Mortars, Luck, Lentils & Loros

2014! 

                          

Imaginations firing in full color at the turn of midnight from the Old to the New Year, Richard and I lay abed, eyes closed.  We'd been awakened by the mortars of Puerto Montt exploding their first loads of los fuegos artificiales out over the bay.  Shouts of approval rose from the gente outside our building, cries of delight emanated from the balconies and windows above & below us – still we did not get up to look out the windows.  For twenty minutes, ¡muy forte! the blasts continued. I’m sure it was a glorious display.  The next day's newspaper confirmed what my mind had fully enjoyed.  

What a miracle that the cold rain that had been threatening since late afternoon did not begin to pound the town till three minutes after the last blast! 

Surely that’s a sign of luck for 2014. 

Forgive me:  I did not know that it was NOT good luck to say Felice Año Nuevo before midnight.  When I returned from the Jumbo with my last minute groceries on Tuesday afternoon, and wished the conserje who let me into the building a Happy New Year, he wagged his index finger at me and said “No, no, no.  A las doce, o a la manyaña!” 

Whoops!  ¡Por favor, disculpa me! 

That bad luck error probably caused whatever cold germs I'd exposed myself to at the grocery store to develop into the sore throat and sniffles that have plagued my 2014 so far.  Life is better today, now that I’ve been BACK to the Jumbo for some real Kleenex, and don’t have to blow my nose in rough paper towels. 

It’s all relative, right?   And there are different kinds of luck.  We had lentils for dinner on New Years Day, and thanks to a Skype chat with Cousin Davide of Ternate, Italy, we know that's a recipe for economic fortune in the New Year.

Our friend G came up to our place for dinner and conversation on NYE, and Richard's excellent risotto satisfied us well.  I'd neglected to take my lemons out of the freezer ahead of time, thinking I could simply grate the frozen fruit for the pisco sours G wanted to make.  (Have you seen that Facebook post about using the WHOLE lemon to get full benefit of its amazing vitamin power?)  We didn't give the grated lemon a fair chance, in my opinion, and ended up thawing the darn lemons till we could juice them, by which time it was really too late for pisco sours!  Who knew G was such a traditionalist?

Speaking of tradition:  the week before Christmas we'd walked to the plaza and captured this view of Puerto Montt's manger scene, all carved from wood.
 Something's missing, though.

Our Christmas Day entertainment was most enjoyable.  Chris and Margi of Hobart, Australia, left their cozy boat in the marina to join us for a midday feast of champagne, hors d'oevres, garlic-roasted chicken (only slightly overdone), spinach pie, green beans almondine (or, more precisely, green beans with blackened almonds, as I left the toasting almonds on the gas burner at a crucial moment to show Margi the Christmas cookies our neighbor, Yolanda, had given us), delicious wine.  We also had perfectly boiled potatoes:  Richard managed to conjure his Grandfather Edwards, who would mash the potatoes just so on his own plate before distributing them onto the grandkids' plates.  We talked religion and politics without any grief, shared cruising tales and harbor gossip, and sight-seeing plans.  R rolled out his charts of the Guaitecas Islands, south of the Gulf of Ancud, to point out places where he'd anchored, as well as places where he'd given up trying to anchor.
Chris and Margi had prepared their traditional Christmas treat:  an authentic English Plum Pudding with Brandy Sauce for our dessert.  What a delight! - and a totally new experience for us.  Please test your imagination and share a spoonful of this warm, spice-flavorful, fruit-rich (yet delicate!) elaboration, drenched in buttery brandy cream.  May it melt in your mouth, bring radiance to your throat and flow caloric bliss through your bloodstream!  

Margi commented that the Christmas creche at the marina had finally been completed by the addition of the baby in his manger.  The gate guard there confirmed for her that Chileans do not expect to see the Baby Jesus until AFTER midnight on December 24th.

Back at the plaza, on the day after Christmas:  sure enough. And there's an angel on top of the "tree," now, too.

Also, couldn't help capturing this chica puertomontina with her Navidad presents on display:  

The local loros are sleeping a little later now that the year has turned.  A certain gang of these green parrots live in the trees just below our windows.  The loro's screech regularly pierces the densest dream in the dark of night. Don't know what had been setting them off at 4 a.m the past few weeks ... hungry baby loros? ... But maybe the trend has passed.  I didn't hear them this morning.

Who knows how this New Year will turn out for all of us?  We hope your good luck outweighs the bad.  Or at least, as they say in Panem, at the start of the Hunger Games, "May the odds be in your favor."