Now, I have managed to find an internet cafe to update you on my strange day.
Firstly it was spent in a shopping mall. Yes, I know you all think that´s odd but I have a good reason - I need to buy clothes and boots for the Amazon jungle. I have some, proper "outdoorsy" type trousers and top, with long sleeves. And some welly boots, which t'internet suggests all the locals use in the jungle. Apparently the flies and mozzies will bug me something chronic, but I´ll just be there for 2 days, I´ll manage.
Anyway, after some hard shopping I was in need of a rest... not least of all because a) my Spanish is rusty and talking, or more specifically, being talked at constantly in a foreign language is stressful and tiring. and b) the content of said talking involved a lot of asking where I´m from and if I´m travelling alone and then sharp intakes of breath and a telling of how dangerous that is. One woman gave me a lecture about how many robbers there are on the tube and how I must hold my bag close into my chest at all times. Another just told me how dangerous it was, especially as a girl, and I mustn´t get into any taxis and I am bound to be taken advantage of. None of this inspired much confidence. I kept smiling and tried to say that I´m from a big city too, and I bet none of them (it was all warnings from women) refuse to go anywhere alone and just becuase I´m a foreigner doesn´t make me an automatic target.... but then, maybe it does. So I just smiled and nodded, but my heart rate was going up by the minute.
So, I passed a hairdresser that also had beauty stuff and I asked for a massage and facial, got told yes and taken through to a back room. The first problem was that the girl then explained the massage was not by hand. She held up big plastic sheet things and said it was electronic. So I said "no thank you, could I just have the facial?".
She got me to lie on a couch and daubbed some sticky stuff on my forehard, nose and chin andthen covered my face in clingfilm (!) with a small hole to breath through adn then left for 15 minutes. She kept babbling in Spanish and I didn´t understand more than a quarter of what she said. Anyway, when she came back in, she loomed over me with a surgical mask and gloves on!! And reached for something... and honestly, I was half expecting to seea scalpel or somehting, I was ready to jump out of the room! But she just came back with tissues and I thought "how bad can it be?" so a laid still. And then..... she started viciously squeezing and stabbing and prodding at my blackheads and spots!! It was very sore and not something I would ever need to pay someone else to do. They do do that sometimes in proper facials, it´s called an extraction and is just the blackheads in the nose, but it´s supposed to after steaming and things so it´s a bit easier. I asked for it once, years ago (or at least said yes to it being offered) having no idea what it was... I didn´t make that mistake again. Until today. Anyway, she was squeezing her nails everywhere!
Sorry, that was a bit gross. Anyway, then more sticky stuff painted on my face and then left for 20 minutes. With no music and bright lights. Not very relaxing. And then she comes back in and this time she really does hove into view with two metal instruments. I nearly baulked again, but held firm having deduced what it probably was, as I´ve read about this. It was a metal roller in one hand and a metal disc on a stick in the other. The disc she moved over my face whilst simultaneously rolling the roller over other parts. The disc gave quite fierce electric shocks and it made my eyelids jump and my teeth hurt.
After five minutes of that, she stopped and rubbed more stuff on my face. Which smelled funny. As had all the other stuff. She asked how my skin was feeling as it had gone quite red and she thought I probably had sensitive skin. "Yes, I do have sensitive skin" I replied through gritted teeth. She advised me to always wear sunscreen.
Next, she came at me with a long plastic tube. I was baced for anything but actually this one was quite strange, I think it was giving off very gentle static electricity as it just fizzed very slightly on the skin and was not unpleasant. Can´t imagine what it actually did though.
More cream, some rubbish facial massage and then she led me out, all red and blotchy, and horribly overcharged me, saying she had given me the deluxe version instead of the normal express facial.
The lesson to be learnt here is possibly not to ever go for beauty treatments from a hairdressers. I know, it was a risk, but sometimes you just have to take them. I am still as tense as ever, probably more so, and need a good back massage but I shall await my return to good old blighty!
Tomorrow I shall go on a walking tour of the city and I hope to get out to see the andes the day after.
xxx
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