The Purest Water in Latin America

A short funny story...

A few days after we arrived here to Santa Cruz, our boss, Luis, was telling us how the water in Santa Cruz is the cleanest and purest water in Latin America. Luis is a really great story-teller, so sometimes it's hard to tell how much he's exaggerating. Personally, I have been a little reluctant to believe that Santa Cruz's water is actually the cleanest of all of Latin America. According to the other staff, they pull it right out of the ground (400 meters below the ground, to be exact) and don't have to add chlorine or salt or anything.

Despite Santa Cruz having the cleanest water of Latin America, the office has a water cooler with one of those large bottles of purified water. Apparently they use this water cooler just because it gives the gringo visitors some peace of mind. Or, according to another staff member here in the office, all the other businesses in Santa Cruz also have purified water coolers in their offices because it looks good; it's a social status thing.

Anyways, last week we finished the last bottle of water here in the office. With all the bottles being empty, we had to wait until the distributor came again to deliver new, filled bottles. Miraculously, though, our last bottle of water lasted through the end of the week.

Later in the week, Luis asked Doug: "Have any of you been sick lately? No one's had stomach pains or anything?" "No, we've all been fine. Why?" "Oh, just because...we filled up the water cooler with water from the kitchen faucet." So, instead of waiting for new water bottles, the staff just filled up the old one with "the purest water in Latin America". And then they decided not to tell us. Isn't it interesting what 'watching out for the gringos' means in different cultures?

Good news is we now know that the tap water doesn't get us sick. That's not going to keep me from drinking the purified water from the water cooler, but at least I can feel at ease trying some of the fresh fruit juices when we go out to eat.

Until next time,
Matt