Hairstyle tourism

Before...

Diana has more guts than I do...but let's talk about something you didn't already know: women's haircuts in Cuenca.

Diana learned a lesson in her early backpacker days. She was getting frustrated with her long hair in some hot, sweltery country so she went to some local stylist/sheep farmer for a sheering (I might be making up the sheep farmer part). While the short seemed immediately better than the long, she soon found out she didn't have enough to put up in a ponytail, and so she couldn't get the hair off her hot, sweaty neck at all.

So this time she had a dual purpose to the haircut: keep enough for the pony, and have enough to donate to Locks of Love (10 inches minimum). Though I suppose it takes guts to go to a foreign land, where blond hair comes only from Dow Chemical Company, and the styles you see every day are, shall we say, of a different mode. But Di went to fancy place in the heart of the downtown scene and paid the big bucks for a gay guy with a salmon colored shirt and a ponytail up in a baseball cap.

He bopped over to her, took five seconds to give the 360-degree assessment, then put her into his sweet-locks flair factory. First she gets the assistant, who is kinda like a dental hygienist--the one who does all the prep and cleanup work that does not require the hand of the artiste. Due to a communication error she did not get a shampoo, but from the final result, you'll see it didn't matter. When El Maestro came over Di thought he was going to cut her hair with his sharp and steely gaze alone. But turns out he does have equally sharp scissors that flew like samurai swords through her long locks.

In mere moments he was done and onto the next canvas, letting the lackey finish with a blow dry and style that was almost unnecessary.

Full consultation, shampoo (would have been included), cut, style, and blowdry--$12. Missy earned herself a visit to the spa. Stay tuned.

...Afters