La Bethanie for New Years

After Xmas,
I went to the Huatulco beach town to return a key to a missionary, one that I accidently forgot to bring back.. I was sitting in the theatre watching Oceans 12 when a big Earthquake shook the place and everyone went running... No problems though!!!
I took the overnight bus back to Oaxaca where I met up with Juan Carlos at Casa Hogar and we went to La Bethanie for the New Year...
Another overnight bus that goes from dry Oaxaca to Cloud Forest and then into tropical Lowlands which are lush and producing bountiful harvests of sugarcane, corn, lemons, oranges and about anything else, and a lot of cattle ranches..
Elec, who is now the only Dr. in this farming town of 3,000 people, was going to be letting us stay at his parents house.. He had patients coming in at all times of day and night with sicknesses and large cuts from cutting sugarcane fields with machetes after they burned them, and treating poisonouse snake bites, Dengue Fever, etc.. And this was his vacation...
We did get a nice trip into the fields and outlying areas which are full of springs, caves, and abundant vegetation...The entire coastal area has been deforested and planted with crops..An older lady said when she moved here there 4 families in 1946... She said everything was rainforest with large trees, monkeys, abundance of wild fruits, nuts and animals to give them there fill... The government deemed the land good for sugar cane and land was divided to whoever cultivated it, so everthing was cultivated and still is today...
On New Years we had a town soccer match in which I can not play but somehow my time still ended up winning...Yeh!! Then they had a 3 hour church service till midnight and it was so full we were sitting on the sidewalk outside by the street.. It is a very conservative christian town and only the family members who left for the US came back and drank alot, but the locals drink very little and it is prohibited by local coucil to have a bar...
We went into the neighboring state of veracruz and bought 33 lbs. of beef for 3 days and 8 people. We ate beef 3 times a day, lots of fruit and vegetables... This is by far the best food I have aten with any Mexican families or even restaurants for that matter. They also raise freshwater bass as a business in a pond with a natural spring next to it..
I don´t have space for everything but we had a great time and when we had to come home all the good buses were sold out, so we got stuck taken the 3rd class retired US school to take us back to Oaxaca...It was alright though, except for all the swithbacks in the mtns. and very cold weather at 10,000 ft....
Im now back at Casa Hogar doing some painting on a new addition before I leave for Chiapas.