Adventures in La Torre

Back in Canada when I got restless in the middle of the night or if it was freezing cold winter outside but I wanted to stretch my legs, I'd go to the 24-hour Walmart and just wander around. Tonight, I kinda revisited that experience by strolling around the new-ish La Torre supermarket for over an hour. It's not nearly as big as Walmart but it was fun to just take my time and explore the weird and wonderful things on the shelves. I wasn't even planning on blogging about it but I thought, what the heck. Some people like this weird "day in the life" stuff. 😊

Tuna. Lots of it.

So these multitudinous shelves of canned tuna are what got me started thinking that my rambling trip to the local grocery store in Guatemala would be interesting to other people. There were more cans, even. I couldn't fit them all in one picture. I don't think I've ever seen so many different types of tuna!
And now you're like, "Big deal." Nope. It is a big deal. Buying tuna in Guatemala is HARD. Back home, the choices are basically tuna in water or in oil, am I right? Oh wait, there's like...I'm trying to remember. Flakes or chunks? Skipjack or...? Anyway, when I moved to Panajachel, I learned very quickly to check the ingredients on the tuna cans. Yes, ingredients! A lot of canned tuna in Guate has pieces of soy protein in it. It's not just tuna. So you gotta check or else you end up with some weird fishy protein substitute. (Unless you like that stuff, then go for it.)
The other strange thing is that some cans of tuna down here have vegetables in them. Peas and carrots and onions. That's actually the type I bought tonight, just to try it out! And they have barbecue tuna and tomato tuna as well. I guess Guatemalans like their tuna! I do too, but just plain old tuna in water, no fancy stuff, please and thank you.

Oooh, fancy tequila.

I love tequila. The good stuff is smooth and fiery and makes me wanna dance. 😊 Patrón bills itself as "ultra-premium" tequila. I wonder if it will make me an ultra-premium dancer? Well, I can't afford to try. Those bottles cost about $78 U.S. or $102 Canadian. Eeks. I'll take the Q5 shots at La Palapa! Ha ha!

Precio Super 4! 

You can't help but notice the highlighted yellow price on the sticker. Except that's not the price. It's only the price if you buy FOUR of the item. They have this Super Price 4 thing. It's on all the shelf tags. It was irritating at first cuz I kept thinking that the yellow price was the sale price, and then would get unpleasantly surprised at the cash register. Shoppers beware!

A jigsaw puzzle for kids.

My Spanish is improving but this one made me pause. The word rompecabezas translates into English as "Break Heads". I was so confused! I'm looking at the thing and figuring it must be a jigsaw puzzle but what a strange word to use for it!

Packages of toilet covers.

I think I should have bought some of the above toilet seat covers to stash in my purse. Not for around here but for when I'm doing chicken bus runs to the border. Some of those public bathrooms are NASTY. And that's if they have a toilet seat at all. I guess these covers would work just as well on the bowl rim itself. ICKY.

Mmmm chocolate.

So what did I end up buying on my shopping trip?

A 430-gram jar of peanut butter Q23.40
That big chocolate bar Q15.90
4.4 lbs of dog food (on sale) Q19.70
12 English muffins Q17.50
162-gram bag of pretzels Q5.90
Can of tuna with vegetables Q12.80

I've put the XE currency converter widget below so you can change Quetzales into whatever your currency is. Handy dandy!

Thanks for reading. Just so ya know, I have 19 blog posts in draft that I have yet to finish and publish, so we're nowhere near done here! Remember that you can use the Search bar on the top right or the topic cloud also on the right to find topics. And head over to my YouTube channel to see videos of puppies and kitties and weather and other fun stuff. TTYL!