Going to El Salvador

People said I was crazy to go to El Salvador. I really didn't think anything of it until after the plane landed. I had been bored and looked through the reading material in the seat pocket. An article about personal safety in El Salvador caught my eye. It said to beware of robberies. It said one of the tricks was that the robbers would do something to the tire of your rent car so it goes flat and you get robbed when you stopped to fix it. I did not advise Ruth of this, she seemed wary enough of going to a place where no one she has ever known has ever been as it was. We had been delayed a long time in Houston and we arrived after 11:00 p.m. The airport was almost deserted. I looked for our rent car company. Nobody seemed to speak any English, so my rudimentary Spanish came in handy. Thank goodness I had reserved a car in advance, because our car seemed to be the only rental car in sight. We got packed in and drove off about 11:30 p.m. hopefully headed toward the beach hotel I picked out on line. Ten minutes out of the airport, you guessed it, a flat! I pulled over to the side of the road in a spot with a little light coming from a "Welcome to El Salvador" billboard. Thank goodness, I had brought my Sprint cell phone with international access and was able to call the number on the car contract. I was nervous because I could barely see a car pulled over on the other side of the divided roadway and they seemed to be watching us. Nobody on the phone at midnight spoke a word of English. I tried Spanish: "El auto has el flato in el tireo. Need helpo muy pronto." With about twenty minutes of gradually improving Spanish, they finally understood well enough to send the employee with the least seniority out and got the tire changed minutes before a gang of vicious robbers were scheduled to bludgeon us beyond recognition and steal our Skippy Peanut Butter from the luggage. With great relief, we soon drove away back on the road to the hotel. The car of guys was still on the other side, watching us. I could see them clearly as we got even with them. It was the Federal Police making sure no one bothered us!