This past week CASAS finally let us loose on Central America. We had about five days to travel around raising all sorts of havock as we go. Needless to say we were stoked. No leaders, no rules (they´re more like guidelines anyway), the possibilities were endless! After much discussion (that went sort of like this - so what do you guys want to go? oh I don´t know, somewhere with a beach.- Because that really narrows down the places to go in Central America). We finally decided in a relatively cheap, all-inclusive hotel. I know not very adventurous but we were smart/ scared enough to realize that no leaders also meant no translator to tell us what important information the check in lady is trying to tell me......and it was just easier on, at least my mind.
DIGRESSION
I find it very ironic that most of the waiters responded to us in English, no matter who many times we spoke to them in Spanish. However, it took us a long time to find someone to go through the check in process with me in English and check on was solo espanol. For crying out loud, ordering food is sort of like the one thing we are fantastic at with Spanish, not dealing with how/when/where to check in or out.
And the whole no rules thing, while being a great rule for us, also seems to apply to a lot of drivers here. Honestly the driving here makes me look tame and downright cautious. Our hotel driver almost drove someone off the road, and I´m not using that as a figure of speech, I mean the other car had to swerve off the road, scaring the shit out of Seth and I. However, this extra cost transportation turned out to be a much better option for us, even if it was less adventurous. I am not ashamed and I can honestly say I was 100% okay with driving past a public bus stop where a group of men were sitting with machetes, while I sipped my complimentary apple juice and munched on my flavorless galleto.
So anyway we spent four days in El Salvadorian paradise. The days were packed with swimming, reading, hanging out, falling alseep on the beach, and playing soccer with little kids (the oldest was maybe 10 years old but they cheated by keeping the score wrong and we actually won. just to clarify). The evenings included slightly racist and very permiscuous resort shows that usually involved dancing, and discotecas where we danced with some friendly gentlemen who in no way weirded us out. At all. There was gold tooth guy, Columbian drug lord (suspected) aka Clara´s sugardaddy, and Jaime - Clara´s coulda-woulda-shoulda been latin lover. You might be noticing that Clara´s name pops up here a lot, at least in association with two of these fine fellows. We were all quite popular and there´s nothing like being a gringa in a discoteca to boost your self-esteem. Guys ask you to dance, shower you with compliments (you´re so pretty! you speak spanish really well! etc), and it´s not until they tell you that you´re a fantastic dancer that you start to really question their honesty. Clara on the other hand was extremely popular. Now some superficial people might say it´s her blond hair, blue eyes, and downright dashing good looks, but I´m telling you it´s really just her charming personality.
One of the aforementioned guys, Jaime, took a particular interest in Clara. He spent two hours whooing her and artfully dodged our ¨I´m tired I need a nap¨ by smoothly suggesting that I did in fact look tired and I should probably go take a nap, but Clara really didn´t look tired at all. Long story short Clara played the ¨Seth¨ card and told Jaime that Seth was her boyfriend. Sitting next to her I found this extremely funny as Seth was on the other side of the pool, completely oblivious/not caring at all that some guy was clearly hitting on his ¨girlfriend.¨ However, Clara was quick to explain that the reason they weren´t really talking, didn´t dance at all together last night, Seth clearly didn´t care Jaime was talking to her, was because they had a huge fight. Of course I varified this story, but as Jaime said ¨sometimes love just isn´t right¨ or something elequent like that. As soon as Seth was informed of his role he played it quite convincingly, acting pissed at Clara. I suggested that Clara should slap him, you know just for emphasis, but she didn´t go for it. Eventually Seth distracted him enough with booze and he ended up jumping into the pool, probably not the best idea, and he left the next morning, no harm done.
However, I should mention that we met lots of extremely nice people. Some more gringos, some nice guys from El Salvador who have their own production company. They were at the hotel because they needed to take time to think and ¨refresh their minds.¨
All in all it was great week with a perfect amount of having fun and simply relaxing. Here´s a short list of the highlights that I didn´t mention above.....
- attempting to dig up a ¨small¨ crab that jumped out as all 6 of us were leaning over it. Consequently we screamed, drawing even more attention to ourselves, and a young kid ran past us yelling ¨puchica!¨
- I got pooped on by a bird while we were biking. I mean seriously what are the chances of that happening? There´s a great picture of Elizabeth laughing at me but karma almost got her back when she slipped and barreled into the wallin her attempt to outrun the rain.
- Seth´s jokes. Him and Elizabeth spent several hours on the way back making up diarrhea songs and dead baby jokes. In closing here are the best ones.....
What´s the difference between a dead baby and a trampoline?
- you take your shoes off the jump on a trampoline
What´s the difference between a Corvette and a pile of dead babies?
- Seth doesn´t have a Corvette in his garage.
¨If you´ve eaten Pollo Campero and it´s coming out in barrels....¨
¨If you´ve dranken lots of Gallo and it´s coming out in piles.....¨
No comments:
Post a Comment