Big Mexico: Barrancas de Cobre (Copper Canyon)

Saturday morning seemed to come awfully quickly. Our breakfast included the usual Mexican items: pan dulces, stiff coffee, freshly squeezed orange juice, plus an egg dish made with the leftover meat from the banquet the night before.

Eduardo, the city tour guide, had also been hired by Nichols Expeditions to take us to Creel where we would meet up with the next set of guides. Eduardo spoke English very well, and had a fondness for cookies. We stopped, north of Cuauhtemoc, to see the Mennonite museum. A large group of conservative Mennonites from Canada purchased many thousands of acres back in the 1920's to start a community. Since then, they have continued to purchase farm land and grow their 'campos'. They are incredibly prosperous, with modern homes that resemble the ranch-style mc-mansions in the Panhandle of Texas. Lining the road, all the way north, were farm implement dealerships, car dealerships, fertilizer and seed stores, just about any kind of industry you can imagine that has anything to do with farming. Most of the apples grown in Mexico are grown in this area, along with oats, wheat, corn, and other staples.

Mennonite Museum near Cuauhtemoc, Chihuahua

Many of the farms are dairies, and cheese is one of their primary exports. We stopped at a cheese factory and were impressed with how clean it was and how wonderful it smelled. Someone purchased a half kilo of fresh cheese and cut it up for all of us to sample. It had that slight squeek when you bite into it, typical of new cheeses.  The museum was full of old implements, tools and household goods. The building itself was typical of a large family dwelling, complete with pantry on the north wall full of home canned fruits and vegetables, butter churns, wood stove, and an enormous table with a bench seat (for boys) on the wall side, and chairs for the girls (who would be getting up often to serve) on the opposite side. The bedrooms were decked out with normal beds, convertible beds (a bench by day....lift the lid and it's a bed inside), clothing, decorations, Hope Chest, etc, typical of boys' and girls' rooms, plus a salon and master bedroom.

The Mennonites are still in villages all over the huge valley. Some are very conservative, others have become more modern. We visited the home of a conservative family that makes cookies the old German way. The home, yard, barnyard, and grounds were immaculate and manicured. The women still dress in puffy sleeved long dresses, gathered at the waist, with hair pulled back in a bun. The cookies were frozen and there were many kinds to choose from. Most of us purchased a few but were too full from breakfast and the cheese break to eat any. When we finally got around to trying them, they were very soft, more like small cakes and quite sweet.

In the museum, the hostess and other locals spoke German. My tour room-mate Lia is German and she had fun chatting with them in their old dialect. Most speak Spanish too, which they learn in school. Eduardo told us that the children still go only through 8th grade. From the Mennonite perspective, too much education leads young people away from the old lifestyle and religion.

The entire area from Cuauhtemoc north to Colonia Alvaro Obregon is Mennonite territory. They are also a large employer of the Tarahumaras from Copper Canyon, and they've been very generous sending food and needed equipment to those poor people who have suffered so much from the drought of the last three years. There appears to be a loving and strong sybiotic relationship between the Tarahumaras and the Mennonites.


Creel: The route to Creel was curvy and through forests resembling Northern New Mexico. Our guide Eduardo bid us farewell and turned us over to new guides, Noel and Manuel who loaded our luggage into two large vans equipped with seats on the top for spectacular viewing opportunities.

Our guides for Barrancas de
Cobre: Roberto and Noel

  

The amusing long-toed boots that
men in Chihuahua favor.

 

Stone Hongos

After lunch at a local restaurant, we headed down into the canyon to visit some Tarahumara villages that have been devastated by the drought. According to Noel they have received less than 6 inches of rain in the last three years!! They've lost entire apple and cherry orchards and have quit planting corn altogether since they've lost three yearly crops in a row. Their agriculture is almost exclusively dependent on the annual summer rains.

The area had some interesting rock formations in the shape of 'hongos' (mushrooms) and the second area had tall slim monoliths like standing monks in their robes. One village featured a store inside a cave where several women were selling things they'd made like wooden dolls, woven belts, toys, jewelry, and musical instruments. The area was dusty and bone dry. Dogs were skinny and worn. It's a wonder anyone is able to survive there at all.

A Tarahumara family compound.

The cave store and it's proprietress.

Little girl with her cat.

