June 6, 2011
One last day of survey’s before a long break. Driving to Belén on a motorcycle is perilous. I had decided the week before that I would just walk. The last time we had tried to get there by motorcycle I had ended up walking half the way anyhow so that Baltazar could navigate the worst bits of road with less likelihood of falling over. Belén is in the same direction that most people on the mission trip would go running in the mornings. A little less than a mile out there is a fairly treacherous hill with a river at the bottom. This river now flows over the road since the rainy season started. Here’s a pic for the mission trip veterans.
It is the same river that we hiked to with the kids on one of the last days. On the other side of the river the road begins to climb upwards, twisting and turning. I know I only ever ran to about the first twist in the road before deciding that it was time to turn around. I was already running at a snails pace and my muscles were burning. Brett mentioned that he had gone considerably farther looking for the top of the hill. He admitted that eventually he turned around just before a curve and tried to convince himself that the hill probably peaked just around that curve. Well Brett, this super sweet pink house is more or less at the top.
It took me 45 minutes to an hour to walk there, and it’s in Belén. Basically that whole road is up hill.
Given that it was my last day before a vacation, of course it was the longest day I’ve had so far. Parents and kids just kept coming. By the end of the day I had been there for 9 hours and surveyed about 60 kids. My current preliminary count is about 440 surveys. It sounds so much worse when I say it out loud (or type it... whatever). That's too many teeth. Good for the thesis though.
Around 4pm they brought me a fried dough thing with potatoes in side – delicious. At 4:30 Baltazar showed up. I have no idea why he came. I know he meant well, but it was a bit annoying. He ignored the fact that I told him multiple times not to come. Apparently he drove all the way to Las Mercedes in the morning (20-30 km), found that I was gone and drove home. Then through some other chain of events that I couldn’t really decipher he decided to drive back again in the afternoon to pick me up. That’s at least 80 km of wasted gasoline, and, like I said, the road to Belén sucks. The first time we drove on it I thought to myself, “If we are going to have an accident it will be on this road.” Don’t worry, mom, I ended up walking half of it again. It is time to go home for a bit.
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