Bathrooms

Not sure if I mentioned this before: but everywhere you go in PEB (Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia), you have to put your toilet paper in the little bin, that's always provided in the bathroom for you. I haven't dropped my toilet paper in the toilet for about 5 months. Today, I did it again for the first time. Because this is Santiago, and it's not some backward banana republic, and you can do things like that. And once again, I was surprised at how surprised I was. It felt really, really weird! Not only am I going to have to acclimatise to Western life again — I'm going to have to learn how to go to the toilet, like a Western person does, all over again.

My accommodation in Veracruz, Hotel Amparo, was a pretty basic, budget lodging. When I was first shown to my room, I noticed that there was no shower in the bathroom. I just assumed that in Mexico, if you stay somewhere dodgy enough, you shouldn't expect to have a shower available. But it turns out that I should have underestimated a bit less, and observed a bit more.