I hate to disappoint you, but there some very good restaurants down here. Yes, they serve cow tongue, intestines, and other things I won’t even bother to list, but you can get “normal” food also. We go to a different restaurant depending on our appetite on any particular night. One of Joeline’s favorite places is Casa de Campo. They have wonderful pork chops.
The chops come with mashed potatoes and two - count them two - green peas on top of the potatoes. We have eaten there probably ten times in the last year and Joeline , being the adverturess she is, always orders the chops - and they always come with two peas.
However, one of the disadvantages of being here is that the people have a distinctive European outlook on a lot of things, one of them being smoking. It seems like everyone here smokes and most restaurants let them light up everywhere. Now, Joeline handles this much better than Jody - Jody is downright indignant if anyone smokes within 100 yards of her, but Joeline definitely does not like it. They know that I hate it more than anyone alive, but I never make a scene.
Anyway, the other night we were out with a couple and people at the adjoining table were smoking. Joeline moved her chair a few times and murmured a few choice words. Finally, I went on a rampage about smokers in general. After I had calmed down, the guy with us said, “I understand not likeing smoking, but you really seem to have a downright annoyance for the smokers and not for the smoke. Why.”
I thought about that for a few minutes and then realized why that probably is the case - the smoke really doesn’t bother me. I don’t cough and hack and get sick like Jody, but……
When I was 14, Dad dropped me and another boy, who was 17 but not too “bright”, (kind of a Rope type for those of you who knew dad) off in Stockton, California, to watch a few horses at the Fair. He was going somewhere and the two of us were to take care of the horses for a week before the Fair actually started. I’m sure he left us enough money to get us by for the week, after all, how much do beans, Vienna sausages, cheese, and crackers cost. We slept on cots in one of the stalls and there was a bathroom at the end of the shedrow. Pretty good gig for a kid.
The first evening this other kid had the bright idea that since we had money we should go to the track kitchen and eat up. We did so, but it set us back more than I had expected, but I wasn’t worried – yet. The next day we walked outside of the gates of the track and found that there was a bowling alley only a block away – what could a few games cost?
Let me cut to the chase. Dad, and the owners of one of the horses were coming back Saturday at about 11 to get the horse ready for a race. By Thursday at noon the other kid and I had a total of about .50 cents left between us. We got our heads together and decided we would go to a grocery store and do the best we could. I figured we could get a box of crackers, some cheese, and a couple of cans of beans and stretch them out. In the store we wandered the aisles, just being near food was comforting. Finally, the other kid said I should give him the money and he would make the purchases. I was watching a couple of other kids play pin-ball and did as he said.
When we got outside I found that he had spent every cent of our money on cigarettes - which I must admit he offered to share with me. I went nuts. Which for me meant I said, “You cottinpickin idiot” twenty or thirty times. He had been telling me for at least a day that he was out of cigarettes, but what did I care, I was hungry and never in my wildest imagination would I have ever imagined that someone would chose to inhale smoke rather than eat! It made no sense to me then and still doesn’t today.
We ate absolutely nothing the rest of the day Thursday or all day Friday, but he had his stinking cigarettes and was a happy camper. Gee, I wonder if that warped me towards smokers?

This is an orchid plant I got in the Rain Forest when Jody and kids were here. They were convinced it would not survive. Actually, I got two and this one not only survived but is blooming. Took it 6 months, but it was worth waiting for.

Can't wait to see what the other one will look like!

Gayle, you have some pull! Told Carl today that you said he was a slacker, and he had this post up in less than an hour. This is for you Alta Girl!

