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Saturday, April 12, 2014

Mexican Car Wash anyone?

Now that I am a Mexican driver, I have to learn how to keep my car clean.  There is something about Mexico that just gets cars dirty - almost daily.  There must be a lot of dust in the air that I am so used to now I don't even notice it now.

And when it rains, which is almost never, instead of cleaning your car like Canada or the USA, the car actually seems to get dirtier.  Hence the car wash (auto lavado).  This should be plural because there are hundreds of them in Cuernavaca alone.  Anywhere there is room to park a few cars, and water is available, you may just find a car wash.

These guys are cheap too.  A typical car wash, which includes a full wash, vacuum, dash and window cleaning inside and a tire polish is 40 pesos.  The process takes almost a full hour, and usually we give the worker a 5 peso tip.  The total - about $4.00 Cdn.

Oh and did I mention, these are not drive-through car washes, it is all done by hand.  It was only recently that our favorite car wash bought a power washer to use in the first part of the process.  The car keys are given to the manager and when they are ready for your car, one of the employees slowly drives your car into position in front of a huge water tank.  These are usually young kids, or at least people that obviously don't drive, and watching them back up is hilarious.

Anyway the car is first given a complete spray with the power washer to get all the leaves and dirt our of the cracks and behind the hood, trunk and tires.  Then the worker takes his large towel and gets it soapy, and using two arms, goes over the entire car with soapy water.  Then the rinse.  Buckets of water are thrown onto the car, sometimes from as far away as 15 feet to get all the soap off.  These guys have good aim.

Then the car is usually backed straight (did I say straight, no way, more like a zig-zag) into another area with the vacuum.  After it is parked, the worker goes over the entire outside of the car with a new towel to dry and polish it.  Now it is ready for a vacuum and dash cleaning.  After this a solution is applied to all the rubber around the doors and trunk.  Finally, this same solution is applied to the outside rubber of all the tires.  All done - and for only 40 pesos.

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