floundersgreatadventure

I know it’s been a couple of days since my last post but old one eye is busy taking care of Ruby and of course his bank screwed up again. Let’s start with a story about water the city of Cartagena which has been without drinking water for I think three days and thing are getting a little rough. As you can expect it’s had a large effect on the cities tourist business which as far as I know is their main source of income. They are trucking water to effective areas but the lines are long and people are upset, they are fixing the problem but they do a lot of that work slowly just like the US you know two or three guys working and eight or nine people standing around trying to look important. But they say on the news that they will get the problem fixed shortly (Yeah right). Medellin has a very modern water system and probably the best taste water I’ve ever had. Now the next story deals with the cost of doing business down here. If you’re a small business owner working seven days a week and you store is on the street and not in a mall you will subject to extortion from whatever criminal element works the area. They will come to you and tell you to pay X amount of Pesos every week if you refuse you will be robbed and possibly shot. The National police must receive a cut of this because they do little or nothing about it, of course if it happens in a wealthy neighborhood they will react but for the common folk tough shit. It’s really amazing walking around and see how useless the police really are of they will set up vehicle checks on the highways but there are neighborhoods where they will do nothing. These criminal get away with this because the people are conditioned to be afraid to complain means injury or possible death. Now we’re safe where we live because a lot of police live in the neighborhood. Now I don’t want you to think this a dangerous country it like most others during the day it’s safe but like other cities you have to be alert as for night time you don’t walk around by yourself and you stay out of certain neighborhoods. I’ve been told it has gotten better sine the old days but it still has a long way to go this is Flounder saying CIAO from Medellin.