Back in town

We had a lovely dinner tonight courtesy of our very special house guests, at a restaurant near the sea wall in Urca, the small, picturesque district at the foot of the Sugar Loaf.
 
D first stayed with us on and off 11 years ago, while volunteering at a crèche/orphanage out in bandit country – serious bandit country. One day the priest in charge and all the helpers, including D, were held at gun point in a locked room, while the rest of the place was ransacked. Luckily, they all emerged safely, scared but unharmed. Another over-young volunteer who had come down at the same time as Dave was already so doubtful about things that she was home with us when it happened. When she heard about it, she packed her bags and went home.
 
D’s now a married man, happily showing his charming and talented wife round his old haunts in the South Zone (the area people think of as Rio) and planning to drop in to the crèche and the wonderful people he worked with there on the way down the coast for more sun, sand and tropical rainforest.