Gringos de Marimán

The land, huerta and cabana are owned and maintained by Veronica, a Mapuche woman possibly in her late sixties. She lives alone in a small house that is surrounded by gardens, hen houses, and a structure for storing wood (our only heating source). Veronica’s gardens include vegetables, herbs, flowers, and fruit trees. Her farm is primarily poultry (except when she has her 3 dairy cows, 3 calves and 1 bull grazing here. They devoured the area within a month and thankfully, went onto greener pastures. Cows are noisy, messy and REALLY LARGE!) Veronica has many hens and chicks, two obnoxious roosters, geese, ducks and an ugly, incessantly screeching guinea hen. We purchase fresh eggs and vegetables from her weekly.

Veronica's poultry

Hen houses, wood storage and on the right is Veronica's house

Cows and calves

Bull sniffing the new car.

Dennis cherry picking

We are about 10 miles from El Centro – downtown Pucon. We have potable water, electricity, indoor plumbing – with an interior gas Hot-water-on-demand contraption – (it produces either scolding OR cold water), a refrigerator with small freezer area, a gas stove, and for heating a small wood burning stove. We DO NOT have a phone line, internet access, TV reception, mail delivery, trash pickup and Cell phone reception is Very poor. We make phone calls from a phone-booth store or use our cell in town; we use internet cafes for all computer related services; we take our trash down the main highway to a community bin; and we pick up our mail at the post office downtown. AND to know how upset I would get when my Sunday New York Times failed to be delivered at our Condo in Pomona!

Our cabana has 3 rooms – a bathroom with a shower, a bedroom and a kitchen/eating area. Our furniture consists of: a kitchen table with 4 Very uncomfortable chairs, a bed (thankfully comfortable) with nightstands, and a side table and dog carrier that the cats use for looking out the windows. We have spectacular views and lots of animal action outside our windows.

The Kitchen. Left to Right - Wood burning stove (our heater), above the sink - Water heater contraption; gas stove; fridge.

No TV necessary

Kitchen/Eating Room

Lester gazing out the window

In regards to Furniture – On January 17th our belongings were Finally picked up by the moving& storage company. Our container had been sitting at the docks in Valparaiso since Dec. 4th! It ended up costing us $1600.00 more to get it released from customs because the moving company waited so long to pick it up. We off-loaded 8 items- 2 were our bicycles! - The rest will be stored until our house is completed or another option presents itself.

Daily Life: Currently we are a family of seven. Dennis and I, the four cats and Ollie (Juno-Pinhead-Bonzo-Roo) – the 3 legged 6 month old Shepherd-mix we adopted (only because we didn’t want to watch him die slowly from a severely broken/infected front leg (now amputated) and numerous DEEP oozing wounds right next to us in Veronica’s yard.)

For the moment, we are all doing well. A few weeks ago Dennis came up with a great routine to help our Cramped (??) situation – he and Ollie GO TO WORK for 5 or more hours each day! Dennis drives Ollie to his huerto on our parcela every morning by 8:30 a.m. Dennis works on preparing his garden beds, planting and composting. Dennis is Blissfully Happy spending time at his huerto. Ollie hobbles around the parcela, eats dirt, plays with his campo dog friends, and snoozes. They return to the cabana around 1 p.m. During their (welcome) absence, the cats and I go out for our morning ritual around Veronica’s huerta and surrounding areas. I prepare our main meal, bake a dessert or bread, do my exercises, think about studying Spanish, complete a few Sudokus and Putts until Dennis and Ollie return.

Pretty nice way to spend the morning!

Ollie (Juno-Bonso-Roo) Morning ritual

Mario getting the BOYS ready to prepare the soil for the huerto.

Huerto from a distance

We usually have our main meal around 2 or 2:30. After lunch we TRY to make some headway on our business affairs. SINCE almost EVERY BUSINESS – STORE – GOV’T Office closes from around noon to 3 p.m. for lunch and the BANKS close at 2 p.m. for the day !@#$ it’s a LITTLE difficult to make much progress. I’m learning to NOT CARE if our house ever gets Started or completed!!!

House: We have a builder! He is from Germany, speaks perfect English and Spanish AND understands the cultural/construction differences between the US, Europe and Chile (he has a son who lives in the US). He has lived and worked in Chile for over 9 years. He will ‘break ground’ sometime in February – hopefully the week of the 12th. It has taken an Unbelievably Long time to get to this point. We actually believed (when we were naïve gringos) we could begin construction prior to the Christmas holidays. Our architect’s business methods are ‘the horse before the cart’ approach. Common business steps not forecasted add weeks or months to the process. It is Extremely frustrating!!

FEBURARY 14 WE STARTED THE CONSTRUCTION!!!!!

Where does the house go?

That looks about right

Why are we using this hose?

Get that 3 legged dog out of the way

Now we're making progress

New terrace with volcano view

Banking: We received a bank account after a 2 ½ month process. Bank accounts here are a luxury. The people say ‘that you need to be either rich or know the right people in order to receive an account.’ They also have ATM cards that correspond to the account. We received our ATM card but are now on our 7th week waiting for the access code in order to USE the card. And so it goes…

Spanish: Dennis, as expected, is progressing remarkably well! He spends several hours every day looking up words and compiling lists with their definitions, examples of their usage, and reading aloud. He is reading Love and the Shadows by Isabelle Allende. He reads each chapter 3 times and is extremely disciplined. I, on the other hand, am LAZY. I would rather TALK to people than Study … but my Spanish teacher Gloria who is a wonderful Chilean woman originally from Santiago – single mother of 2 (13 and 19) spends our totally Unstructured lessons telling me about her life and current events. I tend to get in at least 5 minutes worth of speaking during our 1 ½ hour lesson. However, my listening and reading comprehension skills have improved! Dennis manages to speak the majority of the time during his lesson. He recapitulates his novel readings to Gloria and she only interjects to correct his syntax. I realize I need to take the BULL BY THE HORNS and dictate how the lessons should be run, but my attempts are usually left in ruins-shared cigarettes and wine and listening.

Self: It is obvious that I miss the infrastructures of the States. Also, I turned 50 in December along with the associated biological baggage! Needless to say, I’m not the Ideal Retirement Mate for this aventura or for prolonged RV/cabana/sailboat living with another human being and many animals. Thankfully Dennis has the mental fortitude to ignore or transcend disagreeable situations.