The amazing magical Irish pub with disappearing Guinness!
If you have read my previous entry on this web site, you will undoubtedly know I was a bit excited about our forthcoming visit to the local Irish pub (Kilkenny´s). If I remember correctly "the happiest beaver in Quito".
One day on and one drinking experience later, I´m no longer that chuffed rodent, but a crocodile, who´s just had Steve Irwin poke him with a stick for the last 3 hours in the name of good documentary television.

Lets just say, it wasn´t quite the wonderful warm experience I had anticipated.
Signs were good, exterior: green with guiness sign, interior: darts board more guiness parifinalia, harp in the corner. all in all what you´d expect from this kind of establishment.

Then as soon as I was feeling semi comfortable, it all fell apart!

A small Latino chap seperated himself from a group at the bar, and started to speak extremely quickily, I presumed him to be an over excited local who had had one two many of the black gold at high altitude. I looked past him for a large ginger haired chap no doubt called paddy.
There was no Paddy, or if there was his surname was Dominguez and he was the Basil Faulty like character standing next to me.
I spluttered out "dos guiness por favour"- to which a heated conversation started to erupt between the group at the bar, there were shakes of heads and quick feet shuffling. Then Mr Dominguez said unbelievably "we don´t have Guiness"-
my heart sank, Oh my god, an Irish pub with no guiness!
I was about to turn around and remove myself, when a small shot glass was produced on the bar, and I was beckoned to try
What is it I asked?

"LLama Negro"

Llama bloody Negro!, roughly translated to be "black Llama", "black bloody llama"

How bad could it be? - mesa I spluttered and Basil guided us towards a nice cosy table at the back, next to the said Harp.
The first sip of the Black LLama proved all my worst fears true, If your familiar with Scottish ales, A normal ale will be a 70, a strong ale a 80, some hardy locals may even provide an undrinkable 90. All I´m saying is 130.

After 1/2 hour staring at this drink, Vince decided to break the ice by trying some of the nuts on offer. To be fair they didn´t have the appearance of your regular peanut, and they didn´t taste like a peanut, no they tasted like someone had gone down the arts supply store, bought a nice piece of balsa wood, taken it home and carved it into a small sphere and quickly dipped it in some salt left on the paper of a fish supper. Combine this with the wonderful taste given to us by the LLama(served in a giant wine flute), lets just say Vince was wishing he hadn´t had so much mexican, and on this occasion he was in the need of the BAÑOS(banyo!), which I managed to get wrong yet again for the 200th time in a row.

On his return a further 20 minutes passed, with little more drinking taken place. We decided to not offend our hosts, who I think thought we were Irish, due to the glances they kept throwing our way, and the re-assuring nods they needed to cease this action.
We downed our drinks and headed for the bar to pay. Hand over a $10 note I thought and lets get out of here.
NO! - our friends had other ideas, 30 minutes later with 4 receipts produced, signed and stamped, a database updated, they finally took our money.
A nice touch to finish off- our change handed to us on a silver plate with a couple of complimentary sweets, with the words "come again soon"
Will we come again?

NO! - and the complimentary sweets- like chewing on a bar of lux.

This tale might come across like I´m being unnecessarily harsh on this pub and the staff in it,

but I´ll say it again:

AN IRISH PUB WITH NO GUINESS!
- posted by Anonymous @ 3:15 PM