My Shoes!

You were not treated to a photo of my new shoes at New Year. When my old favourite MBTs finally died, I wore them for another few months. And THEN... I found some great Sketcher (they SAY) sandals in a bus station in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, second most dangerous town in all Latin America, they say, after Bogota and before Rio... really? We only visited the bus terminal in transit and everyone was very nice.

My shoes began to come apart yesterday morning as we set out for a full days travel with backpacks, uh oh.

Leon bus station, a 90 minute wait for a direct bus to Esteli. We love it how these old Bluebird school buses are the real posh buses here... so posh you have to buy a ticket in advance and it is numbered seats only. Quick tour of the food vendors for watermelon, smoked cheese, weirdey tortilla thingies that turned out to justify their 4 cordobas price (for a tortialla,? Surely not!) when they were found to be sweet maizy, loaded with oil and utterly perfect with the smoked cheese... the kind of combo a very good restaurant could happily serve as an unusual dessert accompanied by fresh figs or guava sorbet.

Then with the friendly help of various vendors through a maze of stalls and to the cobblers. A middle aged man who has been mending shoes for 20 years, did his expert mending thing with a sharp hook and then suggested he go all around both shoes for added security. At his side a cheeky friendly young shoeshine man with a quite extraordinary haircut. I had his missing hair, he suggested. Nah, you had a big fright and all yours fell out, I countered. We had such a great time hanging out with the shoe people.

The man gave me his price. The cheeky guy suggested a tip. It was a joke. I gave a big tip. Hardnosed tourists might hate and revile me for it. I figured a quid all in was a great price to have handmended shoes, with a newly reinvented home made look, that will almost certainly last ages now. And he was charging too little for his skills and time.

I love this stuff, these special mundane good humoured encounters. These and the scenery and the politics and history, food, imagination, projections and possibilities... Like the Spanish Inquisition’s, my list of the core of ‘What Travelling is All About’ seems to grow as I write it.