Day 12: Vamos a la Playa

I woke up on Day 12 in Ek' Balam after a most frightful night.

I went to the bathroom and found the strangest spider, which had really long legs, but the tiniest body, right in the center. I thought it was hair at first, but alas, it moved.

Perhaps it belongs to the Pholcidae family of spiders? There ended up being a bunch of them in the bathroom that gradually emerged as I brushed my teeth.

At breakfast I saw another cute creature; this colorful, pretty bird.

Then we were out of Ek' Balam and went to our next destination: the 'beach town' of San Felipe!
Our hotel had the same name of the town and was owned by Jesus.

I went to the top of the hotel to get a good view of San Felipe. And I spotted that sweet playground (more on that later).

Our hotel room was pretty normal looking, but it was the first time I encountered this type of toilet.

After using the toilet, you had to turn that valve which filled the toilet with water. When enough water flooded the toilet, it flushed and you had to turn the valve off.

That day, we walked down the 'boardwalk'/docks.

There isn't actually a beach in the main town of San Felipe, so to get to the sand, you have to take a boat out to a little island.

I guess these birds wanted to go to the beach too!

Here's a horrible pic of me (but a great one of Pepe!)

This boat never reached the beach....

At this time, I was reading the novel Cold Mountain by Charles Frazer, which had just mentioned a blue heron. Then my teacher said, "Look! A blue heron!" And I thought that was awesome.

So we all got out the boat and headed to the beach.

Some more bad pictures of me:

The water was so nice! There were no waves, the water was warm and of course it was so clear. You could see the fish swimming around!

Unfortunately, I thought it would be just like an American beach (which I hate) so I didn't even bring my bathing suit! But I tomared some sol.

Another difference was the sand; it was actually more like clay than sand.

So I tried to make a sculpture of Richard Parker.........

But I think it looks more like the original Richard Parker (a tiger) than MY Richard Parker.

The sand/clay was also different because it was hard and colorful in spots.

Here's a picture I thought would look cool. But it turned out to be another bad pic of me :P

Well anyway, we were told we had the beach to ourselves. So when these kids came, my schoolmates demanded we leave.

Well, not quite, but I heard some complaints.

We left shortly after anyway, where some of us had lunch at Vaseline Restaurant.

My teacher said it had the best seafood ever and that it was the best restaurant on the trip. However, I don't eat seafood. But I did try baby shark (it tasted just like fish to me!) and got breaded chicken for lunch!

And it actually was the best food I had so far on the trip! Yum.

After lunch, Christina and I walked around the town in our free time.

I think this is the absolute best thing I've ever seen.

Sweet!

We also saw El Palacio de Polt in San Felipe.

And this gym that apparently thought telling women they could look this:

would bring in customers....

And we found this mural I liked.

And this sign... but I accidentally didn't get the whole sign in the photo!

We ended our walk at the aforementioned playground where I played on all the (very small) equipment.

Pepe's children were at the playground too. At one point, this Mexican child came in and was acting shy. Monica and Isabella (Pepe's daughters) don't speak Spanish, so Christina and I helped and acted as a translator between the Mexican and the American girls.
So we got them to play with each other by explaining to the little girl how to play each game.

Then she got sand in her eye.

She said she was OK and I went back to the hotel and saw how my tan/sunburn turned out. And it was strange!

My arm was mostly tan, except for a stripe of complete paleness, followed by sunburn. ¡Qué extraño!