Welcome to Mexico...Sort Of

Pancho's Cafe is side by side with Clarisa Luken's periodontist and implants office.

You drive to Yuma, Arizona. Turn south, off the expressway. There’s an enormous parking lot, owned by some Indian tribe I’ve never heard of  before. They charge you $6 to park the car for the day. Then you pass their auto-teller (last chance to get dollars) and walk through a narrow passage, through a one-way gate and now you’re in Mexico. Easy-peesy.

We’re in the tiny town of Los Algodones –there’s maybe 3,000 people living and working here. The weird thing is that most of these people are opticians, dentists and pharmacists and their staffs.

This tiny town is designed exclusively for Americans to walk there and be served. It’s safe. It’s close. It’s another world. We walked across and were immediately approached by touts who sought to lure us into “their” favorite dentist or optometrist. Once you make it through that gauntlet, you then have the challenge of making your way along the sidewalk past the dozens of swarthy men and women whose job is to relieve you of your dollars by selling you silver chains, Mexican blankets, foam jigsaw puzzles of North and Central America with the various states of Mexico and the U.S. and Canada being the pieces of the jigsaw.

Our first task was to find Myers Optical. Our campground hosts in Yuma suggested it was a good place to go for glasses. And, since Jo wanted both reading and long-distance glasses, Myers was on our list. We found the store and the lady behind the counter explained they could test her eyes for free and then fit her with two pairs of glasses, including the lenses, for $90. All of this could be accomplished in two hours, she told us.

After working on her eyes for half an hour, the optometrist took Jo outside, with the optical measuring device still attached to her head. He wanted her to look up the street in daylight so he could do the final adjustment of the prescription under real-life conditions. Pretty strange, but quite effective.

They told us to return in two hours and the glasses would be ready.

Before and after visit to Juanita's hairstyle.

We wandered across the street and into a quiet courtyard where we found Pancho’s Café. We bought a pair of coffees and Jo spotted Juanita’s Hairstylist store. While her coffee cooled, she stepped in and asked what they charge for a haircut. It was only $7, so she returned to the table, finished her coffee and disappeared inside Juanita’s where she received a superior trim. Later, we found another hair-dresser offering men’s haircuts for $2.99 and women’s cuts for $4.99.

We spent the next hour wandering through drug stores and liquor stores. Jo showed some interest in a silver neck chain and we danced and whiled away half an hour negotiating for the right price. The salesman wanted us to understand the difference between pure silver and the cheap stuff. He took a cheap necklace between his fingers and lit his cigarette lighter, applying the flame to the fake silver. It turned black in three seconds. When he did the same test to the real silver, there was no discoloration. Okay. Now we got down to serious negotiating. He wanted $28. I wanted $10. We danced for 10 minutes, with lots of good-natured sparring and joking. In the meantime, Jo threw a ringer into the negotiating by selecting a heavier - and more expensive - chain.  We ended up settling on a price of $14 for the new, heavier chain.

Now it was time to return to Myers Optical. They sent a runner off to retrieve the two pairs of glasses. We wandered back to the border where we met an older American woman who was ahead of us. She told us she had left her passport in her car and was scared the Immigration people would not let her back into the U.S. I told her she shouldn’t worry too much. She’d do well in Mexico – particularly with her teeth and eyes.

She talked to the official and explained her predicament to him. She wrote down her home address and phone number and he sent her on her way! Who says it’s hard to enter the U.S.!

One-stop-shopping for your Viagra and your dental implants at Clarissa Salazar's office.