I’ve moved ahead with preparation of the suite for guests. Here’s a photo of the partial redecoration. By next weekend I should have most of it completed, though there will be fine-tuning until Lillian and Neil arrive.
Here is stage 1 of the basket wall: Now stage 2 with better chairs:
Here is where the new table and wicker chairs will go.
Here is the new table and temporary chairs.
I created this wall hanging from mantas that women use to carry babies and other things.This will have a bar and clothes hangars, and perhaps a small lamp shade on the overhead light.
Making ice cubes with bottled water.
Outside the bathroom in the guest suite.
Should I put a dispenser of drinking water outside the bathroom on a stand (in the space to the left of the door) or just a pitcher of water? You can brush your teeth with the local water, but we drink (and make ice cubes) from bottled water. We make tea and coffee with local water on the theory that it is boiled, though not for 15 minutes. Neither of us have suffered from the local water, ever. I drank it full time for a few weeks at one point a few years back, though I don’t remember exactly why. No ill effects, other than the gray hair.
That’s it for now. We are going to Lima on Thursday for doctor’s appointments and shopping. I am hoping to have the rest of our improvements in place shortly after we return on Saturday.
If you wonder how I manage to spend four months in Peru, here is how some of my days go.
Coffee–fortunately, Jonathan gets up before I do and brings me a cup at 8 am. I get up, get dressed and eat breakfast while reading the New York Times on line. I subscribe to the Lima newspaper, El Comercio. That gets delivered around 10 am. If I don’t answer the door, it gets tucked behind one of the shutters in the window well, as the windows are always open by that hour.
Jonathan may go to the market, and I may or may not go along. This time I am stopping by to see whether the woman who gets baskets from Huaraz has gotten the ones I requested. She’s very crabby and generally very anti-American but business is business. Since I purchased five baskets when I asked for five baskets, it seemed like I might show up to buy the next lot. She may or may not get them. If I stop by several times to say hello it becomes more likely she will remember to get them for me. (She wasn’t there, her stall was shuttered.)
Our Peruvian friends seem incredulous that we actually like the Barranca market. They describe it as dirty and disorganized. To me it is only underfoot in the fish section that is a problem.
Today’s fish was cherlo, something like grouper.
So much water drips off the tables that it gets muddy underfoot. People often put down cardboard, but you end up walking on sodden, muddy cardboard. On the bright side, the fish are absolutely fresh, often still in rigor or even alive.
My response to our friends is that food in the US is so old by the time it gets to stores that the food in Barranca seems wonderful in contrast. Much of what is in the market is no more than two days from the plant or tree it grew on. Chickens are killed while you wait. The sound is not very nice, but the chicken is fresh. We have a regular person from whom we get chicken and eggs, another for oranges and most fruit, another for vegetables, except avocados, because Jonathan likes the ones a woman around the corner sells.
Today’s fish was a cherlo, something like grouper.
Vegetable lady peeking out from under parsley.
A giant squash in the walkway.
The strawberry seller
Artificial flowers.
A family we have known for years sells us olives, cheese, butter, raisins and nuts. We look forward to seeing our vendors, and they look forward to having us as regular customers. Explained that way, our delight in the market is more understandable.
From the market, we are likely to go to the Metro, the supermarket. It is not very interesting and the selection is not great, but it has decent Chilean and Argentine wine, club soda, UHT milk, crackers and a few other things. I did just buy new towels at the Metro, too.
There may be other errands at this time of day, more dog food, or the hardware store. Today I wanted to get new canvas backs and seats made for the two directors chairs we have not been using. You cannot get the fabric from the tailor, you must take it in. My first stop was at a fabric store, looking for canvas of equal weight to what was on the chairs. There was one option that was acceptable. On to the tailor, where we spent some time discussing the quality of finishing that I want, with double folded seams and heavy stitching. It’s a chair, after all. We settled on the work being finished by next Saturday. Now let’s see how it goes.
Back home, we sit down to work on the portion of our research that we are writing up this year.
