Manifestations....aaah crap.

We use to enjoy our trips to Morelia which we took once or twice a month. During construction of the house they were once or twice a week, sometime they even seemed daily. Now that the house is all done, we take the 30 minute or so drive to go to Costco or the wife wants to go to Liverpool while I wander around the electronics department or something just as boring.

Morelia has tons of shopping where I am sure you can find almost anything you would want. The problem is that not one store usually has half the stuff you may be looking for.
About six month ago a brand new mega food store opened up on the LaHuerta side of town. That is the location of where the highway come in from Patzcuaro into the roads that go through and circle Morelia. That shiny new store is Chedraui, which is right behind the Office Depot store, that is across the road from the first Walmart store, and the Home Depot store.
Costco is about 2 km east on the circle road towards the other main parts of town.
Most often what we need unless the wife wants Liverpool, can be handled by either Costco, Walmart and now the new Chedraui.

 Most of the time what ever I need can be handled at the Home Depot store which is slowly getting better inventory year by year after Home Depot bought out the previous home improvement store which was located there for about 7 or 8 years called Home Mart.
I usually need stuff like plumbing parts, electrical boxes ( which most locals never use) curtain rods and parts, water pipe fittings, you get the picture.
Well we no longer go to Morelia as much as we want to simply because the last year there have been Manifestations.

For those of you NOB, a Manifestation is a somewhat controlled mob of people comprised of (usually) teachers, workers ( who obviously called in sick) unions, union leaders, students, friends of students, friends of friends of students, mommies with their kids in tow, visitors from other cities that are bussed in, more students, some more teachers and a occasional tourist or two wanting the experience of fitting in.

What these mob parades do is stop traffic to the point that you either have to circumnavigate the whole town via one or two back roads which usually takes about 1 to 2 hours to get to were you wanted to go, which could have taken you 10 minutes.
Or you could park, take a nap, go to a movie, or simply go back home, which is what we usually do about half the time.

NOB the police would bring in the highway patrol and start controlling traffic, not allowing such Manifestations to stop commerce, life and the pursuit of happiness.
Here the police merely park their cars at 90degress blocking you the ability to run over the protesters. No crowd control, no nothing.

There is a reason for that, the plain and simple over reaction that killed students back in Mexico City decades ago, has left a hands off policy for protestors.

They can do anything they want and the likeliness of any consequences are nill. We had one last week which caused us to turn around and go west to Uruapan which is actually easier to get to from our house, quicker, and almost has the same stores ( although a lot less of them) but is missing a Costco. It does have a Sam's Club which is kinda like that.

That is why we go to Uruapan for our shopping nowadays. There are also a few really nice restaurants on the way there which we occasionally stop at for a nice quiet meal.

That's another story. Maybe the next chapter.