POST by FRAN: Playing en la Playa

Setting up for our first night in the WILD...

Everybody love the beach, right? I know I do! My friend’s parents own a beach house on a beach called ‘Playa Hermosa’ (witch means beautiful beach). They kindly let us go and use their house on the beachfront for a few days. Playa Hermosa is about an hour's drive away from our house.

A lot of people we know own houses on that beach, but they only go there for holidays. So we always get the whole beach to our selves. This time nobody was there except three couples that stayed in a resort just off of the beach and we only saw them like twice. But other than them, we had the beach all to our selves!

We left for the beach on Saturday at 3pmish. It was a squished ride. We had all the luggage neatly thrown in the boot and then Lucky, Anna, Yordy and I were in the back seat with our heads banging up against the roof! In the middle seat was Mum, Lorenzy, Billy, Granny, Eliezer. And in the front were Dad, Grandad, Sezni, and Rafi.

Girls being girls: Liz, Fran, Renz, & our newest recruit, ANNA!!!

We were squished into an eight-seater car with a dog! We were all excited about the beach, we just weren’t that excited about the drive to get there!

We were about a third of the way there when Mum says, “WOW, the dog is doing better than I thought!” She spoke too soon! Just after she had said that the dog vomited all over her back! It’s bad luck sitting in front of a dog that hasn’t traveled before! Mum didn’t say much after we got the toilet paper and wiped off the dog vomit.

We got to a little village that was twenty minutes away from the beach and Mum said, “We need rice and matches and plastic plates!” So Dad stopped at a venta (a shop that is built in to someone's house). Lorenzy and Eliezer jumped out and asked if the lady in the venta had rice, matches and plates.

“Dad I want to run to the beach!” Sezni yelled at the top of his voice. “Me too” said Rafi like a little mouse. “Go ahead! You turn right at the end of the street” Dad explained to the both of them. “So this is right?” Rafi held up his left hand, “and this is left?” pulling up his right hand. “No, the other way around!” said Dad, not really explaining it properly to them.

Lunch, with Franny Brien

“I got it Dad!” Sezni replied, as he started running off with Rafi following shortly behind.

Five minutes later Lorenzy and Eliezer got back in the car with three match boxes, ten pounds of rice and three bags of plastic plates. Dad started driving, “Let’s catch up to those boys.” We turned right and then went on. “Where are they?” asked Grandad. “They wouldn’t have come this far!” said Mum. “Go back! We missed them!” Mum started panicking.

We turned around and went back to where we started, “Have you seen two little boys?” asked Dad. “No,” was the reply. “Let’s go left just in case.” Dad said. “You’re driving!” said mum. We went left and asked two girls if they had seen them, “Oh they are two little white boys? Yeah they ran down there.” “Thanks!” We got to the end of the road, which forked off into four ways, we went straight.

Lorenzy, Eliezer, Lucky and I got out to look for them, “SEZNI...RAFI!?”

After looking for ten minutes Sezni and Rafi came out from the overgrowth crying. “We got lost,” Sezni explained as he climbed into the car. “Did you guys follow my instructions?” asked Dad, wondering why they had gone wrong. “We went this right (putting up his left hand and then we forgot the rest so we just kept going! sob, sniffle, sob” explained Rafi.

Fran & Billy in a tide pool

We got back on track and every one was silent for a while... nobody had anything to talk about. We were all squashed into our car. We were all hot, “Can you turn on the AC?” complainingly asked  Lorenzy. The windows were rolled up and Sezni pushed the AC button. The AC made everyone much happier.

We got to the beach and in total it took us an hour and a half, but when we got there we didn’t care about the long prison ride in the car, we went to the water and just played and had a really happy afternoon.

We forgot to get gas so we cooked over a little fire that took us ten minutes to start. We ate hot dogs with onions! The first day at Playa Hermosa was probably the best. We went to bed at nine thirty, we thought it was like eleven or something, we were all so tired!

The next day I woke up at nine, Yordy had his music on and was practicing tricking with Sezni and Rafi on the sand by the beach house. Mum and Dad were sleeping, so was Anna and Lorenzy upstairs. Eliezer had gone for a walk with Billy.

Franny & Yordy enjoying the rock pools with Lucky

I went into the kitchen and got something to eat, cerial. Anna came downstairs and grabbed some too. After breakfast I got my swimsuit on and went and sat on the sand looking out at the beautiful ocean. Mum eventually woke up and came and sat with me, then came Anna, followed by Lorenzy.

Mum did a little devotion and after the devotion we went and ate more breakfast! Once we were all full we all got ready to go to the pools by the big rocks, thats when we realised that we didn’t bring any sun cream! Oh well. We hit the beach without it, besides my quinse is coming up and I need to get rid of my bad tan lines!

Fran, Yordy & Billy, enjoying the freedom of being at the Beach

The water was so nice and refreshing, but the sun was so hot and we were so vulnerable! The first full day at the beach was so nice - I had friends and family with me enjoying the entire day!

We dug holes and buried people in them so that you can only see their head! We climbed rocks and looked out on the ocean. We looked where the sky met the water. I drew a little and we just had a lot of fun!

Renz, Anna, Yordy, Fran & Sez on the rocks (with Lucky of course)

In the night we made another fire, this time a lot bigger and closer to the water. We roasted marshmellows to flames! We went on a walk and went for a swim for two minutes (we got scared)! We took a few silly pictures and did silly poses. We listened to music, it was so much fun!

We walked up the beach and realised that every step we took there would be some glowy stuff that would glow and then disapear. We decided to run back to make it look like the glowy stuff was chasing us. And when we got back to the fire we all laid down and looked up at the sky, it was a moonless night, filled with stars!

“Wow it is beautiful!” We all eventually said these words out loud. I spotted a shooting star and that’s when I finally said these words, "Nights like these are the ones I appreciate the most, when you're with your friends and family and eternity!"