Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Cheaper than water

Colleen just forwarded me one of those email jokes. This one looked promising because it was about gas prices, something I rarely concern myself with as a car-less freeloader.


The whole gas thing of course got me thinking about Venezuela's petroleo. On a lovely four-hour mountainous drive to the beach, Giulio and I pulled up to a gas station.

Oh yeah—offer to pay for gas. I’m getting a free ride here.

“No no—let me get this,” I selflessly offered.

"It’s ok,” he said, scrounging for some coins between car seats. "Do you have like, 15 cents?"

I looked at the register and wondered if the figure we saw was for one liter, or if they should have been using the old currency and forgot to add three zero's to the end, or if the machine was broken and computing incorrectly, or if the mountain air had induced in me a form of temporary numerical illiteracy and 98 cents really meant "109080 cents".

Nope. The whoooole tank: 98 cents.

Bienvenido a Venezuela.

Caracas: Why walk two blocks when you can drive?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

i finally figured out the souvenir you can bring me back: a tank of gas.