I went to the hairdressers the day before I left and asked for a style that would be easty to manage when travelling. (perhaps Paddington wasn´t quite the right place to make that request). I walked out with a chin length bob, shorter at the back ala Posh. Now girls I´m sure you´ll agree with me that without naturally straight hair a short bob is possibly the least low maintenance haircut in existance. Also of course no self respecting Latina would have hair shorter than her shoulder blades, so my hair added to my fairer than fair complexion, blue eyes and carrying around the biggest tourist like camera ever doesn´t help me blend in with the locals. I´ve lived most of my life in countries where caucasions are the norm but being here reminds of the times that I haven´t and the vunerability that comes from being different. Memories of scary episodes from Honduras and Venezuela flooded back and the unfortunate reality that soaking up a new country´s culture sometimes has to be accompanied with so much vigilence and wariness, especially being a lone female. Even something as simple as taking a dip in the sea (I have a hard time choosing who looks the most trustworthy to keep an eye on my bag on Bondi beach, nevermind here, to doing a 10km race has it´s dilemmas. However I know is it´s part of the travelling package, that at the end of my trip I´ll be able to return to what I class as a safer environment and I count myself lucky as there are so many people who can´t. Sorry to be so serious, travelling of course is not all adventure and good times, it´s also for me so eye opening of how priviledged (at least in the opportunities sense of the word) I am compared to most of the people here. I arrived in Cartagena rather down after the peace, culture and mountainous mystique of Bogota, to Cartagena´s version of Koh San Road. Traffic weaving everywhere, leaning on their horns, smelly streets (apparently I actually can smell!) and the taxi driver warning me to be careful as he charged me double the going rate from the airport as I found out later. The hostel I´d had some vague response from in emails from Australian said they had received my emails but didn´t have a room, a shrug and indication around of the place packed I took to mean, like some of the best restaurants in Australia, they don´t take reservations! They did find me somewhere else though. After a brief disappointed glance around my new room, I showered off some of the humidity, selected carefully the items I dare to take out, or leave behind, which was safer???? and with my daysack hugged to my chest I ventured out. Rotting smelly fruit in the gutter, dead pigeon on the kerb, men doing their hissing thing (latino version of wolf whistling but sleezier) and I was wondering what the hell I was doing here, especially for 10 days, especially with at least 7 until JA and Anne arrived. Cheerleading was the first thing to cheer (excuse the pun!) me up. A group of girls and guys in uniform practising in the square. They were doing all the fancy stuff, somersaults, air splits, back flips and standing on shoulders in a pyramid. It seems as if cheerleading is BIG here. Since then I´ve seen a group of 6 year olds in bikinis & 17 year old guys (seperately by the way) practising for hours on the beach on a Sunday, normally accompanied by a relentless screaming coach telling them how rubbish they are. I thought they were amazing. They show such passion and determination. My next discovery was the preparation for the Cartagena de los indias 10km race due to start in a couple of hours. There were 3 categories, 3kms for the 14-17 year olds, 3 kms for the veterans (eek only 8 years off being a veteran!) and the open one last for 10km so I decided to run it. They had a stage warming up the runners (aerobics yeah, my fave) and since the open was the last to run I´d been warming up for about 2 hours, enjoying doing my grapevine and box steps etc..mixed with some jabs and upper cuts, oh Les Mills I do miss you, anyway back to the point) Let´s just say by the time it came to race I was warmer than I´ve ever wanted to be. It might have been that I haven´t run 10kms straight for a good while now, and let´s just say my fitness has been a lot better, it might have been that I´d just spent what felt like a week on a plane, or it could have been that it was 30 degrees plus with about 95% humidity, or that I´d only given up smoking 5 days before (sorry Mum & Dad, but have have given up now) or I didn´t know the course, only decided to do it 2 hours before...etc.. I could go on, but you get the idea. It was a complete physical and mental challenge and when I sprinted across that finish line possibly the reddest person the locals had ever seen I was very proud of myself, even with a time of 1hr, 1min. I did say however (earlier, much earlier) about a travellers challenge in running a 10km race. Well I´d run with my money belt on, so I´m afraid I´m going to presenting a rather sweaty wrinkled passport at my next border, but worse than that I have two friction burns running around my torso, so bad they bled (hallelujah for one piece swimsuits I say!) Well I´m off to a remote beach tomorrow to sleep in a hammock for a couple of nights, so rest easy you wont be hearing from me for a while. But ta ta for now and take care Tori xxx