Getting Robbed in Chile

I have a habit of talking to touts who approach me in a foreign country.  I mean, if someone asks me a question my first instinct is to answer it.  Pat has to keep reminding me that this isn’t always the best or safest thing to do . . . especially in a dodgy bus station in South America.

My natural inclination to be helpful and friendly bit me in the ass while we were in Arica, Chile.  We had just finished a 10-hour bus ride from San Pedro de Atacama and I was tired and fuzzy headed.  While Pat was buying tickets for the next leg of the bus journey I was standing guard over our bags.  A woman walked up and asked me where the bathroom was and, while I was being the helpful American, her partner in crime lifted one of our small bags.

By the time we realized the bag was missing it was long gone.  I suspect the thief was very disappointed when he cracked open the bag, though.  I seriously doubt he’ll be able to off-load a book of partially completed New York Times Crosswords, two blow-up neck pillows, and a 2-year old Irish cell phone.

 

The Atacama Desert

We traveled to the driest desert in the world not because we wanted to see it, but because we needed to leave Argentina and didn’t want to go to Bolivia.  Even though we knew nothing about San Pedro de Atacama or the surrounding area, I am glad we opted for the Chilean desert experience.

We arrived in San Pedro (de Atacama) after an 8 ½ hour bus ride from Salta, Argentina.  Once we were settled in our hostel we headed in to town to see what options were available for getting out into the desert.  We knew that we would need to book a tour and had heard good things about Cactus Tour, so we found their office in town and arranged to see the flamingos in the salt flats and then head up to about 12,000 feet to see some Andean Lakes.

We weren’t disappointed.  We arrived at the salt flats just as the sun was peeking out over the mountains.

Desert Sunrise

Morning light shining on the salt flats

We were the first group to arrive at Laguna Chaxa, and the flamingos were in close proximity to the pathways.

Chilean Flamingo at Lago Chaxa

Chilean Flamingos at Lago Chaxa

I felt bad for the group coming after us, because the flamingos had all flown to a much more distant lake by the time we had finished our alfresco breakfast and piled back in the van.

Flamingos in flight

For the next leg of our journey our van chugged its way up to 12,000 feet and several mountain lakes.

Miscanti Lagoon

There was a small herd of vicuñas grazing nearby.

It was all incredibly beautiful, but between the high altitude and persistent wind it was very cold.

Pat and Amy in Atacama

That evening back in town we saw a beautiful sunset.

Sunset in San Pedro de Atacama

The evening light on the mountains turned the drab brown vistas into something quite dramatic.

Sunset in San Pedro de Atacama

Later that night we climbed back on a bus and headed for the Peruvian border and then on to Arequipa, which entailed 30 hours on buses, petty theft in Arica, Chile, and a very bizarre border crossing.  We were wrecked by the end of the journey, but glad to be in Arequipa.

 

Argentinian Food

Empenadas

We had left Buenos Aires and were in Cordoba when a man there gave us two warnings about Bolivia.  First, he mentioned the crime there, but said there is crime everywhere.  Then he mentioned food, and we thought we were in for the usual lesson about not eating fresh vegetables or street food.  But no, he struggled to describe the food there until we supplied the word for him – hot.  His eyes lit up, and he agreed, “Hot, yes.  The food there is too hot.”  Before Argentina we had spent six months in Mexico, and we both love hot food, so his words were more a promise than a warning, but the fact that an Argentine might think food was a bit too hot and flavourful was not a surprise.

The food in Argentina, particularly in Buenos Aires, was often disappointing, and one of the main reasons for that was it was so limited.  Steak, empanadas, pasta and pizza represent most of the food options easily available to us, at least in the neighbourhood we were in.  The steak was very good but not the best ever (as we’d heard beforehand), the empanadas inconsistent (even in the same restaurant), and the pasta unexciting.  We had read in travel guides that despite a huge influx of Italian immigrants to Argentina long ago, the Italian food options were “boring” and the travel guides were right.  The “exciting” topping on the pizza was ham.  No salami, no pepperoni, nothing but ham and cheese, no matter what pizza place we went to.  Sandwiches, too, were invariably ham and cheese.

They start with good products in Argentina, like some of the best beef anywhere, but they just don’t do much with it.  The steak is nicely cooked to bring out its natural flavour but they don’t put any seasoning on it in most restaurants.  In over a month in Argentina, we saw pepper on the table once.  Really, just one time, in dozens of visits to restaurants.  To give ourselves a little variety, we had hoped to cook some of our own food in Buenos Aires, but when we visited the grocery stores and looked at the spices available, our hearts sank.  There would be literally a total of from 8 to 12 varieties of herbs and spices in a store with a good selection, leaving me to wonder whether Tang would make a good substitute for paprika.

