Transposition A Disastrous Holiday

Last year my friend Mark came up with a brilliant idea:

“Rosa, why don’t we have a “dream holiday”? In the Caribbean, for example!”

I agreed at once, because we’d always wanted to go there. So we saved up our money for months and months, and booked this holiday in a place called San Antonio. It cost over a thousand pounds each, but we wanted to do something really special so we booked it for two weeks in May, because all the brochures said the weather’s beautiful there in May.

            We were flying from Gatwick airport, and the flight was overnight, leaving Gatwick late at night, and arriving in San Antonio the next morning. But when we arrived at the airport they told us that because of bad weather in the Caribbean, the flight was delayed until the next morning. So we had to spend the night at the airport sleeping on the floor, and we finally got on the plane the next morning twelve hours late!

            But that was just the beginning. On the plane they told us that the bad weather over the Caribbean was actually the hurricane – Hurricane George – and that we couldn’t fly to San Antonio. We had to go to the capital city instead, and stay in a hotel there for the night, until the hurricane passed. Anyway, we weren’t too worried. “Well, it’s only one night”, we thought, “besides, they told us that we were going to a five-star hotel, next to the beach, with a swimming pool.” So we were quite happy at that point.

            When we arrived at the hotel, Hotel Paradiso it was called, they said it was a five-star hotel, but in fact, it was just awful! It was next to the sea, but there wasn’t a beach, just a few rocks. The sea was so dirty that you couldn’t swim in it. There were big ships traveling past, and the sea was all polluted and brown, and it looked horrible.

            So we went to look at the swimming pool, but that was no better. It wasn’t a nice blue color, like you’d expect. It was sort of greeny-black color and as we looked at it we could see things moving about in it, and we looked more closely and we realized it was full of frogs. There were hundreds of them! So after that we obviously didn’t use it.

            And then there was the food. The first morning we went downstairs for breakfast, expecting to have the usual things you get in hotels: bread, marmalade, fruit, coffee, and we were very surprised instead to see lots of different types of vegetables: carrots, peas, cabbage and a big bowl of lettuce. I was really hungry, so I decided to have some of the lettuce. “Look, it’s moving!” said I looking into the plate. Then I understood why it was moving: the lettuce bowl was full of ants! And there were so many of them that they actually were moving the lettuce leaves! After that we didn’t eat in the hotel again.

            The worst part though was when the hurricane arrived. That was really frightening. It was a fifty-storey building so you felt really terrified with all that wind, and rain, and the windows banging, and the trees crashing outside. It was terrible.

             And then they told us that because of the hurricane there were no flights to San Antonio, and that we had to stay there for another three days. “But there is nothing to do! Nowhere to go!” exclaimed Mark on the verge of crying. We just couldn’t believe that it could be happening to us.

            So when we finally arrived in San Antonio, we were five days late. And the worst thing was that Hurricane George never arrived there. The weather had been perfect in San Antonio all the time!

 

Vocabulary units:	Proper names:
1.    peas 2.    lettuce 3.    storey 4.    on the verge of smth.(gerund)	1.    Mark 2.    Rosa 3.    the Caribbean 4.    San Antonio 5.    Gatwick Airport 6.    Hurricane George 7.    Hotel Paradiso

Answer the questions:

1.    What idea did mark come up with last year?

2.    How did they choose the tour?

3.    What happened when they came to the airport?

4.    What were they suggested to do when they learnt about the bad weather?

5.    What was the hotel like?

6.    Was the sea crystal clear?

7.    Was the pool appropriate to swim?

8.    What was the problem with the food?

9.    What was the worst part of the whole day?

10.  When did they finally arrive in San Antonio?