Thursday 19 November 1998
The natural looking spas and pool with poolside bar are absolutely beautiful. Beyond beautiful -- it is Hollywood Movie Fantasy Island spectacular. I am so thrilled to be here!
In the open air stairwell of our hotel, there are lots of insects
Here's closeups of the black moth, the brown fly looking thing, and the praying mantis.
(If you can identify any of these more precisely, please let me know!)
This yellow moth was on the steps of the hallway and a similar one was on the screen door of our balcony.
On the ground somewhere I saw this brown moth.
Hanging from the handrail was this striped insect. This photo shows it about actual size.
On the way to the spas, as a sort of foreshadowing, we saw this trough thing with super hot water draining down it.
The first time at the spas, we simply looked at what all was available; didn't get into the water. We just walked through straight toward the jungle behind the spa area.
Kathryn and I walked separately, and I followed a stream up until it began to get too dark outside for me to feel particularly safe. While treading softly through the jungle, I saw an owl butterfly, some big ivy, a lushly covered fallen log, and even an iguana!
On the way toward the spa, we saw this big leaf (my shoe is a men's size 11). The trees on which this type of leaf grows were so tall that I almost didn't recognize them!
Here are some other pics from Tabacon spas. And here's a big weird thing with big aerial roots!
After our respective treks through the jungle, we ate dinner overlooking the poolside bar. I saw some patrons had left trash and bottles on one of the tables in the pool, and I thought, "how do the employees bus those tables?" They were all wearing shoes and slacks, not swimming trunks... Hmmm.
Kathryn posed a butchered version of the question in Spanish to our waiter. The amazing answer, with helpful hand gesures: "they drain all the pools each night." !!!!
I found out what time they start draining, and I came back to watch. Sure enough, they were draining the pool. Here it is about ten minutes later.
The next morning, I woke up early to see the pool filling up.
