Unforgettable Christmas "Vacation"

Believe it or not, these are photos of the most memorable vacation we ever didn't take. Chris was home for his first Christmas break from college, and we decided to take the whole family to the beach between Christmas and New Year's, combining our vacation with a trip to visit our pastor friend Victor. Several of the older kids had been out to his village to help at the church construction site, and that evening was the dedication service. It was such a good plan.

As we neared the village on a seemingly endless dirt road, Jim (ever the kidder) exclaimed that the engine had just died. Haha, I wasn't going to fall for that one, that is until I saw the grim expression on his face. This was his worst nightmare coming true. We were literally in the middle of nowhere, blocking the road from both sides, in a completely monolingual region where the inhabitants did not even speak Spanish. Eventually some men came along, and helped us move the van out of the way, and Jim and Chris rode on the bumper of the truck out to the church.

Later another truck came to haul the kids and me to the service, and we tried to relax and enjoy the program, not considering what this might mean for our beach trip the next day. The story is way too long to write about here, but suffice it to say it was quite an adventure. That's the first time I ever saw an agouti (click on the link to see this rodent of unusual size), distant relative of the capybara.

That night we stayed at a hotel in the nearest town. Early the next morning, Victor and another "hermano" took Jim back out to the van with a local mechanic. Poor Jim spent the next several days trying to locate a fuel pump, and incredibly, a mechanic who agreed to install it out in the boondocks rather than trying to tow it back to town. The three older boys went on to the beach unsupervised, and I took the four younger children home on the bus.

The bus trip alone is worth a separate blog post. You might say it was educational. The movie selections were a bit racy for young children. It started with "Good Morning, Viet Nam!" in which Robin Williams taught every possible cuss word and vulgar phrase in the English language. After that I was relieved to see the next movie was not in English, but Italian, with Spanish, not English, subtitles. My relief lasted only three minutes into the movie with the first mafia blood bath scene. That was the longest trip up the winding mountain road back to the valley where we live.

So that's it. The vacation that wasn't. (Timmy might chime in with his version, which of course includes the trip to the beach most of us missed.)