Week 2

DAY EIGHT

After a long day of Spanish classes and shopping, we decide to go out for a meal to somewhere recommended in the Lonely Planet Guide.


Mayambe wasn’t there the last time we were in San Cristobal, and serves an interesting selection of curry and Lebanese food. We walk down there with Daisy in the sling, and enter another world – the world of the hippy hanging out traveller.
The only Mexicans in Mayambe are waiting on tables, and the clientele are American, English and German. I had forgotten, in a week, how much more reserved tourists are. After being used to being stopped every five seconds with Daisy, so she can be kissed and cooed over, I enter the restaurant with her in the sling confidently smiling. Not a flicker of a response from anyone in the restaurant. I don’t know whether it put her pretty little nose out of joint, but it didn’t do much for mine.

Daisy slumbers peacefully through most of our meal, after twenty minutes of craning her neck to look at everything, and the food is very fine. I also get my gin and tonic, though when we try and ask where they bought the tonic, the shop they mention doesn’t seem to stock it.

We feel very privileged to be travelling with such a portable baby. Daisy has not cramped our style in any way on our trip, but she has massively enhanced it. We can still go out for a meal, see friends and do all the things we would have done, but we also meet more people and have interesting conversations. She provides a talking point for people who we would otherwise not have met, and we’ve been met with smiles almost everywhere.

Thanks to the peso being so low against the pound, eating out is very affordable, even for those of us living on our maternity benefit. The two-course meal with drinks comes to twelve pounds fifty.

It’s not until we return that I realise I have been wandering around with my bra undone all evening (thankfully covered up by the sling). Oh, the joys of breastfeeding, or ‘chichi’, as they call it in the market.