Traveling challenges

Traveling in Haiti is very difficult.  The roads are so bad and  there are so many people.  Thursday we went to Visa Lodge for team dinner.  We traveled 7 miles to this restaurant and it took over 90 minutes.  Cars are packed on top of each other and people are packed on top of each other in the cars.  As we closer to the Haitian election, the organization I'm working for will be setting new security measures where we can only travel certain times of the day, we will have curfews and only be able to travel to approved places.

 Visa Lodge for a team dinner.  The people on the right are the doctors and a dentist from Chile that we spend a lot of time with.

 Because of the new security measures and as a goodbye trip for our nurse, Kathy and our OT, Clare who are leaving this week, we went to the Dominican Republic this last weekend.  We took a truck from our compound to the border, aka. frontier.  From there we road on the back of motorcycles to a town called Jimani.  In Jimani, we had hoped to get on a bus, but instead we found a man with a van that would drive us to Barahona, on the coast and pick us up on Sunday.  This picture is a National Park in the DR.  Quiet beautiful.  The whole trip was 70 miles and it took us 4.5 hours to get there and then the same to get back.

The Beach :)

 Very rocky but beautiful.  The mountain rivers actually empty into the ocean so the water is cold on top and warm underneath.  It was wonderful!

 We met a great guide who helped us get to the beaches and to these beautiful water falls that we swam and played in for an hour.

There are two nurses working with us, Kathy, on the far left and Suzanne, next to me.  Kathy is 62 years old and she's amazing.  She's retired, fluent in Spanish and volunteers all over the world, in multiple types of medical settings.  She keeps up with us like a young woman!! 

This week we have a pediatric specialty team here this week from Toronto, Canada so my next post will have pictures of all the kids we are seeing here.  I know you all don't believe it, but I do actually work here :)