June 24/25

Friday June 24

Today was my last shift at work. We had a good busy day in Maxillo facial. We had to do an enucleation (removal of an eye) and removal of a tumor.

After work I went out for dinner with my cabin mates. We tried to go to a place called Mamba Point but the taxi driver and about 20 people who had gathered on the street around the cab to help us, did not know where it was. We ended up going back to Aberdeen beach which was really nice. The adventure getting there was quite interesting. Because we had 6 people in our group, the taxi driver agreed that we could have 2 in the front and squish 4 in the back seat. As we took off down the road, it was strange to not hear the driver honking at people. I asked him if he should use his horn as we were getting very close to hitting people and he laughed at me and told me that the horn was broken. Most of us agreed that even though we find the constant honking annoying, it is much better than no honking at all. The driver kept almost running into pedestrians and almost taking out dogs. He then decided to take a "short cut" to avoid traffic. We ended up going into a very poor area of town that was basically in a big valley where all of the rainwater runs, it was fine but we still got stuck in traffic. On the way out of the valley we had to go up a huge hill that was quite slippery as it had just rained. Of course the traffic forced the driver to stop midway up the hill. All of the vehicles here are standard and you can imagine how quickly we started to roll down the hill as soon as the driver took his foot off the brake! We ended up almost hitting the taxi behind us, and all of us offered to get out of the car and walk up to the top of the hill where the driver picked us up again.

As we neared the restaurant, it started to get dark. The driver put his lights on, but they must have been on their last legs because we just got a slight hue of light (with his brights on!). The beach street on Aberdeen has many speed bumps so we all had to look out for them and yell when we saw them because the driver didn't seem to notice and tried to take them at top speed! We were very excited to arrive alive at the restaurant and did not ask the driver to wait for us. We had a lovely dinner and then started the trek back home.

Saturday June 25

On Saturday two of my friends and I took a taxi to John Obey beach for the day. It was a beautiful beach to spend my last Saturday. I got lots of pictures of the scenery. We did have some rain during the day, but not enough to stop us from enjoying ourselves! We had a nice lobster lunch (which I did not eat, but I enjoyed watching the men cook it) as well as grilled pineapple. The beach area that we went to is run by a company called tribe wanted  (http://www.tribewanted.com/). The company works to create a sustainable working co-op within an existing community, that is eco friendly.
We enjoyed another crazy cab drive to and from the beach. However this taxi driver did have a working horn and he really knew how to use it!

Arriving at the beach

getting the lobster ready to grill

watching the storm come in

Hanging out in the sun

Two little village boys who hung out with us

soaking in the last rays of sunshine

It started raining, so the driver passed me his handle to roll up my window