Yelapa, first full day

Es muy caliente aqui, so Janelle and Pamela it’s just as well that you are not here. Dana, the grackles are squawking beside me, I’ve found no blue glass yet, but, some very interesting feathery bones–from some fish I suppose, but I haven’t found someone yet to ask its name.

There’ve been great frigate birds and an eagle. And the butterflies are astounding–their variety and numbers and beauty. One, with white wings edged in brown speckles–evocative of the sand–flew around me, and quickly kissed my outstretched hand.

For breakfast I had scrambled eggs, coffee, and then lemon meringue pie from the pie lady.

Today, I am mostly still. Too hot really to hike right now, although I keep thinking I will go for a stroll. Oh! A dragonfly just buzzed past.

The sea teases me. The blues so delicious. In the water taxi yesterday the ride was rough and the sea spray splashed on my arm. Even then the water was remarkably warm, and learning that released any buried fear I had about our boat submitting to the waves and throwing us out to the blue waters. I suppose some shark or another might be around to eat us, but that never crosses my mind; it is the cold temperatures that unnerve me.

But I haven’t learned the nuances of this sea and I hold memory of how it tossed me about when I was here in February, and tore my bathing suit loose and filled my head with salt water. And I hesitate to enter it (though I have been into the cozy rock-walled swimming pool). It’s not some unplanned nudity really that holds me back. I am not certain really what the source of my reservation is.

Hmmm. Perhaps it goes back to that time when I was 8, or maybe 10, and I was with my younger brother in the dingy, trying to row back from the beach to our boat–against the tide that was forcefully pushing us back to shore. And I was so frightened, trying alone to row the two of us back to the boat–and Dad was yelling to me from the back of the boat. I suppose he was trying to encourage me, but I felt overwhelmed and heard disapproval.

And I remember the sea was especially clear then and i could look down over the side of the dingy and see rocks and starfish, way way deep below us.

Of course that was my young girl’s viewpoint, and the water was probably not too terribly deep (20 feet?) and maybe the disapproval I heard in Dad’s voice was only small notes of fatherly concern. And perhaps he saw this as an opportunity to show me my own strength and power.