The Cachanilla Swap Meet is the place to be early Saturday morning if you're looking for a bargain. Need hand-painted tiles for the bathroom? A blue hammock for the porch? How about an old VCR movie or potboiler adventure novel? And don't forget those Tupperware containers you've been trying to find. The swap meet has them all. And much more.

The Cachanilla Swap Meet has been assembling at the grounds around the Cachanilla Club House for years now. It begins in October and runs until the weather warms up at the beginning of June. The meet has grown from a few tables of Americans selling their tired and untreasured seconds to the now fifty or more tables of second-hand-goods, plants, produce trucks, art work, used clothes, Mexican crafts, old tools, bakery items, T-shirt racks, Mexican blanket stacks, bouquets of hammocks, tables of books and nearly anything else you can imagine.

The competition for display space is getting grim and the stout-hearted hawkers are now arriving the evening before the meet sets up.

Saturday mornings have become a red-letter day on many social calendars. A face that grows dim in your mind from lack of frequency can almost certainly be encountered among the looky-loos and bargain hunters milling about the rows of tables at the meet. Hey, that long-absent friend from one of the south camps is over there at the business end of a dog leash, being tugged along an erratic trajectory between rows of wrought iron sun masks and tables of home-made pies. Yes, the swap meet is the place to go when you want to reconnect with the name or face of someone who has dropped from sight.

So dust off those old chipped dinner plates, that ugly lamp hidden in the storage locker and the Paleolithic Brother Word Processor lying under your bed. Snap out a folding table and spread out those tired treasures. You never know. There may be a pocket full of pesos in them. And a chance to reacquaint yourself with some old friends.

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