They’re busy building high rises here in Puerto Vallarte and swear to God every conversation down in the main shopping zone somehow seems to turn into a pitch for a condo or timeshare.  It starts out "Hey amigo…" and they ask you where you’re from and how long you’ve been here and how long you’re staying and whether or not you’re traveling alone (which I would always answer ‘no’ to even if I was…), and then it segues into a goddamned condo pitch.  Some of the stores along the ocean front shopping zone have put "no timeshare" signs in the windows.

I’ve bought a few nice things to bring back home (I must show you my rabbit…), but I’d probably have bought twice as much it if weren’t for the aggressiveness of the street vendors. Instead of just letting me shop in peace they absolutely have to try and drag you in off the street and into their shop.  By the time I get home I’ll have "No gracias" down pat. (My brother says it’s "Gracias no", but here everyone is saying it "No gracias", so I’m just going with the flow…)

But I am having a wonderful time here so don’t take the above as a complaint so much as just a random observation.  The people here are very friendly and it’s easy for me now to just walk into any little shop here and if I see something I want buy it.  You need very little Spanish in the small convenience stores and the staff in the expensive crafts and jewelry stores all know enough English that you can get by easily.  I greet them with Hola, as they meet me at the door.  A couple times staff has taken that to mean I speak Spanish and start talking to me in it, but when they see that flash of panic on my face they’ve quickly switched to English.  I make sure to say "please" and "thank you" in Spanish even then.

I walked into an OXXO…its like the local equivalent to a 7-11 or a Royal Farms back in Maryland…to get something to drink as I strolled around with my camera.  (I’ve been sticking to soda and beer during my stay here, with the occasional bottled water)  They sell these really convenient little half size cans of soda down here for 40 pesos.  I was standing in line at the counter with about a half dozen locals, all busy chit-chatting with each other and I understood not a word of it and it didn’t matter. 

My fear of the language barrier has kept me from seeing so much of the world and I think I finally realize now that it isn’t anything to be afraid of.  Here in the tourist zones everybody seems to get by with a little basic Spanish and a little basic English and it works out somehow.  The locals, again at least here in the tourist zone, really do appreciate it when you make an effort, and without a doubt if I stayed here longer then a weekend I’d find myself picking up all kinds of useful phrases here and there. 

But there in the convenience store it simply didn’t matter that I can’t really speak Spanish much at all.  What the clerk needed to know was what I wanted to buy, which was obvious enough from the half can of Coke I brought up to the counter.  And all I needed to know was to pay him 40 pesos for it, which was marked plainly on the can.  I gave him a 50 peso note and he gave me back a 10 peso coin.  Its been like that for me ever since Thursday afternoon.  I really never needed to know the language of a country I want to visit as well as a native.  At least if all I plan on doing is sticking to the tourist zones.  Just well enough to be polite and respectful.  In the tourist zones all over the world probably, they’re use to Gringos.

I grew up in the Washington D.C. area, which arguably qualifies as a tourist zone.  I am so glad right now that I have always taken a forbearing attitude to the non English speaking foreigners I’ve encountered, and tried at times to be helpful when I could.  A couple years ago on one of my road trips through the southwest I came across a tour bus full of Germans in Monument Valley.  I saw a middle aged German man taking a photo of the license plate of my car…it’s a special plate with the state bird, the blue Heron, in the middle.  You pay a little extra for it and the money goes to the Chesapeake Bay clean-up fund.  The German saw me watching him and became a bit embarrassed and started gesturing with his camera that he was just taking a picture and it was obvious he didn’t speak a word of English.  I wanted to tell him about the plate because I thought he’d be interested in that little bit of information to go with the photo he was taking, but I do not speak any German.  All I could do was gesture back at him that it was okay, I didn’t mind his taking pictures of my car or the license plate on it.  Basically we just smiled at each other, nodded, and went on our separate ways.  Now I’m the stranger in a strange land and I’m real glad I don’t have any memories of being rude to foreigners to feel ashamed about now.

[Edited a tad to fix the value of the soda I bought…  That’s 40 pesos not 4.  I was thinking in dollars as I wrote that…]