After the Baja we spent one more week with our very gracious friends, Alejandro, Andrea and Angela. Their home was the perfect place to escape the crowds of Semana Santa and Easter week and have a little recharge after two weeks of beach time.
On Saturday they took us to a restaurant on the beach owned by their friends. This family only opens once a year for the influx of people on holiday. Here you order a whole grilled fish and watch as it is slowly cooked over hot coals. The fish is served whole, fillet style. You pick off the flaky charred meat and eat with salsas, tortillas and rice. Amazing.
Sunday was Easter and we spent the day with Andrea, Alejandro and Angela. There is a long term plan for the island to be covered in parks and gardens. There is one garden in town right now and it is beautifully maintained. There is a hotel on the beach in town and if you pay for lunch you can hang out all day and use the pool. For an Easter treat we spent the whole afternoon relaxing at the hotel. Angela’s excitement for playing in the water, whether pool or ocean, is so awesome.
We spent the next couple days in a pretty relaxed state. Eric and I worked on creating a route for moving on, and some sort of timing. We cooked a risotto dinner as a thank you to them, and greatly enjoyed the use of something other than a camp stove to cook a meal. Andrea and I attempted some painting and Eric got to sit in on a Juvenile ministry that Alejandro helps with. Andrea and Alejandro introduced us to Pepe who they had met a few weeks back. Pepe is a wandering soul with a passion for travel, music and his dogs. We went on a date night and rode our bikes to the same taco place we ate at on my birthday last month. Getting our bikes on the small motor boat was uneventful and that was a very good thing. Throw in a few beach hours during those days and Eric’s new addiction to Alejandro’s pina coladas, and you can see why we just couldn’t make ourselves leave. The last night of our visit we babysat Miss Angela so Andrea and Alejandro could have a date night. Watching Angela learn and grow over the few weeks we were with them was so cool. She is very interactive and chatty when she wants to be and we witnessed her learning to stand on her own. She’s going to be running around in no time.
Before we left Alejandro stocked our Mexican ingredient supply with dried chiles, chipotles and rajas and Andrea gifted us some of her amazing homemade Swiss bread. We were so happy to have time with this amazing family to deepen our friendship, be encouraged by their marriage and prayer, and learn from the life they are living for His glory.
Chus, Fernandez De Valle family! Can’t wait to see you again in Colorado!