Passing time

For the past few days, myself, Chris, Leila and Christina have been playing a card game called Yaniv quite a lot. Leila and Christina learned it from some Israelis a few months back (it's an Israeli-invented game — hence the name). It's quite a fun game, although Chris and I seem to lose at it most of the time. Great way to pass the time, and always good to learn new card games.

As I discovered at Parque Cretácico this morning, there really isn't much to do in Sucre. For some reason, absolutely nothing — not cafés, not general stores, not pharmacies — seems to be open before about 4pm. It's a totally lazy and useless place. There's nothing at all to do in town, during the day. Nothing, that is, except hang out at the Joyride Café, the No. 1 gringo haunt in town, and the only place that actually is open when you need it to be. That's how we ended up spending breakfast, lunch, dinner, and most of the time in between in Sucre, sitting in the Joyride Café. Nice place: but Sucre could certainly use a few more places to eat and, well, do something.

In Peru, primero de mayo (1^st of May) is a feriado (public holiday): it's Dia del Trabajador (Labour Day). So today was very quiet in Cusco. For once, there were very few cars, very few street hagglers, and very few school kids out and about. And not much open. However, I still went to school today, although our classes got moved 2 hours ahead, to a 10am-2pm timeslot. Which was good, because most of us went out partying and drinking until quite late last night.

I didn't really have any plans for today, and all the members of the Cohen family (whom I'm staying with here in Vancouver) were busy with work or study all day, so I decided to take a trip downtown. Vancouver is nice and easy to get around, with its great bus system, and the weather was fine and sunny too (if a bit cold). I went and checked out the Broadway area first, then I continued on to the main downtown district.

This afternoon was a rainy, dreary affair. Instead of hanging out at my new beach retreat in the cold and the wet, I returned (as a "trespasser", for the first of many times) to The Weary Traveler, and hung out with Chris, Erica, Laura, and Emily (another Aussie, from Dubbo). Laura taught us all a crazy card game called Irish snap, which kept us drunk and occupied for quite some time.