 

Kids in Buenos Aires

Kids in Buenos Aires are so different from the kids in Mexico.  As we’ve mentioned before, Mexican kids are not only incredibly cute, but they are just as incredibly well-behaved.  Months ago we attended a fundraising event in San Miguel with dozens of old gringos (like us) and four Mexican children.  Though the event lasted hours, the kids never acted up, never seemed visibly restless.  But in just a few weeks in Buenos Aires, we saw example after example of children running unsupervised through restaurants, squirming in their seats, and generally misbehaving.  Don’t get me wrong, the kids here are pretty much like American kids, many of which are well-behaved but many are not.  But the contrast with Mexico is a bit shocking.

There is a trade-off, though.  One of our friends in San Miguel, who has lived in Mexico for well over a decade, says that kids there are taught to march in public school and not much else.  She’s exaggerating a bit, but conformity and politeness is much more valued in Mexico, and our friend believes the limited public education system in Mexico is a deliberate choice by the government to keep people in their place.

The kids in Buenos Aires do, however, conform in one way – most wear white lab coats to school.  We saw kids on a break from school, or apparently heading off for a field trip, and the kids in many of the groups all wore the white lab coats.  They looked like they were off to their lab for a little experiment.

 

The Buenos Aires subway

The Buenos Aires subway system, or Subte, is perhaps the most inadequate and least people-friendly subway system we’ve used.  The system is poorly laid out, like a four-pronged fork joined in the east and pointing westward.  There is no connecting line in the west, so if you are in the northwest and need to get to the southwest, you must ride the line into what’s known as the Centro but is about as far east as you can get, then switch lines and head west again.  There is a short line connecting the two most southerly lines, about halfway along, and one more in the east but heading north/south.

Everything we’d read about the system before coming to Buenos Aires mentioned that it’s completely inadequate, and we’ll share some numbers to give you a feeling for it.  The Subte has 1.7 million riders daily on 32.5 miles of line, while the London Underground has 3.4 million riders daily on 250 miles of track.  So, the London Underground has twice as many riders, but spreads them out over 8 times as many miles of track.  If you’ve ever ridden the London subway you know it can be crowded, so you can imagine how much worse the Subte is.   If you think it’s unfair to compare the Subte to the Underground, consider that the Mexico City subway has 3.8 million riders, but spreads them out over 120 miles, or about 4 times as many miles of track as in Buenos Aires, and it’s a horribly crowded subway system, too.

Not only is it just not big enough, the layout of the stations really doesn’t make it easy to find where you’re going once you head downstairs to the buy your ticket. In any other subway system we’ve used, you can go downstairs from street level at any of the entrances for a particular stop, then follow the signs to the correct line and correct direction.  But here, some stations have entrances for only one direction, so if you’re heading east you must enter at this corner, and if you’re heading west you must enter at that corner.  Also, in the two places where three lines intersect, the stops for different lines have different names, so, for example, you need to get out at Diagonal Norte on the blue line to get on Carlos Pelligrini on the red line, even though it’s the same stop.

It is cheap and the trains run frequently, but that’s about all that can be said in favor of the system here.

 

Chaos Out of Order in Buenos Aires

Waiting for the bus in Buenos Aires

Depending on how you look at it Buenos Aires is one of the most orderly or disorderly cities we’ve visited.  Flying in to the airport at night, it is obvious from the rows of streetlights that Buenos Aires was designed using a grid system.  Walk around any neighbourhood, and you’ll see the buildings lining the street all do so with their fronts neatly squared with the street (which might not seem like such an accomplishment until you’ve visited parts of Ireland and Mexico).  Watch people queue up for a bus, and it’s easy to think you could take a measuring tape and find that each person in line is exactly 18 inches from the next, and they all face the same direction.

But look a little closer and you’ll see the chaos all around you.  Bus passengers may respect the rules for standing in line, but drivers certainly don’t respect the rules of the road, if they exist.  People often drive through town at incredible speeds, motorcyclists ride on the sidewalks if the motor traffic ahead of them seems to be moving a little too slowly, drivers create lanes that aren’t there, or turn from the second (or third lane) over, or turn into the fifth lane (a frequent occurrence), and at the many unregulated intersections (that’s right, no signs or lights of any kind, even at many fairly busy intersections) you can see the yelling and hand gestures imported from Italy.

