Thursday, March 13, 2014

Why Oh Why?

Have you ever wondered why I would leave America and spend two months working in Habanero?  I leave my family, my church and all the comforts of home to live in a little cement block house without full electricity and by that I mean you never know when you will have power.  We also never know when we will have water.  The water comes to the house about every three days.  On this trip we had a 10 day stretched with no water because a pipe broke and it took that long to get it fixed.  Fortunately a few years back we put in a cistern, so we have access to water.  But it’s back breaking work to lift it out of the cistern bucket by bucket.

Well, here are a few of the reasons………..First and foremost, God has called me to Habanero and the children there.  So I thought I’d show you a few of those children, because they are the reason I leave my home.





Bahai de los Aguilas, huh?

It's been awhile since I blogged because I've spent the last two months in Habanero AND the internet which I was so very happy to get set up SUCKS!  I can't say it any other way, it's a throw back to the 1980's when I got my first aol email account.  Remember?  Gosh we were so impressed by the technology we thought dial up was like greased lightning!  lol  Little did we know we'd one day look back on it as slow as watching paint dry..........

Anyway, while Scott and Chris were in the Dominican I'd thought we'd take a day off from Habanero and go see Bahai de los Anguilas.  I'd read so many reviews about how beautiful and secluded it was I was anxious to get there and see for myself.  First thing to do?  Ask around to see how long it'd take us to get there from Habanero.  Well, that was my first mistake!  I received answers ranging from 45 min to 2 hours.  So we planned on a 2 hour ride and headed out for the day with our beach bags packed.

As we headed out of Barahona and then past San Rafael I became suspicious.  I hadn't seen one sign noting either Bahai de los Anguilas or Juragua Park the protected area in which Bahai de los Anguilas lays.  Hmmm.... well we kept driving and hit some pretty rough spots in the road and I mean rough.  Like you could loose your whole rim and tire in it!  We had to slow down and then low and behold we hit construction.  Men here, men there, but not much happening.  Yep, even in the Dominican Republic, you will see 10 mean standing around and 1 looking like he might be actually working.



The view was beautiful during the drive and then right around one corner we saw a wind farm.  Yep, right there in the middle of no where there were acres and acres of wind turbines catching the wind and making electricity.  Of course we had to stop, explore and take pictures.  It was pretty impressive for this backward country which still uses horses and mules for farming.  Hopefully this means that one day we will have electricity 24/7 in Habanero!



Okay, back on the road, we're tired, hot and ready to give up finding this beach when we come upon a police check point.  We stop and ask where it is and happily he says take a left less than a mile ahead!  Alrighty, we are excited, except we already have 4 hours into this trip and 4 more hours to get back home.  We turn left onto a dirt road and go about 10 miles further.  And there in the middle of no where is a restaurant open for business and a guy showing up where to park.  Excitedly we get out of the car and talk to the guy pointing us onward.  He was actually trying to get us into his little area where he cooks and sells food.  We were hungry, but thought it best to eat in the restaurant.

We sat down and ordered something to drink and inquired about the Bahai de los Aguilas beach.  You have to take a 15 minute boat ride to the beach.  Since we'd already spent 4 hours on the road we thought it best to eat and hang out at the restaurant's beach.  We had a nice time, but we were disappointed we didn't get to the secluded beach we'd been looking forward to seeing.

We learned there is a hotel further down on the beach so next time we try this adventure we're going to head out early and then spend the night so we can really enjoy Bahai de los Aguilas beach!

Oh, yes, I learned a valuable lesson about relying on information gathered from people that have NEVER been out of their village!  lol  Silly me.