Today Melissa headed into town to get a haircut and a pedicure. Instead she was transported back in time to a beauty shop from 1952. She found a local shop that looked like a beauty parlor and popped her head in. She holds a hunk of hair and makes a scissors motion with her hands. "Si Si" the proprietor says. So Melissa asks "quantos?" and the proprietor says "cincuenta" which means 50 pesos or about $4 US Dollars. Ok, sounds reasonable. Melissa sits in the chair and proceeds to get a reasonable haircut. Afterwards she says "pedicure?" pointing to her feet. "Si si"! "Cien pesos" meaning 100 pesos or about $8 US Dollars. (Hey - Melissa's Spanish is improving!) So Melissa plops down on the couch. A few minutes later the proprietor shows up with a bucket of water and indicates Melissa should put her feet in it. Melissa complies. At which point half the neighborhood women show up. They look suspiciously at Melissa, who says "No Española". Ok, that's not quite true, but close enough. Each one shrugs her shoulders and sits down on the couch or the small allotment of chairs. Before long there is a group of women all chattering away in Spanish. About every 30 seconds or so they all burst out laughing hysterically. Melissa picks up enough of the conversation to realize they are discussing everything from what's for dinner, to the problems with their teen age kids. Melissa realizes that she's back in 1952 in a beauty shop that is the heart of all small town gossip. Occasionally a husband wanders in, gets hen pecked, and scampers back out as fast as possible.
Next stop is the Walmart. So Melissa hops back on the bus headed south. No problem because she rode the bus into town and there's only one main road, so what could go wrong? Well the van/bus got so filled with school children that you couldn't see outside. A few turns later and - oops - she finds herself in the slum neighborhoods of Tapachula. Dang it. Well, she's not getting off the bus here that's for sure. Eventually the bus empties till she is the only one left. The bus driver says something to her that clearly means "where are you going?" so Melissa says, "Walmart". His eyes get big, "oh No!" he says. This can't be good. For a moment he looks almost desperate. Then he turns the bus off his route and goes two blocks out of his way so that he can intersect a main road. He points and chatters. Yeah, ok, Melissa gets it, she is supposed to get off, walk across the four lane highway and catch another bus back into town. Sigh.
So Melissa starts walking back towards the main town. She crosses a green river and sees a shack with a couple of toddlers running around and hears a baby crying. This is poverty:
Another minute goes by and a taxi shows up. Melissa flags him down. All the while thinking, yeah, white woman in an iffy neighborhood. Might as well have a sign over her head saying "please rip me off". She lucks out (or so she thinks) because the taxi driver speaks English. $30 pesos to Walmart ($2.30 US Dollars). Not worth negotiating so she hops in. And spends the next 10 minutes getting hit on. The taxi driver was just plain slime. "You are so beautiful. You should leave your husband for me." Melissa rolls her eyes. Yeah right buddy. I'm going to leave a husband I adore for a guy who will hit on someone without knowing anything about them who is 20 years older. Yep - that sounds like great decision making. Bleck.
So eventually Melissa does her Walmart shopping and makes it back to the marina. We decide to head back into town to the fair. The marina manager had given us two tickets so what the heck. Just goes to show that fairs the world over are pretty much the same. You have food. Mmmm. Tacos El Pastor:
And just what the heck are these? They were in a bowl next to the olives, look a lot like olives, but are huge - like 2 inches long:
Rides and games:
Clowns and magicians:
A silver painted guy:
A guy with a snake:
Guys' with microphones hawking stuff you don't need:
And, of course, we couldn't pass this up:
