Súa 3

We only had one slightly traumatic experience during our week at the beach. I had gone down into the water, carrying Bentz and Audrey a little farther into the deeper water, when all of the sudden, Audrey started screaming like a banshee. She had gotten stung by what seemed like a pretty decent sized jellyfish. I pulled her out of the water and made it back to the beach, where her leg had already swollen up a bit and had the red streaks on her leg. Of course, I did what every good father would do, and up and peed on her leg, much to her disgust. There was somebody working on the cottage next door, who suggested we put some toothpaste on it. We did, and Audrey said that worked much better than my urine. I doubt it.














We had some fruit sitting out on the table on the deck, and we came out one morning to find a huge leaf sitting on top of our pineapple. As Amy bent over to brush it off, she noticed that it was not a dead leaf, but instead a huge moth. This was the best disguised moth any of us had seen, up to veins and even telltale rips in the leaf structure, as you can see below. Here we have a couple of shots, one from above, where it really does look like a leaf, and one from the front, where you can see the moth body. It is also quite large, as you can see from its size relative to the pineapple, which was not small.





























Here is a picture of the great little beach house we rented. It had two rooms, each with their own bathroom, and a little kitchen off to the side, where we cooked meals and popcorn every day. I´m not sure if we have mentioned it before, but we eat a lot of popcorn here. As a family, we loved popcorn before coming here. Much to our surprise and joy, we found out that popcorn is a staple snack in Otavalo. We make it the Otavalo way (much, much better than microwave popcorn), with a couple spoonfuls of lard or butter melted in a pan and then a cup of popcorn. Seriously delicious.

One night, we also decided to make a bonfire on the beach. For a minute, I wondered if fires were permitted on the beach. Then Amy was like, duh, you dummy, do you remember where we are? We made a roaring bonfire and cooked tinfoil dinners on the beach. It was awesome.