After my dives today I was exhausted (I was actually exhausted starting the day due to a horrible storm and insomnia), and decided to lie down for a while. I fell asleep very quickly. At some point, Huw (Hugh, Welsh spelling) knocked on my door to change our starting time for tomorrow. Afterward, I decided that I’d better go get some food (even though I wasn’t hungry), in case I slept into darkness. The restaurant in my hotel closes at 5pm, and I’m not a big fan of walking 30 yards to the other restaurant, along the beach, in the pitch black. (It’s total darkness by 630pm here. Boo.)
I went to get food, and was hoping to run into Lynn, the massage woman, but no such luck. I ordered my food, and 5 minutes later I started to feel really sick. I had stomach problems earlier, which apparently weren’t gone. I honestly wasn’t sure which end the problem would issue from, nor where the closest bathroom was, in case the nausea got sharply worse. I asked them to package up my food for take out, and they offered to deliver it to my room when it was ready, which I thought was very nice. I tried to eat a few bites when it came, but couldn’t handle it. I put it in the fridge and lay back down.
I listened to music and played games on my iPod for a long time, then got up to head to the bathroom. When I switched on the bathroom light and opened the door, a 2 inch cockroach came flying out! (Okay, not flying, just scurrying very quickly.) I screamed loudly, and again when it changed direction toward me. (Apparently mosquito coils deter mosquitoes, but invite others…)
Needless to say, sleep was a lost cause after that. I finally lay down and started reading the PADI book—I finish the Open Water course tomorrow, and then start Advanced Open Water—checking often for signs of fast, ugly bugs near me.
Later, I decided I was hungry. (After all, I didn’t eat much dinner.) When I sat up, I saw something irregular on the wardrobe door. A tiny (3/4”) frog was there. He hopped down quickly, and when I turned around with my food, he was next to my bed, trying hard to climb up. Since it wouldn’t do to wake up with a small frog jumping on me, I grabbed a bag to try and catch him. Tiny frogs don’t bother me so much, as we had hundreds of them on our balcony in Florida. But I didn’t know if it was poisonous or not, so the bag seemed like a good idea. (I just hope the bag doesn’t make it into the sea overnight…)
After I caught him (no easy feat; I was trying to capture something tiny through an opaque bag without squishing him), I opened the door to put him outside. To my surprise, on the chair outside my door were a mother cat and 2 sleeping kittens. I think my gasp of “Now, what the hell is this?” must’ve scared them, because two of the three were off in a hurry.
I deposited the bagged frog on the table, said goodnight to the cats, and went back inside. On the wall above the air conditioner was a 4” gecko.
While I’m glad that animals find me a kindred spirit, I would prefer that we meet in daylight, when I can run away if necessary. Or at least, not meet in my room.
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