February 16th: Church, Las Auyamas, and Carnival

 Today, we started by walking to church for their Mass. They had several people in the choir loft, someone playing the keyboard, and someone playing the guitar. There was a lot of singing. During the service, an infant got baptized, and someone also had Happy Birthday sung to them, and we all sang that. At the end of the service, we all got invited to the front of the church, and he congratulated us and blessed us. We also all got holy water flung on us.  There must have been more than 250 people there - it was packed!






After church, Glen drove us to a small village called Las Auyamas. There we visited Ana Maria and her family and their home, and it was a house the DR group had helped build about 7 or 8 years ago. Some of us also took a walk down the road and saw many (for us) exotic plants and animals! There is this very interesting plant called Sensitive Plant, and when touched, the leaves instantly curl up! 









They had some fresh avocado, made into a salad with some pickled red onions and something else I don't know the name of. I only had a few pieces, but words cannot describe the taste. It almost coated one's mouth in the most flavorful avocado taste one can imagine. Actually, more than you can imagine. Along with that, there was popcorn rice (the rice that was toasted to the bottom of the pot), chicken, Beans, and rice (did you know that their secret was to add some pureed pumpkin to the beans?), and a cucumber salad. One of the best meals ever. After the food we danced a little bit: all of the neighbors came to watch!





On the drive back, we stopped at a big reservoir on the Yuna River, it provides a lot of electricity to the island. It was super scenic.





Once we made it back to the hotel, we took a quick break and then went to watch the carnival that was going on. We watched the parade go on while listening to some really loud music!

Comments

  1. shelties11February 19, 2025 at 4:26 PM

    It all sounds beautiful and delicious! And how fun that you were there for the carnival!

    ReplyDelete

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