Well, I had a strange lunch hour today. I had a meeting this morning that lasted until 12:30, so I missed going to lunch with my local engineers at noon. So I strolled on over to Ketal by myself and ordered a lomo sandwich and while I waited I couldn’t help but notice a sudden flurry of movement over in front of the frozen yoghurt place – there was a cholita standing there in the shade of that little tree on the sidewalk selling grapes and two other cholitas attacked her box of grapes and started flinging her bunches all over the place. Heaven only knows why they were doing that, but they only quit and waddled away when these two fully armed and armored riot policemen appeared out of no where – they stood guard over the remaining grapes while the first cholita gathered up her scattered bunches. I had to wonder where the two riot policemen had come from – as I looked around I noticed that instead of one armed guard in front of the various banks on Calle 21 there were two fully equipped riot policemen. And then I noticed that there were also two armed policemen at every ATM on the street as well. There was also the normal contingent of traffic cops directing traffic – nothing unusual there. The unusually large police presence started making me nervous about what could be up. I started listening for the sounds of an imminent mob or some such. While I was surveying the police presence all around the Ketal, a police truck pulled up in front of the frozen yoghurt place and another ten armed policemen hopped out. Then all of the policemen on the street, riot and other, converged on an officer who gave all them some instructions that I couldn’t hear. I don’t know what they said but they kept pointing in the direction of the Costanera. Then they formed up and trotted out of sight – in the direction of the Costanera – to what purpose I don’t know. It was very surreal, but kept me amused while I ate my lunch alone.
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