The rains came down and the floods came up

Well this week has been a great one! It rained pretty much every day, all day, and unlike the U.S. where all the water has places to go like gutters and drains, here it's more like the water goes where it wants to go. So most of the sidewalks and roads are flooded and it's difficult to get around. Oh and you get soaked no matter how many things you have to keep the water away.

But I want to talk about this last P-day and the hike we went for (Elder D. and me, that is.) The two gringos on an adventure to climb a mountain. It started early early, like almost 6 in the morning. We headed out the house and to a small dirt road by this little colonia named Jardines. On the way we got harassed by the street perros that I have come to hate. Dogs at home are nice and typically friendly, but all the dogs here are ratty and just plain mean. But anyways we made it to the small path we were going to take up the mountain. We had to maneuver through some barbed wire but after that it was almost smooth sailing. The path went up about 2/3 of the mountain and just as it was about to end we hit a road block...a herd of cows. Okay not just cows, bulls too. There were probably 10 total and the bulls had massive horns. Now as we walked closer the bulls did nothing, just stared at us. So instead of testing fate and trying to pass we took the route through the jungle to hack our way through and not mess with the scary cows. About two hours into the hike we were almost there. The path had stopped and all that was left was a small hill and then we would be there. The view from the top was supposed to look over all of Coatzintla, my area, Camineros, Olmecas, Quirasco, Troncones, and the division by Poza Rica; and then the area of elder D., Jardines, Morales, Kawatzin, Casas Geo, and some other small pueblos that I don't know the name of. But once we got to the top, there was no clear spot, only bushes that were a good 8 or so feet high. From the back, the view away from the city was awesome and I was totally fine with that. I tried to tell Elder D., oh well this was fun and the view of the back was awesome. but Elder D. loves his mountains and his views, so he hacked through the bushes and about thirty minutes later we had a small little view. A little more time and we could see my area. A little more and we saw parts of his.

Now I learned a pretty cool lesson from Elder D. Although he had lots of pesky weeds and bushes to deal with he knew what his goal was and he wasn't going to stop until he got there. Now sadly for me, I was content with the "half way" goal. The view was great. But through our extra efforts and determination we had an even better view just around the corner, just out of sight from where we were. The view we ended with was a thousand times better than what I had been content with. On the way down the hill we had encounters with the cows again and with some ticks. I hate ticks.

Hope everyone is doing well and is safe back home in the states. It's too bad the U.S. lost to Mexico last week because of that I had to eat two whole habeneros and buy some jovenes Coca-Cola. Much love and keep progressing!

Elder Babcock