The Willies

We are now at Lago de Atitlan and have been making our way around the lake for about a week now. It is absolutely beautiful here and nothing beats 7am swims in the calm, smooth waters of the lake in the morning sun! We seem to be just ahead of the winter tourists and have enjoyed many places by ourselves! We will be on the lake until Sunday afternoon when we will head to Antigua but before we leave we must complete our search for the avocado tree under which Keith was conceived 26 years ago!

Now, I titled this blog post the willies so it is time to share with everyone one of the scariest evenings I have ever experienced. It was our last evening at a nice place and our room was off of a balcony. Two walls were make of large stones and the other two were basically windows. It rained last night and we were hanging out in our room watching the lightening from our room when I noticed a HUGE, HAIRY spider inside the room on the window. Now, I HATE spiders but can usually just deal with putting them outside if they are small and non threatening but this gargantuan spider was outside of my comfort level. I somehow managed to talk Keith into knocking the spider out of the window! Whew, my hero! We settled back in and were leaning against one of the stone walls (which the bed was leaned up next to- this was also my side of the bed) and all of a sudden, just when I am relaxed, I see something moving between Keith and I on the wall. I freaked out and let out a sound just shy of a scream. It was a scorpion! It was at this point that we decided to pull our bed away from the wall but I was still on the side closest to it. I was so freaked out that I was using our flashlight to look in the nooks of our room to make sure there were no more creatures. I ended up finding one other small spider and the large one that made its first visit earlier in the evening. We closed the window to prevent it from making its way back into our room. Then it was time for bed. I was terrified of scorpions and spiders finding their way into our bed and the simply thought of them being so close to us freaked me out. I am supposed to say that Keith was not scared. The truth is that even though he was NOT scared, he does not like spiders any more than I do! So, we are in bed laying there wide awake not knowing what to expect when the unthinkable happens! We hear something running around our room under our bed! We flip out and frantically search for the light. We get in on and find that either a mouse or rat fell from the ceiling onto our bed then into the floor. We know this because there was urine on the corner of our bed and then on some plastic bags that were on the floor! There was also a hole in the bag from where something ripped it trying to run away! All of this combined gave me serious willies and needless to say, I did not sleep well. I have never been happier for morning to come as I was this one.