I was treated to one of the weirdest experiences here yesterday, when I went shopping at Jumbo with a friend to get some home stuff/imported foods.

Jumbo’s in a mall. So when you check out, and you’re wanting to go get a remise or cab or whatever, you have to take your shopping cart full of food and parade it through the mall, past the clothing stores and kiosks.

It was really just strange.


A few comments on my Jumbo experience:

It is the worst of Argentina all in one place. The hair, the rudeness, the people with no clue running into you with their shopping cart, overpriced electronics, and it took forever to do anything.

We waited in line after we got all our stuff picked out for FORTY FIVE MINUTES.

All this, while the a**holes in front of us had TWO carts and the miserable-looking wife kept running off and coming back with more sh*t to put in their carts. Diapers, milk, and oh yeah, 18 bottles of 2-liter Cokes, 4 bottles of Fernet, a case of Talca orange soda, about 10 lbs of meat, and random other crap. Did I mention she went back and forth for milk 3 times? No, I didn’t. But I just did.

It got so bad, we decided to pick up a storybook and entertain ourselves reading about Blancanieves and the 7 dwarves.

Note the quantity of soda. not pictured: even more soda, diapers, milk, and angry-looking wife

I did manage to score some pretty sweet American foods. Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup, broccoli & cheese soup, for example. They also had Pepperidge Farms super chunk cookies, but they weren’t scanning correctly, and I was so ready to leave the store I told the checkout girl to ignore them and put them away – I was not about to wait for some lackadaisical manager to mosey over and find a barcode.

Also purchased: flour tortillas (no corn there, grrr), imported Italian pasta, aaand, that’s it.  They bother to import ramen noodles, but they can’t bring in a thing of jalapeños? Tragic.

You’re next, Walmart.