No Soup For You!

Parrot at backpacker dive restaurant

When you've been to Central America 7 times you start to accumulate a few "experiences" shall we say.  Luckily we've never had anything happen that we couldn't laugh about later.  

Well, we had one of those experiences after our hike to the waterfall that I covered in my Dog Gone Tired post.  Remember that little dog gone tired dog at the end?  We were pretty tired as well.  And hungry.  We didn't pass any restaurants to speak of on the long 4 wheel drive extravaganza from our hotel to the trail head of San Ramon.  So it wasn't a hard choice to eat at the restaurant at the bottom of the volcano.  I mean, all we had to do was follow the dog, right?  

They didn't have a menu.  And their buffet looked rather suspect.  And they didn't understand a word we said.  We know it is high time we learned some Spanish.  Uff da.  (Norwegian)   

Finally, an employee came along that spoke English.  Saved!  We ordered a fish dinner and two Tonas.  

Me happily drinking my Tona.  Until....

Ahhhh.  We can finally relax and enjoy the view and drink a beer until our food arrives.  This is when I photographed dog gone tired dog.  We waited, and waited and waited.  Which isn't unusual in Central America.  They usually make everything from scratch.  So it takes a long time.  We then proceeded to wait some more.  Unfortunately, the only person that spoke English left a long time ago.  And to make matters worse another group of people came, ordered and sat down.  We started to smell fish.  Then we heard the grill sizzling.  Thank goodness we thought.  Until the cook whizzed right by us with the fish. And took it to the newcomers.  Restaurant fail!

We just paid for our beers and left with our tails between our legs.  The moral of the story is to learn Spanish one of these years.

So what would we find on the long road home?  Well, we just stopped at the first place that had gringos in it.  Was it even a restaurant you ask?  There were young backpacker types there.  It must be.  And it was in a (sort of) town.  It was indeed a restaurant.  At least there was a cook and a grill.  And backpackers.  The cook didn't speak English here either.  But there was a confidently loud Italian girl that sensed we were idiots.  She barked out an order for us. We added two more Tonas.   Even we can say "Dos Tonas.  Gracias"

Well, our huge $1.50 meal (including drinks) was delicious.  I'm not joking.  One dollar and 50 cents.  No wonder all the world's backpacking youth was eating there.  It was fun to overhear some of their adventures.  That just added to our adventure.  And when I say adventure in Central America I'm rarely exaggerating!

Wild Bird Wednesday