February 25, 2004
Thatch and all that
This is a picture of my bed in Mexico. The mattress was firm. The first night at around 3 AM my roommate and I got the giggles so badly we awakened our neighbor. (As you can see, the thatch is not exactly air tight, and our voices carried. Unfortunately, his unhappiness only fueled the hilarity.)
What made us laugh so hard was that she said that she was sleeping on all fours, in child's pose , trying to get comfortable. The bed reminded her of guest accomodations at an ashram in India, which featured a raised concrete slab upon which to nestle. Later we borrowed some yoga mats from the meditation center, plumped them up with multiple serapes and dosed ourselves with flexerol, thus managing a decent night's sleep.
As you can see the bed also included a mosquito net. Like a bridal veil, managing it took some practice. The net is gauzy and sticks to you when touched, therefore it was very easy to get it wound around your neck if you slept restlessly. Getting up in the middle of the night was also a challenge, since the mosquito net was hard to part and tended to come along.
On our last night, we heard a skittering of feet on the thatch--- not little feet either. I was convinced that a thatch rat was running around inside our yert. We turned the lights on until the generator went off, then I "slept" with my flashlight aimed at the thatch. In the morning we were told that it was just a munching geiko. I guess that was meant to be reassuring --- Rat, lizard it's all the same to me. Had it lost it's footing, it would have landed on the netting, and gotten its little toenails entangled, right on top of me. Yuckers. This is one of the reasons that I rarely go places where I cannot plug in my hairdryer.
Posted by Dakota at February 25, 2004 06:04 AM