my husband, the monkey.

i met amalio in the city.

he took a bus and wore a tie to work. his shoes were shiny and he lived in a big house in the hills.

after a few short months of knowing each other, he invited me to the campo.

a beautiful village near the ocean, lush with vegetation of all kinds. his father's house was home (at that time) to an amazing mango tree. see, not all mango trees produce good mangos - sometimes they're too stringy, or too watery. this one was just right. (it no longer produces any fruit, bad or otherwise). there's also grapefruit trees, avocado trees and a lone caimito. there are oranges of all varieties (bitter, for cooking; sweet for eating; and juice oranges) and even a mandarina or italian orange tree in the field.
these fruits come in and out of season, and whenever we visit we try to stuff our bags with as much fresh (and free) fruit we can get. when we had the car, it was insane. and last year, we received about 100 pounds of avocadoes in the mail.
my first trip to this paraiso was eye-opening. not only did amalio not grow up wearing a shirt and tie, he didn't even wear shiny shoes!
and, apparently, spent most of his time playing with machetes and milking cows. when i was pregnant with samil, at least six women told me it would be okay if i ended up having the baby at home (by accident of course) because amalio was famous for helping animals through the birthing process.
lovely.
i took my brother to visit this wonderland on his first vacation to the island... and he'll even tell you about how amalio's tiny little sister climbed up the trees to throw down the fruit. and others will recount how my brother in law would shimmy his way up coconut trees (at times that would break gym-class rope climbing records all over the united states). and while amalio loves all things campo, taking care of cows and pigs and digging for root vegetable, we rarely get to see him in the trees.

we trekked to a mountain one sunday with a group of students from the UAPA university (post forthcoming, i promise, with lots of pictures). we stopped for a break and amalio, who had been lusting over some oranges since the bottom of the hill, took advantage of the break... climbed a tree and stole some oranges.
not bad for a "not so campesino" man!