November 25-27
Hello everyone!
When life becomes busy and stressful, it’s always nice to be able to get away to beaches like this…
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| Hannah pretending she's in Baywatch |
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| Punta Mango |
This is Punta Mango. It’s far away for El Salvador standards, and a world away from a growing workload.
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El Salvador is a bit smaller than Massachusetts
so no journey should be excessively long |
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This was the view for one stress-busting
Friday evening in San Salvador |
Some of the stress came with us to the eastern edge of the country. The stresses are two-fold and have been for a while. Dogs…
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| Dreaming of squirrels. Or a time when they weren't ill... |
…and the car. The car has now been to three different mechanics and I’m not convinced any of them have actually done anything to make it run more smoothly. It was at the latest garage for two weeks minus a weekend. Having been told repeatedly that I would collect it at 3pm on Thursday, the day before driving to Punta Mango, I found it here…
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Notice him fiddling with the axles?
That becomes important later. |
When I came back about 45 minutes later, it was at least back on the floor and ready. You’ll find out later that they may have rushed things a little bit…
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| At least this hasn't happened lately! |
The dogs also came with us to Mango. They have been suffering with various ailments since arriving, meaning we have had a few visits (sometimes without a car) to the vet. They also went to a dog get-together which they found a bit overwhelming and responded to in their usual way, meaning they had to be put in the car.
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| Dog walk: enjoyable and stressful in equal measure |
We are working on finding someone to look after them over the Christmas break. In the meantime, they were coming with us in the traffic after school (and the England-USA game) with another teacher who they’d never met.
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| Happy to be on a road trip |
Driving away, thinking we had left stresses behind…only to get stuck in a snaking traffic jam due to an accident on a major artery out of Santa Tecla. We were stationary for about 45 minutes, which meant we drove the last section in the dark. A drive which we were told would take three hours ended up taking over five.
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The accident had happened about a
kilometre down the road from this point |
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Maxi taking in the view, which
included crossing El Salvador's biggest river |
That meant that first light was the first sight of the southeastern coastline. Worth the drive!
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| This was the western beach from our AirBnB |
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| The tidal changes were quite extreme throughout the day |
The weekend itself was very relaxing, aside from occasional moments of canine misbehaviour. Maybe they were just itching to get back in the water…
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| Our main lounging point - there were 12 of us |
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| Mini enjoying a beach run |
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| The sand isn't as dark as at other beaches across the country |
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| Maxi enjoys the water. Mini...not so much... |
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| Sun setting on a lazy, lovely Saturday |
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| The pool was a nice cooling-off spot with a great view |
Returning to Santa Tecla didn’t take as long on the Sunday, though it had moments of treachery. One was Mini vomiting in the car. Another concern was a knocking noise coming from somewhere in the car. It got back fine, only for Hannah to find this the following day…
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| Recovering |
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| Frijoles is now on her fourth mechanic |
So the stresses of daily life quickly returned. For a lovely 48 hours, however, they were all swept away by the waves of the Pacific.
Love you all,
Matt
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