1lb of bananas for US$2.00 at Walmart, El Paso

When I arrived in El Paso (having Amtrak-ed from Los Angeles overnight) I made my way to a hotel on Gateway East called La Quinta. I was craving some granny smith apples (not sure why but even when I was in Brazil last year I was craving apples) so headed out in the heat of midday to catch a bus to the local Walmart.

I got a little lost along the way and had to enter into a bedding warehouse to ask for directions. There were a couple of salesmen in there (one of them with biceps the size of a tree trunk and the most amazing tattoos I have ever seen!) and they were very kind to me, showed me where the bus stop was and then rang the bus company to ask the timetable and then told me that if I wanted to I could wait in their air conditioned store and try out some of their beds!

I got a little lost along the way

Anyhow, whilst I was waiting for the bus in the coolness of the airconditioned shop, a military chap entered. He talked a bit with the proprietors and then on departing the shop politely asked if I were okay. I told him that yes I was okay & just waiting for the bus and then he asked if I needed a lift anywhere. I figured, him being a military guy, that it would be okay to say yes. So Mr Green (which I thought was a funny name for someone so brown! Just like I always thought Mrs Green at St Francis Xavier's church in Frankston should really be called Mrs Brown) gave me a lift to Walmart and then proceeded to tell me - as had everyone else - to stay away from Juárez and that the military had always taught him to always travel in pairs. He told me that he was originally from Panama but that he moved to New York when he was a child and that he was in El Paso for 9 weeks studying (which explained why he had a rather complicated mathematics text book in his car) and I promptly fell madly in love with his super-polite military ways and that uniform (mmmmm). Anyhow, Mr Green certainly has raised my opinion of the US military - such a well spoken, well educated & polite man.

So Mr Green dropped me off at Walmart so that I could buy some granny smith apples but unfortunately there were none. Instead I could by one whole pound of Guatemalan bananas for US$2.00. Or I could have bought the entire side of a cow, a year's supply of milk, a tonne of yoghurt, a besser brick sized block of cheese or enough flour to bake bread to feed Ethiopía for a decade. It was impossible to buy one apple or one banana. Walmart is all about quantities - big quantities for big American families. I walked out feeling more hungry and more thirsty than when I walked through the door. If I were to buy anything from there I would need a b-double, not a backpack, to carry around my food.

So instead I found my way back to the hotel and popped into the Denny's next door and the only thing on the menu that didn't look as though it would cause me to have a cardiac infarction was a dish of prawns and rice and beans. It was passable but the size of the serving was beyond even my consumption abilities!