And while the streets and buildings may seem orderly, there are some baffling exceptions.  To see what I mean, walk to Plaza 25 de Mayo, which lies directly in front of the Pink House (much like our White House, except it’s a kind of pink, of course).  You’ll see a nice planned plaza, with a statue of a man on a horse, a flagpole, another statue on an obelisk, fountains, gardens, etc.

Try this experiment.  If you could stand in the center of the main arch of the Pink house and strike off perpendicular to the building, you will come to a statue of a man on a horse.  However, you won’t be right at the middle of the statue, but a few inches to the side.  Make your way around to the other side of the statue and try again, and you’ll almost run into a flagpole just a few feet away.  Almost, but not quite, since the flagpole is not centered on the pink house or the first statue.  Keep going and  you’ll come to a plaque explaining the planned garden ahead of you, but you’ll have to step about two feet to the left to read it since the plaque is not centered on anything you’ve passed so far or even on the garden ahead.  You could keep this up through the garden area, to the statue on the obelisk and so on and you won’t find anything that is lined up with anything else.  It’s generally symmetrical and it would have been the easiest thing in the world to line up the front door of the pink house, the statue, and all the rest but no, they didn’t.  It’s as if someone snapped a plumb line, set all the pieces in place, then nudged each element two feet this way, or four feet that way.  It would be fine, too, if it was clearly asymmetrical, with everything offset enough to give the sense it was done purposefully.  Instead, it looks like each builder just showed up and said, “Close enough.”  It wasn’t.

The most amazing thing to me is how the plaza was used during the recent bicentennial celebrations.  As explained in the last post, this year marks the 200^th anniversary of the first local government in Buenos Aires, which began on May 25.  The nearby thoroughfare Avenida 9 de Julio is much, much larger than the Plaza 25 de Mayo, and so made sense as the focal point of the celebrations, but the Plaza seemed more like a construction zone during the celebrations than anything else.  Imagine there was a 4^th of July Plaza directly in front of the White House, and the U.S. was getting ready to celebrate its bicentennial (July 4, 1976) and decided to use the White House lawn and the plaza as a loading and unloading zone for events elsewhere.  The Plaza 25 de Mayo looked horrible until the day after the celebrations ended, when all the extra crap was cleaned up and it was transformed into a beautiful public space.  It’s still not lined up, though.

 

First Impressions of Buenos Aires

We flew from Mexico City to Buenos Aires, Argentina, last weekend and one of the reasons we haven’t posted anything since then is that it’s been a rough transition.  The total travel time was over 12 hours, with almost 11 hours on planes, and we gained two hours and six months.  Well, we didn’t gain six months, but by crossing the equator we went from late spring in Mexico City, with temperatures in the nineties and over 13 hours of sunlight per day, to late fall in Buenos Aires, with temperatures yo-yoing between the high fifties to low seventies, and only 10 hours of sunlight per day.  Add in a terrible landlady, pressure from Amy applying for and interviewing for a job in Oregon, and it’s been a tiring time.

Things are getting better, though.  By Thursday, Amy got the job, we had a great (but not the best ever) steak in celebration, and it turns out this is a huge holiday weekend here.  All the signs here proclaim that it’s the bicentennial that’s being celebrated, and the events began last night and culminate on May 25, so you’d think that means it’s their Independence Day, but it isn’t.  This marks the events of “May Week” when in 1810 the local viceroy in Buenos Aires was booted out of office and a local government formed (according to Wikipedia).  It wasn’t until July 8, 1816, that national independence was actually declared, so that’s the official Independence Day.  So, this is the bicentennial celebration of  . . . something.  Although this seems to be a national holiday, it might be celebrated more here than elsewhere in the country, in that it commemorates the first local government in Buenos Aires.  Get it?  Yeah, me neither.

We saw part of a military parade, and many of the participants had on old-style uniforms that made it look like a live-action Stratego game.  Celebrations will continue for days, but in our wandering today we never came across food vendors.  I’m sure they’re out there somewhere but I can’t imagine a regular Independence Day celebration in the States, let alone a really big one, that didn’t include more food options than a person could go through in a month.

