We are passed the 4 week mark. We have gotten into a routine. Now that we are the only 2 visitors left, we have moved into the 2nd bedroom and the painting of inside the house has begun. It has been good to stay busy and feel like the swim at the end of the day was well earned.
Julia applying the first coat
One of our other jobs is to collect sea shells to put around a planter. My dedication to this caused my first sunburn of the trip. We are watching more TV (I have caught most of the Kansas Basketball games) and are also getting the chance to cook some meals. I got the little one to call me "Gringo Micah", mostly because I like the way he says it but also to toughen me up. Another way we are toughening up is by slowly getting used to the tap water. When we first arrived, we dove right in unfiltered, but were quickly shown how weak we are. Now we are mixing the tap with the purified and so far feel pretty darn good. We have purification tablets that we will use on the road, but figure it is good to get our stomachs acclimated to handle everything that we plan to throw at it via markets and street venders.
This past Sunday we hit the bird sanctuary called Montibelli, where Osman and Angie used to work. Osman is a pro at spotting birds and knows all the names. It was peaceful walking around the forest and stealing limes.
You can see a Toucan in the middle
Julia is a time-share owner, so we exchanged one that was about to expire and booked a week in Cancún, Mexico in mid-April. It will be a mind blowing amount of luxury about 1.5 months into our backpacking venture. We are also close to buying a plane ticket from Cancún to an island due east in the Carribean. I shall refer to it as "Q-ba" because I live in fear of the US government. We are doing all of our research first because initial searches have revealed that they are now stamping US passports there instead of on a separate card, and upon arrival back into the US, we could face some scrutiny if discovered. This probably won't stop us, but it is always good to look first before dropping $600 on plane tickets.
Otherwise life is good. We have had a few days with some heavy clouds, but no real threat of rain. Always kind of hot but dry. The constantly blowing wind makes time outside in the shade perfect. We stroll down to the office about once a day to check email and other internet stuff. I download new Spanish apps to help me study along with the outstanding free Duolingo app that I try to keep up with. I am also making decent progress on the book I have been reading for almost 3 years (It is not that long, I am just not much of a reader).
We will write again soon, hopefully from the peaceful mountains of El Salvador.
Cheers, from Gringo Micah
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