Mexico is different from the U. S. I like the differences, and find little ones often - sometimes they're amusing and sometimes they make more sense than what we do in the States.
In my neighborhood, a little white car drives around every morning with a loudspeaker on the roof, announcing specials at various stores and other events. Unfortunately, it's all in Spanish and I can only pick out a few words, so I have learned to tune it out.
We have diet Coke here - it's called Coca-Cola light. You might notice above the brand name, it tells us the bottle is returnable! It's been a long time since we have seen that in the States! They still have cans though and although there is no official recycling like we have in the States, there are some people who collect them to cash in.
You know the feeling when you're driving along after dark and you see the flashing lights of a police vehicle in back of you? All police vehicles here have their lights flashing after dark when they're just on patrol. The first few times, it gave me that paranoid feeling - what did I do wrong? After a while, you just get used to it. The good thing is that we know they're out there patrolling.
There are motels in Mexico that are set up with garages for each unit, providing anonymity for their guests, who are charged by the hour. However, gringo travelers have caught onto the idea and use them for stopovers during their trips around the country. Makes sense, since it's cheaper to pay for hours used if you only stay overnight and leave early the next morning.
The car below belongs to an electrician in the area, and he drives it all the time. For those who may not remember, it's a 1970 Maverick - 45 years old! He says he sometimes has a hard time finding parts. Talk about making things last!
Walmart is in the next town and it looks like any Walmart, except for signs being in Spanish and it doesn't seem to have some of the departments we are used to, but they have the basics. They did have a nice big cake set out in the grocery section - you could just cut a piece of it, put it in one of those little plastic containers to take home. For the record - I didn't!
I did find my filters at Home Depot, for about twice the cost in the States. They were imported from the States with Spanish language labels on them. Obviously some things are still made in the States.
A big similarity at WalMart - the bagging people seem to put the heavy stuff in one bag and the light stuff in another bag. Just like most places in the states!
I see people riding in the back of pickup trucks all the time here - lots of times it happens to be men on their way to a job location. I remember way back when we could do that in the states, but the last time I was riding in the back of a pickup was in Tobago, down in the Caribbean. It's probably still legal down there also!
Another thing I saw the other day was electronic price markers on the shelves in a store. I had not seen them before. And, of course, all our measures here are in kilos and liters. You get used to it after a while, just like you get used to dealing with pesos instead of dollars.
The funny thing was that the store they were in was Woolworth. When was the last time you shopped in one of those stores?
No comments:
Post a Comment