03mar06

went down for breakfast and got stuck into excellent home-made toast and a fascinating conversation with louisa the ex-psychologist on her experience of social and cultural integration with puyuhuapi and it’s people.  we discussed the “three generations to social acceptance” theory, the reluctance of locals to take action to improve their lives despite being offered a helping hand (a frustrating phenomenon we had also experienced in guatemala), the hidden resentment of locals to people of european descent, and the puzzling discouragement of their own educational achievers.

intellectually exhausted by 10am, we deserved a long period of relaxation in a nearby island’s thermal spa so we drove the 13km to the ferry’s embarcadero.  on the way we picked up david and roy, two israelis hitchhikers we’d met briefly over dinner the previous night.  no room in the back seats, so they hung on to the side of the roof rack, surprisingly unphased by my driving speed.  only 25 years old, it transpired they were doing 6 months of traveling after finishing 7 years in the army as F16 fighter pilots.  having had unoriginal childhood dreams of being a fighter pilot myself and having spent a losers amount of time on flight simulators as a result, my childhood excitement rushed straight back to me and i was firing years of questions at them.  they taught me techniques for pumping blood to the head in blackout situations and i was happy i did not expect to use them.

we spent the afternoon in pools of varying degrees of unbearable heat, with one at 40 degrees.  the only alternative was an dip in the extremely cold pacific ocean, and a section had been roped off for those who felt brave enough.  an eventual need to reduce body temperature before melt down plus just a little competitive spirit (e-j had been in for “at least 5 seconds”) meant i had to go in too.  externally i smiled to the onlookers as i slowly submerged myself fully, but internally i felt my life-force draining away.  instantly i resurfaced already swimming something resembling crawl (but with a lot more splashing and involuntarily loud inhalations) and made it half way to the buoy before turning round as the theory of vigorous exercise will warm me up quickest was superseded by the theory of get the fuck out the water will warm me up quickest.

we both signed up for the same spa treatments. the first was a thalatherm and entailed 30 mins of being painted head to toe in a smelly seaweed paste and then enclosed in a steam container which steadily rose to a maximum temperature of 42 degrees with only your sweaty head popping out, and the already stilted conversation with the beauty therapist becoming increasingly broken as the heat rose and culminated in nothing but streaming sweat and silence.  apparently it’s good for your skin or something, but i thought it was a skank.  if it wasn’t for the being painted naked bit at the beginning, i would definitely say that was a first and last.  we then went for a therapeutic massage which was rubbish and fortunately only 30 minutes, followed by a shower (although the hot water tap was instantly hot, the cold tap took time to cool) and a tasty but pricey dinner, which we ratcheted down to acceptable value by repeated runs to the buffet dessert trolley ad nauseum.

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