Botanic Gardens

When we got up this morning Richard gave us some good news...the shower had hot water for a change!! Up until now there has been no hot water at all, not even barely warm water, so I took advantage of this and went for a much needed shower which turned out to be slightly off cold but nowhere in the least what you would call warm!! After I'd dried and warmed up a little we went for empanadas once more before getting on the Transmileneo which would take us somewhere near where we wanted to go. We had one change of bus along the way but by 11.30 we were at our stop and after a quick check of the map started walking towards the Botanic Gardens which turned out to be a good 40 minutes away. This central part of the city is actually one of the most pleasant areas as although busy with traffic, the roads are duel carriageways but have parks on either side and big wide pavements that many people use for jogging, cycling etc. We found ourselves walking past the Parque de los Novios (park of boy/girlfriends), a huge sports recreation park with volleyball, tennis, running tracks etc, the Childrens museum which looked quite cool as it had a train, aeroplane and what looked like a monkey cage (obviously to keep the children in!!). We also walked by the Parque Bolivar which is absolutely huge though as it was the other side of the road we couldnt really see what it was like. After going over bridges and under roundabouts we discovered a cool themepark next door to the water park we plan to go to and decided to look at prices on the way home in case it was affordable (it turns out its not...$25 each for a pass...too much for us). Finally we reached the Botanic Gardens and paid just under $2 each to go in, we spent the next 2 ½ hours here walking round looking at the beautifully designed park and commenting frequently how English it was! If you took out the palm trees that were dotted around, pretty much most of the rest of the flora was made up of plants and flowers commonly found in the UK, even down to the splendid Rose garden there. We were particularly lucky in that we caught all the roses in full bloom and the scents and variety of colours was spectacular! There was also an indoor tropical section with a hot house for jungle type plants, a desert room and an orchidarium which was nice but no where near in the same league as the one we went to in washington. There were forest areas, a herb garden with a pleasant seating area in the centre, a pond/lake and much more and we took our time wandering around until we came full circle and were back at the entrance after spending 10 minutes watching and taking pictures of a hummingbird. Leaving the gardens behind we had a hotdog from a stand just outside before walking back to the station and reversing our journey to get back to our end of town. Arriving back at the hostel around 6.30/7 we chatted with our friends for a while and soon realised that the hostel was going to be packed full again tonight, perhaps more so than the previous night as there were loads of people around. Leaving everyone to their drinking and smoking (a lot of this seems to go on and we dont just mean cigarettes!) wewent out to find something small for dinner. We decided against pizza as we'd had that the previous night (even though it is soooooo good!) and instead wandered round for over an hour before finding a place that sold arepas which we'd been meaning to try. They were very cheap and quite delicious, mine stuffed with eggs and cheese and Andy's with eggs and ham, they were also more filling than they looked and so we only bought a shortcake biscuit each to eat on the way back tot he hostel afterwards. When we arrived back at what must have been 11 we went straight to the dorm to read up on Mexico and do stuff on the computer, not wanting to join in the revelries of the other guests which basically involved shouting and getting stoned. Instead us and a couple of others went to bed and tried to block out the racket they were making, which wasnt helped by the fact they came in and out every 2 minutes leaving the bloody door (if u can call it a door...its practically falling apart in 4 pieces) open every time! We must have dozed off eventually because we were all woken up a bit later by a hysteric spanish girl shouting and climbing about on the bunks who I promptly told to shut the '*@# up as people were trying to sleep!! I dont know what she was complaining about but it was another 15 minutes and a few choice words and mutters from several of us before things settled down and we were finally able to sleep once more until morning.