causing problems for his incompetence. At the end give us three single rooms. Two and go to sleep, I awake, help Jason in his absurd claim to dye their hair brown (because then, I never understood!). I never thought it stank so much of the dye lotion! Yuck! The assistance was necessary because the instructions were only in Portuguese and English ...!




E 'right that those without dye reason to suffer! Why dye, modify, destroy the hair, while those who gave us Mother Nature is certainly the best we could want? Bah, no one is ever happy with what he has! In the case of Jason, maybe a little 'desire to have fun with the funny pushed him to this act insudiciante ... But he had really done? Really?!


After a sleepless night, without my friend Silas time to answer my e-mail to meet in his home town, we decide to make a turn. They are very bad mood, and the center of the city, with its skyscrapers, ugly, dull, I feel even more horrible than probaBBolimente is. Sao Paulo is certainly not a place of tourist attractions, but a place where, preferiBBolimente with a local, you spend on eating out and going out at night ... always taking care of everything. But we had to stay only one day. Then Derek and Yvette would come back to NYC, and me and Jason would have continued its journey to Bogota, cool.


Sao Paulo is known for its Japanese community, the largest outside of Japan. There are in fact in Sao Paulo about 1.5 million Japanese who have colonized an area of \u200b\u200btheir own. Here are Japanese shops (with golden lucky cat and money), bar Japanese Japanese people and especially Japanese restaurants. So, we ended up in what our guide called it the best sushi restaurant in the area. And indeed, although I do not like raw fish, you can not deny.

Luckily the ride did not last long. The Italian part of Sao Paulo is very small and unsatisfactory. Rain prompts us to go back, and I fall asleep until 4 in the morning, when I finally go back to the airport to our destinations. Too bad, Sao Paulo, perhaps you will know better another time!





Saturday, February 16, 2008

Lucas Oil Ppl Tractor Pulls

A tour of the favelas.

Thanks to the hostel, we returned to a project that the outside is allowed to do within a short walking tour of the favelas, and in return the money is donated to projects for the community, such as schools, laboratories, painting, and so on. It 'just that even the less fortunate kids can enjoy decent public services and facilities.


The small streets to prevent public services to retrieve the garbage, which are known in every local area to carry waste on the highway because they are caught and brought away from trucks. The favela
we visit is the most Rio larger and perhaps all of South America: it is called Rocinha . Our guide has passed a three-week training which was known by locals, and also moving on the path to do and people to avoid. In fact you can not take pictures, for obvious reasons, in the presence of observers or dealers of the band's dominant drug traffickers.


Thanks to the knowledge of the guide, we take the most modern transport service movement in the slums: the bike! Every day, several riders are paid to bring up and down the hill the locals. The police listlessly stationed here, all corrupt to the core, gets about a real head by motorcyclists, which in this way should not wear a helmet and are allowed to play their role. This organization is highly reminiscent of Naples ....


Our ride up the winding roads of the hill is a beautiful example of a favela is seen from the highway. This is poor houses, concrete in sight, dominated by electrical wires, but in general stores and food shops, enough to serve a vast population, which reached here at least 500,000 people. This is a real city, with all the services and commodities - clearly low cost - of which a large population in need. What I like most of the favela is the simplicity of the people, people like us, who has a family, own a home (which does not pay taxes ), and has a life more strenuous than a normal person, with his 2-3 jobs in wealthy areas of the city. 95-99% of the population are people whose only "defect" is to be poor. They are not murderers, they are not thieves, not aggressors. A small minority is made up of groups rather than of drug dealers who share the various favelas and damage stability and organization. As in Naples, the boss is aware of everything: who enters and leaves the favela, who violates the order and so on. Are not allowed thieves or troublemakers, so that traffic in drugs, here protected and hidden in narrow streets, is not compromised. Most people know who is better not to have to do is continue their difficult but honest life in the favela. Here everyone knows it's like a big family. This is why anyone who wants to enter the favela, to be safe, he must know someone who lives in the same. As in any place, know the locals is an advantage. Ernesto has never even been in a favela, he tells me, but friends who could bring it into this labyrinth of narrow streets and crowded houses.
It does not feel any sense of danger, and people even smiles and greets us. The bravest children are asking for their photos, others play for dusty passages from which emerge often small garbage dumps unhealthy air. Every now and then spend a few cockroaches and other animals ... but after living in New York than in Rio seem cute and almost justified even in a place like this! We head to one of the structures that we are helping to expand the money of the "tour" is a small building in which adults and children test themselves in the painting. It 'a way as any to occupy the leisure time of children and distract from other more dangerous activities. You see it around very young bear automatic weapons ... perhaps a more turbulent to make more money faster. Most of the paintings on canvas depicting the favela, designed but the houses are surprisingly rich in color, although it Staglin black and high on a hill, whose summit is bare. I buy a small painting of a boy named Carlos, who unfortunately will leave in a taxi in the middle of the night in Sao Paulo ... Continuing the tour, we stop at a bakery by the heady fragrance, and tasted all kinds of homemade desserts: coconut, walnuts, a non-memory-more-like-taste but remember cakes that were delicious! Taste even a bit of a strange fruit, like a huge melon, hanging from the trees in these areas: the Jack-fruit. E 'in yellow and a bit' sticky not so tasty ... as shown below, the cart of a vendor met in Sao Paulo. We offer it with the nice boys who enjoy playing ... samba! The pace is pressing while the kids beat the drums with a simplicity that only Brazilians can have a naturalness that when they grow up turns into wild dances, such as funk, that our heroes have obviously experienced in another favela.
While we try to spit out the Jack-fruit without being seen, we have with music and beautiful that people with children the favela. There are many mulattos (and hence the population of blacks and poorer than the Brazilian lighter skin ...) Here are some shots:



A girl drummers.




A little boy asked.



A little girl smiles.
say that is just amazing. Let instead reflect their condition, a condition in which they were born by the will of destiny, and where we might be born too. But I am Italian, I have a beautiful family, and I'm lucky to be supported and loved by my parents. How could I know when I was born? I could be a child of the slums, with a life in the hills, many brothers, and friends or armed honest. But this is not, so I say.


the evening we go to another favela funk for an evening at a nightclub. We are immersed in a huge cube with two floors (the floor for the "VIP") is chock full of people of the favela, or outside. The music is deafening, so much to having to protect pieces of paper in his ears. The way to dance funk in Brazil (and perhaps especially in the favelas) is very, very very uninhibited. I have dubbed the dance of "pre-copulation"! It is fitted with girls in short skirts that sculettano in an extreme lowering and rising, with the seat in plain view and in motion. The two guys are placed in turn behind the girls and take a swing sculettanti monotonous Emboss their river back and forth, in perfect synchrony with the female sculettamento! Never seen anything like it.


Some of us commented that perhaps this is one of the reasons for overcrowding in the slums ... and soon after a girl was dazzled by Yvette. With the unmistakable gestures from behind tries to convince her to dance with her, but want to be spoiled, either from exhaustion, so much lesbian Yvette does not accept invitation! Unfortunately I am not a fan of disco, and even the type of hormone that behavior in these places has the upper hand, but this is an "favela" interesting. Basically we are in Rio should try everything! And I think from this point of view we have not spared!


was high time to leave!