Llama for Lunch by Lydia Laube Read Free Book Online Page B

week day, I couldn’t wait to see what Sunday brought. On Sunday the usual morning bells tolled and then at half past eleven and twelve more bells joined in and the lot went berserk. You couldn’t miss going to mass here – the bells wouldn’t let you.
    During the day I found the library. According to my map it was straight down the street, turn right and you can’t miss it, but real life doesn’t work that way. After a fruitless search I asked for help from a woman who was carrying some books. I had walked past the library twice. I had been expecting something set back off the road in a large building with a huge sign, but this library was entered through the usual heavy wooden doors in a high wall. Only a small plaque set in the wall gave away its identity. A portico led into a cobbled courtyard dotted with chairs and tables shaded by umbrellas, where a fountain trickled dreamily in the centre. Tall pencil pines fronted by flowering plants stood sentinel around the four sides of the courtyard, while bougainvillea massed with purple flowers climbed the surrounding arched walls. Under the arches and colonnades at the far end were long wooden tables and chairs. In this enchanting, peaceful spot I spent a couple of happy hours and decided it was so wonderful I could live there. I gave it my vote for the best library in the world. The Chicago Library gets the vote for the most magnificent but San Miguel’s is the most delectable.
    Cool, quiet rooms full of books radiated out from the courtyard and up a set of stone steps was a restful cafeteria in an upper courtyard filled with flowers and bird song. Up more rough-cut stone steps that took you out on the roof I found the stone office that housed the computer room. It faced the massive old stone walls and arches of the church next door, which looked like a fortress from the street. With a little help from a bystander, I used the internet to send an e-mail.
    Returning from the library, I unwittingly walked past the corner of my street and went all the way around the town and through the square to come back the way I had gone. I did this twice more before I recognised where I was. What’s new!
    Every now and then in the streets I would pass a water spout in a wall, beneath which was a sickle-moon-shaped tiled receptacle for the water to fall into. In the past people would have come there to get water. When it rained heavily, as it did some days, you would only have to stand outside with a basin.
    I found a shop that sold small, round local cheeses and bought one. I think it was made from goat’s milk. It tasted rather home-made and could have been anything, but it was okay with the toast I had been able to buy in packets like bread. My hotel didn’t run to meals, so in the morning, after boiling water with my immersion heater, I made coffee in the little metal filter I bought in Vietnam. With cheese, toast and a banana, what more could you want for breakfast? Bacon, eggs, sausages and a steak for a start.
    Mexicans were unfailingly friendly to me. As soon as I spoke to them they would smile. They didn’t know what I wanted, I could have been about to complain, but they smiled and seemed happy to help me. Even with my fractured Spanish I got by reasonably well.
    The weather was divine in the mornings and warm in the afternoons, but on my first night in the town I nearly froze. The evening had been reasonably cool so I had a hot shower and got into bed. Half an hour later I was almost asleep when the cold fell on me as though someone had chucked a bucket of water over the bed. My whole body went into spasms of shivering. I got up and put on all the warm clothes I had, including long-johns and a cardigan, but still I shivered. In the morning I asked for another blanket and during the day a very heavy one materialised on the bed. I doubled it over and, of course, sweated all through the next night. Now I understood why there was a large, obviously well-used, open fireplace in