After we got back from whale watching, we decided to walk into towns so that we could book going into the rainforest and also buy some snacks. It's about a 2.5 mile walk one way to get to town. There's no roads, no trails, no nothing besides the beach to walk on. And having as many kids as we have, even trying to hire motorcycles is difficult--they had to know days in advance when we needed to come in with our luggage and then be taken out again. The beach is beautiful though.
So this was how a lot of the houses looked, some a little better, some a little worse. One we passed be the school, I would have sworn was abandoned. It was half collapsed but I saw smoke and also there was clothing drying on a line outside. Jubal took a lot more convincing and did not believe Leo for a long time that someone actually lived there. The back of the houses above and around the bay actually were pig sties so they could clean the manure off into the water. We saw a dead, bloated dog floating in the water that day, and the next time we walked in, we saw a couple girls swimming and washing their hair with shampoo in the water almost exactly where the dead dog had been. Yeah, this trip was definitely eye-opening for my children.
So I loved this trip and several of my kids loved this trip as well, and it was our favorite place we went in Colombia, but it definitely is not a place you go for a fancy resort and an easy time of it. But if you're willing to put up with some inconveniences (it's not for everyone), it is the #1 most biodiverse place on earth per square kilometer and AH-mazing! (The Amazon is more diverse only due to its overall size.) It is also one of the least developed places on earth where the rainforest is practically untouched. Tribes still live in their villages as in pre-Columbian times, except with outboard motors attached to their hollowed-out log canoes. And, like I mentioned before, one of the rainiest places on earth. Best of all, it just stays around 86 degrees constantly, so despite the 95% humidity, it is not the death trap that Houston is. If you like, PBS has a good documentary where the first part is all about Choco. https://www.pbs.org/.../from-the-pacific-to-the-andes.../.
This was the school we walked past going from our hotel to town in El Valle. One of the days, some of the kids were doing music class outdoors and ever since, Sebas brings up the fact that he only wants to be in band again if he can play percussion like they did in this school. He loved it! You could hear those drums all over the town playing a fast and heavy afro-indigenous beat. Seriously awesome! Nicolas liked the school because kids were climbing the trees during recess to get down coconuts and crack them open on the cement to eat them. I don't think that would go over in well in our last school.
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