Apr 22, 2010

Today has been a very relaxed day, catching up with ourselves and letting our luggage catch up with us.

Adriana made us a wonderful lunch of platanos, a kind of very thick-cut bacon fried crispy, the ever-present arepas, and a black bean soup made of beans fresh from the farm.

Much later in the afternoon, Marta, Papito, and I took a walk. Papito was looking for a particular shopping center, but we turned the wrong way at the bottom of the hill and got totally lost. We ended up taking a cab to the shopping center and back home. The “shopping center” was a kind of strip-mall with open-front stores, a bank, and a lot of people who come to drink a beer after work and pick up pan (bread) for breakfast in the morning. The young women dress to the nines, as Marta had indicated.

I stood out a bit because of my height. However, I think I blended reasonably well, since when Papito would ask questions, the respondent would often turn to me (if Marta was not immediately present) and explain in rapid-fire Spanish. I’m getting by on my child’s Spanish, but it is very difficult, and I don’t say much. Papito and I have fun, though. His sense of humor is sophisticated, though it takes a crude turn (exactly like mine), so we have a couple of recurring motifs including eucalyptus and howling like a dog. Don’t ask.

We came home to dinner, and will doubtless be turning in fairly soon. I did manage to get a reasonably good night picture of a tiny slice of the city that gives a small hint of its verticality. But I have not been able to capture the full three-dimensional glory of the place.