San Andres, Colombia

We spent Saturday to Wednesday of last week with Diego's family in San Andres, a small island off of the Atlantic Coast of Panama (though it is part of Colombia). We gathered to celebrate Hernan & Mercedes's 40th wedding anniversary. Jules travelled with the parents from Medellin, and JuanFe & RC travelled with us (literally, the same itinerary) from DC. Sadly, at the last minute, Liz was unable to join us from Costa Rica.

(I took my camera, but not a single picture, so this will just be a narrative. Sorry.)

Overall, the trip was a great success. The things that mattered most, went really well. Everyone arrived safely, we got to spend lots of time together. Everyone, especially Hernan & Mercedes got to know Luis (and he them). There was much relaxing - card playing, pool lounging, SCUBA (for RC, Diego and me), good food and yummy fruity drinks. Luis practiced his Spanish, and said daily, la playa (beach), piscina (pool), gracias (thank you), abuela (grandmother), hola (hello) and mas agua (more water). Luis jumped into the pool (from the side) about 500 times - each time, as soon as he cleared the water from his face, he said MORE MORE MORE. We all built numerous sand structures with the super great sand toys that Jules brought.

As a travel companion, Luis could not have been better. Despite our 4a departure from the house on Saturday morning, the 5hr layover in Panama City on the way home, or our arrival at the house at 2.30a on Wednesday night, Luis took it all in stride. He was easy-going and fun-loving the whole time.

All of this goodness overshadows things like the Medellin contingency arriving a day late because the travel agent forgot to tell them their flight had been re-scheduled (and their sitting in the airport for ~ 7 hours on the return because again the travel agent did not notify of flight changes), the 47 mosquito bites Luis got the first night, the fact that our room flooded the second morning (because of pooling AC water in the ceiling - noting the home of the mosquitoes) - we switched to another room immediately, the AC breaking down in the entire hotel (and the resulting feeling that we were vacationing in a SAUNA), the all-out war that the sand fleas launched on Luis's left leg, and what not.

I'm hoping to get some pictures from Jules, JF and RC and will post here.