Welcome to Gecko Land…

So, Miami Airport is one of the most miserable and sad places on this earth. Our flight had been delayed in Santa Cruz you see, and though we had no connecting flights, some poor people did. When booking a flight through Miami Airport, make sure to leave at least five hours of time to get everything done. Now, arriving in Miami makes one feel a little bit overwhelmed. One is instantly overcome by how BIG the airport is. You walk at least a long, long way to get to Immigration, and then stand there in a queue for at least an hour before actually getting to the little desk, as people from about three other flights try and do the same things as you, clogging up the airport with hundreds of people. Then there is baggage claim, or if you have a connecting flight, customs. I was soo glad that we didn’t have to go through any customs there, they are mean…

But, onto car hire. We used Budget Car Rental, and they really seemed to try and make it difficult for us to hire a car. They wanted a credit card, we had debit. They wanted an American License, we had Australian. Non-American Citizens, I found, were treated as lower beings. Paper work, queues, etc. For American Citizens these things are much less painful. Us as Australians are treated, though warmly for our Australian status, have been put through far more queues and paper work than our American friends.So after finally getting a car, we stayed the night at a Red Roof Inn, a good and clean place to stay.

Going through major culture shock at this point, all the white faces makes me do a double take every time. In Bolivia, if you see a gringo, you might know them, so you always take a second look to see. So here, everyone I see might be familiar, so my brain has been going overload as far as memory and storage, trying to recognize any faces I see.The next morning, and thankyou Red Roof for providing a breakfast, it was an eye-opening experience. One that led us to the conclusion that Americans must not do breakfast very much…

Then we got into our rental car and drove up to our friends house further up the coast a little bit. He is an old friend we knew back in Bolivia, and has housed us in a little house on a property, which is next to his own.

A very nice Mexican lunch followed at one of Bob’s favourite restaurants, even if the very big waiter managed to spill a drink all over my mum, I half expected him to come out with the “yeees masssterrr” munster/smeagol voice, but no, he had a very deep voice one would normally expect of a man his size. After lunch, we made a visit to Wal Mart. We spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around the gigantic store that seemed to have everything. What they combined into one store, you’d have to do a bunch of driving and walking to find in Cochabamba. Groceries? Right over there. Clothes? In the center (centre I should say, seeing as an American would be the one giving directions) there. Manly men and fishing stuff? Over in the corner there. Computer stuff? Oh just over there. Really! They have everything, all compressed into one big store. I’d like to see what they call a Mall, see if it is similar to one of our Aussie Shopping Centers. We then retired back to our little house, watched an episode of “Are you Smarter than a 5th Grader” and decided that most of it isn’t smarts, but recent-ness.
Then, we went to bed.
From a rather sleepy blogger,

Curious