Some of you may think we recently experienced Mexican Independence Day on May 5 but Cinco de Mayo is a relatively minor holiday in Mexico.  In fact, it’s not a national holiday at all but just a state holiday in Puebla, and which is partially observed elsewhere.  The day commemorates the Battle of Puebla, an impressive victory of the outnumbered Mexican army over the invading French in 1862.  The problem is the French went on to win the war and control Mexico for 3 years, so the Battle of Puebla ended up not making much of a difference in the arc of history, though the battle became a source of justifiable pride for Mexico.  The real Mexican Independence Day will come this September 16, and will mark Mexico’s bicentennial, too.  Several other Latin American countries also declared their independence in 1810, though it took years of fighting in each case to actually break free from the crumbling Spanish Empire.  1810 was not a good year for Spain.

 

Great Food in San Miguel de Allende

Best tacos in San Miguel de Allende

Originally uploaded by Pat and Amy’s pics

As we wrap up our final days here in San Miguel de Allende, we wanted to pass on a few of the great restaurants we have enjoyed here. It is not a complete list, but it is our list which means affordable and flavourful.

CHEAP EATS:

Taco stand at Hidalgo and Insurgentes: If you are willing to give street food a try, it doesn’t get any better than this. The stand is up and running by around 7:30 or 8:00 most evenings. We have tried tacos at other places, and nothing can hold a candle to this place. Our favourite choice is an order of Gringas al Pastor. They slice off bits of marinated pork and cook it up on the griddle with a handful of molten Oaxacan cheese all put in a flour tortilla with a sliver of pineapple. The tacos al pastor are excellent, as well. In addition to tacos al pastor, they serve bistec, costilla (rib meat), chorizo and lengua (tongue). I’m sure the other choices are good too, but we are hooked on the gringas al pastor. A gringa al pastor will cost you $15 pesos, and the tacos are about $8 pesos apiece.

The Asador on Potranca on Salida a Celaya: Potranca 4. As with the tacqueria, this place has no name but you can’t miss the huge black grill sitting in front of the restaurant. Arrachera is their specialty, and the hamburguesa de arrachera is very flavourful. Arrechera is a thinly cut, marinated flank steak. I also like their hamburgers and the baked potato con todo: bits of arrachera, cheese and sour cream. We haven’t been there on the weekend, but I believe they offer grilled rib-eyes on Friday and Saturday. The arrachera burger is $40 pesos and the baked potato con todo is $30 pesos. Open for dinner (maybe lunch, too, but we’ve never tried).

Burritacos on Mesones between Hidalgo and Reloj: Once again, not sure of the name of this place, but it is the only place I know of that makes fresh flour tortillas here in San Miguel de Allende. Corn tortillas are far more common in this part of Mexico. You order the number of tacos you want at the counter (I usually get two or three), and then go to the back to choose from about 12 fillings. My favourites are pollo con mole verde (chicken in a green sauce) and papas y chorizo (potatoes and sausage). There are a few tables out front, but we often get the tacos to go and eat them while sitting in the Jardín. A burritaco costs $8 pesos. Open for lunch and (an early) dinner.

BREAKFAST AND LUNCH OPTIONS:

There are loads of options for breakfast and lunch here in San Miguel. The places listed below tend to run between $30 to 70 pesos for a meal.

Cafe Contento: Hernandez Macías 72. The terrace is shady and pleasant and the food is consistently good. Try the crepes with fresh fruit and cajeta (caramel sauce). A scrambled egg breakfast, one of their sandwiches, or the Sopa Azteca are also good options. As a bonus they have a basket full of old New Yorkers and other magazines to browse while you wait for your food. Free wi-fi is available and there is a small collection of paperbacks for sale or trade. Their bread comes from the Buena Vida bakery which is just down the hallway. Stop by Buena Vida to get a cinnamon roll or donut for dessert.

Cafe Buenos Dias: Reloj 64. This place is filled with loyal customers with good reason. The bacon is (almost) always crisp, the cafe latte is the best in town, the waiter is a perfect gentleman, and the owner, Elisa, is always welcoming and friendly. Pat always gets the scrambled egg breakfast and I am very fond of the French toast and the fresh fruit smoothies.

Via Organica: Calle Margarita Ledesmo 2. For breakfast, try their French toast or tapas de huevo (scrambled eggs, beans and cheese served in a puff pastry). For lunch, they have excellent salads. We also like the chicken salad torta and the ham and cheese torta, which come with a small side salad and cost as little as 30 pesos. In addition to the restaurant, Via Organica has a shop with fresh organic produce, handmade local cheeses and other items for sale.

