my room at the iguana is a freestanding cabana with a bathroom and tiny porch. its very cute. the only problem (besides the cold showers) is that it isn't sealed from the elements. the walls are wood and there is a large (and purposeful) gap between the walls and the roof. the roof is metal with a couple giant holes, which are covered in plastic for some daylight. the roof makes it hella loud during the thunderstorms, which are every evening and nite. the roof is also about 6 feet 1 inch high so i have to constantly stoop so i don't feel like i'm going to hit my head.
2 nites ago a giant spider surprised me in my bathroom. it was a pretty big spider, just hanging out, but i wasn't down with that. it was also the nite the electricity was out and i only had the lite of my tiny headlamp. everything is scarier when the power is out. so i hit the spider with my slipper. no problem, dead spider, all is well.
last nite, again its a torrential downpour, and i see another giant spider on the ceiling near my bed. oh hell no. there are some wooden planks separating the roof from the walls and the spider jumps between those and hides. aargh. i'll just have to keep my eye on that area, ok, i can deal with a spider. i don't think they really want to mess with me anyway.
i happen to look up from my book and see a tiny bit of movement so this time i grab my running shoe for a more solid hit. and its a scorpion. on my ceiling. above my bed. it must be able to sense my intentions because it scrambles back into the hole that it came out of. i don't know if it helped any but i started beating that space with my shoe and yelling at it. maybe i can scare it away.
so now i have a giant spider and a scorpion, hanging out in the wood planks above my bed, conspiring against me. i haven't seen this much activity in the entire time i've been away. i think i've killed 2 cockroaches so far.
needless to say i didn't get a great nites sleep. every few minutes i'd compulsively shine my headlamp along my ceiling, covering the entire room, looking for movement. i think i finally drifted off around 2am.
the first thing my spanish teacher asks me every morning is what did you do last nite? we're practicing the past tense. i told him about my spiders and scorpion. he wasn't shocked at all, no sympathy. but his second job is leading nature walks, bird watching, things like that. so he pulls out his book of indigenous birds and animals of guatemala and decides that i also need to see what kind of snakes are around, just to frighten me a bit more.
boa constrictors. coral snakes. rattle snakes. he was preparing me for what i might find in my room some nite. what a great guy.
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