6/2/10 - day 59.

up at half 8 and went to the market just a block from the hostel where a bought a couple bags of melon fro breakfast. at 9am i left with monica, tomas and the 2 argentina girls id met in santa ana to go to los chorros de caderas. this is a series of waterfalls a couple km's walk away that we'd organised the day before as you need a guide to take you there for safety reasons.

didnt actually go under the falls but they were moderately impressive and it was an alright way to spend half a day. more entertaining were the local kids that were jumping off them from crazy heights into the deep pool below. we spent about half an hour there then had a look at couple of other smaller falls and a much larger inaccessible one, before walking back.

it was a pretty mucky, slippery walk both ways, and i nearly stacked it on more than one occasion and by the time i got back my feet and flip-flops were the same filthy colour. i hammocked up in the garden for a bit til lunchtime then went into town for the massive food festival that is held in Juayua every weekend. people come from all over the country for it and quite often from beyond as well. basically copious amounts of food stands took over the area all around the central park and surrounding streets, with a staggering amount of choice, though meat did seem to form the basis of most of it.

i eventually settled on a place and for 5 bucks they piled my plate with all sorts of meat including beef steak, pork, chicken, chorizo sausage and something else that i couldnt figure out what it was. plus a token blob of beans and a couple tortillas. i went for an ice cream afterwards and then bumped into monica and tomas down there. i sat with them for a bit then we went for a walk around the non-food related part of the market. it was all hand crafted bits n bobs but i did make a purchase of a keyring on this occasion.

went back to the hostel after a while and watched some spanish football (real madrid vs espanyol) and met an american girl who'd arrived at the hostel (sarah). the 4 of us went out for dinner about 9pm to the place we'd eaten the previous night because tonight they had live music there. it was a little odd but interesting. the band invovled 2 guitars, 2 panpipes, a flute, a drum and something that looked like, but may not have been, a ukelele. when the band finished around half 10 we went back to the hostel and hit the sack soon afterwards.