Day 14: my shower friend
Trip Start
Nov 2007
1
21
33
Trip End
Dec 2007
Granada,
Nicaragua
Thursday, November 29, 2007
I hopped in the shower and noticed a small spider on the wall by the water nozzle. It made me smile and laugh about how freaked out i was the day before when the same spider decided to run all around the wall trying to find a dry spot. What a silly arachnophobe i am, but how far i´ve come in one day!
Well, at that moment, god must have just laughed too and decided to play a joke. Because as i reached for the soap, i noticed perched about a foot below on the wall was a huge tarantula... about the size of my hand. My first thought was... no way, a fucking trantula... what could possible show up in my next shower?!
Needless to say I never, ever took my eyes off the bugger even though I new there was no way he was going to spontaneously run into the shower to bite me. It´s hard to rinse off shampoo while keeping an eye on a spider! And imagine what it was like for me when i had to go to the bathroom last night at 2am in the pitch dark!
Ends up a bunch of trantulas live in the rocks along the walkways of the building. At night, Mel and i explored and saw 3 more. The one i saw has, according to the residents here, taken up residence in the bathroom.
Actually, we did more than that, I just always wanted to say ¨nothing happened today except that I took a shower with a tarantula¨. This morning we got up bright and early to go bird watching with the scientist that manages the proyecto. His name is Jose Luis and he is a plant specialist, but he knows "90%" of the local birds by sight or sound. He was great, taking us on about a mile walk in a circle around the proyecto.
We saw a ton of cool birds that mel will have to describe later, but that included a toucan and a mot mot, the hypercolorful national bird of nicaragua. It was so cool to see so many birds within a few hundred yards of our place. Later in the day, Mel´s eagle eyes spotted the amazing mot mot in the tree right next to the deck of the building, not but 30 feet away and in plain sight. She found the bird looking backward through her legs as she attempted to put a hair thingie around her hair!
During our walk, we also heard the rumbling of monkeys off the path so Jose Luis took us into the deep brush to look for them. At several points, he admonished us not to touch a specific plant. I can only imagine what it must do for him to have repeated himself like that. After trompsing through the brush, we encountered 2 monkeys who were none to happy that we were there and communicated it with loud deep grunts as they bounded from tree to tree around us.
The sound of monkeys is downright eery in the mornings. Their grunts can be heard resonating throughout the leguna ¨huahh huahh¨, the base beat of our morning orchestra of dogs, roosters, birds and monkeys.
In the afternoon, mel and I went for a walk and took a dip in the leguna. We want to, but have yet to find one of these places in the laguna where heat escapes from the volcano below (the laguna is water filling the crater of a volcano). These guysers of heat warm the water almost too hot to touch!
Later all!
steve
Comments
Mom and Dad
Oh Wow Don't think we would appreciate the Tarantela either. This protect sounds pretty neat. I'd flip out over all the colorful birds you saw with Jose Luis.
Well were off to London today. See some sights...maybe try some English stout
Dad and Mom