This afternoon, I Googled ‘manicure San Carlos MX’ and found a place I could locate, being near the Froggy’s bar and right next to the post office. I walked down to that area and looked at each building until I saw one with the word estética barely visible through the cover of trees. I would have looked for the word esthétique in French, so I knew I’d found the salon!

If the post office was indeed next door, there was absolutely no sign for it. I did see a man with a shirt that said ‘correos’ (post/mail) on it come out the door, so I guess the locals know where to go to mail something!

I went into the salon and asked if they had time for a manicure. A lady thought about it and said yes, 130 pesos. OUCH! But I was there and getting pretty desperate to trim my talons so I took a seat to wait.

When I worked for the government and was still a nail biter, I got gel sets done as often as I could afford to so that my hands would look nice. But since hitting the road, the only manicure I’ve treated myself to was in Nuevo Progreso in February of last year, and it was just a basic one, no fake nails. I’m hoping to regularly get such manicures regularly this winter since I won’t be doing any manual labour.

It was eventually my turn and I sat at the manicure table, gratified to see the lady sanitize all the equipment. The building was full of local ladies getting worked on, which told me this wasn’t a gringo priced place and that I probably couldn’t have done much better price-wise in the area.

The lady had a look at my nails and asked if I wanted them cut. Yes, please! She took off a bit and I asked for more. The second time was the perfect length. She then filed and buffed them, cleaned up the cuticles, and, my favourite part, gave me a forearm and hand massage. I didn’t want any colour on the nails so that the manicure will last longer, but I did accept clear polish.

I’ve always had ugly sausagy hands and it was even worse when the nails were a mess. I’m happy with how my digits look now that the ends aren’t all gnawed to hell!

From the salon, I went further into town to the Ley, a grocery store, to get something to munch on tonight, picking up cheese (I have crackers), yoghurt, and pistachios, plus a banana for tomorrow morning. I was grateful for the translation app on my phone as it helped me navigate the yoghurt offerings. Arándanos are blueberries! They didn’t have raspberry (frambuesa, which I didn’t know but would have recognized as it’s so close to the French framboise), so I went with strawberry (fresa, which I definitely knew).

I don’t know yet if I’ll be traveling tomorrow. I’m waiting for my landlady to call me back and give me an idea of what the weather is like on the ground. Contessa is concerned that the road to Stone Island might be impassable after the heavy rain. I would prefer to hang out here than to proceed to Los Mochis and be stuck waiting there, simply because San Carlos is now familiar and feels safe. I’m not feeling super adventurous right now. 🙂