Espinal and Prado

This weekend we travelled to Espinal to a Finca owned by a family that has children at our school. It was very last minute, as most things are here in Colombia, but we were all thankfu that we went. As always, everytime we are invited to do something, it turned out to be an incredible experience. The Finca is in "hot country", about 5 hours from Bogota. We arrived Saturday night about 11pm to this beautiful house in the countryside. The car rides are some of the most exciting parts of our trip since all 11 of us are packed tight in a van...I'm starting to be curious about why we say "packed in like a bunch of mexicans" because at times we have had 17 people in this same van. I've decided to start saying "packed in like a bunch of Colombians".

We stopped at a restaurant in "Mesa" on the way to eat dinner saturday night where we ordered a three big platters of chicken, potatoes, and platano. This seems to be typical of colombia meals and is delicious! However, we were not given plates or utensiles to eat with which was fine until we saw the sink area, which is in the middle of the restaurant for everyone to use openly. There you have a community bar of soap and a community bath towel to dry your hands. Once again, not so bad until you see the dirty stains on the towel and a lady dry her hands and then wipe her nose on the towel...which was followed by a friend of mine dying her hands on it not having seen what the lady had jut used it for. It was awesome! And of course after that we dared each other to use the towel...

Saturday night at the Finca we swam for a few hours which was so relaxing because it was very warm there which is hard to believe being only a few hours outside of cold Bogota. The Finca was so beautiful and we were so blessed to be able to get out of the city and see nature again. I cannot express with words how gorgeous this country is and I was in awe of this place that God has created that so many travelers have not yet seen because of the dangers of the country. Most of the territory we were in this weekend was Guerilla territory a year ago.

Sunday morning we woke up early, had a Colombian breakfast of arepas, eggs, fruit, and of course hot chocolate, then headed out towards Prado, another of God's amazing creations. This place is a lake, surrounded by huge mountains where everyone who lives there travels by boat because there is no road system. My pictures do not do it show the so everyone is just going to have to come see it for themselves (or you can see the video that I took while out on the boat). The area is not very touristy because the guerillas lived here only a year and a half ago and had run everyone out of the area except for the family on the island where we spent most of the day. The property we were on at first looked pretty run down but soon felt like turns on the boat and while waiting swam in the lake where later, we found out that there are sting rays that you have to scare away from the sand, and crocodiles in low water areas. I didn't get back in the shallow areas the rest of the day except to get in and out of the boat. paradise undiscovered. We took naps in the hammocks on the island mid-day and then had a huge colombian lunch with maracuya juice...mi favorito! After lunch we went out to find some high cliffs where we went cliff jumping, which was a highlight. Later that afternoon we headed back to the boat ramp to head back to the finca in Espinal where Sancocho, a Colombian traditional soup, was waiting.

Today we woke up early and drove back to Bogota. The view of the mountains coming back up was incredible. All of the natural beauty of this country has taken over my heart and all I can think of is how awesome our God is to create such beauty for us to enjoy and that he must really love us alot, much like how I want everyone I care about to be able to enjoy this beauty with me.

On the way home, Rafa, my principal's husband who is absolutely hilarious, and his son, Rodrigo, discovered that the windsheild wiper fluid sprayer actually is aimed to the right and shoots pretty far and so they begin spraying it as we passed pedestrians walking along side the road. What was even funnier is when we passed the guards/military men standing along the road and sprayed them as well...probably not the kindest thing for us to do but it wasnt spraying them alot because we weren't going too slow and it was warm so we were actually doing them a favor. What a great time road trips can be!

So we are back in Bogota now ready to begin the week (today was a holiday, we have one like every other week in this country).

And to update on my meeting last week: a teacher who was taking time off this year volunteered to do half days so I will only do kindergarten 2-3 hours twice a week to fill in for when she is not there, which would be a normal amount of time to spend with those kinder ESL kids. What a relief!

Thanks for everyone who is reading about my adventures...I'm sure it seems like all I do is travel and have fun but I promise I work too! We have just been really blessed with opportunities to get to know the country and the people here.