What can I say except, “I’m sorry!”
I know I haven’t written on this for months and months, and I know everyone else is busy, but that is my only excuse. Now, we are back from Atlanta and Texas, we are moved into a fabulous house - so Joeline could have a yard, and now I have a little time.
I don’t even know where to start, but think I will tell you about my trip back to the States in November.
Joeline left in October for her annual visit with her “OLD” friends from Dinuba (California) - they actually met at one of the friends houses, Gayle's in Sonoma - and for her Art Workshop in San Angelo. She left the dog here for me to take care of while she jetted around the world. All went well until I tried to take it back to the states with me.
First of all, this mutt had to have more paperwork than I did, and certainly more shots. All kinds of arrangements had to be made with American Airlines and with AeroSur (the airline for around Bolivia). But, the real problems began as I was in the cab to the airport in Cochabamba.
My secretary called and said that the hotel they had me booked in, in Santa Cruz, Bolivia would not take pets. (There are no connections from here to Miami without staying all night in Santa Cruz or La Paz.) I told her to check other hotels. She said she had already called everyone on our list and none would allow the dog. I told her to forget it, that I would find one when I got there. (Much easier said than done!)
At the airport I got in a taxi and in my fluent Spanish I told the driver to take “yo to the hotelo with the doggieo”. He understood and we left immediately. For two hours - from 10pm till midnight – we drove around Santa Cruz. He took me to the worst dives you have ever seen. I mean my Dad, in the early years of our travels took us to some dives - when we weren’t just sleeping in the trucks or in the trailers with the horses - but they were in the U.S., they don’t compare with the dives here. And none of them would allow the dumb dog.
Finally I told the driver to take me back to the “airporto” and I would just sleep on a bench - my flight left at 10 the next morning. On the way back, way out of the city we passed the Coyote Hotel. It really looked bad, but by then I was past caring. I told the driver to stop. He did so, but when I told him to pull into the hotel, he refused. He kept saying, “No Aqui”. I kept saying, “Si, Aqui”. Finally I won. He pulled in front of the door to the office but wouldn’t get out.
I went in and confronted Freddie Kruger watching drag racing on a 3” TV. He ignored me until I put my hand between him and the screen. Finally, I had his attention, I know because he picked up a nightstick that had been leaning against his chair. After a few minutes of fast talking, in English of course, he got the idea that I wanted a room. He quoted me a price - I guess, but the only word I could decipher after the third try on his part was – “hora” which I know means hour. He rented these “rooms” by the hour. Getting the idea?
We settled on $50 U.S., which is like $300 in the U.S., but I was past caring.
Now it gets good!
He pushes a button and a couple of minutes later a guy that looked like Lurch came out from somewhere. He takes me outside and pulls back this huge steel sliding door. It reveals a narrow driveway with other steel doors on the left and a high wall on the right. He signals the taxi driver to follow him down the driveway, but that “ain’t happening”. I have to get my bags, and dog, out of the taxi and carry them down this driveway. Lurch immediately slides the steel door closed and locks it. We walk down this driveway to the third steel door on the left. He unlocks it and slides it back. It reveals a carport type structure with a door at the end. My imagination is really going wild as to what is behind that door.It’s too late to turn back now, so I walk into the carport. Lurch slides the steel door behind me, with him on the other side and I hear him lock it. I have a choice, lay my bags down and sleep on them in the carport, or go open that door. Evita is at the door barking at it. Oh well, I walked up to the door and then realized no one had given me a key. The door was unlocked. The pictures below are of the room.

I have never been so amazed. The room was huge, with a sunken Jacuzzi tub, tv, stocked refer., etc. Of course it did have mirrors all around the bed and on the ceiling above the bed, and there were condoms on every conceivable spot in the room. There was a deadbolt on the inside of the door, so I locked it, piled my suitcases in front of the door and laid down ON the bed. Didn’t bother to pull back the sheets.
After lying there for awhile waiting for Lurch or Freddie to barge in, I got up and looked around. Weirdest thing was a square “box” on one wall. It had a door about 2’ X 2’. I opened it and it was like looking into a box, except the top was open. I put my head in and looked out the top - it opened into an alley?
I finally realized that if anyone in this room wanted something - now you can let you mind wander as to what that something might be - they called on the phone and it was delivered from the alley. There was no way any deliveries were going to be made through all those steel doors. I balanced a glass ashtray on top of the little door and went to sleep. Oh, I did take a wine bottle out of the refer and set it by the bed - only weapon I could find.
At 6:30 the next morning I was dressed and ready to go when I heard the steel door being opened. They had a taxi waiting for me at the office.
I will let Joeline tell you about our return trip, with the dog.