We woke up to an e-mail telling us that Howard’s 91 year old dad, Len, had broken his hip. Now, that wasn’t good. We received e-mail updates from his geriatric case manager, Nancy (who has been helping Len with his medical needs), and Dorothy (who helps Len with household needs and has been a wonderful friend to him). I was also able to call the hospital and get an update even though it was about 3am in Tucson. We were encouraged that everything we heard had positive overtones.
With news on hold until the surgery was over, we ventured out for the morning to a nearby museum, La Moneda Cultural Center. There was an exhibit from the Los Angeles County Museum featuring statues, paintings and carvings from India depicting religion-based images. Although the exhibit was interesting, our thoughts were distracted.
We decided to stick close to home for the afternoon in case we heard about Len. Neither one of us wanted to say out loud what we were thinking: That is was likely we’d soon be on a flight back to the US. But incredibly enough he came through the surgery just fine and they had him standing less than 24 hours later. We received many updates on his unbelievable progress saying “don’t come home.” We wondered if those ladies were fibbing to us but we were inclined to want to believe them.
We had not had lunch but a large breakfast at the museum had held our hunger at bay for the afternoon. But it was early evening and I was time to focus on food. I searched the Internet for nearby restaurants and we set out to find one that looked particularly good and was not far away. Not long into our walk we realized that the streets were rapidly filling with police in riot gear! There were police on motorcycles and armored vehicles at every corner. We heard the chanting of a protest demonstration coming toward us. But it was clear to us early-on that the police presence was an incredible over-reaction to a small protest group. Motorcycles were zooming everywhere and the riot-geared police were blocking every corner. We heard what sounded like gun shoots and they were not that far away. We could see high-powered water hoses targeting the demonstrators. I noticed pretty quickly that, unlike in the US, there were no media covering the event.
We later found out that it was a demonstration against the government’s effort to build hydro-electrical plants in the wilderness of Patagonia, our next stop here in South America. Last May thousands of people across Chile demonstrated against the dams. Now if we’d known this was all about Patagonia we would have joined the demonstrators!
We never did find the restaurant. Eventually our wanderings led us back closer to home to The Blue Jar. The fare was tapas (not full dinners) but we had our fill of little chicken brochettes, grilled shrimp, smoked salmon, and empenadas. Oh, and, of course, Pisco Sours.