On the first day of Isa and John’s visit last week, we took them to Maracas beach, where we decimated more than our fair share of bake and shark, LLB, Carib beer, and Pringles.  It was lovely and decadent.

On the second day, I took them to Mt. St. Benedict to sanctify them a bit after having plied them with said decadent goods.  I would have taken them anyway, Maracas indulgence-fest or not–some clear fresh air in a mountain-side monastery is never amiss.

After warning Isa not to screech at the steep, twisting road, I very deftly navigated the Smurfmobile up the mountain, parked, and we walked around to take in the views and the calm, breezy afternoon.

The Benedictine monastery was built in 1912 by an order of monks from Brazil and, as well as having a beautiful church and monastery, it has a seminary, a drug rehabilitation center, a guest house… and a yogurt factory, all run by the monks.  They are enterprising monks indeed.

I’ve been at the monastery many times, but I’d always managed to visit at times when there were private ceremonies, so this was the first time I got up close and actually inside the church.  It was beautiful, bright, simple, and airy–just as a church at the top of a mountain should be:

Needless to say, they were VERY impressed with the view:

Even though we had planned to drive through nearby St. Joseph before picking up Mr. Man and heading to Port of Spain for a savannah stroll and dinner, we ended up chilling on the mountain for a couple of hours, taking pictures and eating the baby bananas (silky figs, to be exact) that I had just bought at my favorite fruit stand.

Did I mention we took plenty of pictures?  Yep.

It was a beautiful afternoon out and I was patting myself on the back for having brought them up here and chattering to them as we were leaving, and as I was backing out, in our little cloud of silky-fig and fresh air bliss, someone backed her car up to the loud sound of thump.

You see, just because a ramp ends doesn’t mean that it won’t have a low wall (not visible from either your mirrors or by turning around) that will be located in the exact perfect place to put a nice paint scratch and dent right in the middle of your bumper.

Because I was in a place of worship (and because I didn’t want to scare my delightful guests) I kept my beratings PG-rated, and of course we were fine.  But I felt terrible for putting a dent on the car, as I’ve never done such a thing before.  I wanted to crawl into a hole and weep.  Instead, I shook it off as best I could and drove us down the mountain and back to pick up Mr. Man, to whom I handed over the keys forthwith for the rest of the day.

Ah, poor Smurfmobile.  Little did it know that my Mt. St. Benedict’s thumping was only the first lil’ accident it would have in twenty four hours and that the Toco trip thumping was yet to happen.

So yes:  Mt. St. Benedicts 1, Car Paint Job 0.