welcome to the jungle, pura vida

Today I had to take an unplanned surf break.

On Monday I thought I had gotten a bad sunburn, but weirdly it was just on my chin, the front of my legs, and around the edges of my back legs. Tuesday it got worse even though I was wearing a zinc suntan lotion that made me look like a member of KISS.

Today I woke up and my bottom lip looked like a botched celebrity lip job. And I had a rash all over my chin and the aforementioned areas of my legs. I cautiously went down to breakfast only to discover that my new friend Ezra had the same thing going on.

We finally figured out that we are both (yes, BOTH, not just me) allergic to the surf wax we've been using on the boards. It's pure blah blah bullshit what ever good for the environment "natural" wax. My reaction was a little worse than Ezra's but I'm a lot older than her...

So we stayed at the resort and got slathered in aloe every hour (is it helping? Ezra a little, me, not really) and the owner of this joint offered to bring us drinks all afternoon. Instead we did a jungle hike.

Ezra is sort of like me about 15 years ago and has a similar record of weirdly broken bones and food allergies. Also, she's clumsy. On Tuesday she was stung by a jelly fish (the only person in 4 years to be stung by a jelly fish on the beach where we surf) and she jumped off her board which somehow caused the board to shoot out and almost strike the 60 something year old guy in our group, G, in the face (missed him by centimeters).  Since we weren't allowed to go surfing today G said, at dinner, "I was so much better at surfing not having to worry about Ezra killing me with her surf board" (he was joking, he loves Ezra).

During our jungle hike, Ezra was distracted by her new gopro and I was worried about snakes. The hike was through a very steep canyon and we were either heading way down or way up. At one point we ran across a section of the trail which was a giant rock face. I crossed it in my running shoes and almost ate shit and slid 200 feet down a snake infested (I'm sure) cliff. Then I recrossed it and helped Ezra across it. Later we were talking to one of the guides and he said "the trail went above the rock and was very easy to cross" and Ezra said "that's what I get for having a rock climber finding the trail" and I said "well you were supposed to go first to protect me from the snakes".

Anyway, Ezra now wants to move to Colorado and she wants to go rock climbing. And she has taken ballet for years and is teaching me to stand on pointe and she also taught me some basic ballet exercises so I can finally get off my ass and sign up for ballet classes.

Perhaps I shouldn't mention this, because really, I'm fine, but I was also bitten by a spider on Tuesday.

so much for that gelish "impossible to chip" pedicure (white part is where the spider bit me. right under my big toe)

Everyone kind of freaked out about the spider, but they don't bother me, even when they bite me. We were eating lunch and Ezra looked down at my foot and said "you dropped some of your sandwich on your foot, OH MY GOD THAT'S A SPIDER!!!!!!!!!!!" and then the spider bit me and then I picked it off my foot and threw it in the sand and was like "fuck" and no one wanted to walk in the sand anymore unless they had their shoes on.

I was talking to Roberto after video analysis today (he gave me exercises to do in the pool since I couldn't surf today) and he said how amazed he is at our group here at the camp this week. He said normally people don't talk to each other or hang out. We are a conglomerate of nationalities sharing languages (serbian, spanish, polish, swedish, and english) and stories and drinks.  Half the time I don't know what people are saying but we still manage to make each other laugh.

More tomorrow about watching step into liquid Tuesday night. Power seems to be going out again...