Cliques

During 2 1/2 months of low-budget travelling in Central America, we rarely get the opportunity to mingle with the one-week vacationers we used to be. Antigua has plenty of opportunity. We signed ourselves up for a bona fide tour to climb an active volcano and watch lava flow for a rock-bottom price. At 6am, a shuttle bus picked us up and proceeded to stop by some very nice hotels to acquire the rest of our group. In the next few hours, lava aside, we were just as shocked to learn they spent $200 per night on a hotel room as they would be to learn we spent $5. They moan about thin walls, and we can only grin with commiseration. They look forward to a lunch of Spanish tapas or sushi. While we know the expat chefs can faithfully recreate these specialties, we drool over mounds of guacamole and our new favorite, pepian de pollo at the market.

That night, we hob-knob with the Antiguan expat elite at another gallery opening drinking Chilean wine in the corner before returning to our hotel to feast on tomato and avocado sandwiches and chat with fellow travelers from Japan, France, Spain and Canada who haven´t moved all day. Tomorrow, we move on to a more far-flung destination where there will be neither tapas nor gallery openings. If there are tourists, our discussions will return to the size of our packs, the best place for a beer, and which country next with some old-fashioned bragging thrown in. We´ll still be looking back fondly on our own short vacations and try to make our long vacation a series of great short ones.