Hair Care

Curl creams and gels for colochos:

a curly routine is built in layers, and the products are not interchangeable. A leave-in conditioner goes on first and stays in, a styling cream gives soft definition, and gel holds hardest. Loose waves go limp under a heavy cream, while tight colochos can take a thick one and still look dry, so the curl type a product was made for matters more than its scent. Many curl lines are sulfate-free and skip heavy silicones; the label says so if the listing does not. Straight hair is simpler: shampoo and conditioner picked for oily, dry or dyed hair. Purple toning shampoo, the matizador, is made for blonde or grey hair, and men’s wax and pomade sit alongside. Heat protectant spray belongs here, while the flat iron it goes under is in hair styling tools, and coconut or argan oil bought for the body rather than the ends is under skin care.

Salon litres against the supermarket bottle:

professional lines come in big pump bottles made for the basin at a salon, often marked for professional use, next to the smaller retail sizes the same salon sells at the counter. A pump litre is good value for a household that gets through it; for one person with short hair it can sit open for a very long time. Supermarket shampoo costs around ₡5,000 to ₡7,000 for a full litre, while a salon line asks something like ₡8,000 to ₡14,000 for a bottle a third of that size, and a salon-size keratin straightening kit starts at about ₡70,000. That spread decides what is worth passing on: a sealed salon litre keeps most of its value with a buyer who already uses the line, a kit used once still holds most of its treatment, and an opened supermarket bottle hardly justifies the listing.

Keratin kits and dye boxes, which only work complete:

a keratin straightening kit, known as “alisado”, comes as a sequence of steps, usually a deep-cleansing shampoo, the treatment and a finishing mask. A kit missing a step, or with the treatment poured into an unlabelled bottle, is a gamble. Box dye is the same: colour tube, developer and gloves all present and unopened, because mixed dye cannot be kept. Salon colour comes as single tubes by shade number with the developer bought apart, so give the line and exact shade.

A salon shampoo with its lot code scraped away:

is the clearest warning sign on the shelf. Genuine bottles carry a printed lot code, and when professional stock leaks out of the salon trade it is often scratched, blacked out or cut from the label so it cannot be traced. Copies show themselves in a shampoo thinner than the real one, a slightly wrong smell, a pump that does not seat properly and blurred print. Then look inside. A mask or styling cream that has split into a layer of oil, gone watery, changed colour or smells sour is past it. Sealed sells as near-new, a bottle with a few washes gone sells for a fraction, and one somebody has topped up is worth nothing.

Half a curl routine, or a stylist’s leftover stock:

most second-hand hair care comes from someone who has gone back to straightening with a cream and gel barely used, or from a stylist changing brands with unopened litres left over. Photograph the front label, the lot code and the level in the bottle, and say whether each one is sealed or how many washes are gone, when it was bought and the hair type it was meant for. For keratin, list every step in the box. Keep it all out of a parked car until the handover. Someone coming from Limón for a half-used colocho set will want to know what your hair is like, because a gel that suited loose waves can sit heavy on tight curls.