Yeah...that's right...I paid $13 for a shower.

Technically, I paid $6.50 for a shower and Hugo paid $6.50 for his. If you want to get even more technical, we each paid $5 for the showers and $3 for a refill of my five gallon bottle of water.


From the beginning...


When I was still living in the USA and came to visit Hugo, we always stayed at his uncle's house. Jaime is a year older than Hugo and his wife, Nora, teaches in a remote mountain village. She lives up in the mountains during the week and comes to San Salvador on the weekends. One of my visits happened to fall on a weekend when Nora and their son would be home. Hugo and I didn't want to intrude on family time, so we decided to stay in a hotel for the weekend. Hugo mentioned that a brand new hotel had been constructed across the highway from Jaime's house. He suggested we check it out.


Upon arrival, I realized it was the strangest hotel I had ever been to. It was designed like townhomes. We pulled into a garage and went up a flight of stairs to the room. There wasn't a front desk to check in at. We spent the first few minutes checking out the room and trying to get the lay of the land. It was indeed a new, clean establishment. A few things seemed a bit odd...like the floor to ceiling, wall to wall mirrors around the bed. Before I could ponder the implications of that, there was a knock at the door. Hugo tried to open it, but it was locked from the outside. We couldn't figure out what we were supposed to do...the knocking continued. Finally, we noticed a small sliding door. Hugo slid it open and a hand instantly poked through the opening. A voice asked, "Do you want the entire night or just the hour?" Hugo looked at me with shock. I'm sure my face registered the same emotion. Hugo informed the disembodied hand that we would be staying for the night. Hugo paid, the hand gave him two towels and a bottle of water in return. When Hugo finished the exchange, he found me standing on the bed...inspecting the lightbulb. When he asked me what I was doing, I told him I was searching for hidden cameras. He told me I was crazy. I told him that any place that charged by the night was skeevy enough to do something like hide cameras. After I determined the lightbulb was just a lightbulb, I crawled under the covers. Hugo asked what I was doing. I told him I was changing into my pjs. He asked why I was doing it under the blankets. I said, "just because I didn't find a camera doesn't mean there isn't one." I was totally creaped out. The fact that the TV had three channels...all showing porn...didn't help things. I don't think I slept a wink that night. Luckily, Hugo suggested we pack up and head out first thing in the morning. Duh...like I was actually going to stay there any second longer than necessary.

Fast forward to current day...

We had an entire week of rain and, thus, flooding. There was tons of damage to roads, bridges, houses and...water treatment plants. We had three days without water. It was perhaps the longest three days of my life. I had a five-gallon bottle of water saved for just such an occasion (we regularly loose water...but usually only for a few hours). However, those measly five gallons didn't last long. I tolerated it as long as possible, but finally I cracked. I needed water. I needed a shower. So what did we do? We went to the "sex hotel" (as we had affectionately started calling it when we drove by each day) and paid for an hour. Apparently, sex hotels aren't recession proof...prices had gone up. An hour cost us $13 (I think the last time, the rate was like $6). Thus...a $13 shower. But let me tell you...it was well worth the $13.