We’re coming home!!!

This is the last time I will write about our trip. Adam has put me to absolute shame with his extensive (but very well written) ramblings.

I´ll sum up our first week in South America:

1 day sightseeing in Santiago, Chile – a nice city surrounded by snow-topped peaks.

6 days, 5 nights (125 hours) on a bus travelling through Chile, Peru, Ecuador, and Colombia – monotonous desert, pretty green hills from Ecuador onwards, no washing facilities (baby wipes became my new best friend), uncomfortable, sometimes sleepless nights, bad movies with bad Spanish dubbing, loud trashy latino music as a wake-up call at 7am (sometimes when we’d just dropped off to sleep), shouted Spanish conversations at all hours, police checks, border crossings, 2 hour+ comfort stops, random chats at all hours, cheese and chorizo sandwiches every meal, every day. Let’s just say I’m relieved I won’t have to do it again.

We then arrived in Bogota, Colombia and were staying with Adam’s cousin Louise, her husband Diego and their 5 kids (Jonathan, 4 months, Samuel, 4 years, Daniel, 6, James, 8 and Laura, 10). They had just moved house and were so kind to allow us to invade their space amongst the unpacking! They are a lot of fun, and made us feel so at home. Also living in Bogota are Louise’s brothers (twins) Steve (married to Helena, with kids Grace, 2 years, Amy, 6 years, and Ashley, 9) and Phil (married to Maria, with kids Daniel, 15, Elsy, 17 and Heidi, 19 recently engaged and living in England). Steve teaches at the Bible Institute there and we were able to sit in on one of his classes on Revelation – Phil kindly translated as it was in Spanish. Helena home-schools the kids. Phil and Maria have an English school which Maria directs, really great to see her working there, she´s a natural with the students. They also have their church upstairs on the roof. Phil spends a lot of his time leading, encouraging and participating in discipleship groups (most of these meet in people’s homes or workplaces). These groups are a bit like our church small groups, they study the Bible in a methodical way, discuss it and chat and pray about their lives and their joys and struggles. Many have come to know Jesus and have had their lives transformed as a result of the biblical truths and the love they have been shown by the people there. It was a joy to meet some of these people and take part in Bible studies with them.

We spent time with the various cousins, having great meals, playing games, chatting, sightseeing, celebrating birthdays, sampling tasty Colombian treats made by Louise, playing with baby Jonathan (sooo cute), and visiting old friends of Phil’s in Fusa.

In the middle of our time there we had a trip with Diego to the Amazon to visit some people working with the tribes in the jungle there. Amazing to see what it was really like, again I’ll sum it up:

Wobbly boats, well made wooden houses, lots of fruit and fish, lots of tiny kids running around (to whom we gave lots of sweets!), church in the middle of the village, hot hot heat, rain and lots of mud, sickness and the poops (for one day for me, fun), dressing some nasty tree-burns (a boy shimmied up a tree without a rope tied between his feet, he got tired at the top and slid down on his inner thighs, ouch!),  monkeys, dogs, chickens, turtles, mosquitoes.

We then went to stay with David and Chris, Adam’s uncle and aunty, in Venezuela. On the way on the bus, we were awoken by what felt like some big bumps in the road, but realized it was a little more serious when the bus swerved and flipped and the window became the floor. In the few seconds before we stopped, the visions of the bus flipping over off the side of one of the many mountain roads we’d been driving on earlier that day were hard to shake. In Latin America, people like to scream and wail when there’s a crisis happening, and this only serves to heighten the impending sense of doom. The bus, when it had stopped, began to fill with choking fumes and we calmly got up from our position on the window (which was now the floor) collected our things and followed the people in front of us to the front windscreen, which had been smashed and had become the exit. People helped us climb over the barbed wire fence which had been squished and now overhung the field into which we were trying to climb. Turns out our bus had hit an oncoming pick-up truck, and it had been raining. As a result our bus had swerved and flipped into the ditch next to the road, ending up halfway into a farmer’s field. No one was seriously hurt in the crash, thank God. We waited for a replacement bus for 4 or 5 hours, attempting to communicate with various people who would approach us assuming we spoke Spanish.

We arrived to be picked up by David and Peter (Adam’s dad, David’s brother, who’d come over from England to visit the various relatives in Colombia and Venezuela)

We arrived in the early hours at David and Chris’ apartment in the Bible Institute there. So great to see them. The next few days were spent doing the following:

Making music, going up to 4200 metres shrouded in cloud, eerie and fun, eating tasty Venezuelan treats, putting a sling on my arm (realized I needed it when it became too painful to lift my arm to shake people’s hands at D&C’s church, I looked like I was doing a robot dance), seeing Isnotu (a “spiritual paradise” –  I´d beg to differ) a town full of Catholic idols, looking around the Institute, seeing beautiful sunsets.

The next two and a half weeks have been spent with Joanne (Adam’s cousin), her husband Luis, and kids Joshua and Jordan, 13, and Benji, 7. They live in a city called Puerto Ordaz, which is on a big river with lots of Dams and waterfalls (v beautiful). We’ve been hanging out with them, meeting their friends, having lovely trips to the river and orange grove, meeting lizards and big fish at parks, playing volleyball, Wendy’s icecreams, castles, sunshine, trampolines, malls, games (dutch blitz and phase 10), Pizza Hut, seeing various creatures – snakes, tiny frogs, baby birds, lizards, a parrot, big ants and a locust. All in all a great time with a great family. And they’re about to move house so even kinder of them to have us!

We fly tomorrow morning to Caracas, then from Caracas to Madrid tomorrow evening, then to London Heathrow, arriving Friday morning, hopefully with our baggage (it’s made it this far!). Then many reunions with many wonderful people, then we need to work out what we need to do. I for one am VERY excited, I hope you are too.

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