Friday, July 25, 2008

Guaymas Commerce Part I

A glimpse into commerce in my town...

This is the place we buy our drinking water. We take in our two 5 gallon containers, they wash them and refill them with purified water. It costs $6 pesos/container (about 0.60 US cents.) It's fast, efficient, clean and one of the guys carries the containers out to the truck for which I give them a tip.













Recently we took our truck to this auto shop for an oil change and a check on the transmission and differential. It's located about 6 blocks from our apt and Lolita's son, Chuy, said they do good work. It is a very small shop and they do a lot of the work right on the street or across the street in a little vacant space. We left the truck there, walked home, and picked it up in about 2 hours. It was $300 pesos (about $30 US dollars.)














Here we have Lolita's Hotel Ana. As you can see, it is a corner property that is fairly large. I haven't been in a room yet, but the office/entryway is beautifully tiled and it looks very nice.













In the US we have small convenience stores called 7/11. Here in Mexico we have OXOX (say Ox-oh) and just like the 7/11 stores they are virtually everywhere!














Contrary to the big, shiny OXOX stores, are the Abarrotes...these are tiny stores that offer just some of the basics. And it seems like they are located about every 50 yards from each other. I happen to like this one because of the name...















El Centro is packed with various businesses and I'm lucky I was able to get this pic without causing a traffic accident. A Zapateria is a shoe store and if you double click on the pic you can enlarge it to see the variety of shoes in the window. Also notice yet another variation on the spelling of my name...














This last one is not related to commerce, but it caught my eye nonetheless...I always thought these meeting places were without signage.

2 comments:

1st Mate said...

Cynthia - Not only do AA meeting places have signage (necessary for barrachos stumbling down the street half-blind looking for help) but there's a street sign on the Empalme side entering Guaymas, just like the Rotarians have.

Theresa in Mèrida said...

Abarrotes means canned goods or groceries. Where we live those are tiendas some places they called them bodegas which actually means warehouse. We have Oxxo, 7/11 and another mini-mart called Extra. We get our water delivered for $20 each garrafon, it costs the same at the tienda so we just get it delivered. I like your price better especially if you get your own bottles back. We were buying water from a no name water vendor and he gave us a garafon with rust stains on it! yuck!
regards,
Theresa