While Malcolm brings home the jamon from the apartment I¨ll be taking little solo ventures around the city.

Yesterday I planned to visit the Museo de Historia Natural, located way far west on Calle 59 between 82 and 84. I started walking south down Calle 58, which is becoming a somewhat familar route, past the square where we had our first lunch, the Gran Hotel, and the Burger King. I´m taking pictures and trying to look nonchalant and then I remember that it´s okay to be foreign and enchanted here, so I go for it. I´m walking by beggars and babies and backpack stores, and hostels and scooter stores, and abanded buildings next to really posh buildings, and feeling very content. You see, I´ve never done this before, and I find it all delightful.

Just when I thought I might keel over I found myself outside of this church and primary school next to a park. It´s green and cool and the children are chasing birds and the mothers are watching the children and the iglesia towers above us all.

It´s a little deserted here on the outskirts, but there is tons of construction going up. I pass the museum to investigate the traffic circle just ahead. This park is fabulously quirky, as you can see. The zoologica is a sad, dusty city zoo. The zebra is long in the tooth, the giraffes seem shorter, the North American brown bears are trying to turn themselves inside out they´re so hot. The big birds are mean and dinosaurish and one big lioness prowls close to the people and I am sure she could escape if she was so inclined. Children are happy. A sun shower!

The museum itself is tiny, like five rooms perhaps and a teenage girl runs ahead of me into the next room to turn on the lights and exhibits. I read about the planets (in Spanish) creep past this scary simian grave site, lock eyes with this old fella and thank everyone profusely before I head out. I really like shabby museums, with their dated facts and unintentionally spooky dioramas of the pleistocene. But I am super glad the park was nearby.

Walking back my feet are pinched and blistered and I am hot plus now hungry. famished, actually. I take a cab back. I like the presence of the rosary in every car. I like using the money with its windows and Aztecs. I like lunch. I have never, and I am serious, eaten more ham sandwiches in one week in my life ever. And that more or less brings me up to date.

When I leave here I think I´ll visit the Catedral, the oldest one on this continent America.