February 7-8-9, 2010

Random Vignettes
Bird on the Light: We have a fluffy little orange barn swallow who sleeps on our spotlight in the corner of the walkway at the Internet café. Sometimes he shares with another bird, who sleeps on the wire. All day they are away, presumably catching bugs. One night there is even a tiny lime green gecko sleeping on the wall right by them. Must be the comforting heat of the spotlight.
Chocolopas is the name of the shrimp-beetles that the birds catch on shore. They are, in fact, known as sand shrimps. They leave small holes in the sand when waves head back out. They can get quite a bit larger than the less than one inch ones on our beach and are often used for fish bate. The larger ones may burrow deeper but these small ones are nearly on the surface and easy to catch.
Crab King: One day, a crab scoots out and steals the chocalopa from the curlew, when he and his buddy the willet are not looking. We cheer! The crab takes the whole bug, shell and all, into his hole. We surmise that he is using the shell as cooking pans.
Dancing: We dance for an hour in Unit Three, singing appropriate songs like Uno, dos, tres, mas! Later we gather on the deck for games and we can look up and see Chris and Barb still dancing. They do shadows and shapes through the windows for our amusement.
Things: This game elicits surprises, embarrassing moments, tales untold, and of course, laughter until we cry.
Monday: We miss going out for dinner again, we are singing and telling stories by the ocean and get too caught up to remember to get dressed and go. So everyone cooks something up and then meet by the sea again for games. Dave and Doug make the most delicious mix of eggs, peppers, onions and cheese. We scoop it up with our fingers and smear it on bread. It accompanies Vince’s famous bloody caesars extremely well!
Tuesday morning, Chris, Dave, Barb and Doug go back to reclimb the mountain, since Barb missed it the first time. The clouds clear and the breeze is spectacularly warm, soothing and scented of Pacifico. Vince goes down to the beach and feels a pinch on his heel. At first, we think it’s a crab, but it turns out to be a big blowfish. We’ve been finding small brittle pieces all over the sand – close up, we can see the blowfish has wicked scales. It smells of decay so Vince gets a shovel for its burial. It’s difficult to call blowfish anything but nasty and ugly.