Four Days in the Jungle

So we spent the last four days out in the jungle.  Some friends of ours recently acquired a lodge in PG (Punta Gorda) a town in the South of the country.  He had some tile work he needed done so Dani and I headed on down to do them the favor.  So today's update is pretty much about our work there.  

I must say, creation and it's variety is truly amazing.  It's so cool how morning, daytime, and nighttime are all different worlds when you're in nature.  From the plants to the animals.  Here are a few examples:

If you take a close look to the picture to the left, you'll notice a baby scorpion...I reached down to grab a tile and this little sucker caught me by surprise...harmless I'm sure.

Here's another pic that shows just how small it was compared to my pinky...

Besides the scorpion and spiders and beetles and bats and butterflies and birds I had to take a few pictures of the ants.  The leaf cutters are so amazing...They cut paths all across the ground...and not just trim things but I'm talking down to the hard dirt.  It'll look like you took a bicycle and road it down the exact same path 1,000 times until it was just dirt.  It's so cool.  And these little guys are some serious hard workers... they will strip a tree down to sticks and branches over night.  Here's a day pic of their path during the day...



And here are a few from during the night when they are active.  I know this aren't the greatest of pics, but if you look close you will see small red and green pieces of plants.  Attached to each of these pieces are the leaf cutters, carrying their piece back to the nest.  If only the pictures did them justice.

Here's a pic of one of the managers on the job.  A big bad pit bull...He's so cute...

...and here's a pic of one of the rooms before the tile was laid...Do you see my other manager in this pic???

Here he is zoomed in...this little bat would not leave the room...All I could think of every time he flew around the room was Dwight and Merideth in the kitchen on "The Office".

This last nature pic is of this huge tree by this creek.  I forget the name but it looks very interesting.

And finally, this last picture is for my contractor friends back home or really anyone with any knowledge of home repair/plumbing/electrical. I've used these in Guatemala, Mexico, and here in Central America.  Basically this is a hot water heater for when you don't have a hot water heater.  The shower head connects directly to 110 and as the water flows through it it heats it up.  It actually works really good and you can control the temperature by controlling the amount of water passing through the shower head.  I think this one was pretty new because I didn't feel any electricity passing into my head.  The last two times I used one of these things I could feel a small amount of current in the water.  But no shocks this week...

I guess that's it for now...after a long week of tile laying and then giving the public talk in PG we finally made it home after a 7 hour bus ride and hour and a half boat ride back home to San Pedro.  It's time for dinner now and then a good nights rest.

Til next time...By the way...you can click on any of the pics to see the larger copy