i eat these for breakfast.

called "tuna" in chile, prickly pear was one of the most common plants i saw when we made our way winding the mountains to olmue, the town where mireya's mother lives. although we had our first rain of the season on the way down there, coming back through the mountains, the view was amazing - rows and ruddy cordilleras, speckled with green and overlapping like shark teeth. then you would round one of the many curves and they would open up to reveal a glistening city or ocean. olmue is a small town about 30 minutes from vina del mar and valparaiso. valparaiso is basically the bigger, more disorderly port city and vina is its cleaner little sister with a pretty beach. valparaiso is like a strange mixture of the bright colors of seaside, the feeling of decayed glory (with a few bright remaining specimens) of new orleans and the drunken angles of san francisco streets (and the hippies). i saw more tourists there than i have yet, with their dog-eared guide books, ready cameras and obviously ostentatiously practical walking shoes. i heard portuguese, , french and english (both british and american). the seafood is of course, fresh and delicious here. i has "pastel de jaiba" for lunch which was basically melted cheese baked with chunks of fresh crab (pic on flickr). very delicious, and good for my cholesterol i'm sure.

mireya's mother's house was a treat in itself - built by mireya's father of a rosy pine, it was spacious and surrounded by an amazing garden and orchard. he had a passion for gardening and several of the trees were grafted together - an avocado tree that bore four different varieties, and an apple tree whose left half ripened early in the summer and whose right half was just now coming to fruit. we brought back pounds of fresh apples, pears, onions, corn, peppers, plums, and eggs (from down the road). sometimes you forget where the fruit in the fluorescently-lighted grocery aisles came from and plucking a fresh apple off of a tree just seemed magical.

that saturday night i had my first taste of chilean night culture. moni (mireya's daughter) and i had dinner with the 30-something year old couple that lives in her grandmothers other house (about 20 yards away). she had hung out with them a lot over the summer and they had invited us to make and eat pizza. starting at about 8:30 pm we drove down to the local grocery and picked up the supplies. then we drove about 20 minutes out to pick up his goddaughter. the husband was very animated and talkative and kept a conversation going the whole time is was anywhere near him. he told me how his goddaughter's parents were learning english with this "english without barriers" program (yes, the same one as in the movie "spanglish"), so when we got to the house, he had them pull it out and show everyone. they had just finished the first lesson, which involved introductions, and thought that the handshake greeting was rather cold. after having been kissed about 100 times since being here, i have to agree. the conversation on the way back to the house was mostly about "pokemon" - not the cartoon, it's their word for what are basically "emo" kids. my chemical romance is very popular here and there is a whole subculture of manga, punk, eyeliner-on-boys, choppy bangs over the eyes, stripes and combat boots that creates a look referred to as "pokemon," i think because of the beginning with japanese cartoons (hello kitty and beyond). apparently there is a whole unspoken code of how to "be" pokemon. its pretty intense, down to the way you pin your hair. now at about 10:30 we start making the pizza, which we sit down to around 11. we ate and talked for three more hours, until i was almost falling asleep between conversation topics, which ranged from his adventures in the andes to how chile is perceived by america, to public transportation to food i have to try. i only grossly misunderstood a few questions - abrupt topic changes throw me off because my context clues get disrupted. 

and about that prickly pear - i did eat it for breakfast, after mireya had unarmed it. they sell them in bags with the spikes removed (they will jump you!) and you have to peel off the thick outer skin with a fork and knife. the inside is bright green and full of seeds the size of regular grapeseeds. its is light and sweet, a little melon-y, like honeydew. i think it would make a good juice, because you have to eat it through the seeds (just kind of swallow them along with it).