Jacmel

We had to travel to Port au Prince to get a water test done. The campus that we live on uses city water for everything, and we already know this isn’t clean water. However, we needed to know what specific nasty things are in there to determine what kind of water filter we need. We tried to take the sample ourselves and take it to PAP to then mail to the states, but since you can’t mail ice-and they have no dry ice in the country, there was no way to get it there without compromising the sample. And so, we needed to pick up Randy from PAP and give him our water sample.  So we spent the night in PAP, then got Randy from the airport, spent the night again in PAP, then drove to Jacmel, and drove back the next day. It was a long 5 days away from home. Port au Prince takes a lot out of us-it’s a huge, loud, busy, crowded, overwhelming place to be. Not to mention not exactly the safest either. The drive to Jacmel only took about 3 hours though, and it was through some very beautiful scenery. There was a paved road the entire way, which sounds like something silly to notice, but was a pretty big deal.  We stayed at an old and weathered hotel-but weathered in a good way.  It had old wood floors and antique furniture-it was by far the nicest hotel we have stayed at in all of Haiti. The plan was to spend all the next day touring around the area, but instead, I got sick. Which was a bummer cause Jacmel is beautiful! It has a huge farming and agriculture presence, and is charming, quiet, lush and green. But, I couldn’t leave the hotel room. I spent all morning dreading the idea of getting back into the car-and finally slunk into the front seat at about noon. I threw up the entire drive back to Port au Prince. It only took the driver once to know to take me seriously when I said rete conya.  Stop now. The part that bummed me out the most about being sick was realizing I couldn’t go the grocery store in Port au Prince. We have been to one and it’s pretty good-especially considering there in only one in pdp, and it has 3 isles with a few canned goods and some snacks. The one we were planning to go to had a real deli, bakery, and almost anything you could buy in the States!!