It’s important to have a project in Barranca, because there isn’t a lot to do other than walk up and down the beach. There was no movie theater from about 1999 to 2012, and the new theater only shows films dubbed in Spanish. There is no local theater, music or art. No branch of AAUW. Thus, we need projects. We each have books we are writing and together we are writing about our research. Though the field work is over, there is still quite a bit of data that needs to be brought together. We plan to post our completed work on the project website. This should keep us busy for several years of spending the austral summer in Peru. (We are not much for sitting on the beach.)
At one pm, we put all the things we’d like to have for lunch on a tray and set a table and two chairs out on the front porch. We look out at the Pacific Ocean, I read El Comercio, Jonathan works on crosswords, and we have lunch. We chat with friends who pass by.
Today Leila was painting a new logo on Las Gaviotas, the restaurant next door. She does this most years, as the restaurant repaints before the start of the busy season each December.
Start
Lunch Break
Ready to go!
After lunch is siesta (optional) and more work. If there are other errands to run, we go out around 4 pm. At 5 pm we head out to walk down the beach, checking on what has been going on in the neighborhood. We say hello to as many people as possible, from the restaurant owners and staff who are there every day to the young men who stack their surfing gear on the sea wall, and the mototaxi drivers who play soccer on the beach. We wave or say hello to the police on motorcycles, the mother, daughter and granddaughter who are out on the sidewalk every day at this time.
Can you see the shiny new padlock?
We check out what is changing. Three story brick houses are being tucked in behind the row of houses that fronts the beach. The new hotel almoar finished the wall around the top floor where they’ll hang the laundry. There’s a new padlock on the door of a long-abandoned house. Will there be new construction? The debris from the two guys knocking down old wall segments is indeed piled in the nearest alley where we thought it might end up.
We spotted a new bird on the beach, a single black skimmer in a flock of laughing gulls. I often wear my jacket just to have a pocket for binoculars.
We passed Hadar and Marita sitting with a friend on the patio of the Casa Blanca, the hotel they manage.
I have never seen this before in Barranca. Salud!
At the Malabu, we turn around and stroll home.
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Someone was celebrating on the beach.
There is late afternoon light that is particularly beautiful.
Since we are in the tropics, the sun still sets around 6:15 pm. The longest day of the year is coming up on Dec. 21, and the sun will probably set at 6:21 pm.
From the patio, the sky is beautiful. The two vultures are heading for the tree where they roost. We see lots of them them gather there every evening.
We often put chairs on the porch to watch the sunset. Today’s is particularly lovely because the previous three days were cloudy and there was no sunset to watch. Summer is on the way in.
We go inside at sunset, close the shutters, bar the door and move the center of activity back to the office and the kitchen.
Jonathan brings me an appetizer so that I won’t get cranky before dinner, and then he cooks.
After dinner there is Netflix, blog posts, email and such until bedtime. That’s my day!
Every afternoon at 5 pm we walk down the sidewalk to the end of the beach and back We say hello to most of the people we pass, and occasionally stop to exchange air kisses with friends who we have not yet seen this season. We also keep track of what changes and what stays the same.
One thing that stays the same is the group that plays soccer most afternoons on the beach. Here the tide is high enough that they splashed in and out of the water.
Both teams are mototaxi drivers taking a break. Sometimes there are a dozen vehicles parked along the sidewalk. Friends and family watch and chat.
Working moms in Barranca often take children to work when they are not in school, or on the weekends. Here are a couple of women who sell goods in street stalls with their playpen set up beside them and their babies playing together.
Something that is new is the construction of a very small two story house right by the public water tap, where people who have no plumbing get their water and wash their clothes. You can see the large sign “No washing cars” that is ignored.
We spoke to a man working on the project who said it is a space for the local security men (Serenazgo). I’m wondering whether this location was selected so that the security people can collect bribes from the people who insist on washing their cars with the public water.
And in the “Some things never change” category,
Some time ago, this hole in the pavement was cordoned off as you see, shoveled out (pile in background), ready for repaving with new asphalt. Now there’s a good crop of weeds, but no sign of a road crew. Will they come before I leave Barranca on March 1? Wait and see.
There’s nothing like an unexpected procession to enliven my Saturday.
