Day 74, Year 10: Making Granola in Puerto Rico
Date: Tuesday, December 23, 2014
Weather: Partly Sunny Day, Afternoon Shower
Location: Visiting with Justin, Jo, Ziggy, and Coco in Aguada, PR
I can’t escape it. Making granola is my destiny. Before flying here, I spent what seemed like days making enough granola to last us until the spring equinox. I thought I was done for a bit. But we brought some with us and Ziggy loved it so much that it disappeared more quickly than anticipated. Sooooo . . . Ziggy, Coco, and I spent the morning making granola. Justin and Jo have a stove top, but no oven. They do have a big toaster oven and a solar oven, so we used both to bake the granola. Unfortunately today was not as bright and sunny as the other days here have been, so using the solar oven was only partially successful. We had to finish the granola off in the toaster oven. But Mark and I were both really impressed with the potential of the solar oven. It easily reaches 300 degrees F with partial sun. If we had more time here, I would love to experiment some more. But we have only tomorrow and Christmas Day as we fly home on Friday.
In the afternoon, Mark and I walked into town in the hopes of picking up Justin and Jo’s car. I didn’t mention in last night’s log that the car broke down on the way home from Jo and Coco’s shopping trip yesterday. The car overheated and just stopped, so Justin had to call the garage that does work on the car and have them tow the car and bring Jo and Coco back to Aguada. He then took the stroller into town and walked back with them. By mid-afternoon today, the guys at the garage had still not figured out what was wrong, so after a bit of shopping in town, Mark and I walked back home. It is about 1.7 miles each way from here to town. And if you do a few side trips as we did this afternoon, you end up walking well over 4 miles round trip. We were thankful that it was partly cloudy today.
Ziggy and Coco are both really getting into the Christmas spirit. They have embraced the idea of re-gifting and love wrapping anything and everything they can find to give on Christmas Day. We have run out of wrapping paper, so another trip into town is in store for tomorrow. After that, I’m hoping we will be able to spend part of the afternoon at the beach as a Christmas Eve celebration. The weather here has been delightful. As my Christmas present, I want to wrap it up and take it home with me!
