A Bathroom Buddy?

So if I wasn’t an experienced pilgrim showering would have been a challenge. Since I am, I had plastic bags with me, one of them big enough to hold my clothes. Showers are small stalls with a curtain and no distinction between genders. Hooks are outside the stall.

So, experienced pilgrim that I am, I put my phone and money belt in a bag, and all my clothes except my pants in a bag. The bags stayed in the shower with me. I of course took the shower closest to the hooks. Balancing while sliding your feet in and out of flip flops to dress and undress is a trick that can’t be described.

Sinks are in a separate room with two toilets each in their own room. I was trying to turn on the light in the sink room and turned it out on a gentleman on the toilet! I learned this because I heard, “La luz, por favor.” “ Oh! Perdon !” I said. Nada,” he replied.

I slunk off into the adjoining sink room and hoped he wouldn’t look over. I was just finishing my teeth when a different man came out of the toilet in the room I was in. “Una mujer,” he said, clearly startled. He then proceeded to assume, since he was unaware the bathroom was coed, that I was the sort of woman who hung around in men’s bathrooms. Either that or he was trying to direct me to the right one.

When I didn’t respond, he looked at the door and saw the coed sign. “It’s for both,” I confirmed. Awareness mixed with a small amount of embarrassment washed across his face and he gave me a little wave good-bye, slightly flirtatiously, and proceeded to do that every time he saw me again. Apparently I have a bathroom buddy.