For the feast day of Saint Martin de Porres, a very important saint in Peru, there was a procession on Saturday that went up the street past our house and then back down to his shrine, set up outside the Ordonez restaurant. After the solemnities were over, there was a fiesta with food and dancing, and regular fireworks. For late in the evening a large framework for fireworks was constructed on the beach. I didn’t stay up late enough to see it, though I checked outside the front door a couple of times during the evening.
We are planning to offer one of our bedrooms that has a private bath on Airbnb after the first of the year. My pilot guest will be Lillian and her boyfriend Neil over Christmas, and before they arrive I want to get the room as well-arranged as possible. I can use some help.
The bedroom has high windows and I don’t want to put curtains on them because it becomes difficult to open them in the morning. The mattress is a good one, so I believe the bed will be comfortable. I am going to center a hanging over the head of the bed. I have good cotton sheets, so the basics are there. I believe it also needs a coverlet that is coordinated with the hanging, pillows, and a small straw mat on either side of the bed. Since we are on the beach, rugs don’t work very well, and there are some very nice locally made straw mats. The next photo is the space to the left of the bed.
I am having a coffee table made to replace the checkerboard table, but I’m not sure what to do about chairs. The doors of this room are narrow and an overstuffed chair or recliner won’t fit through the door. Small upholstered chairs made here are very low.
I am considering mounting a group of baskets on the wall because it is a large space. I was going to bring in an armoire for the corner of the room, but it won’t fit through the door.
Below is another photo of the space and a couple of ideas I have of patterns for mounting baskets.
If you have other suggestions, let me know. I am thinking about using natural baskets, because I would like to use quite a few.
Colorful baskets are also available.
You may notice that right now the room doesn’t have a color scheme. The floor is brick red, a common treatment for cement floors in Peru. The walls are white. (I don’t want to repaint.) What about shades of blue or blue/green? Alternatively, yellow and orange to complement the brick colored floor?
I didn’t realize they would be throwing us a parade, but it was fun to see enthusiasm for education. Thanks, University San Pedro in Barranca. I am not sure what was being celebrated, but the queen might be “Miss Learner” 2015.
Part of the reason for the parade is to celebrate the presence of the university and I am all for that. As Jonathan noted on his facebook page, there are some dubious sponsors, like the mobile drinks truck, but the paraders were just having fun.
The blending of past and present is highly visible in parades like this one. A recent poll in Peru showed most people consider themselves to be a mix of backgrounds (mestizo).
The “Marinera” dancers here are from a traditional dance performed on the coast, especially in northern Peru.
The dancers dressed as skeletons and carrying bones display highland traditions, where there are many dances and dance groups, most consisting of groups of both men and women, like this one.
Many families that live in Barranca today emigrated from the highlands to this coastal region in search of work and to escape drought conditions. Some arrived as nomadic herders and later settled in towns and cities.
New York and Chicagoland are great, but it is nice to stop moving after a bit more than two weeks. We arrived in Lima on the night of 11/18 (Wed), stayed overnight at our usual stopping place, the Hotel Senorial in Miraflores, and began our resettlement process with a visit to the Surquillo market, more shopping at the Wong and shopping center in San Miguel and the drive to Barranca. Traffic is worse than ever, the highway entrance near the hotel (Bajada Balta) is closed indefinitely for bridge rebuilding, and it takes a half hour to get anywhere. I was happy to head out of town.
There was some new street art:
Lima has been reclaiming land from the ocean for many years and the results are emerging with a series of parks along the shore.
This is the “before” view. The shore has been extended outward, but it’s still settling.
The “after” view includes recently planted palm trees, bus shelters, streetlights, playing fields and some sports facilities.
I completely fell down on my obligation to the blog world during our week in Wheaton. I have almost no photos despite a very full schedule of events.
We arrived from NYC on Wednesday night, collapsing onto the soft bed provided by our good friend Peggy. Thursday, Peggy hosted a Caribbean dinner as part of our local AAUW’s Spice Routes interest group. There was a groaning board of dishes from all over the Caribbean and more than 20 participants. The program is kept to a brief period in the kitchen when each person explained the dish they brought. The rest is experimentation with knife and fork. I loved catching up with friends. (Did not take one photo.)
