Spanito

The cold with cough is spreading. Jason had it first and now I have succumbed. My current host family ´dad´is a doctor, so I have plenty of ´remedias´on hand for me, but really all I think I need is rest, so to bed I go as soon as I do a wee update here. The chilean spanish is slowly becoming more intelligible to all of us. It is funny because they add ´ito´ to a lot of words. So instead of just having te, they have te-cito. Instead of bread (pan) pancito. So now, I think I only speak Spanito. A little bit of spanish. Learning a language in full immersion is great, but exhausting and my brain seems to function in waves. I will do ok for a while and then it is like something has been literally unplugged and I can´t understand a word. Ah well, little by little.

Today we all drove south out of Rancagua to a town called Santa Cruz. Here a former arms dealer who is Chilean has set up a museum with his own private collection of pre-Columbian artifacts, carriages, wine equipment, jewelry of the Andes, amber and fossils and many other things. It was quite fascinating to walk around and see such a diverse array of things and to learn more about the huaso culture in Chile. The huasos are cowboys and can range from a working cowboy to a ´patron´who owns the land, but still works with his horse. The time for the most rodeos is in September around independence day, so it is unlikely we will see one, but in the rodeo there is a round ring called a medialuna in which the huasos have to trap a young cow against the wall in a zone marked with paint. The horses are therefore very agile and fast and are the descendants of the original horses brought from Spain by Pedro de Valdivia. The museum had many of the old stirrups made from wood, the large spurs of silver and other metals and the ponchos that are typical of the huaso. The hats are large and flat and made of straw to keep the sun off. After the museum, we of course headed to eat.

Today, the menu was cazuela. The photo on the left shows Maggie, Jacqueline and Adam warming up in the restuarant with pisco sours and wood fire before eating lunch. Cazuela was just perfect on a chilly day like today. A broth with a chunk of meat, a piece of corn on the cob, some potatoes, a bit of rice and big portion of squash all floating around.

Another food tradition here is onces, which is tea and bread and cakes at aroudn 5-6. Jason, my rancagua parents Irene and Jorge went to their friend´s house in the country just outside the city for onces. They had everything you can imagine growing on the land outside their house. Lemons, avocadoes, pomegranates, chickens, oranges.... the list goes on. The second photo is the moon (almost full now) over the grape vines outside their house.

I think hot water and bed are calling me. All the best! Robyn