I make a phone call for you friend

While on vacation this weekend, I found great reason to appreciate living in the city. Two statements provide proof for my reasoning. First, there are many options for eating in the city. Second, there are no roosters in the city.

When we had about two hours remaining in our eight hour journey, we stopped at a travel agency to get a fresh driver. The owners of the travel agency showed a great concern over where we would stay that night. They offered to call ahead and reserve a place for us. We told them no, but they were so pushy and "helpful" they did anyway. After several calls they informed us only one place had openings for us that night. Several of us (okay, just me) stood in the doorway and made faces at the men behind their backs, all the while whispering that I didn't believe a word they were saying. My intention is not to spoil the story, but I really should trust my gut more often. We finally escaped from these men and continued our journey. Our driver was much more helpful and assured us that trucks from each hotel would meet us upon our arrival in the town.

When we did arrive (the last part was over a 20 mile dirt road), the driver stopped outside the town. There was only one truck waiting for us. Because it was 10 pm we decided not to pick a fight, but Jim did point out that we stopped outside of town. So we drove through town, and away from the town. We drove far enough away from the town to make it too far to walk back. That was probably part of the plan of the hotel owners.

We arrived at our hotel and tried to order some food. They didn't have some food on hand (turns out they didn't have a lot), so our options were very limited. The waiter told us sandwiches were easiest to make late at night, so we ordered those. We waited 30 minutes for our sandwiches. Good thing we didn't order anything more complicated. When they did arrive we discovered the waiter had messed up our orders. It was late, so again, we didn't pick a fight.

In the morning we were waken at 5 am by a rooster. I don't mind waking up at 5 am. I DO mind waking up by the noise of a rooster. The rooster sounded like he was just below my window. Jim thought the rooster was next to his bed. Regardless, the rooster made himself known in a very unpleasant way. After a while the rooster decided it was morning and kept quiet. We finally got some more sleep.

We marched down to the kitchen once again, this time for breakfast. Again, out options were limited. This time we waited 40 minutes for our food, and yet again the waiter messed up the order. We finally left for our day outing. When we returned we grabbed our bags and went in search of the hotel we had wanted to stay at the night before. It was not too hard to find, and while checking in, we asked the receptionist if the hotel had been full the night before. "Oh no," the guy responded, "We only had four guests last night."

So much for the "phone calls" the guys at the travel agency made...

Jim and I used another travel agency to return to Antigua. It is a good thing we did too, because we traveled back during the day, and we were NOT too tired to pick a fight this time around!