What a wonderful weekend we had! We left for our two hour drive to the mountains of La Paz in San Ramon as early as we could Saturday morning. When I say "we", I mean Tío Francisco, Tío Jose Fabio, Owen, Luke and me. Ron, unfortunately, is still in Peru, because he would have LOVED this place! Here's the cabin we stayed in:
One of the first things I had to do here was make a fire for the stove... the cabin has a traditional wood-burning stove that I had a lot of fun cooking with (though it was a lot of work; wouldn't want to do it everyday!)!
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And the reward for the hard work of building and maintaining the fire? Beans and rice for dinner!
While I was cooking and the Tios were setting other things up and cleaning a bit, Owen and Luke had a blast playing in the yard, especially once it started raining!
While the beans and rice were cooking, we took a really nice walk, playing in the river as we had time... the scenery was amazing. Luke and I were barefoot (as I didn't realize we were really going on a walk - I thought we were just going to the river to play) and some parts of the road were a bit painful because of the rocks, but it was well worth it! Here are a bunch of pictures from the walk:
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Early to bed, early to rise! On Sunday morning, after I made another fire for the stove, I made gallo pinto for breakfast with somewhat limited ingredients (we didn't bring everything we needed), but it was still pretty good!
Very shortly after breakfast, we headed to the river to play... not as much of a trek because Francisco found a little gate in the barbed-wire fence on their property, so we could even see whoever was at the river from the cabin. We all spent a fair amount of time there, but the boys spent the most as we kind of traded off here and there (I did have to tend the fire after all). Luke must have spent somewhere between 3 and 4 hours in the river that day! Owen got out a little bit earlier, but only about a half hour or so. Here are the boys at the river on the property:
The boys learned how to play futbolín (foose ball) earlier this trip (at Castillo Country Club) and got some more practice here quite a few times (Owen vs. Luke, Luke vs. Tio Jose, Owen vs. Tio Francisco, the four of them together, me, etc.). They really like it a lot!
Another thing the boys are learning to play here is video games/phone apps with their Tios. I don't mind them playing some, after all you can't always play in the rain, but we'll definitely have to keep things in check and make sure it doesn't get excessive!
Tio Francsico made the boys paper boats to float downstream, which they LOVED.
Only problem? Luke was very, VERY sad to see his boat float away and not be able to get it back. Solution? Tio Francisco! He made a tin boat using a sardine tin, wrapped it in some old rusty wire and tied a shoelace to it so it wouldn't float away. Problem solved! In fact, Luke loved that little tin boat so much that he still has it and wants to bring it home to San Diego!
At some point all good things come to an end, so we packed up on Sunday afternoon, cleaned the cabin up and hit the road. On the way home, we stopped at La Fiesta del Maiz, a famous restaurant with all things corn (including some you've likely never heard of)! We had some yummy corn on the cob among other things, including a granizado -- basically a snowcone in a cup with powdered milk and condensed milk on top. Didn't have the camera out for that one, but as weird as it sounds, they are quite tasty!
Hence our weekend came to an end. There are (of course) lots more pictures and such, but I hope you get the idea...
