Up and down the street

To get anywhere from our resort you have to walk. This suited us just fine. Old Vallarta is teeming with interesting sights. Some of the funniest things we saw were right outside our door. Across the street, right next to the looming stairway to hell is one of the innumerable pharmacies in PV. These pharmacies sell everything a foreigner might need: toothpaste, diarrhea pills, diapers and of course, sunscreen. Woe betide the forgetful traveler who arrives in Mexico without his sunscreen. While every pharmacy offers a colorful variety of products to deal with sunburn prevention or treatment the average price is about $20.00 a bottle.

     Another thing pharmacies sell in Mexico are prescriptions. While on the surface this might not seem unusual, the fact that you can buy all of the prescription medication here without a single endorsement from a doctor, however, is definitely different. Yes any Joe Blow can walk in off the street and buy just about any drug you can think of. Pharmacies are so competitive down here that they list their most popular drugs on billboards outside their shops to try and entice septuagenarians to buy Viagra at their shop rather than the one down the street.

    It's interesting to note that the drugs listed first on the billboard outside our resort are for erectile dysfunction and heartburn. Obviously the old guys who stay near us need a lot of help keeping their boners up and their burritos down.
     Of course there is another way to work with erectile dysfunction and that is to indulge in one of the many many Mexican massage parlors in and around our neighborhood. Most of the ones on our street were nothing more that one small room. Staffed by one man wearing greasy hair and a white tank top. These massage parlors promise stress relief either on site or as a room service. Happy endings are a sure bet and it's funny to think that this form of prostitution is so mundane that many massage parlors advertise explicitly.