The next major stop was in a small town with a beautiful cemetery and church. It was full of people milling around waiting to receive their allotment of food from the government. It was being distributed from the front door of the church. As the newly arrived tourists we were inundated by children and young women selling crafts and chewing gum. The food consisted mostly of wheat flour, corn masa, dried noodles, dried beans, and sugar. Since most of the people had traveled by foot for long distances, it was probably beneficial that it wasn't mostly canned goods.

As the sun began to set, we drove further into the higher reaches of Barrancas de Cobre to our hotel, a primitive log building set against cliffs facing a river, near the town of Cusuare. On the way to the hotel I noticed a clinic and wondered if it might not be a good idea to talk to a doctor. I'd had several embarrassing coughing fits and worried that I might spread this horrid cold to the others in our cramped quarters in the vans.

Church where people received food.

Felicia and I went to see if anyone was at the clinic. It turned out that the clinic is also the temporary home of the doctor in residence. He was there, a tall slim man with the face of a saint. He practically gathered me into his arms and led me back to the exam room where I sat in a chair next to the desk. He never asked for my name, or any details of my health, nor did he weigh me, but he did take my blood pressure. I explained about the cold and the coughing. He shown a light down my throat and pronounced it infected, then rummaged around in some boxes on the floor for a box of pills and gathered a couple more medicines from the amply stocked shelves. He took a magic marker and slowly told me, as he made short deliberate marks on each box......"Morning, noon, evening", three marks on one box. "Morning only, then evening"....two marks on a plastic bottle. "Morning, noon, evening and bedtime", four marks on that box. I realized that my not speaking fluent Spanish may have prompted him to use the technique he probably uses daily with the Tarahumaras to make sure we all know when to take each medicine.

He refused to accept any money. "But I'm not a Mexican citizen" I said. He shook his head and replied, "This is a service of the Government." Wow. Real socialized medicine in action. How wonderful for him to be practicing where he doesn't have to fill out any forms, put information into some distant computer database, or go through all the other bureaucratic crap that Americans have to go through. I thanked him profusely and went back to the room to take one each of those medications as quickly as I could!

Our rustic hotel with kerosene lamps.

In the area around the little hotel there is no electricity, all light comes from kerosene lanterns. It's high in elevation so the nights can range from chilly to freezing. Each room had a bathroom with hot running water, kerosene lamps, and a pot-bellied stove for heat. At the end of the row of rooms was a large dining room with a huge fireplace at one end. We had 'happy hour' with wine margaritas and plenty of beer, followed by dinner with many local dishes, well prepared by our Tarahumara hostesses in their colorful dresses. Back in the rooms, someone had lit the fires and each one was warm and redolent with the smell of kerosene.

A family headed home with food for a week!

Valley of the Monks

A regular Monastery!

Big Mexico: Chihuahua City

Arrival in Chihuahua City corresponded with La Comida, the two hour mid-day lunch and siesta. The cab driver was even headed home after he dropped me off at the hotel.  I asked him about the drug dealers, how much of a problem are they, and is it difficult to live in Chihuahua these days? He shrugged and said yes, they're a big problem, and every family is affected in some way, but in general the people don't live in constant fear. The cartels mostly kill each other, but unfortunately, some of those who get killed are related. That was reassuring since Chihuahua is the most murderous state in all Mexico.

From sweet to smoking hot!

Our hotel, arranged by Nichol's Expeditions was a beautiful B&B, Boutique Hotel San Felipe,  in the heart of the city. Fortunately I felt a bit better after sleeping most of the way on the plane, and since the tour group was off on a City Tour, I wandered around a bit looking for a place to eat. There was a seafood restaurant about a block away, so I ordered the shrimp and octopus cocktail. A nice assortment of condiments on each table ranged from benign American Catsup to raging hot habanero salsa with flames rising up the label. It was absolutely delicious and made me agree with the sign that said "To eat here is to eat in heaven itself."

Back at the hotel, I took a brief nap between coughing fits. My friends arrived and we had a nice little reunion as I'd not seen some of them in several months, including my room mate Lia. She immediately took charge of my health and gave me some antihistamines that worked amazingly fast. We took a long walk around the city. They showed me some of the sites they'd visited on their city tour including the mansion, Quinta Gameros, built by a rich man for his mistress but never lived in because of the advent of the revolution in 1910. Pancho Villa's home is now a museum too, and it was open. I explored over there while the others checked out the store across the street. I spent way too much time trying to decipher the labels on the exhibits which were in Spanish and something vaguely resembling English. The Spanish was easier to understand. The home is filled with period furniture, some of it actually belonged to Villa's widow who only died about thirty years ago. It contains the car in which Pancho Villa was assassinated, cleaned up of course! And there was the usual assortment of weapons, photos of generals, and other military paraphernalia.

