Erin, Nicki had gone to the beach for some early morning yoga, Niki and Jil were still sleeping so I headed to the porch to blog some more. Eight thirty in the morning with my bottle of water and the warm breeze blowing through the shady patio was exactly how I wanted to spend my morning.
By about ten thirty, Erin and Nicki were ready for some sun so we headed to the beach. We lathered up with sun lotion, knowing the sun is much more intense down here and walked the three to four hundred yard path to the beach.
Popping up and over the hill, a wavy blue ocean greeted us with tide pools and all. We scoped out our towel spots to lay out and I headed to the tide pools for some cool photos. Walking barefoot across the rough rocks was a dumb idea, but I got to see so many cool creatures. Sea urchins, some kind of slug thing, baby fish, and hermit crabs galore! Before my trip, I bought a waterproof point and shoot and hadn't really used it yet on our trip. Being in the ocean and being able to take my camera in the water was a huge reminder of why I bought it! I was able to put my camera right down into the pools and video the sea creatures in full HD. The film turned out awesome!
Niki and Jil joined up a little later and we hung out on the beach all day. Nicki and Erin went back and one point and brought us some sandwiches for lunch. Tomato, avocado and cheese sandwiches on the beach. Laying on the beach, I got a kick out of watching the crabs running perfectly sideways across the sand, and in and out of their holes.
It was so warm, and the sun was so intense, that we played in the ocean alot. Waves were incredible and we were very careful to stay in shallow waters, after being told how strong the riptides were. At one point, Niki had shouted out that she had lost her sunglasses, so we frantically searched for them, but had no luck. In efforts of finding hers, I gripped mine extra tight, but the waves were picking up and within two minutes of hers getting away, mine were ripped from my grip too! We searched the shoreline, hoping they'd wash up, but finally decided to pronounce them as lost at sea. Thank God they were nothing expensive!
By about four o'clock, my skin had felt like it was put in the oven. Although I was good about lathering up with lotion, I had forgotten to reapply as many times as I should and was definitely paying for it. I looked like a lobster. A couple of us moved to the shady pool back by the condos to rinse the salt water off and cool down for the night. We had met a guy name Floyd and his wife Jan who were very informative of the area. They were from Canada and live down here for five months out of the year. I loved talking to them and their neighbors while chilling in the pool.
Sunset was a huge gathering time for the people of Las Palmas villa. At around five, people start to work their way towards the couple of driftwood logs on the beach to wait for the beautiful Coast Rican sunsets. Floyd and Jan were one of the first to join us girls seaside, along with more and more of their neighbors. They all came with a cold evening drink in hand and were all eager to hear about us girls' trip. Dick and his wife were from Washington state, but were actually born and raised in Michigan. When I asked where, he described a small island not far from Detroit, and before he could finish I was like, "Oh, Grosse Isle!" and he was absolutely amazed that we knew where he was talking about. We chatted it up with a few more people sitting on these driftwood logs as the sun sunk lower and lower showing off its amazing colors until it disappeared below the horizon.
After sunset, we walked to the store for some dinner groceries and some gelato that the retirees had raved about. I ordered a coconut flavored scoop and was more than pleased!
As dinner was cooking, we took turns showering and getting into our comfys. Niki and I were cutting up vegetables when Erin came running out of the bedroom, "Oh my God there's a huge spider in there." My heart naturally starts racing, because I hate spiders, but my pulse increases from racing to turbo when I see the damn thing. Sitting right at the end of the bed on the floor was a brown spider, similar to our wolf spiders in Michigan, and I was in awe. I'm of course screaming, "Kill it!" along with some other profane words, while grabbing my camera. Of course the camera doesn't do justice, but the fact that the flash made its eyes glow in the photo, like a dog's would, was enough to freak me out even more! Nicki runs to grab a cup and a piece of paper to rescue it and I don't dare take my eyes off it, not because it was fun to look at, but because I didn't dare let that thing disappear into our bedroom. Nicki returns with a Tupperware cup and a sheet of paper. She traps the spider, strategically slides the sheet of paper under the cup and the spider, and calmly tells the spider, "It's ok, we're not going to hurt you. We are going to put you back outside where you belong. There's no need to worry, you're not gonna die." Once in her hand and on the paper, there was a great photo opportunity to show how big it was. She released it back into the wild and the house took a few minutes to cool down again. All that kept running through my head was the fact that if that spider was living in this amazingly clean and resort like house, what the heck were our future hostels going to be like? Dan explained to us that it's totally inevitable to totally prevent them. He told us if we went around looking for them in dark places in the house we'd find many more, plus scorpions. Hmm, yet another reason I hate the dark! Mom, after this little event, you win. I'm in total agreement now about standing in the garage and shaking out everything I own and leaving it in freezing temperatures over night before bringing it inside. There is no way in hell, I am bringing anything like that into our home!
After our little arachnophobia episode, the rest of the night was chill. We all gathered around a laptop to watch a movie from New Zealand. Nicki was a film major in college so she knows a lot of great movies. It was so cool to see a production from another country and culture and as much as I wanted to make it through the movie, the long day full of sun and sand had worn me out. I headed to our room, scoped out my bed for any kinds of creepy crawlers, because that saying of "Goodnight, don't let the bedbugs bite," is some serious business down here apparently. The coast was clear for sleeping so I crawled into bed and was out like a light.
Photos:
(Sorry, I had to pull them up on my other camera and take a picture of the camera screen because I had none on my phone)
1) Tide pools at low tide
2) View of our beach
3) Jil, Niki and I in the water
4) Nicki's spider rescue
Ha ha! You had better shake out your stuff! Some of those spiders are pregnant you know!! Yikes!!
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