Sunday, December 14, 2008

The Car Wash Guy

No matter where you park your car in Mexico there will be a guy with a few rags and a couple of buckets of water standing nearby. They are the Mexican version of the Automatic Car Wash. They will give you a very good car wash using only one bucket of rinse water that they get from local businesses. The charge is $20 Pesos for a basic wash. This is the least I have paid and the most is $40 Pesos in a large city after the “Gringo Tax” was added. $2 to $4 dollars is a very cheap wash job. Sometimes they will offer a hand waxing to go with it for a reasonable additional charge.

They are usually young men trying to make a living. Like all Mexican workers they are honest and hard working. We left the car in a grocery store parking lot today while we went sightseeing and I gave the young man $20 Pesos and pointed out the car before we walked away. We returned to a shining clean Honda.

He could have done a shoddy job or he could have just walked away with my money. He was never going to see me again anyway. He didn’t walk away. He was conscientious and gave me just as good a wash as he would have if I had stood there watching him. Maybe better. I love Mexico. It restores your faith in humanity.

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