We checked out of our hotel room and wound up finding a place to get hair cuts for both of us: the hairdresser had to cut Scott's hair 3 times before she got it short enough and mine is now a totally different style - that's what you get when you don't speak enough of the local language- but both of them we only $5 total! Then we headed over to the other - fancier -mall to get some better food than what was in the Metro Center, buy French baguettes and do a quick grocery shop. The malls here have a lot of shoes stores: at the Metro Center every other store is a shoe store and at the Multi Plaza every two stores is a shoe store. The Multi Plaza has some really neat huge water fountains inside but less people.
Back at the bus station the guys were all vying for our business regardless of where we wanted to go it seems but they wound up being very helpful - more helpful than in the states for sure. We wound up taking the longer regular 495 bus back, the one that winds up and down a mountain road picking up and discarding people as it goes. Though the road was paved it was better that I didn't watch as we were going around those sharp curves! It was fun to be going back a different way and the views into the valleys were great! We were the only Gringos on the bus and therefore the height of interest to a bunch of smiley people including an 11-year-old girl showing off her very cute baby sister. Alex, our friendly local 'back door doorman' was very chatty and we think was trying to get us to come to his family's restaurant - asked us for our phone number but we don't have a local one. The doormen are great the way they help people off and on the bus and squeeze through the crowd to get the fares-I imagine it is a cool job for a young man. Since the bus didn't get back until 5:30 p.m. we had to run the 'Mosquito Gauntlet' to get back to Raven.