75. Still More Pucalpa

75.

Still More Pucalpa:

I find a pharmacy and go in to buy some iodine to use as a water purifier.

The clerk is the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen.

She is the Queen of Pucalpa! I wonder what kind of jungle future she has in store.

I’ve been trying to find a copy of “Alice in Wonderland” in Spanish.

I know the book pretty well in English and have discovered that I can read books in Spanish if I already know them in English so it helps my study of Spanish.

The town library has a collection of about 500 books and it is one of them. And guess what’s playing at the local movie theater? Yep, Just my luck! Alicia en la Pais de Maravillas, so I go ask the Queen of Pucalpa at the pharmacy to go to the movie with me.

She won’t. I tried!

And now a word about the locals:

Though there are no tourists on the street, there are still a few “professional natives” lurking about, but the men here are never professional natives.

Men wear western-style clothes, Japanese watches. European cologne and shoes--but there are a few tourist bait women who wear the traditional folk-costume: black and white kilt and white blouse.

In one hand they carry strings of Job’s Tear seed beads and in the other toy bow and arrows. I am the Tourist of the Week and since they must feed their children and since I am an American the prices are up.

Odd! These beads are exactly the same as the Job's Tear beads professional natives in Hawaii sell to the tourists there—for exactly the same price! Am I on to an international bead conspiracy?

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