Monday, June 18, 2018

Peru 2017 Day 9- Pacific Blue Boogaloo

July 10

Anabelle and I stayed unconscious while the guy to appraise the furniture came as one of a long series of steps to facilitate Abuelita’s eventual exodus.

Rosa also looked up operation hours of the Fountain Park and learned it was closed Mondays. So much for the grid.

We checked the remarkably similar every day weather for the area to help reschedule. Learning this day would be Partly Sunny instead of the rest of the week being Partly Cloudy was not a huge help.

While figuring we watched Disney’s Robin Hood in Spanish.  “Oo-da-lally” is part of a universal language.  Anabelle also discovered the existence of the Banned Books list this morning, quickly adding as many as she could to her plans for future reading.

That’s my girl.

Rosa made us all Estofado de Pollo for lunch. That’s Spanish for, “wicked yummy chicken.”

Yo tengo agua, por favor.

Taking advantage of the Partly Sunniness, we decided to walk to the beach in La Punta, marveling at how the graffiti topped most sanctioned art in US cities.

On the way there were many slightly larger than life sized statues of varied Peruvian naval heroes. 

And one of the Gorton’s Fisherman.

Rosa convinced Anabelle to join the seated statue of Grau on his bench, but she would not shake his outstretched hand.  Her reasoning, “Do you know how many people have touched that?”

On the way we passed through a large park with monuments commemorating Peru's friendship with other countries. Each had a little plaque describing the nation and the bonds of international camaraderie.  Some of the monuments clearly had the plaques ripped off after the fact.  So much for global relations!

We also passed through some wet cement on the sidewalk.  Anabelle was completely panicked at first, until she realized there were sneaker prints in every single square inch of the sidewalk newer than the Nazca lines.

We walked out onto a small peninsula jutting out of the large peninsula of La Punta we were adventuring on.  Warning signs saying the ocean was contaminated were on only one side of the jutting.  Either there are some strange currents in the area, or the sign posters were excessively optimistic.  Rosa pointed out “Gilligan’s Island” that they used to walk to at low tide in her youth. Considering that’s one of the staple series here in the US that I thought she said didn’t make it to Peru, I have no idea why it was named that.  I don’t recall any Spanish explorers named “Ponce de Gilligon.”

Reaching Rosa’s childhood beach, Anabelle set about tossing stones into the surf. Spending most of her life on a Lake instead of the sea, she missed the ocean a few times. Moving water can be tough on those of us not raised in it. 

We sat down on the ocean smoothed stones, except Anabelle, who inherited my luck and sat on the only bumpy rock on the whole beach.
She then set about constructing symbols and arrows out of the stones, to entice the waves to strike Rosa and me.

Earth Magic!  Woo!

We spent some time moving the rocks around looking for teeny crabs. Neat!

Of course, stopping at one of the many beach D’onofrio carts was a given. Rosa, again using her Peruvian Sense to tingle out the good one.  We looked over some of the little stands near the restaurants and came away with some snacks for the trip home, Municiones (little spiral vanilla buns) and Mini Kraps. (Little Kraps!)

It was interesting to note that in Rosa’s neighborhood, the tsunami warning evacuation signs all pointed to the heavily walled fortress  that protected the coast from natural and ship bound invasions.  Out here on the unprotected, beach filled peninsula, the signs pretty much said, “Run up the nearest hill and pray fiercely.”

A medium sized bus had “space” for us. Even Anabelle didn’t have leg room on that one. On the way home, I learned more about Peruvian horn etiquette.  Horns were used when the busses ran red lights, and also when cabs backed off the sidewalk towards busses. How polite!

At home, we downloaded pictures, and did some reading. Anabelle finished the autobiography of Lily Collins. (Star of Mirror, Mirror and Phil’s daughter) I had some tamales for dinner.  After fiddling with pacifier placement on Abuelita's toys...
Anabelle went into total dinner party planning mode for our return, fully basing the theme on Neil Gaiman’s Endless from the Sandman comics.  That’s my girl!

The rest of the night was a mix of planning the other days, packing what we could, reading and writing.

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