Joanna Biggar's Blog

A Day in the Life of…

Local Color on the street where we live

Even though we’ve been here so short a time, it was easy, and in a way desirable, to find ourselves living some kind of “daily life.” Since school and its demands and pleasures — and homework — takes up a considerable part of our days, we’ve found ways to have a routine.  Since everywhere we go is by foot (unless we’re being picked up to go into the reserve) and since all paths are hilly and many rocky, I guess you could say we have our daily ups and downs.

    That’s not only true for going up and down our rocky road, but also for going into town, which is Santa Elena. Along the way we pass through our hamlet, called Cerro Plano, which also has plenty of attractions: some very attractive shops with local, handmade items, cafes, restaurants, big, handsome hotels, smaller ones with cabanas, and digs for backpackers who seem to be prevalent here. There are cafes, a wonderful tapas restaurant, an ice cream store, and an ATM machine that always has money in it. A real plus. There’s also a “24-hour” medical clinic, that is open when it’s open, and a Honda store next door that sells motorcycles, and still sports its life-size Christmas creche. Evidently, these stay up into February.

   We go to the big burg (4,000?) of Santa Elena mostly to shop for groceries, either in the Super Mercado or the farmer’s market. En route, we pass tin-roofed houses, sometimes wildly painted and often nearly hidden behind “forest growth” with a large dose of hibiscus everywhere.  We follow a stream, that sometimes smells, and we dodge cars, vans, buses, motorcycles, and often kids on bikes. Mothers stroll along with toddlers and prams.

    Sometimes, on the same walk, the weather can change five times…from hot, to cloudy, to windy, to sunny with showers, sometimes all at once. Nobody seems phased by this, maybe because it’s “summer” now, and the roads remain basically dry. Whether we’ve worn the right clothes, gotten wet or no, we always come back from town laden with stuff, including some item from the bookstore (I’m buying stuff in Spanish now), a piece or two of fried chicken from a chicken shop, and whatever the supermercado has to offer. It always includes some Chilean wine!  Then for about a buck, we hail a cab and bring the goods home, thinking about how to cook whatever it is we’ve bought.

Our apartment building at Casa del Toro

    Friday, when we “entertained” Doug’s Dutch study-mate, it was hilarious. Since we tried to have more than one thing at a time, salad for example, we had to keep interrupting “the flow” to wash our four plates, three cups or glasses. But we made a concoction with rum, and Idoubt she minded.

      Now, having sort of “settled in,” we’re about to shift again. Classes in the afternoon instead of the morning, and next weekend we leave the cloud mountains to head to the coast.