The hotel had arranged for their cook to prepare a meal of local dishes for us that evening. I should have taken notes on exactly what we had but memory will have to suffice. Gorditas made of corn and stuffed with cheeses, nopales (cactus) and other vegetables lightly pickled, a spicy crumble of meats with potatoes, handmade corn tortillas, a lovely mushroom dish made with spices and tomatoes, and chile rellenos. There was something yummy for dessert but I was in overload by then.

We went to bed stuffed, tired and happy, ready for an early trip across the vast expanse of Chihuahua, Mexico's largest state, to Copper Canyon.

Big Mexico: The longest night

I haven't posted for over a month because I've been traveling through Mexico which will be documented in a series of Blogs with "Big Mexico" in the title.

The trip almost didn't happen at all.

John and Mike came back from Palenque at the end of January with horrible colds. In our tiny house in San Cristobal, Chiapas, I ingested enough germs to take down an elephant.

Three days before the flight to Chihuahua, I came down hard. Both guys said the third day was the worst. The third day? That's when I would be flying!! Lots of sleep, fluids, kleenex, cough drops, nasal decongestant, and chicken soup couldn't stop the malaise. Time for a flight change. Oh happy days, it only cost half the price of the original ticket.

I knew the tour group from the states would be in Chihuahua until Saturday morning. I could reschedule and fly out on Friday, and still meet up with them. After that, all bets were off. They would be with a guide out in the boonies of Chihuahua, deep in Copper Canyon without any way for me to get to them. Friday was it.

Thursday I felt somewhat better, and decided to take a bus to Tuxtla and stay in a hotel so I could get up in plenty of time to catch that early flight to Mexico City, and then the second flight to Chihuahua. I didn't want to run the risk of missing either plane. But, being ill, fearful, a bit impoverished, and not thinking it through very well, I asked a cab driver to take me to the nearest hotel to the airport that was cheap.

Thus began the worst night of the trip.

There are no towns near the airport. There is a vaguely motel-like building, off the main road, out in the middle of nowhere, which is exactly where the airport is. The cab driver took $400 pesos and sped off leaving me with my bags in the hands of a ten year old boy in a dirt parking lot in front of a two story building with metal doors leading to monk cells. A man upstairs yelled to the kid to put me in room five. I went into a room that was as barebones as it's possible to be without actually being a grave.  The bed was a single thin mattress on a concrete slab elevated by four concrete blocks. There was no furniture. The TV was in a cage mounted high up on the wall. I couldn't have reached the on-off button without jumping. There was one plug next to the TV, also higher than I could reach. The one and only light was a single bulb hanging from the ceiling by a thread, or maybe a bare wire. A metal door led to the bathroom which was behind a six foot wall, open air above to the room's ceiling. I opened the door. There was a single sink, a toilet with no seat, and a garden hose spigot mounted on the wall where one would hope a shower head might be. And a gaping hole in the wall to the outside. Four concrete blocks were missing creating what can only be considered the bathroom window. Any slim guy could shimmy through that hole and into the bathroom.

I went outside and called up the fellow upstairs. "There's no window in the bathroom." I said. He sent the kid back downstairs to take me to a different room. It was identical to the first, except that the bathroom window had a wooden frame inside it with a bug screen stretched across. Someone had pushed it almost entirely out of the block frame. I showed it to the kid, and said "This isn't secure." He promptly hopped up onto the bare toilet, grabbed the wood on the frame, and wrenched it back inside. "It's ok now" he said.

Oh dear.

On the positive side, the bathroom door locked from both the inside and the outside. I suppose a burglar coming through the screened-in window would make some noise and then would have to scramble over the tiled walls into the bedroom. That just might give me time to escape.

More on the positive side. It's out in the middle of nowhere. With lights off, and hardly a soul staying there, which room would a burglar chose to invade? And what is the likelihood there is a burglar out here anyway? It's not like there are bunches of other great places to break into and get stuff.

I was too sick to think any more positive thoughts. It was just one of those times when you must have faith that nothing bad is going to happen, and let it go. All I wanted to do was sleep and get up the next day and get on a damned airplane.

