[boe4fun]

Most of the time we’re able to make some side trips. One of the best ones was visiting San Francisco de la Sierra and taking a 3 day trip into one of the canyons to see a petroglyph along with several cave painting sites. Took about a half day to ride by mule in order to get to that canyon (Santa Teresa?). Us 4 clinic volunteers had 2 guides and 4 pack donkeys to carry all of our gear, which we donated to the guides at the return to the village. My wife had packed 6 ribeye steaks on dry ice that we grilled and shared with the guides on the first night.

One of our volunteers, Dr. Bob Haining, a Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation specialist had the elders of the pueblo call for an impromptu clinic when we returned from the canyon (all communication up there is done by ship to shore radio). Since we were taking down donations we were able to fit a plastic drop foot brace to a stroke victim and an osteoarthritis knee brace to an old vaquero who could barely walk. I still remember him dancing in the dirt lot kicking up dust as we drove off! Turned out that one of our guides (Angel Arce) was a cousin of Juan Arce who operates sport fishing charters in Bahía Asunción. Angel’s son has Cerebral Palsy and was attending a special ed school in Loreto, where he was living with his uncle. He had braces made by a Shriners hospital in Alta California a few years before that needed replacement as he had outgrown them. We met him at his uncle’s paint store and measured and took molds of his legs below the knees, then took them to our clinic lab and fabricated new braces which we delivered on our return from La Paz. All in all, one of the most enjoyable of many dozens of trips down there over the past 67 or so years.