Llama for Lunch by Lydia Laube Read Free Book Online Page A

over-the-top decor.
    As I walked along I decided that the folk here must be honest. I saw vendors’ carts left unattended in the gutters protected only by a piece of cloth that had been thrown over the contents and tucked in at the corners. You wouldn’t be able to do that down in Mexico City from what I’d read.
    I was completely floored by the beauty of the town’s bank and wondered why all banks couldn’t be like this. Entering from the street through big wooden gates and a little portico, you came to the teller’s desks, which were on one side of yet another open courtyard full of natural light where flowers bloomed around a fountain. Mexicans seemed to be able to make all kinds of mundane places attractive. Unfortunately this didn’t always go hand in hand with efficiency. For some unfathomable reason the bank only changed dollars between half-past-nine and eleven in the morning. And later, between one and four, came siesta when everything shut.
    The market was just a short way down the street from my hotel. It had a big veggie section packed with many stalls of fresh produce where I bought some delicious guavas. There were also stalls that sold huge glasses of fresh juices that I tried and found scrumptious. Women sat on the ground with cactus and prickly pear fruit laid out neatly in green rows on mats. The rest of the goods were pretty ordinary – clothes, shoes and tourist junk. No one harassed me. I could stop and fiddle with the goods to my heart’s content. I sat on a stool at the counter of a makeshift stall and had hamburgerzitas – better than McDonald’s and you got chips too. The chips were fried in corn oil, not cooked all the way through and came covered with sweet tomato sauce. The hamburgerzita had a slice of ham to keep the meat patty company as well as cheese and salad.
    Street food stalls, where people sat on tiny stools alongside the gutter or walls, offered food that looked yummy. There were tacos and corn cobs grilled on braziers. After drinking my fijoa juice I watched the proprietress washing glasses with water from a tap on the wall and realised that it probably came from the canal. I’d passed the canal on my walk. It was a stinking horror of filth.
    In a small shop I bought a bag of local coffee, bananas, bottled water and laundry powder that was sold from an open drum for a peso a kilo. It smelt like Omo, looked like Omo and was blue, so I can only hope it was. Seeing some bottles of hair colour I decided that if I rinsed my hair a bit darker it might make me look more like a local. Most Mexicans look half Indian. There are 1.7 million descendants of ancient Aztecans in the country.
    And now I looked like one of them. I hadn’t meant to come out jet black like an Indian but, as usual, what I had hoped would be a light golden brown had turned out a definite light golden black. Maybe it worked. People now seemed surprised whenever I said ‘No, hablo espanol’.
    That evening I ate at a small cafe close to my hotel. When I sat down at the table I thought that the red cloth had a pattern of black dots on it but the dots, resenting my intrusion, arose en masse and flew away. The waiter casually flicked their retreat along with a tea towel. Then I saw that the whole place was swarming with flies. They left me alone, however, while I ate a solid meal of enchaladas stuffed with cheese and drank delicious fresh orange juice. After dinner I was chewing gum to clean my teeth and, good grief, there was tooth filling in the gum. Lots of it. Oh, no, not again! This had happened to me in China. Why was it that the minute I got to a thirdworld country I lost a filling?
    At seven in the morning, before it was even properly light, I was awoken by the sound of clanging church bells – and what I hoped were firecrackers and not a revolution going on outside. At first I thought that this day must be Sunday, but it wasn’t. The bells started again at twelve and I decided that if this happened on a