Day 255 Bank Strike

Monday 20 Apr 2009

Today there is a city wide transportation strike by taxi, combi, and bus drivers and we can tell the difference while we eat desayuno—the quiet is palpable. Teri gets a ride to school with Juan, but he asks her to sit up front with him so ‘real’ taxi drivers don’t think he’s a scab (Juan’s Toyota wagon has no markings on it). The intent of the strike is to put pressure on the city so they will revise a transportation plan they are planning to implement which greatly changes a lot of bus and combi routes and restricts taxis and moto-taxis to certain streets.

My shoulders hurt so I don’t go pump iron; I stay home and take ibuprofen to reduce the swelling caused by using my laptop all weekend while it sat on a pillow on my lap while I sat in a living room chair because Teri was using the office all weekend trying to catch up on school work. I’ll go to the club tomorrow, Thursday, and Saturday and get back to MWF next week.

On Saturday morning I got an email from Gustavo, the travel agent we used for our trip with our kids in January. I emailed him on Wednesday asking if he could find us some cheaper flights after I found out on Tuesday how much roundtrip flights to La Paz would cost us. His email said only: “I’ll get right on it.” For our last trip he got flights with LAN Peru for less than half the price we could get online. He was not all that he could be, but we are so cheap we’re willing to throw the dice on Gustavo one more time—but this is the last time, I swear.

I walk to BCP around 11:00 to deposit dollars in our account so when Gustavo wants payment we’ll be able to transfer the amount to his account at Banco Continental—we don’t want any last minute fiascos like New Years Eve. It is wonderful to have so little traffic on the streets—no horns, no stinky exhausts, no problems in crossing the street. I withdraw $300 from our credit union at the ATM, go inside and get a number from the machine—damn, it’s S235 and the TV shows S225, and I didn’t bring a book. Then I remember I have Teri’s bank card so I go back to the machine, swipe the card, and I get C57—the TV shows C54—whoohoo! I sit down and the next number that pops up on the TV is B102—where did that come from? Going to the bank here is like playing BINGO. My C57 comes up when the TV shows S229—now I know to bring our card every time I come to the BCP. The teller takes my money, stamps a receipt, and I’m out of there. Other than learning the new time-saver trick my day at the bank doesn’t really qualify as an adventure—ho hum.