July 3
Abuelita was kind of on her own custom time schedule and got up excessively early each day. Rosa got up with her this morning while Anabelle and I stayed unconscious to recover from travel and “waiting for Daddy to travel.”
A large portion of the day was spent
simultaneously unpacking and packing.
Going to see the Incan jewel of the Andes required some severe
Carlinesque “smaller version of your stuff” planning.
In between I started reading the “pre Disney” posts to Anabelle as part of both a proofread and fact check.
Our first Menu’ of the trip was at a
little nearby restaurant owned by one of Abuelita’s friends.
Considering she lived in the same
neighborhood for over fifty years, that’s going to describe many places we ate.
Anabelle went the fried route, which
they excel at down there. I stayed with
something I knew, Pollo Saltado, the chicken version of the “Lomo” Rosa makes
with beef, tomatoes, onions and potatoes.
Rosa and her mom had the full menu’ with soup and fried rice.
While they took a walk, Anabelle’s
Disney Genes compelled her to ask for me to read more of the drafted
posts. To recover from her Abuelita Standard
Time awakening, Rosa took a nap while Anabelle gave me a one woman show of Beauty and the Beast in Spanish...
Because once those Disney Genes
activate, they keep running.
To continue the theme, Anabelle also
pulled out the old Disney figures we played superheroes with on our last South
American adventure. Their time was
short, before we launched into the first of far too many marathon Doctor Who Uno sessions.
All recovered in our own ways, we set
out on a supply run (or more accurately, walk) to Tottus. We needed to not only stock up for the
extra-large gringo on the continent, but also to make sure Abuelita was well
supplied while we were off on our mountainous adventure.
I guess Anabelle was happy to have all
of us together, as she broke into a spontaneous song and dance in the street on
the way there. Then again, several others we passed did the same thing when
they heard music from nearby shops, so it may be a Latin thing.
There were the same number of street
living dogs, but more poop than last time, indicating some sort of
infrastructure break down.
Either that or we were walking on
Monday, right after a busy weekend.
At Sodimac near Tottus, I learned
Anabelle had recently purchased the “magic trick mug” that made it look like
she was drinking beer. I had thought it
was something Abuelita already had, without really processing why she would have it.
Sadly, there were no Kraps. I had planned to bring back some of the
hysterically named, yet somehow tastier Ritz cracker clones for work. Our biggest complaint about them was that
they fell apart, and a little research revealed that’s why they were
discontinued. The Krapologists could not solve the structural integrity problems. Fortunately, we eventually discovered the
even more entertainingly named “Mini Kraps” were still in common distribution.
I don't think there was any connection
to the absurdly teeny potatoes the store sold, but there may have been.
The large air mattress Rosa had bought
was swapped for a tiny one. It wasn’t that we didn't need the space. It was
that we packed (and they lugged down) our giant, queen sized one, and never
noticed the valve cap was missing. As
long as we needed to buy a whole new mattress just for the plug, we wanted to
minimize.
We got back home in time to catch a
Matt Smith episode of Doctor Who in
Spanish. Following geeky shows and
movies was my only hope of getting more of the language into my head. Real life certainly never worked.
Rosa was back on the normal Peruvian “one
big mid-day meal schedule” and had some crackers. She was well aware of the
kind of physical and emotional breakdowns that schedule leads to in my system
and surprised me with a tamale. Woo!
As an indication of how tired I was
after eight hours on a plane, this was when I realized that he was also our
Taxi ride from the airport and an Uber driver we’d be calling regularly. I took
advantage of the Wi-Fi to check a bunch of messages, and keep the old blog
links connected. I felt so
technologically international!
Rosa called to confirm our flight for
the next morning, while Anabelle regaled me with the tale and photos of her
trying “Hen Soup” which uses some different parts of the hen than we normally
associate with food stateside.
This was also known as the “Chronicles
of the Chicken Foot.”
Before turning in for what would be an
extremely short night, we watched a couple episodes of the Sixties Aquaman
series. The limited animation, insanity of
the stories and over acting prompted Anabelle to declare, “This Is the Best
Show Ever!”
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