MUNGO EATS Latin America

Another day in Cusco, another day of chores.  Kevin was hoping to get some work done on the van and the trailer and was planning on getting a garage to do the work for us, but for some reason, we can’t seem to find what we are looking for in this town.  We need some muffler work done, and in every other town, every other corner has a muffler shop, but we could not find a single one in Cusco.  Also, the wheel bearings on the trailer need regreasing, but we were having trouble finding someone to do this as well.  In the end, Kevin decided  to just do the work himself.  It’s not that the work is difficult, it is messy, and it has been raining nonstop in this town for the past 3 weeks, so the ground is wet and muddy.  Needs to be done though.  Today we went to buy grease for the bearings.  You don’t learn those words in a language school.  We managed though, found what we need. 

Since I don’t have any great  adventure to write about, I thought I would write about “jobs you would never see in Canada”.  As we travel through Latin America, we have seen many people making a living selling things or doing things that just would not fly in Canada.  Let me tell you about it. 

People will sell ANYTHING in the streets.  Some of my favorites are the following:

TV remote salesman, Cell phone charger salesman, pieces of rope salesman, and the best one…rat poison salesman. 

There are a whole lot of people who sit on the street corners, with half a dozen cell phones on their lap, that will sell you cell time on their phones.  Usually, the phones are tied to them with cords or rope (probably bought from the pieces of rope salesman) so you don’t take off with them. 

In Cartagena, we saw many, many people selling juice on the streets, usually lemonade or orange juice.  Doesn’t sound so strange.  What made it strange was that they pushed their juice around in a big fish tank mounted to a cart.  When you ordered a juice, they would just scoop some out of the fish tank with a cup, and then resume pushing their cart down the street. 

All sorts of food is sold on the streets.  My favorites here are the corn roasters, who just have a small hibachi of coals and roast corn on the cob for you, and in Panama, the vendors cut hot dog wieners in a spiral and then skewered them on a stick and roasted them, so you could have “fancy” twisty wieners on a stick! 

Peru has the best “models” to pose with.  In  all the touristy towns,  mostly young girls are dressed up in traditional indigenous clothing and will pose for a picture, for cash.  Most of them have some type of animal pose with you, an alpaca or, even better, a little lamb wearing a chuyo (traditional Peruvian toque!).

But of all the strange professions we have seen, THE BEST has been the knife/machete sharpening guy that we saw in Mexico.  This was an older fellow, who had adapted a bicycle to spin a sharpening stone as he pedaled, and would sharpen your blade while you waited. 

So anyone reading this, who has not found their true calling in life, maybe one of these jobs is for you!!!