Hell’s Half Acre

Jamie and I would like to let everyone know we are All Right.  We didn’t suffer too greatly, we are recovering and have plans to avoid future confrontations.  What do you mean, WHAT?  It didn’t make the presses?  It didn’t make international news?  What news sources are you guys reading anyway?

WE WERE ATTACKED BY HORDES OF RAVENOUS MOSQUITOES.  Yeah.  THAT!

We weren’t able to take pictures, but I’m sure there is a news source somewhere with comfirmation of the ambush, battle and retreat.  It was simply horrific (sob).  I’m not sure I’m strong enough to go on, but I’ll do my best to carry on.

We headed out on our daily exercise walk, completely unawares of the momentous danger which lay ahead.  It had been raining on-and-off and then REALLY on, pretty much all farking day.  During the last hard rain I mentioned that this would be a good time to walk as we wouldn’t have to worry about mosquitoes.  But we didn’t (insert ominous music).  I slathered on the anti-mozzy stuff and we headed out, oblivious to our fate.  Pikey, when he walks with us, has designated four zones of our walk.  The PaaMul zone, the rocky zone, the white zone and the garbage/dirty zone.  I have added the mosquito zone to his rocky zone but he has never been along during infestations.  We’ve run into mosquito-laden areas of the walk before, but soldiered through and always hit a respite area.  We found the mosquito zone and it was worse than it had ever been.  I suggested heading down to the beach; they were sure to be better there and we’d probably get an off-shore breeze.  Uh, no.  We now still battled mosquitoes, batting at our heads, slapping our legs and thighs, fanning the backs of our necks but now trying to push on at exercise pace on a rocky beach.  This proved to be impossible and we soon fell back to simply batting, slapping and dodging while trying not to break an ankle on the very very very rocky beach.  Jamie finally called a retreat and I was more pissed that we wouldn’t get our exercise than the attack that I actually headed back to the road in hopes the situation was better, but it was actually worse.  I took off my hat and fanned the area in front of my face so I could breathe without ingesting mosquitoes and started jogging.

Strangely, it is not so easy to jog whilst holding onto a full water bottle (no chance of battling the mozzies just to take a sip of water) while holding down both bouncy appendages (ahem) and avoiding large puddles.  Who knew?  When it rains here, the puddles are somewhat dangerous as the limestone is VERY hard (think rock) and the sand/mud on top of it make it a lovely (or not so much) slip-and-slide.  I managed to have a go at the slip-and-slide while traversing an ENORMOUS and deep puddle and enjoyed a wonderful muddy bath.  Oh, it was SO much fun!  C’mon down and experience it for yourself!

I’m sure the palaperos and Maya who constantly tell me that they are NEVER bitten were tickled to see Jamie and myself running out of the jungle, slapping our legs, fanning our faces, twisting and turning as we ran, followed by large clouds of mosquitoes, easily keeping up with us and chasing us down the road.  How fun for them!

I think today I’ll try to convince Jamie to pool-jog.  He is incredibly embarrassed by the exercise, but I’m not too keen on another jungle adventure.  Raining I post.  Don’t expect the sun today.