The room was very clean and except for the sheer poverty, it might have been in Switzerland. The bottom sheet was so thin the label on the mattress could be read through it. There were two pillows and a top sheet. No blanket, no towels in the bathroom, and just enough toilet paper, carefully arranged in a neat folded pile, to poop once.

Oh dear.

I got into bed and drifted off to tolerably loud Mexican banda music coming from the bar next door. Sometime in the night dogs started barking. I tried to go back to sleep but then more dogs chimed in. Listening carefully I counted twelve distinct dog voices ranging from Chihuahuas, a schnauzer, the rolling rrrrrrr of a beagle, to the deep throated bark of a German Shepard. Suddenly it stopped. Oh good. Back to sleep. Thanks to the glass-free bathroom window the room filled with skunk smell. Strong, pungent, biting. I buried my nose in the pillow and fell asleep an hour later hoping the oily stench didn't penetrate my clothes. Some time later I woke up cold and dug through my bag for a sweat shirt, long pants, and the towel which was large enough to serve as a blanket. Asleep again. Awakened by a tremendous roar. Apparently my hotel near the airport was VERY near the airport, maybe even at the end of the runway. Fortunately the Tuxtla airport is small and has only ten or twelve flights a day.  Just drifting off when there was another series of loud roars as three giant trucks went by, grinding their gears on the hill. Will these interruptions ever stop? Drifted off again.  I was awakened by a light that came on in the room and a strange static noise. OMG, someone was in the room with me and had turned on the light!! I came shooting out of bed to discover the TV had come on all by itself. It's not enough that animals and people contrived to keep me up all night, now here's an evil spirit  turning the television on?? I grabbed a pen out of my purse and jumped up and down poking at the plug until it came loose from the socket. No devil is going to turn on the friggin TV again if I can help it. Then more mad than tired I finally drifted back to sleep........CockADoodleDoooooooo!!!! The roosters started in, one after another, each trying to outdo the guy in the next yard.

Fine. Fine. I was done with this nonsense. Time to get up and take a shower. Oh, right, only cold water and no shower head. Grin and bear it, there's no other choice. I was ready to go at 5:30 when there was a knock on the door. The fellow upstairs had called a taxi for me and it was waiting. I guess the cab driver had asked him to do that. He was very sweet, even asked me if I'd slept well......

Seriously, what did I expect for $200 pesos a night?

La Gruta

South of San Cristobal, in the limestone mountains, there are caves. Some are dinky, dank, and home to small animals, but a few are large caverns reaching a kilometer or two into the mountain.

Entrance to the cavern.

One cavern is called La Gruta, the grotto. It's a live and growing cave with water constantly dripping down forming ever longer stalactites, and during the rainy season, a spring at the back of the cave feeds a rather deep stream.

Outside the cave is a park, owned by and guarded by the federal government. A military installation is just down the road. It's a wooded forest filled with picnic areas equipped with cement structures that double as picnic table and wood fired grill. Saturday I went there for the first time with new friends Laurie and Tom. Laurie is the other student in my Spanish class with Edith (pronounced eh-DEETH).

The place was populated with locals from San Cristobal and the surrounding area. We were the only Gringos. The entrance to the cave is a couple of kilometers through a beautiful and very tall pine forest, past picnic'ers, and children riding ponies. The cave is the reason for the park, but the entrance and ticket booth were well obscured by all the other activities.

Inside, looking out.

Two long buildings with an open covered patio housed a dozen food vendors, all pretty much selling the same food: quesadillas, tacos, fried bananas with liquid cheese squeezed over, potato chips with Valentina sauce, grilled meats and onions, roasted corn, corn kernels with chile and mayonnaise, and fried corn bread. Next door is a riding stable and for $15 pesos (about a dollar) you can ride a horse for half an hour.

Formations with Electrical wires....

Another set of two buildings facing each other across a patio housed the artisans who sell exactly the same stuff as in the markets: hand embroidered clothing, trinkets, plastic toys, painted ceramic animals, baggy drawstring pants, warm Mexican hoodies, wool capes and scarves. Behind that building was a restroom featuring the usual 3 peso entrance fee which entitles you to a small wad of toilet paper, and in front of the cave entrance......an elaborate shrine to Our Lady of Guadalupe.

