15 july

today was a pretty great day of relaxation. i was a bit concerned about the timeline as i'd been invited to have high tea in the early evening with friends we'd made at our last church. meanwhile during the day the assistant pastor had offered to take us out for the day. my worry was that we might be out for the full day and be unable to contact our hostesses.

we rose early and had quiet time and breakfast at the regular times, then it was sitting around and waiting for the cars to arrive. it was supposed to be 11ish but the actual time was 12:30ish. we ventured up to the largest of the three fertile valleys, which surprisingly was not far out of town before you could see the groves of olive trees, banana trees and tomato vines. amazing fact we were told that each mature olive tree will yield a ton of olives, a kilo (2.2 lbs) is $4 here, an eight oz can in california is over a $1 that's pretty amazing when we saw these fields of thousands of trees. i thought it odd that the villas weren't grander.



we made our way up to a museum in the valley where the claim to fame there is the oldest recorded mummy. the cost was preclusive to some members of the group so we drove around the valley. there were the geoglyps - ancient designs out of rock on the hillsides. we then scales a hillside, i did it barefoot as my flip flops didn't do so well in the sand. down was much faster and easier, bounding. this is sort of short and cryptic as i'm in front of the school, getting strand looks from hte locals.

we managed to make it to the dinner with our hosts had a there's more to this and i'll hopefully update it all in the future.