untouched territory

hola mes amigos! it has been awhile since we have made a post.... and this is going to be a bit of a boring one since it has no photos. wasnt super organized today, and we didnt move the photos from the camera, to our laptop, to our key to take with us to the internet cafe.... so.... more photos later but for now, just a little update!

vivienne and keith, mentioned earlier, have spent a lot of time mapping out parts of our territory that have never before been visited for english. they spent a few weeks driving up to a town called puriscal, which is 3 hours from quepos. it is actually a suburb of san jose! and it has NEVER been worked for english speaking people before. so thursdays have now been designated puriscal day.

we made arrangements with 3 sisters from canada (katie, robin and britt) to rent a car together for the day to defray the cost. they were GREAT company, they are hilarious! hopefully they enjoyed their time with us as much as we did with them. we got very detailed directions from keith and picked up a territory and headed out of town! as true pioneers we started the day with a coffee at cafe milagro (seriously overpriced, we have got to find a better place to get "cafe frio"). about an hour and a half later we stopped in herradura at a grocery store for a bathroom break. this is the best grocery store ever.... tons of yummyness and clean bathrooms and right off the main road! it has become a staple stop for us.

about 3o minutes later we pulled off the highway and the directions said soemthing to the effect of "follow the long and windy hill to the top where there will be an orange church. make a left." that took about 45 minutes! it was only about 20km or so but the hill is SOO super hilly and windy that we had to go really slowly. the views were just amazing.

we finally pulled into puriscal and set about finding our territory... not all that easy since almost none of the maps have landmarks yet! we had a map of the whole town, which had the church and park marked in the center of town. from there we were able to find our only landmark (thank you keith for giving us a territory with a school in it!) and find our 4 streets.

now that we knew what we were working, we had to find me a bathroom. hmmm.... no super nice american style grocery stores here with super convenient bathrooms! so josh and i went into a small soda ("soda" means "restaurant"... forgot if i told you all that yet). the very nice man there let us use the bathroom. then when i tried to wash my hands in the sink he gestured to hold on for a second and he came back with a pitcher of water since the tap didnt work! sooooo friendly and sweet....everyone in this country is just so nice. we bought a bottle of water from them later.

on our first street, britt met a woman who spoke excellent english but who was home for just a short time from work to have lunch with her family. a bible teach book was placed, with promises to return. on our 3rd street robin placed a book with a man! she had a great conversation and also made plans to return.

we finished our territory right around 2:30 which was perfect, as we wanted to head back before it got dark. on our way down the windy crazy road we encountered a giant truck coming up the other way right around a big curve. i said "oh man i really hope some maniac doesnt come flying around trying to paaa......" before i could finish saying "pass him" a maniac came flying around trying to pass! he slammed on his brakes and went back behind the truck and we continued on our way without incident. they are crazy drivers here. there are no rules apparently!

soon after that josh and i realized that the girls had turned our backseat into a makeshift kitchen and were assembling mini tacos! they had tortillas and a variety of items packaged in their bags which they assembled and ate on the road! we were super impressed! a photo of that will follow ASAP.

we headed back up to puriscal the following thursday, same car group. there was much less adventure although britt did take quite a tumble down a very slippery dirt "road" (our little toyota yaris couldnt handle it so we had to hoof it) and had a bloody knee for the rest of the day. she took it all in stride though. in fact we forgot about it until we stopped at the grocery store for a break on the way home and she got a few "wow are you ok" kind of looks.... then we remembered :) unfortunately that day no one placed any books and both return visits were not at home :( but britt did place an order with a local guitar maker and she will go pick up her very own hand crafted guitar in a few weeks. at least, we are pretty sure that is what she will get.... the man spoke no english and between all of our gesturing and attempts at speaking spanish we THINK she ordered a guitar!

will keep you all posted on that and will share some photos on puriscal just as soon as we can....