Wild and Crazy Days

Jan 29 – The wildlife experiences continue. I think that black scorpion I saw in the bathroom two days in a row is a lucky scorpion. Monday, we traveled south with friends Ryan, Clint, Christy and Dani, to a place called Ventanilla to check out the local ecotourism. This little beachfront community consists of black sand (which is metallic) and a large lagoon. For 35 pesos we jumped in a boat and our guide, Vicente, paddled us around the lagoon giving us snippets of history and facts about the mangroves and animals. We saw many crocodiles, turtles, tropical birds, and iguanas. At the close of our hour long tour, Vicente’s eyes practically popped out of his head and he vigorously paddled closer to the unfortunate demise of a pelican, snatched out of a low branch by a 4 meter long crocodile. With cracking and snapping, we watched that poor pelican go down the gullet of that giant croc in just a few minutes.

The next day, Roger and I woke up early to join Clint and Christy for a day of sport fishing with Captain Omar. Again, in the early morning I saw the black scorpion high on the bathroom wall. I just didn’t feel like trying to catch or kill it because it I thought it quite lovely. My first stroke of luck came while walking to the beach to meet at Omar’s boat. I found 200 pesos in the street. Then, as you can guess, during our morning of fishing, I caught a HUGE sailfish. It took every muscle in my body to anchor myself in the boat and then slowly reel him in. It was like fighting with the weight of a refrigerator. We had about 30 seconds to take a picture, then we let it go. Gratefully it dove back into the sea.

Roger was a wonderful photographer and cheerleader. Clint caught one too. We saw 3 humpback whales, many sea turtles, thousands of jellyfish, and had an all around enjoyable day. I really enjoyed being out on the water. It is extremely clear right now so Roger and I have tried to snorkel more often than usual.

Today while Roger ran and did yoga on the beach, I met two friends, Pedro and Diana, for an hour long swim. It was my longest swim this year. Our routine is to leave from a protected cove, go out into the open water, but swim along the shoreline away from breaking waves that can slam us into rocks covered with sea urchins. It’s all very safe, but today we did experience a lot of jellyfish stings. These are small critters difficult to avoid and their sting is like a quick hard mosquito bite that itches immediately. Between my tired muscles from catching the fish, and a long swim, I’m finally chilling out indoors.

Now here’s something interesting. We’ve been staying in this same apartment for 4 years, next door to a lovely little hotel owned by Dan, a guy from Canada. He lets us use the pool, borrow books, use the internet. We’ve been calling ourselves “extended family”. While visiting with his niece yesterday, I asked her “What’s Dan’s last name?” She told me it was Clemens. Immediately that triggered a question (and every Austin relative knows what I was thinking): “Is he related to Mark Twain?” I asked. “YES”, she said excitedly, “I am too!” My great grandmother, Karen Clemens (mother to my paternal grandfather) was related to Samuel Langhorne Clemens, and I grew up learning that Mark Twain is my 32nd cousin. My grandfather was born in Ontario Canada and this is where Dan’s family is from. Somewhere along the line, we’re related.

We booked our tickets for home. Less than 3 weeks to go. Tomorrow we meet our friend Tom Landis at the airport - he's coming down for some big savings on dental work and hopefully some big surf in between appointments. If you need work on multiple crowns, take Tom's tactic. Buy your ticket to Mexico, stay here for 2 weeks, spend less for the same work in the states, and get a vacation out of the deal.