To me the word rumbo has always sounded fun and exciting, a game or a dance or something like that.

But alas, it is not.

Rumbo is a direction. It can also be a path that you try to follow. Not all that exciting but still a fun word.

I just finished a 27 hour bus trip this afternoon. I would like to say that I will never do that again, but I have to get home somehow.

While standing in the aisle trying to stretch my legs this morning I saw a sign that can be lit up when necessary which read ‘Permanezca Sentado, Camino Sinuoso‘ (remain seated, windy road).

I have only heard the English word sinuous used when referring to a sinuous woman. I was surprised to see it applied to a road this morning. When looking into a few English dictionaries, I find that my definition, once again, is not a primary definition in the dictionary. Sinuous simply means curvy, twisted or serpentine in English. It means the same in Spanish.

My bruised shoulders make me wonder why the sign was not lit on the bus, because the road certainly was sinuoso.

While buying wire today I asked for alambre at the electrical store. The man showed me a board with several pieces of wire tied to it and asked me to pick out the size and type I wanted. I choose a 12 gauge stranded wire. He told me that it was cable and not alambre.

Alambre is a single wire, whereas cable is stranded. In English (or at least where I have grown up) the word wire could be used for both. Cable was reserved for larger gauge wire and often when it is not being used to conduct electricity but has other purposes. Usually such other purposes include strapping something down or pulling a heavy object, like the cable on a crane.

Alambre is a single wire. The way to think of it is a metal coat hanger, if stretched out, would be an alambre. Inalámbrica is wireless.

Cable has strands of wires bundled together. The type that is often used in home wiring.

I read the word hocico yesterday and had no idea what it meant, but it just looked funny. I pulled out the dictionary with a smile on my face and was not disappointed. It is the word snout, as in a pig’s nose.

It can also be used idiomatically to mean stick one’s nose into something: meter el hocico en algo. Or to fall on one’s face: caer de hocicos.

The word lograr is most often used to mean to succeed, achieve or accomplish.

Sometimes I will hear it to mean to obtain or to get. If someone is reaching out to get something and does, the verb lograr could be used. The idea is not just grabbing on to something, agarrar, but that it is something that has to be worked for to grab hold of, lograr. It could be something physical, or it could be an ideal or concept.

Vale la pena is an idiomatic expression meaning it’s worth the price or it’s worth the trouble.

To hinder or impede something is the word estorbar. But it carries with it the idea of getting in the way. More as a happenstance than as a malicious act of will. Like, to bother, or be a nuisance.

A deliberate act would be detener or impedir. Detener meaning, to put a stop to or detain, as in arrest. Impedir is less harsh and would be to impede, frustrate,