Comings and Goings

I had a couple of slightly strange/unsettling experiences yesterday...

The first is that I had a 1200 appointment at La Paz spa for a body wrap. I´ve had them in the past and at different spas, and they were all the same: massage the body with special ´stuff´, wrap, heat for 20 minutes, rinse. But here...well, there was no gentle massaging into the skin, no cocoon-like wrap, no incubating heat, and no rinse! Instead, I was roughly worked over with two very cold oil concoctions and told not to shower for the remainder of the day. The end.

The other is that I thought for about 2 hours that someone had gotten the numbers from my debit card and made fraudulent charges to my account. If this has ever happened to you (and despite my vigilance, it´s happened to me on more than one occasion), then you understand how your tummy flips and your stress levels soar as you contemplate the inconveniences of cancelling your card, closing your old account and opening a new one and trying to negotiate the details from a foreign country where you are temporarily without recourse to your funds. So it was with an immense sigh of relief but also a serious pang of embarassment when I finally got in touch with the bank only to be reminded that I had, in fact, made the purchase in question a few days earlier. Oops.

To shake off the weird vibe of the day, I stopped by a photography exhibition showcasing local artist Patricio Robles Gil and another guy whose name totally escapes me at the moment. The former housed pictures of exotic wildlife, flora and several landscapes and, though the subjects were deserving and the talent was clearly top-notch, I thought it was kind of unremarkable...like blown-up glossies of any edition of National Geographic - gorgeous but a bit commonplace now.

On the other hand, Mr. X´s exhibition, entitled Falsos Reflejos, was an inspired collection of black-and-white pairs of females in the nude, skillfully contorted in graceful poses that mirrored one another at first glance, but on closer inspection were actually slightly different: a left leg crossed instead of a right, palms facing up instead of down. I feel uncomfortable taking photos of photos (unlike paintings), so I´ll have to post an update when I remember the guy´s name and then you can look ém up.

On Wednesday I went to the local artisans´market, where they sell things like wood carvings, woven baskets, textiles and trinkets. Showing what I like to think of as ´great self-restraint´, I left only $10 poorer with a ceramic vase painted in traditional blue and white, some embroidered doilies and a game of loteria, purchased out of nostalgia. I recall playing this game (basically illustrated bingo) in school as a child during the obligatory Spanish lessons of south Texas´public elementary schools. I´m a bit surprised now because some of the cards would probably not go over so well with our present society´s rigid sense of political correctness. Examples:

El Borracho (the drunk) - Illustrated by a disheveled man holding a liquor bottle.
El Diablito (the little devil) - The infamous red body, forked tail, horns and pitchfork.
La Sirena (the mermaid) - Bare breasts for 8-9 year olds?
El Negrito (the little black man, apparently) - Depicted in severely mismatched clothing, wearing a straw hat and carrying a cane. Um, okay...

But I still think it´s fun so I´m going back today to buy one for my kid sister, who turned 7 yesterday.

Tomorrow we board the 0600 bus outta here, so more in a few days...