Wow..sorry it has been so long!

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We are still hanging out in Santa Fe. We took a short trip to Santa Catalina to visit the beach and take a vacation from our vacation. We stayed at a great little hostal called the Blue Zone. It had hammocks overlooking the Pacific Ocean. There is a huge hype right now about this little town, but we just couldn´t see it. It has a very small beach. It is suppose to be excellent for surfers so maybe that is why we didn´t quite get into it. We did have some great food at a little restaurant called Donde Vianca. Not only did she have great food, she was about the only restaurant open for lunch. We are not quite sure where the tourists are suppose to eat there (although there aren´t many tourists there). Not sure. We were going to stay 3 nights, but cut it short and only stayed 2 nights. We had to ride 3 buses to get there and 3 on the way back. It was nice to revisit the beach but we were glad to return to Santa Fe.

JJ had a birthday while we were here. We thank everyone for the e-mails and missed phone calls. We invited John and Janet over for some parmesan chicken and chocolate cake, oh, and of course, margaritas. It was very hard to come up with a gift for him, but I managed to get him a machetti and a cover. We sometimes wonder if anyone ever finds it strange to see all kinds of people just wandering around with a machetti. It seems like it should be intimidating, but it is a way of life here. JJ is still trying to figure out how to sharpen it and has had lessons from a couple different people.

We also rented horses for a day and went to El Salto. It is a little community consisting of only 2 families. One of the families has 10 children and we got the opportunity to swim with almost all of them and eat Sancocho (the national soup). It was excellent. JJ and John were suppose to share a horse but John managed to walk all the way up to El Salto before we caught him. It took us a little bit of time to pick up the horses and get on the road, so he had a little head start. JJ was definitely ready to be off the horse and was looking forward to SHARING IT on the way back. That didn´t happen either and JJ rode it most of the way home. Needless to say, it was a long day! It is about 2.5 hours there by horse and much quicker on the way back. The horses know they are done for the day and anxious to get back home. This really cut time off the trip.

El Salto is a hidden treasure outside of Santa Fe. They are doing organic farming and roast their own organic coffee. The lucky traveler will get up to see El Salto and swim in the river under the waterfall. We are very fortunate that John and Janet are friends with the community as we got to see some waterfalls and sites most people don´t. We find it amazing how the kids climb over the rocks like little monkeys. I wish I was that sure footed!

We came down to Santiago on Monday (today is Thursday..I think), to blog, check e-mail, and grocery shop. Unfortunately we forgot that it is Carnival in Panama and EVERYTHING closes down for 4 days. It was the quickest trip to Santiago we have had. Luckily the 2 major grocery stores were open so we could at least shop, but we had to come down a second day (grueling bus rides) to get internet stuff done. It will be culture shock when we can just go to our lap top and check e-mail again.

We had John over for dinner last night because Janet went back to El Salto to stay for a couple of nights. William (the kid we get to practice our really horrible spanish on) and his girlfriend also joined us. Nothing fancy, just some spagetti, but it was sure entertaining. John wasn´t sure why JJ was teaching William how to say Supercalifragalisticexpalidocious but it sure was a hoot!

Well, we head back in a little over 2 weeks and we probably will not blog again. Thank you everyone for the comments and e-mails we have received. We are excited to see our new nieto (grandson) soon. Angel is anxious for the arrival as well! Chow for now! We will talk to you all soon!

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