Robinson Caruso

One of the things we've missed since arriving in CH as a family is big climbing things at parks. In the States, the newest fad is the huge climbing thing with multiple slides and swings poles and such, and everything is coated with a squishy plastic like substance so as to not be too hard.

In CH, there is no such thing.

The average CH playground has an old iron swing, and if you're lucky, a slide.

Pathetic, really. Why bother. No wonder why the kids start smoking at like 12.

They do however have these crazy adventure playgrounds. I walked by one about a month ago down by the river. It looks like a crazy old man assembled it as an art project and kids just happen to then play there. There are old tires on roller-wheels, a huge random sandbox with a plastic boat buried in it, a hollowed out airplane fuselage, multi-level tree houses with ladders and fireman poles, winding slides down the side of a hill, huge rope nets just hanging from trees to be climbed. It's all very earthy. In the US a kid would get hurt there and it would be shut down in an instant. Here, the moms stand off to the side and chatter while the 1 year old crawls away on its own and the 3 year olds jump off huge rocks onto big poofy mats. There are actual employees that work there during the day and will provide food and beverages for a small fee. Kind of like minimalist childcare.

Turns out, there's one just down the street from our apartment. Alison thinks it looks like Robinson Caruso built it or something. We've been there twice now. Noah loves it. Here he is jumping off the rocks for the 4000th time with his new friend Alma from Spain. Alma's mom kept yelling "Bravo Alma! Bravo Noah!" It was great. Noah and Alma then drank some agua and worked in one of the wooden casas together making sand pizzas or something. They also rode their little bikes around in circles for about 30 minutes.

The older kids blow through every now and again. Kind of like they are coming back to a place they grew up in. They jump off once or twice, giggle a bit then move on. It's definitely a place for the small kids.

We bumped into our downstairs neighbor there yesterday as well. They are very nice, and have offered to help us out a bunch. The wife even stopped by this afternoon and chatted with Alison about schools and pools and all that stuff. She said they went through the exact same thing themselves when they moved to the Netherlands many years ago so they understand our situation. Very nice that they are so friendly.