While you were working – Sierra Norte part 3 | Charlie and Steve's Excellent Adventure

So today is starting well, a little queasy belly (Steve) escalates to schoolies week style blowing chunks in the dining room toilet, so sexy. Seems Tommy wasn’t done after all. Some water down and half an apple for breakfast sees us on our way pretty close to on time. Feeling really dusty and only about 20 minutes into the walk, here comes the half apple. Crouched over on the side of the road throwing up, crappy weather, I’m thanking my lucky stars that today is a very easy walking day, so spoonful of cement and all that, on we go.

We arrive in Benito Juarez in pretty good time all things considered and we bunk down to see out this poor turn in the weather, so its a lazy afternoon for these little soldiers.
The day is looking a like a little bit of a write off until we get to dinner, the cooking ladies are all over the fact that there’s a sick patient in the town. We sit down to dinner and in no time at all I have a tiny Mexican lady crouching in front of me, hello! Thankfully she gestures for me to take my boots off and goes about squeezing my feet… WTF. A bit of hurried yelling to the kitchen and I understand the words cold, hot and tomato… again, WTF, what other words sound like tomato?
We get our Pamello tea and this time with a squashed up guava in it, this is local medicine Mexican style right in the middle of a public mess hall. Just when we thought it was kinda crazy the other lady comes veritably charging at me with a bowl in hand. No beg-pardons here, the shoes and socks are off and my feet are being washed down with roaring hot rubbing alcohol with chunks of pounded tomato… yes, we didn’t mis-hear tomato. All the fuss is quite funny and I have to say my feet are sweltering up, but lets not stop the show there…
Clearly deciding that I have super sexy feet she stands me up and tells me to undo my jacket. Now she’s being really lovely but I have to say just not my type to be honest, but shes persistent so undone is the jacket. BOOM, shirts up and she’s rubbing the tomato all over me, for a little longer than necessary I reckon, all over my torso, back, face and neck and the hood of my jacket is pulled right up. I sit there stunned with Charlie chuckling away feeling more than just a little taken advantage of… but I kinda liked it.
It has to be said though that the remedies seemed to warm me up and feeling a little better. We leave dinner to return to our room and find a roaring fire in the hearth, the chill that has been hard to shift all day soon melts away. So we’re finishing on a high note after a day that wasn’t reaching any great heights at all. With all the elements against us the visit to Sierra Norte still manages to deliver.