The cave entrance looks a bit like the entrance at Carlsbad Caverns, only not so deep. This cavern is not below ground at all, but a fairly level "tube" into the side of the mountain.  There had been no attempt to hide the electric lines which were strung up in a set of four wires pulled tight between insulators bolted to the stone walls. The bulbs were the newer tubular florescent bulbs sticking out of sockets, blinding if you looked directly at them. The cave has little color, but a lot of formations. Some of the larger stalactites are curved toward the back of the cave, telling of a constant breeze blowing in that direction as the water evaporated over the last few centuries. Seeing those was a surprise, since the entrance has a strong cold breeze coming OUT of the cave.

Very wet walls and growing formations.

A wide concrete walkway has been built above the "river" at the bottom of the cavern. In the far reaches there was water standing in pools, but it was dry closer to the entrance. The walkway itself was quite wet, pooled with water in some places, and the walls of the cave were slimy. Quite a bit more water in this cave than Carlsbad, but probably much more like Carlsbad was during it's growth in the Pleistocene. Children, around the age of 10 or 12 were guides in the cave. Each one was droning in a horrible monotone the memorized sequence of words for each stop along the walkway.  I asked one little girl-guide if the river ever has water flowing in it, and she said yes, during the rainy season.

Laurie and Tom

At the entrance are quite a few hand-lettered signs saying that smoking, eating, drinking and "making bathroom" are prohibited in the cave. We got a laugh out of that one, as many Mexican men seem to think peeing on things and over edges of cliffs (or in this case a railing) is a fun thing to do.

As we walked along, several chubby uniformed men dashed past us down the walkway. At the end of the raised platform, there was a crowd of people. Apparently some locals had climbed under the railing, gathered on the rocks at the back of the cave with candles and incense, and were holding a ceremony. The excitement was over by the time we got there, the authorities were gently escorting them back under the rail. The women had short (now dead) candles in their hands and were dressed in traditional indigenous clothing. Some children were with them, and a couple of men, but the ceremonial group was mostly women. From the silence and the body language, I gathered this might be a fairly common occurrence and no one was upset about it. This cave was probably sacred to the Mayans and the modern Mayans still use it for religious purposes, even though it's no longer "theirs".

The lovely forest in the Park.

Daily Life

I thought it might be fun to show a few pictures of daily life. Like pumping water.....

How we get water out
of the big glass jug. Notice
the balancing act with the pitcher!

Yesterday was cloudy and by midday it was raining, thundering, lightning and hailing. The air was cold and the streets almost deserted. It was quiet except for the occasional siren. We ran out of water.

Water is delivered in large glass or plastic bottles by large lumbering trucks that come down each street about once very two hours. Each company plays different music: Over the Rainbow, Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head, etc. If you want to exchange your empty bottle with a new full one, you must wait outside for the truck, because by the time you hear the music and get out to the stoop, the truck will have already passed.

So this morning, it was quite chilly after yesterdays' storm, and I sat out on the stoop reading a book until my butt was almost frozen to the step. An hour passed before the truck showed up, and it wasn't playing music. It was just luck that I happened to look up and spot it far down the street. If I were one of those drivers, hearing that same music all day long, I wouldn't last three days at the job. It would be a nightmare right up there with "It's a Small World After All" - that hideous ride in Disneyland.

Our bottle is glass, so it's even heavier and more awkward than the plastic ones which have a built-in handle. The strong young driver hopped out and I opened the gate. He lugged that monster bottle up to the house and put it inside. I always tip them at least 5 pesos for that, as they aren't required to do it.

Then Mike and I walked to the Mercado Organica around 10:00. They were just getting set up so we were able to get first crack at the wonderful vegetables and even purchased some whole wheat cookies that have very little sugar and are made from locally grown and roasted cocoa beans. Heavenly.

Just before the hail storm.

Drying vegies.

But, back home, it's always necessary to wash the vegetables and fruits in disinfectant. So here are some photos of life at home.....

Vegies in the disinfectant.

Sweet Bits (Dulces)

A sugar-addicted friend once pointed out that Halloween marks the beginning of the Sugar Holidays: Halloween, Christmas, Valentine's Day, Easter......A time-frame inundated with sugar, candy, special treats, but always punctuated in January with a plethora of new diets (that really work!) put out by women's magazines.

I think Mexico is on a perpetual sugar holiday. There is little distinction between holidays, Saint's days, national holiday celebrations, personal birthdays, birthdays of Mayan gods or politicians.....it's all about eating sweet treats.

