Hodgepodge

Today was an interesting day.

Our driver picked us up this morning and we started out on a 5 hour drive to Sigiriya.

Not very far along he pulled over on the side of the road; and without a word, got out of the car.

Being the astute diagnosticians that we are, the fact that he was checking the right front tire led us to believe that we might have a flat.

When he got back in the car, he still didn't offer an explanation. So we asked, and I swear he said it was just a stick that he ran over.

However, a little way up the road, he stopped again, backed up and pulled into a tire repair shop that looked a lot like a tire repair shop we would find in Anguilla. "Ten Minutes", was all he said as he got out of the car. They then jacked up the still running car with us sitting in it and repaired the tire. We were back on our way.

Until a little while later when we were flagged down by two policemen standing by the side of the road in the shade of a tree. Again, sort of how Anguillian policemen would do it. A wave of the hand. You stop. Get out and walk back to them. Apparently they declared that our driver had overtaken another car in an illegal/unsafe fashion and fined him for it. Don't get me wrong, I think our driver ALWAYS overtakes other cars in an illegal/unsafe fashion; but doesn't everyone always in this part of the world?

The only thing on the schedule for today besides getting to Sigiriya was to stop for a tour of a local village. In our travels w have been on many of these. Cue the elephants. Cue the weavers. Cue the potters. Thrash some wheat, that sort of thing. But it is comething you do. In this case we strolled about 100 yards down a hill where the oxcart drivers were waiting. We have been forewarned of this part of the tour and had, from the get go, made it clear that we did not want an oxcart ride. Even so we had to decline it two or three more times today. The oxcart was going to take us just a little further to the "catamaran" that would take us across the lake to the village. I put catamaran in quotations because technically the vessel was a catamaran, but it was just a wee 15 feet long with a wood plank deck made of a 4x8 sheet of plywood.  Meanwhile, storm clouds were brewing so our driver and the village guy were debating whether or not we should chance the crossing. I was thinking (1) how is Michael going to get in and out of that boat and (b)is a little boat with metal rails in the middle of the lake a wise place to be in a thunderstorm? One minute the two guys were trying to convince Michael that it would be all right and that we should get into the boat. And the next minute they were telling us to walk quickly as it started to rain. A comedy of errors for sure.

In the end we made it back up the hill in a light rain that stopped immediately thereafter. And proceeded on to our hotel on the lake where they have a bar and all the trappings with the notable exception of a liquor license.  *sigh*