The first morning at Casa Raab, I woke up, stretched and walked over to my clothes. Interestingly enough, there is only one poisonous tarantula existing in the world. Part of the Wolf family, it is- and dancing and singing won't cure it. Anyway, this is probably not a baby tarnatunla, but it was very close to my clothes and very big. It could jump ten feet straight up in the air and hide in the rafters.

The burros, Gizmo and Paloma were awesome and loved watermelon. They were very friendly and only ran away from home once. Rob and John helped Rebecca find them, following the path of villager's comments to their grazing space in another campesino's field.

Chatto would lead us up the mountain in the morning howling and barking his way. He even slept over once and was kind enough to keep his growls, howls and gurgling at a minimum until the sun came up.

The house in the morning at Casa Raab.

The pool was pretty chilly, but for some reason, at midnight the first night (possibly the tequila) it seemed perfect and we went for a swim in our clothes. I found it difficult to swim with a long skirt- I would suggest balling it up if you try it.

During the day, however, it was nice and good in comparison to the strong sun.

The last pic was from the hotel in town where many of the guests stayed.

Rob, me, Jeff and John stayed in the casita after our first night in the loom room. Really the spider was not the reason- the casitas were cool and away from the house- walking there at night helped you to remember what darkness is really like. You don't know night until you've been in the middle of nowhere at 2 in the morning.

And you have to walk back to your casita. All of the sudden while trying to remember where that pile from Gizmo was, you hear twelve or fifteen dogs run by yelling, scraping and squealing. Luckily, there are more interested in the girl. Almost there and then there is a bullhorn and a man shouting.

Nighmare thought in the middle of the night about what a man on a bullhorn at 2 in the morning can mean.

Found out in the morning, the bullhorn is for telephone calls. Yeah, okay.