Leaving the farm for 4 days took a couple weeks to plan and orchestrate.
The BIGGEST shout out to Adjanie who took the reins and became Farm Boss.
Not only taking responsibility for the horses, but also the dogs.
She and her husband, Cristian, took turns camping at my house with the Peter, Garrett, Micah and the pest Dax.
These two are neurotic enough to begin with, hard to imagine what 4 nights at a kennel might do to their fragile psyches (and mine).
Big thanks to my adopted son, Todd, who used his vacation time to work 4 days on the farm doing trail maintenance.
A former Marine who served Bush and Obama on Marine One, he's the kind of man you want patrolling your property when you're not there.
Dr. Simmons made sure Peter had two healthy doses of physiotherapy.
Times like make your heart swell with gratitude to be surrounded by genuinely good people.
For me, the most relaxing part of the trip was the knowledge that the farm and all its creatures were receiving an uninterrupted flow of love. That's a vacation in itself.
Then there was the actual vacay with this guy:
Exiting the farm at 5 AM... being whisked through security thanks to this:
Wheeling around at 100 mph, until the Salvadorean crew temporarily lost my scooter.
Grounded:
Almost an hour spent trying to relocate it and then more time to get rental car, complete with ridiculously stained upholstery, a bulging knot in the back tire where the belt had broken, and what we soon discovered were failing brakes.
Stopping at the first road side stand to get fresh coconut water to attempt rehydration. By then, we were a couple hours off schedule. Our Airbnb accommodations were still over 2 hours away. No worries, I had printed maps and had prior confirmation with Verizon that my phone would work in El Salvador, easy, right?
Firstly, there's the issue of traffic and the fact that main thoroughfares bottleneck through residential areas. This wasn't a one way road, this is an example of 2 way traffic. What happens is the bigger guy honks until another backs up and then yells "tu madre" as they drive past.
Next, this country, the size of New Jersey, with over 6 million inhabitants, is one of the most densely populated in the world. People everywhere, flooding the streets, cutting you off on bicycles, crammed like sardines into these popular open air convoys which stop without warning for disembarkment.
So full at times, that people hang off the sides of them. It was trial by fire for my chauffeur! Horns blaring, complete disregard for stop signs or general driving rules, cows on the road, the converted school buses that are a staple of mass transit appear out of nowhere on narrow roads and bully you into backing out of their way.
Yeah, that's what Flynn was dealing with. I, chief navigator, was stressing on my inop phone GPS for Mapquest and the lack of signage everywhere. I had contingency plans if my phone failed, but paper maps only work if you can locate street signs. And guess what? They don't address properties either. The only coordinate for the Airbnb are that it is located at kilometer marker 89.5. And good luck finding a mile marker that hasn't been run over on a road that isn't posted.
5 hours later, we were still lost, finally in the right town, but no one I asked seemed to know the coffee plantation we needed to find. Every business is guarded by private security guards or off duty policemen carrying pistol grip shotguns or submachine guns. The last guard I asked for directions phoned the police for us. I heard them say in Spanish that 'these Americans have no business out here after dark'. I completely agreed. I had chosen to disregard the US State Department's warning about avoiding travel to El Salvador because its violent crime ranked it in the top 10 most dangerous countries in the world. And now I was beginning to wonder what I had dragged Flynn into.
My usual good luck prevailed and we ended up with 2 police escorts: 2 trucks with about 4-5 men apiece, some masked, all with machine guns. I breathed a huge sigh of relief. Flynn, not so much.
They pulled us over in the middle of nowhere. For a moment, I thought, this is where we get kidnapped, but then a gate opened and we were home free.
Flynn needed a moment to regroup.
The plantation manager and the cook had all but given up hope on us and were about to leave, instead, they rattled some pans and made us supper!
I was feeling quite smug at this point.
We did it! We had found our way up the flank of a volcano, to a small coffee plantation guarded by 3 Rottweilers, left to ourselves (as the plantation owners were away and the place was ours after the two employees left). Our little $40 per night cabana.
