When we were little we often went to Shaw’s Lane(Placentia Bay, NL) on Sunday after Mass and Mom and Dad would pile all of us into whatever car we had at the time. They also somehow managed to pile in lunch which sometimes was a pot of homemade spaghetti or a chicken dinner and drinks, possibly dessert, blankets to lie on and towels………basically whatever you needed for a day at the beach. Life was simple then, or so it seemed for us kids, and spending a day in Minca at the waterfalls and the river brought back this very strong memory. The waterfall and the river was full of Colombian families enjoying life, and enjoying their family, often 3-4 generations. It was a hike to the waterfall and they brought the elderly or disabled in on motos or, on one occasion, two young men brought their elderly grandfather in on a chair……they carried him all the way and then sat him in the water on his plastic chair. Did you know that as of Dec.31/12, Colombians and South Americans were considered to be the happiest people in the world(more about that later,maybe!). Anyway what we witnessed in Minca, which is just a small mountain village perched high in the Sierra Nevadas and is famous for its coffee, cooler temperature and bird watching, confirmed for me the reasons their strong sense of family values brings them happiness. Hopefully you can get a sense of that from the pictures below. Once again I think my grey hair made me stand out as an elderly person, which I often forget that I ‘might’ be. I was sitting on a rock next to a family of four generations and a man in his fifties placed a chair next to me where he then assisted an elderly woman in her 70’s to sit down. She was there a couple of minutes when she tapped me on the shoulder and very gently and quickly began to speak Spanish and before I knew what was happening she insisted her daughter or daughter-in-law pour me a coffee from their supply…….and so I joined her in a coffee. I was quite touched actually! About ten mins later her granddaughter came and sat next to me and began talking in pretty good English and asked me where I was from. When I said Canada she asked if it was Vancouver or Quebec because they seem to be two of the places that Colombians know in Canada. When I told her I was from Nova Scotia this led to a conversation about how large Canada was and then she asked me how much it cost to fly to Colombia and when I told her she seemed shocked and said it would take her a long time before she could visit Canada. She went on to say that she was a university student studying international relations and that she one day hoped to visit Canada and the United States. She also related that her grandmother thought they should share their coffee and food with me because it was obvious we did not have anything. I thanked her and she explained to her grandmother that we weren’t there for the whole day but just a couple of hours and would not need to share their lunch. I did have an orange in my bag which I gave to the grandmother and she quickly peeled it and then shared it with me, a friend named Donna who was with me at the time and her family. When I left she hugged my shoulder…….it was a special moment in Colombia when you once again realize how much we all have in common. From the waterfall we hiked back to the little town of Minca which was, by now, totally overcrowded because it was Good Friday, a holiday, and it seemed that all 440,000 citizens of Santa Marta had come to visit. Their was a traffic jam on the one way bridge into and out of town which was really a dusty road. And once again I was brought back to growing up in outport Newfoundland because it was 3pm on Good Friday and every Newfoundlander knows that it always rains on Good Friday in Nfld(or so my memory tells me). At 3pm exactly, the skies opened and the rain was torrential so Jim and I ducked undercover waiting for it to pass but the soccer game in the little park continued and families came up from the river looking for a place to have a beer or an ice cream. Everyone was happy and life was good in spite of the rain which lasted about 20 mins……..and then it was done and so were we!