Salto del Penitente

Today is Dia de la Raza, or the Day of the Race (actually, the 12th was the real day, but for some reason it's being celebrated today? I don't know, Z's off, though). It's basically the Latin American Columbus Day, but is a bit more than that. Rather than being about Columbus arriving in the Americas, it goes a bit deeper and is a celebration of the day that the different races that make up most Latin Americans first met and ultimately began to mix.

Anyway, Zachariah had the day off again, so this time we headed northeast to a waterfall/park, called el Salto del Penitente. The drive was amazing, and we had wonderful spring weather!! Soooo beautiful, even better than our westward adventure last week, and that was pretty darn good. Rather than just rolling fields with crops and cattle, we were treated to rolling hills, a few low mountains, some fields, decent little towns, and lots of streams, forests, and rocky outcroppings. The twins were not as appreciative as we were, but luckily the drive to the waterfall was a bit shorter than to Colonia.


The highlights: Zac planted his first geocache, we got to pet some horses, minor bouldering with the babies, Bran peed all over my lap while I was changing his diaper which really made it look like I peed all over myself, I figured out a way to tie my mei tai (baby carrier) straps so it was more supportive and comfortable (I was very excited about that...yeah, the lexi twist, Aislinn), Nuala and Bran got to drive a big pinewood derby car, and we ran over a partridge but despite a worrisome puff of feathers, she survived intact! Yep, a good day.

"Chico"

Today was a beautiful day in Uruguay. We set out to go to a feria down the street from our house but it turned out to be only for vegetables on Saturdays, all the craft stuff is there on Sundays. So we headed from there to find a geocache located just a few miles from our house that I've been trying to get to since we moved here.

The cache, Chico, is located in an artificial forest of Eucalyptus trees between our house and the airport. It's probably only about 1 square mile, and the cache was in the middle, but we got turned around on all the dirt roads on the way out. The sad thing is, we could see buildings and roads through the trees on all sides, we just couldn't find the exit.

Castles, Pods, and Chicken Boti...

Oct 9 found me on the way to Frankfurt for a conference. I had to speak at the request of my boss, not a desire of my own, but I'm always up for a free trip to Germany. After 4 days of a boring conference I had a few days to kill before my flight to Afghanistan so I thought I would rent a car and go to Heidelberg to do some shopping. After an address mix up I ended up with a 72 Euro taxi fare and a super reduced rate on a Mercedes C-class rental. Shopping was fun, I even found some time to find a Geocache above the Heidelberg castle (in picture) before taking a long roundabout drive through the German countryside back to Frankfurt for my flight out.

To get to Afghanistan you can either take the UN Humanitarian Air Service flight in from Dubai, Tashkent, or Islamabad. I had a ticket for the flight in from Dubai on Sunday Oct 15, the flights are on Sundays and Wednesdays. I imagined the UNHAS flight to be on some dingy recycled aircraft, but to my surprise it was actually very nice. The flight even had stewardesses and fresh food! The flight in took us over Iran. Everything was smooth and normal coming into Kabul airport until you get out of the plane... there are no terminals so you climb out on the tarmac amongst a crowd of expediters/greeters there to meet each of the different groups on the plane, all surrounded by armed guards/military/special forces.

I found my contact and we made our way to the front of the airport and our armored Landcruiser parked next to signs saying "No tactical gear or weapons past this point," nevermind my cadre of armed guards completely decked out in their tactical gear. Guess the sign doesn't count for them. I put on my body armor and jumped in the Landcruiser and we were off into the city. It's a quick drive to the embassy and the living compound where I then spent the next four days. Living quarters are cramped, I was lucky to share a Pod with only one other smelly dude instead of sleeping in open bay barracks, ugh.

On the second day I was supposed to head down to the airport but about ten minutes before we were to leave a suicide bomber blew himself and his car up where we were supposed to drive by so the embassy was locked down the rest of the day. We made it out the next day, all that was left of the previous day's explosion was a huge crater causing a traffic jam. While in Kabul, I was able to see Vince Dreyer from our church ward in Virginia, he is stationed there with his Army Ranger detachment. My work was done on Wednesday so I hopped a UNHAS flight to Islamabad, Pakistan. I saw more of Kabul from the air than I did from the ground.

Islamabad is a great city, clean, well laid out, and the food was excellent. Food in Pakistan is a mix of the Middle East, Afghanistan, and India...lots of spice and flavor. I stayed in a guest house called Capital Grande which cost $32 per night and was really very nice. Dinner at the guest house cost between $3-5 and consisted of enough food to feed a family of four. I felt badly every night leaving so much food to waste, I wonder what the house staff thought...they average around $200 US per month for salary and here some scrawny young American comes and spends $5 US on every meal and only eats 1/3 at most. I tried over and over to get them to produce less food for the same amount of money, they laughed at me...oh well. The best meal they made was Chicken Boti, it looked really quite boring but the mix of spices was amazing, I ordered it so many times that the cook started suggesting other things to try. I tried their suggestions to be nice, but still ordered some Boti on the side...I loved this country, not usually fond of these places but the people are really nice, food is wonderful, and culture quite rich... if it wasn't for all the danger of getting blown up, kidnapped, and beheaded.

I hiked into the mountains above Ibad on one afternoon, a place called Pir Sowha, beautiful mountains. The guide book said they are home to jaguar, monkeys, bears, and a host of other exotic animals. I saw some big monkeys and some parrots. I also found a Geocache at the very top of one of the peaks, it took about 3 hours to find and was surrounded by a pack of wild goats and some disheveled Pakistani soldiers camping out. Work took up most of my time while there so I didn't get to see as much as I would have liked, but I did get down to Karachi and Lahore. Very different places. Karachi is just dangerous, Lahore, on the other hand, was pleasant, with a completely different type of lifestyle and cuisine.

It was a fun trip, but it's always nice to get home. ~ Zachariah