Our oldest daughter Amanda arrived from LA later in the evening, and the following day we went out to Dekalb to meet up with our colleagues at the NIU Anthropology Department and the Pick Museum of Anthropology at NIU. Another large group sat around O’Leary’s in Dekalb chatting about work and family. Emily and Tim brought their new baby Clara–an absolutely darling baby. (Again, not one photo.)
Bright and early on Saturday we left for Champaign to see our youngest, Lillian, and her boyfriend Neil. We shopped, took a walk, talked a lot, admired the pets (rabbit Gizmo and parakeet Green) and played Trivial Pursuit (I won!). Jonathan grilled steak and veggies and then drove back to Wheaton. We managed one picture. Hooray!
We spent a clear, bright Sunday visiting the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island.
An earlier torch was shaped like an aladdin’s lamp.
Lyra is standing beside a full-sized replica of the statue’s toes.
My paternal great, great grandfather was Michael Dwyer, and he may have arrived at Ellis Island from Ireland. I didn’t find him in the records, but I could do more looking.
On the way back to Manhattan from Ellis Island, we saw a fireboat with all its hoses shooting in the air. It was a salute to an arriving Navy vessel.
Arrived NYC from Barcelona on Wednesday, bought household supplies and crashed. The weather is wonderful for November, short sleeves, high 60s to low 70s, with some rain. Thursday was subway tickets (unlimited 1 week) and the Met. We selected 4-5 different galleries we’d like to see, mostly temporary exhibits (Faberge eggs, American quilts, House models from the Americas, and some jade). As we moved from gallery to gallery we had brief looks at many other things, Greek vases and sculpture, the Temple of Dendur, Egypt.
From the Met we returned to our neighborhood (E. 3rd St.) and had a late lunch at Katz’s delicatessen that resulted in our not needing dinner. It was divine pastrami, chopped liver, coleslaw and a vanilla egg cream, not to mention pickles.
Friday we went on round 2 to MOMA. I was particularly interested in the temporary exhibit on Joaquin Torres-Garcia (1874-1949) because of his overlap with the Barcelona modernists. Torres-Garcia lived the artist’s mobile life in Europe, working in Gaudi’s studio in Barcelona, spending time in Paris, and 2 years in the US. Well established by 1932, and seeing the impending possibility of war, Torres-Garcia returned to Uruguay where he began a school and taught, wrote and campaigned for art until his death in 1949. He was the first person to draw a South American’s view of the continent, America Invertida:
Much of Torres-Garcia’s work looks familiar to be because it seems to have influenced my late mother-in-law, artist Eleanor Haas.
Torres-Garcia: Eleanor Haas:
Not to brag, but here I am with a famous painting….
Here’s a short explanation of Van Gogh’s success at depicting turbulence in “Starry Night,” despite this being a thorny problem in physics.
I am sorry to be leaving Barcelona. It is a walkable, livable city, architecturally rich, with a new vista or decorated facade around every corner. Most people have a balcony and there are lots of people in the streets. There are many daily markets and even more appear on weekends. People take festivals and traditions seriously. Take the castellers, they are not just forming towers, but all kinds of human sculpture. Note the satisfied coach on the left. This is a youth group. I’m impressed.
The girl in the helmet is Level 11
Getting this far was difficult.
Then they turned in a circle.
At the end, each upper girl does a forward roll into the arms of team members to dismount.
No place is perfect. I understand that Barcelona still has high unemployment among college educated young people. The real estate market is described as just now rebounding from 2008. There are beggars and street people. I still think it is a wonderful city.
I cannot say what has been my favorite experience. I made a list of all the things we did and places we went, something different almost every day of the 60 that we were here, and some days more than one stop on the tour. I didn’t want to forget anything. We had a last meeting with Joan, who provided our apartment and we chatted about Barcelona and travel and home. When I started this blog, I put Gaudi tile work on the banner because visiting Barcelona was a long-standing dream. I have to consider changing the image now and see what the future holds. For now we are on to the US and then to Peru for the winter. The next two posts after this one are informational, highlights of Barcelona, and a “Good to Know” section with a few practical thoughts.
Llywindatravels 2026 