Today is hot and humid, an ugly combination. I am sitting in the cool house with my feet up and a cup of coffee in hand. The dogs are napping. They’re just enjoying life. I do wish it was cooler so I could sit on the deck to take in the day. The only event on my dance card is uke practice tonight.

One summer in the mid 1970’s, my friend and I traveled through South America. Back then, there were few tourists. We seldom found English speakers. We landed in Caracas, traveled the continent then took off from Rio. I planned the trip. I knew enough Spanish, but my friend knew none. She said the only word she wanted was for beer. I helped her with that. We stayed in Caracas only a couple of days. It was a huge city which held little interest for us. I remember going to this huge building filled with kiosks all selling tickets to various parts of Venezuela. We bought tickets to Merida. We were the only foreigners on the bus. I remember the trip took close to twelve hours on a winding road. We stopped in a small mountain town for lunch. Our fellow passengers told us to order the trout. We did. It was amazing. Merida is in the Venezuelan Andes. Many of the buildings are Spanish architecture and are stunningly beautiful. We went to Merida to ride the cable car. I remember being in line when they announced no cars that day because of the wind. Instead, we walked around the city and went to the market biding our time, but the next day was the same so we decided to move on to Columbia.

Our next destination was Bogota, but it was a bus ride of fifteen or sixteen hours so we planned a stop. I remember a cheap hotel where we didn’t dare take off our shoes and thought we’d leave dirtier than we had arrived. That was the first of our how can we sleep here hotels. Bogota back then was safe. We walked all over the city with no problems. The most unbelievable place was the Gold Museum. What I remember is walking pass a thick metal safe like door into a dark room. When they turned the lights on, every person ooed as we were surrounded by cases filled with gold artifacts. It was brilliant. We went to the salt cathedral next, not so far from Bogota. The cathedral is underground in a salt mine. What was surprising was the salt was in chunks and not very white. I asked a guard at the mine how the salt was processed from the chunks. He actually took us in a car to the factory down the road. One of the workers led us on a tour of the factory. We even had to wear hard hats. I remember salt was everywhere in the air. We breathed it and tasted it. We watched the whole process. Before we left, I was given a small chunk of salt with some black on the edges. I still have it. I keep it in the fridge so it won’t melt.

Ecuador was next. I’ll save that for another day.