Hammocks and Manu Chau!!

We were up at about 10 this morning and we went out for breakfast and to say good bye to Vinnette. We ended up in the same little cafe that we had first gone to when we arrived where we ordered eggs 'rancheros' (Omelette with sausage, onions and tomatoes) each and the usual coffee. We chatted and ate until about 12 when we had to go back to the hostel, we said our goodbyes to both Vinnette and Marcus while they tried to pile all there stuff in the taxi (Vinnette has 3 bags AND and suitcase!!!). It was now around 1pm and a little late to go to the swimming pool, but we were informed by Richard and Claudia that there was to be a free Manu Chao concert in plaza Bolivar, the warm up acts started at 3pm, which they decided to go queue up for while we opted to do the few jobs we had planned for the next day, namely buy some hammocks, get some more malaria pills and do some laundry. The afternoon turned out to be mildly successful, we found some hammocks quite easily around the area Marcus had told us about the day before. They were not in such nice colours and slightly smaller that those on sale at other places, but since we only need them for 3 days and they were almost half the price we decided to buy them. Happy with our new purchase we set off on the hunt for Malaria pills. We asked at a little pharmacy, but the man behind the desk didn't have any, he offered us something else instead but when we insisted he gave us directions to a different pharmacy that he thought would have them. He turned out to be correct and we found the other place with few problem and after showing them the piece of paper from our original box the lady quickly came up with 2 boxes of pills for which we paid a grand total of $2.40. Our final errand of the day tuned out to be substantially harder as we gathered together our laundry and went out to find somewhere to get them washed. We first went to a laundry which we had assumed was self service as it was called a coin laundry, but no they wanted us to pay almost $2 per kilo of washing, when we asked if there was a self service option she said yes but the price for this would have ended up being almost the same as for them to wash it. We decided very quickly that this was ridiculous and didn't wash our clothes after all. Rather annoyed we trudged back to the hostel dumped our stuff and went out for dinner. Earlier in the week we had passed a little restaurant called Dados which we had said we would try another time as the falafel looked amazing. So with that in mind we ordered falafel each and also took advantage of the offer for 5 beers for $6 which we drank along with our meals. We had not been wrong as the food was delicious especially when the hot sauce and garlic mayo was added and afterwards we were both thoroughly stuffed!! By now it was about 9 and we went down to Plaza Bolivar to see if there was any hope of getting into the concert, oddly enough we arrived as a very large amount of people were leaving and pretty much walked straight in, quite amusing really as people earlier in the day had queued for hours!! Despite the large exodus the plaza was still packed with I guess 25,000 or so people, including people who had climbed half way up the cathedral in an effort to see. We had arrived just in time for Manu chao and watched his set and the 3 or 4 encores until he finished about 10:30. We waited around for the crowds to clear and laughed at the people trying to climb back down the cathedral before making our way back to the hostel where we read up a little on Mexico and the Dominican Republic before going to bed.