the final weekend!

What a way to spend my final weekend!

Spent the weekend in Jacmel at the beach, partying with the ultra marathon runners and swimming in waterfalls.

After the epic journey to Jacmel (see previous post), we spent the evening taking in the sights and sounds of the beautiful beach that the hotel backs on to.

The next day was spent celebrating the end of the Haiti: Ultra - marathon. Seven crazy people decided it would be a good idea to run across haiti. It took them three days and was 60 miles in all. Day one was through the madness that is port-au-prince up into the mountains. Day 2 was spent running further up into the mountains to a school that one of the runners has spent the last year building. Day 3 was spent running down the mountain to the finish line at the beach.

Me and some of the other volunteers at the clinic where waiting at the finish line to congratulate them. It was an epic run, with many memories made and stories to tell. These were shared over a massive bbq chicken cook out and afternoon hanging out on the beach. The water was beautiful and there was plenty of surf to make playing in the waves hours of fun.

That evening we ventured into Jacmel to an italian and mexican restaurant. We arrived to find the whole town in darkness as the power was out. But the owners welcomed our party of 20 with big smiles and proceeded to find a generator. So for a while we were the only place with power. She even pulled out all the stops and reliably informed us she could cook chinese too!

After a delightful meal we drove back to the hotel through the party's on the streets of jacmel, thinking it was going to be an early night as we had to moto, tap tap and bus it back to port-au-prince the next day. However, Jacmel seems to be the place to be for NGO networking and we managed at about midnight to score a ride with another group of people who were heading back to PAP. They were however going to have to go via Bassain Bleu and was that ok?

Bassain bleu is a beautiful waterfal that you have to drive to through steep dirt roads, rivers and then trek through the juggle, shimmy down a rock and then swim a bit! We told that if we absolutely had to we would totally be up for that! (It happened to be on our list of things we wanted to do but ran out of time to do).

It was an awesome experience and one I will not forget in a hurry. I'm sure I have said this in a previous post, but Haiti has such beauty that if it could harness that into tourism it would be onto a winner.

We then got driven back over the mountain pass in a relatively comfortable land cruiser, it beats the bus anyday!

Back to normal routine on Monday of clinic. This week the power has been a little dodgy which has proven to give us new challenges in the clinic as we try to work in the smouldering heat without fans, and its a little dingy without the lights.

I leave Haiti on friday and relocate to the US for three weeks! I'm sure I will do one or two blogs from there so keep your eyes peeled.