Actually, it was this past Saturday, the day before the primary elections in Colombia. As if to prove that they are still a bit of a banana republic, they ran out of ballots all over the country. But I’m not here to talk politics, least of all COLOMBIAN politics. I’ll just tell about my Saturday afternoon trip to Medellin Centro.
I had an order to pick up at five o’clock at my favorite pharmacy. It’s about one long block north of Parque Botero. Having nothing better to do, I arrived on time. Unfortunately, my order was not yet ready. Come back in an hour, they said. Now, if this happened to me at some strip-mall pharmacy, I might be annoyed. But I was in Medellin Centro, and killing an hour is pretty easy.
[rau]
Across the street was a ‘gentlemen’s club’ that was open daytimes. Down at the end of the block was another, which had the advantage of being air conditioned. I decided to give that a shot first. Sadly, the place was totally packed and the music was ear-splitting, as usual. I decided to move on. I walked around a couple of the blocks nearby that had numerous bars and several ‘gentlemen’s clubs,’ but the music coming from every single one of them was just too loud for me to tolerate, so I passed dozens of them by and ended up near where I started,
There’s a bar in the neighborhood called the “Copa del Rey” and it has some tables outside, where the music is slightly less painful. It turns out that at six o’clock, the bar was shutting down because Sunday was election day. I finished my beer and took another stroll around. All the bars and gentlemen’s clubs were shutting down, and it was interesting to see some of the girls in broad daylight with their dim light makeup on. Some of it was kind of scary.
I went back across the street to wait at the pharmacy. While waiting, I was approached by a pair of chicas who looked quite young. They propositioned me but I said that they looked underage. One of them obviously was, but the other pulled out her cedula (identity card) to prove she was legal. She looked nice, if a little on the rough side with her tattoos and whatnot. I told her maybe another time but I had to get back home with my medicine. She smiled and blew me a kiss as she walked away.
And that was my trip to the Pharmacy.