Our home base for this leg of the trip is in the small town of San Pablo de Lago, just south of Otavalo. We are staying on a mini farm that has a variety of livestock (cows, sheep, a goat, rabbits, guinea pigs, and A LOT of chickens including multiple loud roosters), pets (3 dogs, 4 cats, 2 parakeets, 2 bigger birds) and a large garden.
Interestingly, the garden has plants in it that produce fruit, but not any of the staples I normally would expect in a garden. This one has raspberries, uvilla (cape gooseberry) and tree tomatoes for juice (tomate de arbol). Similarly, the livestock walk around and eat, but no milk, limited eggs, and a lot of noise (the goat is particularly entertaining). So, maybe I am missing something in their reason for being present, but regardless, they are funny to see as they run around the grounds.
Our house is just right. Two bedrooms, nice kitchen, tons of windows and sunlight, and a pool with jacuzzi. When we arrived there were roses everywhere (I counted 153 actual roses, plus there are multiple baskets of rose petals), it was awesome to wake up each morning and see them bloom. They have since died and were replaced with bamboo sprigs, it is a nice touch all around.
Now on to the surprising/learning curve aspects.
Surprising #1 - One of the main reasons we decided to rent this particular house was for the pool. We thought it would be great exercise and fun for the kids on a daily basis. We got in the first week and discovered that it is freezing - I am talking Lake Dillion at Memorial Day kind of freezing. The kids were blue lipped and shivering, so the pool quickly lost its appeal :( The jacuzzi is nice, but it self drains, so when ever we want to use it, we have to have the caretakers fill it up. One thing we didn't take into account is that we are in their 'winter' so the temps are slightly lower than they will be later in the year, but I don't think this would make a huge dent in the ice pool :)
Surprising #2 - There are more windows than walls in most of the rooms, and there is not a single blind or curtain in the entire house. I mean entire house - not the bathrooms, not the showers, no where. This has been interesting all around including privacy, sunlight (particularly sunrise!) and how absolutely black it is when there is no moon. It is what I would imagine living in a glass house would be like. On the other side, it does make you almost feel like you are 'camping' in that you wake up seeing everything outside, and can see nature, and the weather, and the animals, all day no matter what you are doing. I do love the sunlight, I do not like trying to find a corner of the house to get dressed in :)
Learning curve #1 - Food. This was a big one, that I think no matter how long we stay here, it would be tough to get used to. First, it isn't convenience in terms of access that is an issue, which was honestly at least some of what I expected. We have small shops and panadarias (bakeries that also sell various items like cheese and milk) within a few blocks of the house in San Pablo. It turns out that the main issues are variety and flavor. The options for meals based on what C and I are familiar with in terms of cooking are chicken, beef, rice, beans, pasta (no sauce - this will be a post all in of itself) and some veggies (onions, tomatoes, green peppers, giant corn). I did leave out the chicken heads and feet, and cow tounges and feet, which we just weren't ready to tackle, but fascinated A and N as they looked in the meat case at the market.
The staples above aren't bad to deal with, if you have spices or sauces, or whatever we normally would through in to keep variety on the table. We have found that the particularly tough part here, is that spices are very limited. We have salt, pepper, cumin, oregano, garlic and achiote, and that is it. No chili powder, no parsley, rosemary, thyme (if you are old enough, you can hum the tune to the song here). There are some fresh herbs available up in Otavalo, and we did try some fresh cilantro, but it is just been too hard to soak and 'de-parasite' and keep it in good enough shape to use.
It has been a rude awakening to see how blatantly spoiled we are in the US with having any veggie, meat cut, grain type, seasoning, etc. when ever we want it, and it quickly became clear that we were at a loss without our spice cabinet in terms of making a months worth of various dishes from our few available staples. There will be a few more posts on our adventures surrounding the shopping and cooking at our house as we continue on, so stay tuned :)
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