January 4, 2010

I woke up early today to go into Puerto Montt with Lisa for supplies.  I was up with much time to spare so I built a fire in the stove and made some tea.  It was really nice to have the house totally quiet, the day awakening while I sat drinking tea in the kitchen…never happens at home.  Anyway I walked across the compo listening to the birds chirping, a hawk hunting and a pair of some kind of bird screaming when I flushed them off their nest.  The drive into town was quick.  We took care of business in town and I snapped a few pics.

Then jumped on a bus for a quick trip to a touristy area down where the cruise ships dock – Angelmo (pronounced: an helmo).  I loved it.  First there were all these booths under a roof but still open to the outside where people were selling all kinds of produce, fresh eggs, various suspicious looking (and smelling) dried seafood and herbs.

Then in a corner of the Mercado were the seafood vendors filleting and selling very fresh fish, mussels, clams and other unidentified bivalves.  The smell was atrocious but the activity and excitement was infectious.  Walking towards town from this area we passed numerous other street-side shops selling beautiful local crafts such as baskets, hand carved items, alpaca sweaters, hats, mittens, lapis lazuli jewelry, homemade chocolates and the usual trinkets.  We picked up a few things and moved on to other errands.

The Walmart of South America (and, Yes, Walmart does own a percentage of it) is called Hyper Lider (pronounced: he per lee der).  The hyper part I understand.  Anyway, it is much like a stateside Walmart except many of the brands are foreign (however not the “Great Value” brand), the music, while American in origin, is sung in Spanish and from the 70’s.  The people are not as fat, they don’t speak English, the array of items to choose from is much more limited and the beer selection sucks, the wine selection is awesome (and cheap in cost) and the liquor choices are good.  The Home Depot/Lowe’s of South America is called Sodimac but I was unable to determine if either HD or Lowes has any stake in it.  We stopped at a residence on the way home that advertized empanadas…we were so stoked to eat fresh, homemade empanadas and get enough to not have to cook dinner.  Despite the sign still being out there was no one home.  Bummer.  All in all it was a productive day.  We had a good ole American meal tonight…PB&J, chips and freshly sliced tomatos with salt (and lemon), delicious.