Episode Two...Que' Susto (What a Fright)

Some of you know that Carole is a teacher. Not just by vocation, but avocation. She is a natural. So after lunch we would sit on the balcony and review what we had covered in the morning. But let’s talk about lunch. In Central America the menus are on a stand outside the restaurant and you can look at the selection and prices. We chose our restaurants by the price of their beer! So two beers each, lunch and then back to studying. We would people watch and make up stories about the people that passed in Spanish and then we would practice the different tenses. By then it was time to think about dinner.
Santa Elena is the town across the bridge from Flores. Santa Elena has a new Pizza Hut. Now this may not be your cup of tea, but after living without for most of the year, Pizza Hut is a treat. As we had arrived on the bus we noted where the Pizza Hut was and it appeared to be close to the bridge not far from Pollo Campero (a great fried chicken place…eat your heart out Colonel Sanders). So after 4 days of típico food off we headed for Pizza Hut on foot. We passed Pollo Campero and walked and walked and walked. We are now in a very seedy part of town and the “working girls” are out. It is starting to get dusk. Carole asks a man where Pizza Hut would be located. The answer was very far. We turn around and walk back to Pollo Campero and have a lovely meal of fried chicken. But they don’t serve beer. We stop on the way home and have our usual two beers and then back to the hotel for sleep.
Not to be discouraged we decide that we will take a Tuc Tuc the next night and get our Pizza fix. What is a Tuc Tuc you ask? Well it is a means of transportation that is a three wheeled motorcycle with a roof. Usually quite safe. We find our Tuc Tuc and off we go around the island to the bridge. This is when we have our near death experience. The road is pure slippery mud, next to the lake with no guardrail. As we slide we keep getting closer to the lake. I am convinced that we are going to go in so I plan in my head how to save my life. I share with Carole that all I have to do is get out the window and push up. Ha, Ha she says…you will have foot prints on your head from me getting out over you! Finally we get to Pizza Hut but it takes us almost 15 minutes to get a hold of ourselves before we can stop talking about out bouncing boobs, rattling teeth and near death experience.
As we are eating we watch the traffic and note that not many of the Tuc Tucs have lights on. Carole informs me that she WILL NOT ride back in the dark in a Tuc Tuc that doesn’t have lights. I ask her if I will need to do an inspection. Finally I see one that has all his lights. So fortified with pizza and beer we leave with our one piece of to go pizza to catch the tuc tuc with lights. When we ask the price we are told it will be double what we paid to come to Pizza Hut. When asked why we are informed that after dark the price doubles. Carole asks if that is for the lights. Ha, Ha… I ask if we can get a discount if we give him the piece of pizza. Okay he says and off we go. We arrive at the malecón and now he wants full price. Of course he doesn’t have change. Nobody has change. Envision this…Carole and I standing in the headlight digging in our purses for Quetzals, centavos, anything to make 20 Quetzals. Okay we let him keep the pizza. We didn’t have a fridge and would have just thrown it away. Now we have a story for class tomorrow were we can use our preterite tense of verbs.
Episode Three Tomorrow.....