Goodbye Chus. . .Hello tigers.

 Tomorrow I spend my last few hours with Chus, José and Pablo. I join the safari in the evening. Chus has been very hospitable to me and her poor family have had to put up with another person always hanging around like a bad smell, but they have only been very generous and kind to me. 

The last couple of days, I've been to two parks: Nehru and Lodi Parks. In Nehru Park I got lost. I had a deadline to meet the driver who would be taking me back to meet Chus, but I exited the park at the wrong road. Didn't realise it was surrounded by four roads, not just the one I had been dropped off on. I had left the car with my camera, no phone, and only 60 rupees (just over a dollar) in my pocket. I didn't know the registration number of the car, nor a phone number I could call for help. Not a very successful Boy Scout.

I walked down a street along one side of the park but couldn't see the gate I came in by. It was 33 degrees and the time of the agreed pick up was nearing, so I hailed a tuk tuk driver. He answered my question about whether he spoke English with a "Yes!" and waggled his head. 

The extent of his understanding was soon obvious. He did know "round the park", "Stop!" but not "go slowly" nor "keep going".  I coerced him around the park, getting out every now and then to check the parked cars on the side of the road for the driver I came with. No luck. The tuk tuk guy got a bit more worried, I think, every time I got out to peer at the men in the cars. 

He stopped at the exit to a parking lot and I asked a guy there if he could speak English. He also said yes, but he wasn't lying through his teeth, like the tuk tuk guy. He explained the situation to the driver and told him to try the two car parks on that road. Tuk tuk guy chucked a U-ie and I found the driver at the beginning of the first car park. 

Another sticky situation resolved with the help of strangers. 

Today in Lodi Park (33 degrees again) I was surrounded by schoolchildren, all wanting to shake my hand. In fact, it started reminding me of "Suddenly last summer", that movie with Elizabeth Taylor about the young man who was eaten by the beach boys (or it was something equally horrific). Anyway, the little boys were getting a little too close for comfort, and more and more of them seemed to be coming at the same time, some of them saying "money", "money". I found a teacher and sat down next to her, and they petered off eventually. 

Well, I can't keep going because it's late and I have to get up and leave early tomorrow. So that's it until I have a little more time, probably tomorrow.