Today’s plan was an early morning walk for Danelle and I to the nearby ecological reserve. Coty wanted to be woken up early to meet a friend for breakfast. Then Corvin and Sonora would sleep in and meet up with us later. I woke Coty up as requested and Danelle and I were out the door shortly later. We started walking in the direction of our destination for the day. Danelle spotted a nice breakfast location and we agreed to stop. It wasn’t a particular memorable breakfast. Okay, not true. I had the meat with eggs. When it came out, the meat was 4 slices of deli ham folded in half and still cold on the plate. It didn’t taste bad, but didn’t pique my American tastes. Danelle, on the other hand, enjoyed her breakfast of eggs and fruit. It was the first time we’d had a breakfast that was not focused on bread and sweets.
We continued on in our stroll to our destination. I thought we would take a taxi and get their sooner, but this was not Danelle’s plan. We spent time walking through local parks and re-viewing past landmarks we had seen on a previous walk or taxi ride. But as we neared our destination, Danelle needed a bathroom. We found a nearby coffee shop called Llama Coffee Roasters that had a bathroom and decided it was worth the price of “second breakfast”. As we sat there, consuming our lemonade, cookie, and slice of lemon bread, a man came over and spoke to us with a slight British accent with perfect English. It turns out his wife owns the place and he wanted to make sure that we got what we wanted from his staff. We ended up talking to him for several minutes each sharing a piece of our own story. I’m glad that we made the stop and were able to talk with him about life.
Funny thing is that the ecological reserve was about a quarter mile away from the coffee shop. And the first thing we saw was large sign for water and bathrooms. We laughed but agreed our previous decision was the right one. There were a few reasons for me wanting to go to the reserve. I wanted to be closer to nature and see some local plants. I like spending time with Danelle who also likes these things. And it was on land’s edge so I would be able to see the ocean. It’s fascinating to me how close this city is to the river/ocean and how much it appears from my experience to be completely neglected. This is most obvious to me by the fact that a few miles of the ocean front are taken up by an airport 🙁 I think your only chance for a consistent view is from a tall building.
The preserve had a very wide path which I didn’t expect. There were only a few trails, and they were heavily trafficed. Running and biking were the main forms of traffic with lots of people getting a touch of nature while working out. Danelle and I took what is about a 1 hour walk and at least doubled it sauntering hand in hand through it. We sought shade to stay cool and stopped often for flowers, plants, and views. Danelle has been taking photos of some of the animals we’ve seen along the journey, adding many of them to the iNaturalist App, partly to find out what they are and partly to contribute to community science from interesting places. She did this in San Juan a bit, too, adding data for a place that is not very well-represented in community science.
We received a group text from Coty asking where we were. Followed shortly by a message from Corvin and Sonora asking of our progress. We responded with a screen shot of our location. I ended up calling Sonora to clarify and she was a bit concerned. I explained that mom and I were taking our sweet time and they could too. When they left, they should text us and we would speed up. She was relieved that there was time to charge her device before coming out.
It was definitely after 11am when we got the text the kids were coming. Somehow, Coty and her friend also converged and we all met together at a fountain outside the park. It was decided we would walk back through the preserve. So now we all walked the reverse of what Danelle and I had just done. But done in much less than half the time. On this leg of the journey, we came within a couple feet of a snake which we later found out was an Urutu, a venomous pit viper. Coming out on the other end, we had hungry kiddos. Back to the coffee shop for lunch. There Coty said bye to her friend. Then we went back to the reserve, but stayed just outside. There were stalls of vendors selling all sorts of items. There the kids and Danelle went shopping.
The first purchase made was from a jewelry stall. They had charms and necklaces separate from each other so you could get a chain the correct size for what you wanted. While Sonora bought an item, Danelle decided to get a new chain for the necklace that she’s been wearing regularly for over a year. The one she’s been using gets tangled in her hair periodically and she wanted a replacement. Since she wasn’t sure about the quality of the chain, she planned to wait until back in StL to switch it out, but it wasn’t meant to be. Not an hour later, her existing chain broke with the pendant falling to the ground! Luckily Sonora saw it fall, so the piece wasn’t lost.
We continued shopping and found items for the people back home and some for ourselves. It took a while, but the shopping distracted foot weary people for a little longer. But after shopping everybody but Corvin took a taxi back to the place while Corvin walked for more steps. During the taxi ride, Coty started talking to the cab driver and he perked up. First it was a comment about his Renault Logan driving being much better than mine in San Juan. Then he wanted to know about Puerto Rico. We laughed and explained that San Juan is also in the west of Argentina and that is the one we were at. The driver didn’t think that Coty’s accent was from Argentina which helps explain his confusion. Just the same, he laughed and apologized. We spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing with me totaling over 27,000 steps for the day! A quick shopping trip and I made hamburgers for dinner and some wine for the adults. But of course our day wasn’t done just yet. We went out for ice cream as a family. Now we could sleep!
