A trip to Pueblo

Today I went to buy groceries. In most places it's not such a big deal but here you really want to plan ahead and stock up for a week at a time. Here's why:

The closest supermarket, Pueblo, is 17 km from the observatory and it takes about 30 minutes to drive there. The road is really just a series of curves one after another: there's maybe 4-5 places on the whole route to the supermarket where the road can be described as straight for more than 200 meters. In addition, deep jungle prevents you seeing behind many of the curves and the area has a lot of hills so the road is curved also vertically. The first time on the road to the observatory in the car of a local taxi driver was basically comparable to a roller coaster.

The width of the road is in many places equal to a width of two cars and the lanes are not really marked in any way. Each side of the road, and relatively often also the middle of the road, is dotted with potholes that efficiently destroy both tires and teeth if you hit them incautiously. Most people drive in the middle of the road (because that's the easiest way to avoid the potholes) so behind any curve another car may be approaching you – or be parked – on more or less your lane. If you're lucky, there's only one or two dogs, chickens, cats, or horses sunbathing or for other reasons hanging out on the road or in the near vicinity. If it's raining, there's toads.

The car that I used has automatic gears, which might sound fancy to some Finnish people because in Finland most cars have still manual gears. Well, that's where the fanciness ends. Here, the car is known as the green car that used to be owned by the previous group leader's family until they moved away last year and, since then, has been in use of another post-doc working at the observatory. The green car is (in)famous for almost having lit to fire by itself once and for a loose rear window that at least once dropped off. Buttons, such as A/C or open-the-trunk, don't work as expected but also look like they could drop off at any given time. In that sense, a missing window could be seen as a positive issue! Today's temperature was a pleasant 28˚C (82˚F), probably around 50˚C in the car. Fortunately, as a Finnish, I'm used to saunas. But buying ice cream might not be the best idea.

The steering worked well enough so (to my own surprise as I don't have a car in Finland) I survived the whole trip with intact tires and teeth and without hitting anyone or anything! Yay! And I got more food, like mangos and papayas that cost about $1/lb (~2 €/kg). Yaaay! In general, I love walking in the grocery stores of new places. Although by now it's not completely new anymore, it is interesting enough to see all the products for which I'm only guessing a more familiar name or how to prepare them. I bravely took a few local plátanos or plantains, which are the banana-like but less sweet fruits that can be prepared into, for example, tostones or tajadas (fried sliced plantains) or mofongo (mashed plantains seasoned with garlic), and will try to cook some of those myself.

To sum up, I'm really grateful that I got a car to my own use for free. But before making any longer trips, maybe I should look for other options too...

Coquí report #2: Zero frogs observed, although I can hear about a thousand right now. Maybe they become even more active during rain?