ubignut

Another early morning to rise. This time I woke to the sounds of music, kids laughing, and engines or motors starting. Here I thought I’d slept in late until I looked over at my watch and saw Ii was 7:15AM! I popped my head up and looked out the window – it was breathtaking, simply beautiful! At this moment I realized I didn’t want to go home at all, and I would love to wake up to a view like this every day. The water was a bright blue, the fishing boats were resting and swaying in the harbor, the light sound of waves hitting the shoreline, and the laughter of kids splashing in the water. All I could do was smile, and just feel so relaxed. I just didn’t have any care in the world at that exact moment, and everything from the day before was erased from my mind. The only thing I wanted to do was get my bathing suit on and be a part of the beauty going on outside.

I walked along the small fishing town and took so many great pictures. I talked to a few locals as well, even in Spanish, although they kept trying to talk to me in English. I think we were all being a little forgiving for screwing up both languages during the conversation. I grabbed my daily morning fruit juice and walked back towards the hotel where I read my book on the patio until I saw the signs of life from others in my group. Since we were making our way to a national park for a few days and coming back, it was best to just pack a light bag for a few days and leave our suitcases with the hotel. Luke helped negotiate a taxi to take us all to the park so we could avoid the bus and double travel time. At the entry of the park, there was a group of armed guards that needed to search our bags and taxi to make sure we’re not bringing anything illegal in. We couldn’t even bring in alcohol, so our taxi driver helped us hide the aguardiente we had in the trunk. It was a little nerve wrecking, but we all cleared the inspection and got dropped off at the furthest east point of the beach – Canaveral. From there we walked about 45minutes through a jungle-like terrain, over the donkey poo, and through the hills to get to the beach area Arricefes. I was so hot and sweaty, even with hardly anything. As we reached Arrecifes, I just kept walking right towards the water, past the check-in area, removing some clothing and bags with every step, and walked right into the Caribbean Ocean.

Aaaaah, the cold water felt so good! And looking around me, it was so beautiful! The waves were big and the current was strong. Apparently this wasn’t a good area for swimming for that very reason, but it was good enough to cool off in and after a few minutes we all got out, grabbed our gear and went soaking wet over to the check-in area to inquire about lodging. Our options for that night were to rent a tent, rent a hammock, or rent a cabin which held only 3 people each. The hammock would have been cool but there were no mosquito nets. We opted for the cabins with bathrooms and fans although it was really small inside and we had a “visitor”…. Gorky and I took the top of the loft area with the two beds, Manning had the downstairs. There was gecko poo everywhere! You’d think I would be used to it after the experience in Thailand, but it was still gross. And looking around, we saw on the wall by Gorky’s bed was our gecko friend, looking at us. Yeay, our own little pet! We dropped off all our stuff and went to hang out at the beach for the afternoon and play in the water. We didn’t have to walk far to get to a non-current area. It was fun in the sun for a few hours, then back to the cabin to take a nap before dinner. As we were hanging out and relaxing with the fan upstairs, we noticed our gecko friend was still in the same spot on the wall. He looked a little pale too – could he be dead? Gorky decided to try and scare it, but it didn’t move. He touched it lightly, it still didn’t move. We had a dead gecko stuck to the wall. Well, at least he wouldn’t be pooing all over the room anymore!

I was running really low on money so I had a very light dinner. In fact, I didn’t really even eat at all because what I ordered turned out to be sooo fried that it didn’t really taste good in the heat, and it wasn’t agreeing with my stomach that hadn’t really eaten friend foods in weeks! So I was SOL on dinner again, but did get a taste of Mike’s fish – man it was good!! The rice was made of a coconut milk… I HAVE to find the recipe for that! Since we had the aguardiente we had snuck in through the guards, we decided to have some drinks by the beach. Except we needed something to do shots in. So Gorky kept his crab shell from dinner, rinsed it out really really good, and off to the beach we went with our aguardiente and crab shell shot glass. I guess you’ll do anything at any point right?

I was off to bed early… with barely any dinner and a few shots, I was feeling a little sleepy and thought it best to just go to sleep. Besides, I’m on vacation and part of that means getting some rest. Tomorrow was another day….