Little trip

After church on Sunday we drove to the base of the volcano. The road, and I use that term loosely, that leads up to the base is very steep and narrow. The truck we are renting as no guts, it barely made it up the road. I couldn’t see how the other little cars made it up there when we finally got to the ski lodge. To my surprise there was a tour bus parked on the side, how they made it up there I will never know. I would have wet my pants had I been on that bus going up that “road”.



Anyway, it was neat up there. The lodge isn’t open right now, but the ski lift just sitting there was kind of cool to see. The volcano was smoking a lot! Turns out it erupted a little last night…..HA! We took a few photos and then headed back down. It was cold up there and we had on shorts and t-shirts. We had no idea what to expect to be up there. After driving back down we headed to Lake Caburga. It is always nice there and we had nothing else to do. The water had not lowered at all but had actually risen a bit. There were a few more people there than the last time we went but still not crowed as it usually is.

Well, the weather forecast claimed that there would be rain in the afternoon today, but the sun was shining when we got up this morning. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky so we thought maybe we would get some work done today! Oh, what a lovely thought. I was on the other side of the site drawing the maps of the first trench. We had been there about an hour when Jake showed me what looked like a few bug bites on his wrist. The first aid kit that we brought contains Benadryl gel. Sadly it was back at the cabin. He came back in a few minutes and showed me that the bites had spread up his arm. Needless to say they weren’t bug bites but Jake was having an allergic reaction to something. There were ugly red bumps all up his arm. We quickly decided that work would have to wait and we would have to get Jake some kind of antihistamine. We were back in the truck within 5 minutes. All the workers were trying to convince Jake he needed to go to the hospital and get a shot. By this time the bumps had spread to his other arm. The woman at the pharmacy had an antihistamine and told Jake that if it didn’t help and he felt like he couldn’t breathe to then go to the hospital in town and get a shot. She made him take the pill at the counter. There were a few of the bumps on his neck now. We got back to the cabin; Jake took a shower, rubbed the Benadryl gel on the bumps. Thankfully they stopped spreading and the itching lessened. The swelling has gone down a lot and he is now knocked out. No throat closing or eyes swelling. He is fine now, just asleep.

So, no, not any work done today. We have not had a full week of work since we got here. Crossing our fingers for next week!

Tomorrow is a National holiday, the day of Immaculate Conception. Mary’s conception. So, the workers have to day off and Jake and I are heading to Temuco to celebrate my birthday. We are going to eat at Ruby Tuesdays! Jake is so excited about the salad bar, I hope he doesn’t eat himself sick. We have about two weeks left with this trip. It is strange, it seems that time hasn’t really gone by that quickly but then at other times is seems to have flown by. We are excited to take a break and enjoy ourselves in our house, and sleep in our bed. The cabin is nice but we miss home. The United States is defiantly a country of convenience and we have greatly missed that.

Mandy & Jake