Last day at the beach

Our room is pretty basic. It has two beds and a floor fan that makes a lot of noise, but is necessary. There is one light bulb, by the door. No chair or table. One of the mattresses is store-bought, the other is hand-made and stuffed with grass or leaves. I'm not sure which, but can tell you it's hard! Oh, there was an electrical outlet, thankfully, where I could recharge my camera batteries. There was no hot water, but the water tank was on the roof, so the water was warmed by the sun. The toilet, surprisingly, had a seat. Many toilets here, don't. Alex also provided two thin pillows, two very thin sheets, and two well-used towels. We were set! I ask: how much time are you going to spend in a hotel room in such a beautiful place?







One day, I locked our only key in the room. I asked Alex to open the door, and he said his son would unlock it when he returned later. The son returned, went to the back of the hotel and brought into the breezeway a hand-made ladder. He propped it against the wall, walked away and returned with a long piece of pvc pipe. He climbed the ladder, reached over the front wall of our room (it didn't meet the ceiling, providing for a little air circulation) with the pipe, and pushed against the door latch to open the door. They don't have another key to the room! I noticed that some of the other rooms had padlocks, which means that the door keys have all been lost, and Alex just added a hinge and bought a padlock. I love a simple answer.








Our European friends spent last night on the beach. It's a birthday celebration for of one of them, and the Birthday Girl wanted to wake up on the beach, at sunrise. We found them the next morning, groggy from the night, but very content.













This is the little sunrise celebration the Birthday Girl built in the sand. The tall sticks are sparklers, which they burned at sunrise.



It's time for us to begin the return trip to Oaxaca. We don't know how long it will take, but at least 2 days, probably three. It all depends on the bus schedules. We spend our last day enjoying the beach, the children, the hammocks and the good food.

Alex will get a lancha to take us to Ocos tomorrow morning. We arrived from the east side of the river, at Tilapa, but will depart from the west side of the river, because it's a more direct route for the bus to get us to Tecun Uman, close to la frontera, the border.

The dutch woman and Stuart chatted, and she knows a child's song that Stuart's mother sang to him when he was a child, a song in dutch. She wrote the words for Stuart, and the three of them sang for him. It was very sweet, and we all had tears in our eyes when they finished. Our lancha captain arrives, Victor takes Stuart's case, and we walk down the sand street to the path to the lagoon.