(February 2011)
(Skip this one if you’re tired of “same-old” stories about adventurous road trips. I think we may have encountered our worst-ever road conditions — at least on the “main highway” that connects Yuty to the paved road. There were so many funny extenuating circumstances this time that it’s worth writing yet another story of our “troubled travel.”)
Making music with MK friends.
Nathan & Samuel had great fun with two missionary kid friends who came over for five daysat the end of summer vacation. Our plan was to drop them off at their respective houses and have a two-day camping trip as a family before school started. The car was packed full — all of our camping stuff in the back, 3 boys and our collie in the back seat, and Samuel on my lap. I reached heights of co-piloting that I’ve never considered possible, as I held a box of delicately-balanced-on-the-console homeschooling books with one arm (not to use while camping – to pass off to a colleague), had nine-year-old Samuel on my lap, read aloud AND served terere as we slid and bounced through the thick mud.
It was possibly the worst we’d ever seen the road. Dan pulled out stuck vehicles four different times, and it took us three hours instead of the usual 45 minutes to get to the first main town! The boys had great attitudes as we poked along, eating their way through many of the snacks we’d brought for our camping trip and climbing on the roof of the car when we stopped behind somebody who was stuck.
As if things weren’t bad enough, our dog Lana had a seizure-like attack while crammed on the floor of the backseat. She has these occasionally. They are pitiful to watch from a distance when she’s miserably sick somewhere in our back yard, but the poor Back Seat Boys were right on top of this one, including the seeming gallons of saliva she drools as a result. Things were now officially a mess inside and outside.
We eventually got our friends dropped off and had one last memorable moment on the already-unforgettable trip. Playing after church that morning, Samuel had hurt his toe. I figured he’d just stubbed it, but just in case we had our doctor colleague take a look at it when we dropped off his son. He thought it might be broken. When we finally got to Villarrica, after 9 at night, we went to have it x-rayed. I was very amused that nobody washed Samuel’s mud-coated foot off. The x-ray technician seemed to have no qualms about putting the muddy mess on the shiny clean glass plate which was on the immaculately pristine table covered with a spotless white cloth. It’s a good thing xrays penetrate thick red mud! And the doctor didn’t seem to mind, either. They said it wasn’t broken, but it sure entertained us for the next week with its changing colors. (Once he washed his foot off!)
Obviously we didn’t make it to our camp site that night, but had a great time once we finally got there. It was a more primitive spot than where we’ve stayed before (no electricity or running water — but some of the people in our church live like that all the time!) We shared the spot with some very nice torch-juggling, jewelry-making Argentinian gypsies . . . but that’s another story. Our trip home was less eventful than the trip there. How could it not be!?
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