Media Naranja: Hidalgo 83. Another great place for breakfast or lunch. Their salads are excellent (especially with the extra chicken). I recommend the falafel salad with tahini dipping sauce.

Bagel Cafe: Even though it is the Bagel Cafe, our favourite dish is the club sandwich. They also have good chilli. Try the naranjada here. It is a very refreshing drink on a hot day.

Cafe Etc, (or Cafe Juan): Reloj 37. Most people agree that Juan makes the best cappuccino in town. The club sandwich is excellent too. A friend of mine tells me there is a Spanish conversation class that meets here on Monday and Friday at 11:00. The cost of the class is 20 pesos.

Monte Negro: On Correo very close to the Jardín. The food here is always fine, although not spectacular, so it’s not usually our first choice, but it’s always a safe one. The prices are reasonable, the ambience is comfortable, and the salsas are tasty.

Sappos Restaurant: Paseo del Parque 10. The terrace is very pleasant, and the chilaquiles are the best I’ve had in town.

Cafe Rama: Calle Nueva 7. Come here for a special lunch. It is a bit more expensive than some of the other options, but the quality of the food is worth it. Try the Asian Chicken Salad, and make sure to leave room for dessert. The truffles are superb and I hear the lemon cheese cake is a revelation.

Posada Corazon: Aldama 9. Come here to splash out for brunch in a beautiful setting. They have a set menu which is $140 pesos. It is includes 2 cups of coffee, hot chocolate or tea, fruit salad or juice, a main dish such as eggs Benedict, and a buffet of homemade granola, yogurt and artisan cheese. Reservations are recommended.

DINNER IN SAN MIGUEL

Ten Ten Pie al Carbon: Sterling Dickenson 5. It’s a bit off the beaten path, but well worth it. This place has the best arrachera we have tasted since being in Mexico. Perfectly seasoned and always tender. The chicken kebabs are also excellent. You will not be disappointed. Margarita, the manager, is always gracious and kind. The last time we were there, she plucked pomegranates off of a tree in the courtyard and shared them with the customers for a refreshing dessert.

Longhorn Smokehouse: Salida a Celaya 6. This is the place to go in San Miguel for Texas-style barbecue. The grilled ribs are quite good, but our favourite choice is a cheeseburger and a side of fresh cut fries. Thursday is steak night. They also have key lime pie that is worth saving a little extra room for. As a bonus, the waitress there (Jimena) is very friendly and charming.

Burrito Bistro: Correo 45. We love the fresh roasted salsas, and they make a delicious naranjada. We have liked everything we have tried on the menu, but our favourites are the grilled chicken salad, the thai chicken soup, and the grilled chicken burrito.

Gombo’s: Tata Nacho 2. Come here for the pepperoni pizza.

Fenicia: Calle Zacateros 73. Great Lebanese food. The chicken shawerma wrap is especially good.

Mare Nostrum: Umaran 56. Run by a Sicilian couple, the pastas are handmade and delicious. The last time I was there I had mushroom-stuffed ravioli with a sweet potato sauce. It was wonderful. Rumor has it the pizzas are good too.

Chinese food: DondayinSMA has a great post about the two Chinese restaurants here in San Miguel.

BITS AND BOBS

Ice Cream:
On the corner of San Francisco and Reloj is Dolphy’s Ice Cream, a Mexican ice cream chain. They use real cream and have about 20 flavors to choose from.

As you head south on Ancha San Antonio, you’ll find Santa Clara Ice Cream, another high quality creamy ice cream. Menta con chispas in my favourite.

For a taste of real Mexican ice cream, go to the ice cream stand at the corner of Canal and Hernandez Macías. I highly recommend the sorbets. Limón and Mango are my favourite. If you are feeling adventurous they have queso (cheese), mamey (a fruit with a sweet potato-like flavour) and rose flavours on offer.

Fresh Fruit and Vegetables: My favourite place to go to for fresh fruit and vegetables in San Miguel is in the Mercado Ignacio Ramirez. DondayinSMA is also fond of this particular stall. See his post for details.

 

Mexican Television

We have a great deal on our apartment here in San Miguel, and cable television is thrown in for free.  As much as I may complain about the offerings on TV here, it is nice having something to watch occasionally.

Our cable system has about 70 channels, and it’s a mix of Mexican stations and U.S., with many stations devoted to movies, several to science (this is one of our greatest frustrations – that the National Geographic and Discovery channels are invariably dubbed into Spanish, and between my still-fledgling Spanish skills and my ever-worsening deafness, it’s not worth the effort to watch them).

