Life on the dune

Living in a rustic cabina is wearing us down. It is nice and peaceful, if you don’t count the continuous roar of the ocean. But it is a hassle just existing here. Everything always has some sand on it, and everything is a bit damp. There are no wardrobes or cupboards to keep clothes etc in, and you have to check everything you put on for scorpions. A British health and safety executive would have a seizure if he checked out the wiring, and indeed it has recently started to cut out due to an overload of the system. That coupled with the local power cuts has resulted in a further limiting of our access to IT facilities and hot water.

Last Friday, as classes were finishing a little earlier than usual at 7:3opm, we decided to escape to a real hotel with walls, and hot water and only minimal indoor grit. We had to pay $20 to get a taxi to the Alandaluz ecoresort, and then it was $64 per night. We had booked in and intended to stay for the weekend, but after the first night, straight after breakfast, we were told by the desk staff that they had booked our room for somebody else, and if we wanted to stay another night, we would have to move into a seafront cabina, fully equipped with grit and dank. So that was it, we could move on or pay $64 per night for what we had come to avoid. A quick search of the internet revealed that there were no other hotels with vacancies within 30 miles of us. Comfortable weekend over, we had no choice but to head back to our cabina, with the sand and the damp and the scorpions and the local snake called matacaballo (horse killer).

This is starting to feel like we are stuck in the Prisoner, seemingly idyllic coastal living, but any attempt at leaving will be thwarted. Or perhaps we are stuck in an episode of Tenko.

Scene from Tenko

Life at Playa Kamala