Pueblo Rico

One of the concrete canchas, this one is behind the school and overlooks cerro Tatamá, which is behind some cloud cover, I'll work on getting y'all a picture

Just down the street from the school looking 90 degrees to the left of the last picture.  The overhang that you see there is the coliseo and the little dome is part of the church

This is pano from inside tho the school, kind of a good view.

People cleaning in the school

Its not that windy, the trees are just kinda like that…

            So now that everything has calmed down and this whole experience has obtained a sense of normalcy that I usually takes me less time to find, I am happy to report that this place is pretty friggun awesome.  I have been without internet for a while now, so I cannot remember exactly what I said before, but this town is tiny.  When I say tiny I mean tiny.  So small infact that people that I have not met yet happily greet me by name as I walk by them in the street.  This is probably the closest that I will ever get to being a minor celebrity, which is pretty awesome.  Well, that is until I become a senator, or president, but that is a rant for another time.  Anyways, this town is three hours by bus from the capital of the region, Pereira, and is high up in the mountains.  It is not I am on a mountain side looking down at some far away place, but rather I look down into a vally, which again rises into another mountain.  Basically there’s mountains everywhere and amazing.  Some of them are forested, but others have cow pastures, coffee plantations, banana farms and other interesting things that decorate the landscape.  The things is that it is always cloudy here, so I unfortunately not be comeing back to all of you with the tan I all know you wish that I had.  But anyhw, because we are so high up the clouds seem only just out of reach when you look up, and it is not uncommon that they simply settle down and envelope the pueblo.  This morning was the first sunny one that I have experienced so far here in Pueblo Rico and I was quite surprised to learn that have been living under an absolutely gargantuan peak, which I have since learned is called Cerro Tatamá.  Its rather crazy how even the biggest things in the world can lie hidden from existence for all intents and purposes under just the right conditions.  Anyways, the next time I see it I’ll snap a picture for y’all.

            In the town square there is a small park which is surrounded by various little tienditas.  There is a general store, several restaurants, a couple of discoteques, some billiards halls, cafés, a bank, and the obligatory awe inspiringly beautiful church.  And that, my friends is basically the whole town.  When there are only 11,000 people in a town you really don’t need a whole lot more to be honest.  There burbs, if you will, radiate out in all directions and people live throughout them as you would expect.  One of the coolest things about the whole place is the number of places to play soccer there are.  There is one full sized pitch behind the school, which is pretty awesome to behold, especially in such a small town, which is reverently referred to as the stadium.  The other three are smaller, probably 40% of a normal cancha, two made of concrete and one of artificial turf.  My favorite is easily the concrete pitch called the coliseo (coliseum if you couldn’t figure it out), which is none other than that perfect, gritty, piece of shit, field of dreams, factory of faith that will give you your favorite scars and greatest memories.  This field is indiscreetly tucked behind the church and is for all intents and purposes a giant box.  20 foot concrete walls with the very best vulgar amateur graffiti surround the place and the floors have been worn smooth from the blood sweat and tears of hundreds of matches.  I’m pretty proud to say that I took a tumble and donated a few drops of the old sangre to the floor myself, no big deal or anything.  The sad things is though that I have only been playing with teenagers and the kind of just dick on my life.  Its kindof awful.  But thankfully they grow em short here so I can play a little bit of bully ball if push comes to shove, but I really try not to because no one likes to be that guy. 

Yeah. People like soccer here.