No ropa?

Last night we had dinner with our friends here in Crestone, Bill and Chinle, and mutual friends Bruce and Tass, who were visiting from out of town. (I've linked before to Bruce's account of their bicycling trip through Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, and Greece -- a fascinating read so I'm linking again.)

The four of them are all rock climbers, and Chinle told the story of climbing in Mexico a few years ago. Chinle speaks very little Spanish. They were climbing there when she noticed some Mexican boys climbing in an area where they should have had ropes on.

So she called out to them, "No ropa! No ropa!"

In Spanish, ropa does not mean rope, as she thought. It means clothing. The mother of one of the boys thought this was hilarious, and laughed and laughed.

That led me to tell the story of the earnest young American man who told his Mexican friends how embarrassed he was by American foreign policies. Embarasada in Spanish means pregnant!