I wish you all much joy and time with loved ones as we celebrate together the Incarnation of our Savior Jesus Christ!
This past weekend I got to go on a trip to share some Christmas joy with the children of Isla Venado, a little island in the Gulf of Nicoya (inside the thumb of the mitten of Costa Rica). I got to play in mud, swim in the ocean, hang out with the cool young people from the church there, play with the kids and had out gifts to them, eat delicious coconut apretados (simplified homemade ice creams) and enjoy hammocks made from fishing nets (I LOVE HAMMOCKS) and hula hooping. Head to the blog for more stories and pictures!
Much love to you all,
Carrie
Several years ago my friend Oscar started collecting presents to give to the children of Isla Venado. Isla Venado is very poor. The people there live almost completely off of fishing. The only trouble is, fish are often hard to find! :-( And there is great temptation to make a little extra dough helping out the narco-traffickers. Not cool. But, this little island of about 850 inhabitants, around half of which are Christians! In spite of Costa Rica being such a Catholic country, there is actually not a Catholic church to be found on the island!
To arrive, we had to go on land to Puntarenas, then on a ferry to Paquera, then on land another 30-40 minutes, and then in lancha (like a long speed boat that doesn't go very fast) 15-20 minutes to get to the island. Total time in arrival is 5-6 hours, but it's very enjoyable (if you have the right attitude and aren't afraid of the hot sun, mud or water).
Going on the ferry was fun. I have another ferry story to share with you, but I'll save that for another day. It reminds me a lot of going to Isleboro when I was little. I'll tell you more about Isleboro some day too. Good times and great family memories!!! Anyway, when we first left the dock there was some breeze or waves from something because we were pitching a little bit, enough to show us we definitely don't have sea legs! But, not enough to really make us nervous. I know Mommy wouldn't have liked it though.
The next interesting part was getting to the boat landing where we had to wait for the lancha. The tide was wicked low, so we had to walk 300-400 meters (about 3 football fields) through crazy thick, slippery mud to where there was enough water to meet the boat. We had been warned this might happen, so I had my super duper rubber boots along that I purchased in México de Upala in October. But I was told the mud was great for exfoliating the skin on your feet and I kind of wanted to walk in it, so I lent my boots to somebody that didn't really want to walk in the mud and had at it. We all had to make several trips back and forth carrying all the bags and boxes of gifts, plus our luggage. It was really hot, but I had fun. (Don't worry I was wearing lots of sunscreen.) And I'll tell you, boy are my feet smooth!!!
We got to the island, met Pastor Eladio and his wife (amazing people!), filled up the goody bags, cut material for the kids activity the next day while chilling on the nifty hammocks, and then went to the beach. I didn't have my suit, but I didn't care. Unfortunately the water was so warm it didn't even feel refreshing, but it felt good to be in water and it was fun.
That night was probably the highlight of the trip-we were going to have a bonfire, but it began to rain, so we hung out inside instead. A whole bunch of the youth from the church don Eladio pastors came and we got to do some icebreakers with them, have a little devotional and get to know them. It was great!
We got up really early on Sunday-the howler monkeys, roosters, cats, and Richi's snoring helped make sure. But with 24 of us plus I'm not sure how many of them and 1 bathroom makes life a bit difficult. I showered Saturday night and didn't worry about it Sunday morning.
We had yummy gallo pinto and eggs for breakfast. Every other meal we had was balck beans, rice and fried fish. YUM! A little repetitive, but yum. And it wasn't for long enough for us to get sick of it. At least. Not for me!
Then we had the kids activity on the plaza (right across the street from Pastor Eladio's house). It was crazy, but a lot of fun. I had to partner up with a girl in a skirt in the wheelbarrow race-so you know who go to the the wheelbarrow. I never realized what good exercise that is! Especially trying to do it as fast as you can! I was a little sore from that yesterday.
Then we handed out the presents. That was madness too. Well, we started pretty well organized, but by the end, that was a little harder to maintain as we quickly had to decide how to hand out gifts from kids who didn't show up to kids who weren't on the list but somehow showed up anyway. Then we had a brief time of prayer and sharing and away we went! We had to wait a long time for the boat that was going to take us and we thought we were going to miss the ferry and have to wait until 9pm (we were trying to take the 5pm one), but we made it on time, and the ferry actually left like a half hour late, so it was really fine. I had a nice talk with Alejandra processing things. She is a sweet lady. And then, unfortunately after the Puntarenas-Heredia soccer game ended they started blaring reggaton and we witnessed some really dirty dancing. That was disappointing. I just tried to look away and at the ocean or sky instead. The stars were really pretty. And, finally, we made it home. And I went to bed. The end.
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