Christ for the City always plans at least one day for rest and relaxation. So after breakfast we drove to the black sand beaches of El Salvador.
We headed back to San Salvador (which is not on the ocean. Not sure why it is where it is, to be honest). There was a Holy Week parade prepping to march near where the apartments are situated. The parade was like something out of Godfather II. But before the March the streets are covered in Alfumbras. Meaning literally "carpet", the Alfumbras are made with salt. Salt that is colored and the poured by hand to make the art work.
After that we had a nice dinner with Lauren, Josué and Cristian (yeah I have been spelling it wrong this entire time).
It doesn't really matter where you go around the world, beaches are beaches and the people who live near them are laid back. Same is true in ES, except there was definitely more garbage on the beach we were at today. Hey people, seriously!?
One of our CFTC hosts happens to know a surf instructor. He and his gringo girlfriend have a hippie-style place right on the beach that has a small wading pool. Nothing fancy, but soooo comfortable. Just a really laid back vibe that transcended the people. They had a couple of Salvadorian cooks who made us delicious baked chicken. There was a Salvadorian dude there who cut open a coconut for us and we drank it straight from the nut. There were gringos there too, including a guy from Boston who recently quit his job at TIBCO to see the world (how does one end up in ES?) and a classic "no prob bra" dude from So Cal who was working his way down to Peru with his surf board. Probably not a shocker that he is in to bee keeping and has a flexible return schedule. Dude was awesome. He has never ever smoked weed. Wait.
The surf was not great for first timers, very choppy and a hard rip tide. But we braved the 80 degree waves and learned how to surf from the Salvadorian instructors. Within our 1.5 hours all four of us got up and rode the waves at least once. Fun for sure.
Very beautiful. It took teams 10-12 hours to complete each one. And they are completed just in time to get intentionally trampled by the parade. In fact the part of the parade that carries Jesus in a glass coffin literally stops and shuffles back and forth for a while on each alfumbra.
Tomorrow we fly back. I can't believe this is it.
Tomorrow I will take some time to post all the backstory things that made up our trip. For example, did you know that we weren't allowed to flush toilet paper? Nope. Must place in garbage. One day I accidentally threw my TP in the toilet and had to fish it out. Not awesome.
No comments:
Post a Comment