16 - Culture and Cuisine

Analise was happy. She was deeply immersed in the native culture and experiencing the local cuisine. After breakfast, she'd taken a taxi to the local ruins.

The driver had offered to wait, nobody spent more than 30 minutes here. "If you want", she said, and went to buy a guide book. The driver reckoned it was easy work - have a drink and a cigarette, then drive her back for a double fare. Two hours later he left, cursing her for wasting his time.

She'd been up every flight of steps

and along every wall (keeping away from the edges).

She'd found the "thirteen bovines" (easy once you knew they were wall carvings),

the "three pillars of faith" (not so easy unless you knew the secret of mazes),

made "an offering at a quoin" at the central shrine

(she watched the bus-load of tourists, under the direction of their leader, throw a coin into the pool at its base. She'd briefly considered pointing out that a 'quoin' is a corner and the offering should be food, but decided against it. She'd then seen the leader, while the tourists were eating a local dish of grilled fruit, sneak back to the pool and fish the coins out),

and she'd even braved the public loos! (Ed: The reader will be pleased to know there is no picture for this!)

She'd waited for the walking tour to start, sat on a block, eating a bowl of steamed rice and vegetables, drinking a soda, reading her Lonely Sim guide.

The walk took three hours, along jungle paths the leader occasionally had to hack clear. She'd seen fantastic flowers, delightfully dappled clearings,

wonderful waterfalls,

beautiful birds, and insects the size of her hand that would give her nightmares for years to come - but even those were incredible. She'd seen so much, she was beginning to run out of alliterative adjectives. The low point had been the spectacular suspension bridge across the gaping gorge.

She'd eventually been able to cross by holding on to each hand rail, squeezing her eyes tight shut and singing. It had taken her half of an hour. By the time she was across, the leader and the group had gone on, all except one boy.

He was 25ish, athletic, and what most women would describe as "good looking" or "cute". Analise thought he was a right, royal, pain-in-the-a. He would just not shut-up! Even when she dropped un-subtle hints like, "Don't you think the sounds of the jungle are nice on their own?" He stopped for a nano-second to listen, agreed, and then started his endless wittering. She'd started devising ways to kill him and hide his body. Fortunately for them both, the trail ended not long after that. He even had the temerity to ask for "her digits" - she so wanted to punch him!

He'd hung around, presumably hoping to share a taxi back to civilization, but Analise was fully intent on exploring the ruins at this end of the trail,

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and he eventually gave up following her around like a lost puppy - she was so glad. She still had four pages of the guide book to go when the fruit stall owner found her, pointed out that it was getting dark, and offered her a lift back to her hotel as he was now the last person here.

The ride back was exhilarating. His truck had neither head-lights nor suspension, and seemed to only stay on the road because the wheels were trapped in ruts in the unmetalled surface. The sun set fast and Analise was glad, as she couldn't then see the drop as they skidded around corners. Asking to be set-down somewhere that sold typical local food, he stopped in a bustling plaza surrounded by food stalls.

She bought several chunks of meat (chicken she hoped) on bamboo twigs covered in a sticky honey sauce, crispy seaweed strips, a bowl of rice and a cup of 'coconut saki'. Sitting on the tumbled blocks of the breakwater, watching the bobbing lights on the yachts at anchor in the bay, she ate her simple meal - it tasted delicious. The missed meeting and the puddles of vomit seemed a world and a lifetime away. She was tired, full and happy. The saki was mildly alcoholic, causing her to misplace some inhibitions, so when music started in the plaza behind her, she went and learnt to hula dance.