San Blas: Spanish for 'place of many biting things'
10/07/2009 at 19:25 from (21.527881, -105.282218)
The mosquito attack demanded a full day of recovery, as my stomach refused to settle down and my bites continued to swell. Marijana spent a good portion of the time tending to my various needs and wants, so she was effectively out of commission as well. It wasn't until our third day in San Blas that we left our cabaña and actually cast more than a cursory glance at our surroundings.
We started with a shower, something I had been craving for awhile. The sweat was caked on my skin and I had been too sick and irritable to do anything for the past several days. Marijana and I walked leisurely over and stepped into the shared surf showers next to the restrooms. She had smuggled a green ball in with her and we amused ourselves by tossing the ball over the wall that divided our showers, trying to hit each other in the head from unexpected angles.
Things calmed down, though, and we got to the business of washing ourselves. Just as I was finishing rinsing the filth from my body, I heard screams from Marijana's shower. She sounded terrified and kept repeating "BIG SPIDER! BIG SPIDER!" I was a little disturbed, seeing as how she isn't at all the hysterical type, but reassured her by telling her that it's just a little spider, that it's more scared of her than she is of it, and that I'd be over in a second.
As I stepped out of my shower, she began insisting that I approach cautiously from the other side of the curtain, not the side closest to me. I was puzzled, but amused at the fear in her voice and did as she said. I slowly opened the curtain to reveal a spider larger than any I had seen in my entire life clinging to the inside (with the exception of Mrs. Truelove's tarantula in kindergarten, that is). It ran with breathtaking speed around the curtain, from the inside of the shower to my side, just below my hand, and stared me down.
It was huge, with a thick, hairy thorax and a bulbous, fleshy abdomen that seemed too heavy for it to carry. Its legs covered an area almost as large as my hand and its mandibles were plump and twitching. I took a reflexive step back as Marijana begged me to kill it. I remembered the ball in my hand and slowly wound up, heaving it fiercely right at the center of the sprawl of hairy legs. The ball hit the spider with a thwack and both fell to the ground together as Marijana screamed. I made sure that the spider was dead and then made my way back to the cabaña as Marijana insisted behind me that it was still alive and guarding the entrance of her shower.
Back in the cabaña, I put on a fresh set of clothes and was soon joined by Marijana, who was breathlessly telling me about her narrow escape from the shower. I was convinced that her tales of another spider were just jangled nerves, but accompanied her back to the shower just to humor her. Pulling back the curtain, we saw another spider, just as large as the first, perched on the far wall. I hurriedly fetched a broom and speared it from the safety of the shower entrance as Marijana taunted me for my lack of trust. It fell to the ground, dead, looking identical to the other one.
Paranoid, now, of an invading spider army, we swept the two bodies out into the sunshine to justify to the other confused and amused campers our shouts and screams. As we made our way back to the cabaña, a young woman approached us and asked us, smirking, if the showers were free. I told her they were ("And spider-free, too!") and escorted Marijana back to our place, comforting her and agreeing that, yes, her terror was absolutely understandable.
As we climbed the ladder to our cabaña, I looked to the left and noticed a hive of bees not three meters from us. We shut the door tight behind us and wondered aloud why this place couldn't have been infested with bunnies or frogs or doves. We resolved to accept San Blas on its own terms, though, and ventured back into town (the first time since my tummy episode struck me down two days prior) to explore and find food. We pedaled along the long, dusty road connecting San Blas' downtown with the Playa Borrega on the bicycles that came free with our cabaña, taking in the sights and sounds and smells of a town that operated on a much different clock than the bustling Mexico we had seen thus far.
We headed toward a shop that Pompi had recommended, but, since it was closed, wound up investigating the quirky-looking taqueria next door, instead. It was run by an affable woman named Beba who seemed to take a shining to us. As she made our tortillas by hand, we admired the interior of her tiny restaurant. The walls were brightly painted and lined with photos of revolutionary figures. There was no room for tables, so the seating was arranged like a narrow bar, with stools lining the one available wall. The kitchen smelled incredible, the food was reasonably cheap, and, after our first bite, we knew we had found another haunt.
We munched lazily on our burritos and sipped on the best horchata we had yet tasted. The midday heat and exhaustion from the previous couple of days' events left us feeling drained. We lost our sense of adventure and turned our bikes homeward. When we got back, we decided to finally indulge in that surf lesson we had talked with Pompi about. Mexico's former longboard surfing champion, he also operates a surf camp on the beach in front of our cabañas (hence the name of the place).
The motto of his surf school is "If you don't stand, you don't pay", so I assumed my lesson would be free, while we'd be out a few hundred pesos due to Marijana's quick grasp of everything. Sure enough, at 9:03am, Marijana stood up on her first wave (and her second attempt) and only fell twice after that. I continued to fall in new and creative ways, though, and seemed to be wearing on Pompi's patience when suddenly, for no good reason at all, I surprised the whole beach by standing up, if only for a brief moment, a mere 18 minutes after Marijana had.
Pompi left us alone to hone our skills and we surfed until our arms and legs were too sore to continue. Exhausted and puffed with pride, we sauntered back to the palapa restaurant attached to our hotel and lazed on a hammock in the shade. We passed the rest of the day talking, taking photos, people watching, playing with Pompi's dog, and itching our bites in silence.
We stuck around for the sunset, then walked hand in hand back to our cabaña. On our way, we passed the bodies of the spiders we had bested that morning, now covered in thousands of large, orange ants. We smiled at the thought that even San Blas' bugs aren't safe from San Blas' bugs and climbed up the ladder, under the mosquito net, and into bed, happy to finally be relaxing.