Party supplies by the ton.

San Cristobal features an artesanal market south of the Zocolo, down la Calle de Dulces (not it's real name). I've begun calling it that because there is a Mayoreo (wholesale store) with every kind of candy, so many brands (all Mexican) that it would blow your mind, plus pinatas in hundreds of shapes and sizes, party supplies, and sweet alcoholic beverages like Sherry and brandy. Across the street from that store is a candy/sweets cafe that sells coffee to go along with whatever sugary confection you've chosen from their glass case. On the corner is the Michoacan ice cream store. That's my favorite, in spite of having gotten very sick on a Rompope paleta in Erongaricuaro (in the state of Michoacan)  That ice cream is the best in Mexico, at least I've not had better. Every week or so I buy a half-liter of the chocolate-coffee blend and we often have a small cup of it in the evening with Kahlua drizzled over. Heaven!!!

There are at least three bakeries on this street, one of which is French and makes the most delectable pan au chocolat, some also stuffed with banana. I'm drooling on the keyboard.

Inside the Mayoreo wholesale candy store.

Ratones.....

At the indoor artesanal market, they sell hand-made clothing, beautifully embroidered shirts and soft drawstring pants from Guatemala. They'll tell you everything is made here and by hand, even though much of the thick embroidery is clearly done by machine. And in many of the stalls: traditional sweets. Bees abound in there, drawn by the sugar. Nobody bothers to shoo them away because they don't carry germs like flies. Serenaded by the buzzing, you may linger over crispy fried cookie shells stuffed with white cream or fist sized wads of baked merenge sprinkled with cinnamon. Chunks of squash that appear to be similar in thick rind to pumpkin have been stewed in brown sugar syrup. Dried coconut is blended with sweet goo and stuck together in piles that resemble haystacks. Cookies of every shape, size, and flavor have been coated with decorator icing or slathered in chocolate. Marzipan gets shaped into Mayan gods or animals. White sugar skulls and plaques of sugar painted with Catrinas (day of the dead skeleton people) and lovely crisp cookie layers drenched in honey and cut into rectangles sit next to ratones, those chocolate morsels in the shape of large brown rats.....

Did I forget anything? OMG. Just writing about it gives me a sugar high.

Cultural misinformation

The casita is at the back of a property that includes two other apartments and another larger garden. Both places are substantially more expensive and quite a bit lovelier inside. The turnover of renters is frequent, most people stay from two weeks to two months.

When I arrived, the larger apartment housed a couple from England who are on a Round-The-World trip. They left a couple of weeks ago, and a couple from Buffalo, New York are there now. Their names are easy to remember:  Ben and Gerry!!  Neither of them are big fans of ice cream......

They also own a home in San Miguel de Allende. Gerry is a Unitarian, so we had an instantaneous connection as well as some acquaintances in common. Their home is rented until March, so they thought they'd try living somewhere else in Mexico for a while. Neither speak much (or any) Spanish. Gerry came with me to my class and now wants to take a beginner's class from one of the schools. I showed her the free Learn Spanish program on SpanishDICT.com and she loved it. I think she'll make some real progress here as there are so few English speakers....except of course, those of us who rent in the same complex!

Ben and Gerry had been over to the Cinepolis the day before. It's a multi-screen theater in the only indoor shopping center. They wanted to see the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (with subtitles in Spanish). The show was to start at 1:30, so we hiked the 2 miles over to the theater only to find it closed up. No signs or anything...... That should have been my first clue that we are not in the US anymore!!

We asked around and were told it opened at 2:30. But Gerry was certain she'd seen the time inside posted as 1:30. Finally they opened and the girl selling tickets was almost blank when I asked why the theater had been closed. She told me they opened at 2:30, looking at me like I was an idiot. Well, yes, I pointed at the times posted (which clearly showed the movie starting at 1:30) and she continued to look at me blankly. Finally I asked, what happened to the 1:30 show? She said curtly, that's Saturday and Sunday.

Nowhere did any sign say the posted time was for weekends only.....you're just supposed to know that I suppose. We shopped at Chedrauhui for a bit and walked back home. If there'd been an early show we might have stayed but the next movie started at 7:40.

Oh well. I got some shopping done and put in a four mile walk. Plus, going there and back I got to know Ben and Gerry. The day was hardly wasted.