We woke up at 2:30am on Saturday morning to catch the 3:30am bus to El Rama. This is about a four-hour bus ride away. Once we arrived in El Rama, at 8am, we bought our boat ride tickets to Bluefields, but we were told we had to wait until all the boat seats were sold before we could leave. We traveled with our roommate Isabel and when we arrived to the ticket booth, including us three, four of the 22 seats were sold. We grabbed some breakfast, read, slept on the benches, and just waited until the boat seats were all sold. We left around 11am and arrived around 12:45pm. Our meeting was at 2pm.
Since the almost two hour boat ride was all in direct sun, we were hot, tired, and sweaty. Thankfully, the hostel had running water and we were able to rinse off before our meeting.
Our 2pm meeting ended at 4pm!
You can kind of get where I’m going with this now, right? We traveled 9 hours for a 2-hour meeting!
The meeting itself was ok. We received some updates and were able to express some concerns and frustrations. However, the highlight came that night.
There were eight of us at the meeting and we decided to go out to a nice dinner together. I was truly happy because I had skipped lunch! At dinner we had salads, veggies, and seafood, all amazing food that was a real treat for everyone there. Dinner was at sunset overlooking the river we had traveled on. Truly beautiful.
Tim and I enjoyed a good nights sleep at the hostel and began our trek back to Nueva Guinea at 8am on Sunday. A boat ride and two bus rides later, we finally made it back around 2pm. Yes, a 6 hour return trip.
So, all in all, we traveled 15 hours for a two-hour meeting! Tim and I asked ourselves if it was worth it. Our conclusion came because we hung out with some amazing people for a few hours. – Caressa