The not-so-good is that most of the shows are crap, and most of the movies repeat about seven thousand times each month.  Dances With Wolves, for example, seems to have played every day or so since we first arrived in October.  Sometimes the movies are so bad they’re good, like Plan 9 From Outer Space, which we enjoyed a couple of weeks ago, and if you like good old movies, it’s fairly common to find Humphrey Bogart or even the occasional Hitchcock movie.  Most of these are subtitled in Spanish, but some are dubbed, and it’s not uncommon to see a movie with English audio and Spanish subtitles on one station, then see the same movie start an hour later on another channel, but this time dubbed into Spanish.

Most of the shows seem to be either telenovelas (soap operas) or shows from the U.S.  I am fully convinced that some anthropologist exploring the jungles of Papua New Guinea will stumble across what she believes to be an undiscovered tribe, but will that night find the village gathered around a TV watching CSI Miami.  CSI, CSI Miami, and the Simpsons are on TV everywhere we’ve travelled.

What surprises me are the movies on the Mexican stations.  There seemed to have been a period in Mexican moviemaking (from the clothes and the colors, I can only assume it was during the ‘70s and ‘80s) when there were only three plots available, all of which involved men in suits making goofy faces around women in lingerie, or less.  The fairly common nudity from decades ago in this extremely conservative Catholic country never fails to surprise.

It is great, though, to flip through the channels and catch a movie like Once Upon a Time in Mexico, which was filmed largely in San Miguel and the nearby town of Guanajuato.  It’s fun to see Antonio Banderas and Johnny Depp in places we’ve come to know so well.  Rumor around town has it that Banderas owns a house in town, though no one we’ve spoken to has actually spotted him.  Until he shows up in person, we’ll have to settle for watching him on TV.

 

Doing the Laundry in Mexico

I hate the laundry.  In America I didn’t hate doing the laundry; in fact, it was a reminder of the luxury of life in the United States.  Every time I did the laundry I was reminded of just how easy life was for us there.

We mentioned in a long ago post how our first apartment in Ireland had a washer/dryer in the kitchen, and it sounded like a jet plane about to take off.  The washer and dryer in our second apartment was out in a separate building, and was shared with two other properties, so it was less noisy but often occupied and not always convenient.

Here in Mexico, though, and often when we’re on the road, we simply have to turn our wash over to someone else.  Our apartment doesn’t have a washer we can use, and there are no self-service washers in town that we know of (actually, they seem pretty rare in every country we’ve visited), so we go to a lavanderia.  It might sound nice not to have to deal with the laundry but it isn’t. Let me use our current situation to explain why.

When we drop off the laundry, it’s usually ready the next day, but it can take up to two days before it’s done.  With last week being Semana Santa (Holy Week) many shops, including our lavanderia, shut down from Thursday on, so to be sure we got our clothes back before they left on holiday, we had to get our last batch of clothes in on Monday of last week and we weren’t able to get anything washed for a week.  For many of you a week without washing clothes is no great inconvenience, but we travel light — I own five pair of pants, about that many t-shirts, and two button-up shirts.  Since I can’t exactly deliver the dirty clothes naked, at least some of our clothes are not able to go for a wash at any one time, and so a week without being able to wash is a problem.

I dropped off clothes Monday morning, and miracle of miracle, they promised they would be done that afternoon.  Unfortunately, when I went to pick it all up, the smallest bill I had was a 200 peso bill (about $16) and they couldn’t make change for the 72 peso charge.  So, our desperately needed clothing was done, but I couldn’t get it because I didn’t have the right size bills.  Luckily, when Amy got home she had some smaller bills and was able to pick up the clean clothes.

Today, though, when Amy went to pick up another load, she had a 50 peso bill and the charge was 42 pesos.  The 8 pesos in change is about 65 cents.  The woman working at the lavanderia laughed as she looked at her till, because she barely had enough change, with Amy cleaning her out.  We discovered upon Amy’s return home that she was actually short-changed one peso, however, so the lavaderia wasn’t actually able to make 8 pesos in change.  Our earlier post about the difficulty of making change is applicable here in Mexico – one store is so averse to giving change, the owners have a sign saying they won’t accept bills, which means the largest denomination they’ll accept is a 10 peso coin, or about 80 U.S. cents.  It can be maddening to be in a country that often requires exact change but by that same token never gives you any.