Thursday January 15

Thunder rumbles in the distance,
Occationally crashing overhead on this mountaintop at Casa Delmonte.
The jungle like air is hot and wet,
One minute dripping and the next pouring.
It slides over yellow green, to blue green to green green,
Wrapping us all in a soft heavy fragrant cloak.
Trills, chortles, piercing cries, deep screeches eminate from overhead,
Their owners hidden in the foliage until the rain passes and the day turns glorious.
Large ants scurry by, always on a mission.
Are these the same ants that make the giant red mounds
that jut up like large bolders in the fields?
A gecho races up a tall straight palm
heading for the explosion of foliage overhead.
Insects buzz and dart.
I wonder which ones carry denga fever.
Our room in this expensive eco lodge is simple, austere.
In the cheap hotel in town which was within our budget,
we slept under a hideous red and brown tapestry bedspread
edged with gobs of slithery red satin.
Now we sleep under off white woven cotton.

Hello All
Yesterday we packed up in Caccupe and took our bags down to the main street and waited for a bus to Atyra. The day before we had seen numerous buses to Atyra but we had to wait about an hour until one appeared. I forgot that that carrying my suitcase, I couldn´t get up the steps of the bus! Somehow we got on. The ride up was on a long red sand road. We kept wondering how would we know Atyra when we got there? Eventually we arrived at a marvelous little town. We asked an older lady about hotels and she took us up the street to the municipal office and eventually we were driven several kilometers up a mountain to an expensive compound resort, Casa Delmonte. Perhaps Atyra doesn´t have a hotel. Although this isn´t at all what we wanted we´re here for two nights. We´re enjoying the pool, the good food (expensive) and we have plans to spend all day tomorrow seeing Atyra. We´re also studying our Spanish with more vim and vigour since it´s our lack of language that really makes travelling difficult.