Tuesday August 12After eating breakfast in our room Ken went to the hotel lobby to check his Gmail. The Gmail notice he wanted said that our Long awaited package from Texas was ready for pickup by recipient – that being us.
He excitedly burst back into our room. I was calmly doing initial work on the camel quilt. I was very pleased, too. We quickly donned our walking gear and set of to the downtown Post Office.
The Post Office seemed to be in disguise. Once inside it smelled like Canadian Post Offices and did look like ones at home. The first person we tried to discuss the package with needed an interpreter. The person who acted as our interpreter just happened to be there doing some type of mail transaction. Soon the boss was on the case trying to find our package. She phoned, emailed, Googled, etc. Then came out to tell us the final word – in Spanish. Her compadre used Yahoo translator to let us know to come back to three. We did understand "tres". We thought it meant to come back in three days (you can not imagine our disappointment). When it was 3 pm (about three hours away) I was almost in tears of happiness.
We walked home to the Hotel. Mean time the courier service brought our package to the Hotel but could not leave it. We had to go over to by the Walmart, driving Pepe, to pick it up. Once we actually found the place we were thrilled to get the part. We got some jugos from Walmart then went and got the part installed. Pepe was Pepe's mechanic. Ken anxiously waited while the part was being installed. I tried to calm my nerves by painting a picture of vegetables that I saw in the newspaper. We were very happy to get back to being able to drive.
We then celebrated by eating downtown. We realized that if we had been driving all the time we would not have had as stress free of a holiday. Parking and driving were problems we did not have to experience. We had to pay to park that night while walking to the restaurant. We both got in really good shape and lost weight from walking. It was a good experience.
Monday August 11We patiently waited for our package of a wheel bearing, etc. We waited until after 2 pm.– no package. I saw someone hand one letter to Norma – ugh! We decided to go downtown for lunch. We went to an interesting open front restaurant like an old Moose Jaw, SK. restaurant from the 1940's. Great Mexican food! The restaurant had an interesting name, too, – "La Cabana" De Le Plazuela.
We found the Century 21 office. The real estate agent spoke no English, his secretary only spoke minimal English. He took us to his car (parked in the sun) and drove us to look at three houses in the $65,000. range. He drove around the neighborhood like he was lost and he had no map. One place his didn't have the key for and he took us to one place twice. He didn't even realize he had taken us twice until we pointed it out. He had to phone the office to get information on how to get there. He was really out of it.
The places were brand new, made out of solid cement and were like spec homes in Canada. They had no real character or charm but for some tiles and cement cove molding. The kitchens were small with very limited counter space and cupboards, not like our Canadian kitchens. Appliances were not included. Basically, you could get a new home for under the price of a junk lot on Gabriola. Hummm! Would we want to live in Zacatecas for part of the year? Something to think about.
Ken stocked up on juice and we went to the bakery one last time. I reluctantly said good bye to Poochie.
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