Conducting Business in the Key of @SF^##i4i4i

After a trip to the beach on Monday to drop off another pair of Reefs with our favorite waiter, we decided to go on a walkabout. 

Bought a beautiful basket on the beach

We would leave out sometime on Tuesday after packing and doing a few errands. Then Terry dropped the surprise on me. He had his Bancomer ATM card, but not mine. We had remembered using them both on the last trip to Chedraui when we bought groceries. I think that was on Friday. The thing is, ATM machines in Mexico retain your card until all of your transactions are complete then it spits out your card. It is easy for us to walk off and forget to take the card back. Both of us were surprised that we hadn't realized we didn't have the card until Tuesday morning.
Shortly after 9 we were writing our name on the clientes list at the closest Bancomer location to the house - about 6 blocks away. We were number 4 in line to get waited on. We sat and waited about 15 minutes then we were called back. 'Gloria' waited on us. She spoke no English, but was very patient as we explained: "Perdí la tarjeta de debito en el cajero automático en Chedraui en la esquina de Avenida de Itzaes y Calle 75."
We explained it was mine that was lost and Terry's we had. He showed his to her. We did not need to replace Terry's card. But, that part wasn't understood and she had de-activated Terry's card. After another go at explaining the issue, we both ended up getting new cards since she de-activated both of ours. We had to have our passports for id, and luckily Terry had written down our account no., clave number, and his ATM card no. Of course I didn't have my ATM card no. on file. Numbers and any other information written down on paper to hand forth is always helpful, even if it doesn't get used.
The one last hurdle was when she tried to activate Terry's new card she was having problems doing it. She sent him to another representative in the teller line and she took care of him while Gloria explained to me that we had the new cards but would use our old, existing NIP (PIN) nos. As soon as we walked out, we went to the adjoining ATM to make sure all was good, and sure enough the old PIN nos. worked. They both worked fine. This bit of business took us about an hour and a half.
You may recall just last week we had gone into another Bancomer location to get Terry a new card because all of his numbers had worn off. After talking with one of the bank reps. we decided against it because he said it wasn't a problem. Both of us were glad we hadn't gone through with getting a new one and then reported it lost a few days later. 
Talking about the weather, ordering food, and asking where the baño is in Spanish is much easier than conducting business in a foreign language. 
It's like the person you're conducting business with is saying @SF^##i4i4i over and over to you.
So, on to Valladolid, Yucatan. But, that's another story.