Two Adventurers

22 November 2009 Mexico

Miguel, a young man with excellent English and who worked at Main Street cafe, next door to our hotel, mentioned while we were having coffee there, that his boss had a few houses for sale. We were interested in looking at the houses, three of which were not too far from the hotel, and just a few kilometres from the town centre. He agreed to talk to his boss and make the necessary arrangements to take us through them tomorrow.  This suited us well as we had already made plans for today to walk around the town centre area and visit the market, as well as watch the dancing and listen to the music in the street that night.

Just so you know, we are certainly having our fill of Mexican food – have now had Empanadas (filled with fish for me, and chicken for Jim), Quesadillas, Chimichungas, Guacamole & Black Bean dips. When faced with an option to top your food with spicy chilli sauce, tomato and onion salsa and more, the choice is obvious, give it a try! The result is very tasty and not always so very spicy!

After our Empanada lunch at a nice “Cafeteria” we decided to walk the twelve or so blocks to Walmart, the iconic American store, to purchase a Battery Charger for the new camera. Being a Sunday, the streets were very quiet and we had the pavement to ourselves all the way. Some rather palatial houses on the way. The Walmart we are used to from our Colorado days was quite different from the one we located in Merida. Firstly, I noticed most prices of goods were half of what we normally would pay in Australia and here I’m talking about items like shampoo, hair colouring, moisturising creams and the like. Clothing, also, was extremely inexpensive there. It was quite dark when we exited Walmart so crossed to a nearby local bus stop where we hopped straight on, the bus taking us to within 100 metres of our hotel. At this point I feel obliged to say that at no time have we ever felt unsafe since arriving in Mexico – we still take obvious precautions when it comes to walking around with money and I wear my handbag with the long strap over my head and across my body. We will continue to be careful though, as there is always the exception to the rule but in the general sense the Mexican people are among the most warm, friendly and kind people we have ever met! Our Spanish language capabilities are not very great but we certainly make an effort to be understood.

The town square was in full swing when we hopped off the bus right by it, with music issuing forth from a band at one end and a young drummer doing his thing in the park  with a crowd of admirers watching on.

Food booths were busily cooking up a   variety of great snacks, mostly fried, unfortunately, but tempting our nostrils just the same! Other colourful vendors with traditional Mexican dress for sale were hoping to sell their products too. It was great fun listening to the

various bands playing their  own choice of music for the huge group of dancing public in the street, all eager to show off their dance skills. At around 9pm, we found a Sorbet shop, ate one each from a dish and then felt hungry again so made our way to Main Street Cafe once more, where we shared a great pizza over a couple of Coronas (beer) but just couldn’t manage to finish it all. Shame…