Back to Chedraui, the local out-of-town supermarket, to buy all the things you can’t find anywhere else. Actually, we can’t find that many of them in Chedraui, either.
Now that Day of the Dead is over, it is apparently Christmas, which Mexicans seem to celebrate by buying Ferrero Roche. They seem to be a really big thing here, and you can buy cartons of them in various festive shapes along with Christmassy Kinder Eggs. Other popular items seem to be Christmas underwear (of course) and lights that flash and play O Come O Ye Faithful, or, somewhat ironically, Silent Night.
Sadly, we haven’t come looking for Christmas lights, so we’re bound to be disappointed. We always come back from Chedraui clinking with alcohol, since wine is pretty hard to obtain anywhere else. Last time we were out here it was virtually impossible to get wine at all, so we should think ourselves lucky we can get it in Chedraui.
We keep trying to buy Mexican wine, since people tell us it has improved massively, but Chedraui seems to keep hiding it behind everything else. Any Mexican wine that does exist is called things like “The blessed tears of Christ our Lord and the Virgin Mary”, which rather puts me off buying it. Mind you, that’s fairly typical here, even the rice we buy has a picture of the Blessed Virgin on it.
By the time we clink our way back home, we’ve bought wine (Californian, sorry, but at least the food miles are fewer than they would be at home), amaretto and baby tights – which only come in purple and red for some reason. We also spot several women from Zinacantan browsing for irons and toasters in the electrical section.
Zinacantan is the richest of the local villages, and the families there are great flowergrowers. They wear beautiful traditional costume embroidered with flowers all over (must be awful to wash), and they have tremendous pride in their costume, so most (including children) continue to wear it. Seeing them browsing in Chedraui makes me wonder how long this will keep going.
At home, we give Daisy a bath, using the bath toys (not suitable for children under three) we bought in the local market. She is really loving her baths now, but I don’t think she realises just how jealous we are of her ability to immerse herself in water – only showers here. Still, she is keen to share the experience and splashes us all over.
1 comment:
It's the new years underwear you should be looking for. Mexican tradition has it that if you are single and on the look out you must wear red underwear on new years eve. I guess you then spend the evening checking each others under garments in the search for a partner. You'd probably need two or three bottles of mexican plonk as an appetiser...
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