The Fine Art of Sleeping in Mexico

It turns out that just sleeping in Mexico is not for the faint of heart. It has taken us a good couple of months to figure out how to get a decent night sleep. The obstacles are many: heat, bugs, and then the various other creatures that may and do wander in...

So we have come to Puerto during 'peak heat'. Through April and May, the temperatures here - and the humidity - have steadily increased. It does not cool down at night. At first, the heat wasn't so bad, but it has recently gotten to the point where it can keep you up at night. Everyone (I mean everyone, not just us) is anxiously waiting for the rains to finally come, to cool things off. It is so hot here that even the locals are complaining (which makes us gringos feel a lot better about ourselves).

At first all the options seemed bad - sleep completely covered by a light rayon or polyester sheet (to protect yourself from the bugs) and become an increasingly sticky, sweaty, uncomfortable mess as the night progresses; or sleep sheetless, and serve yourself up as a buffet for the mosquitoes and whatever other insects are hatched, hungry and nearby.

Mummy-Boy.

And Mummy-girl.

What to do? Bug spray (only the healthy, safe, all-natural kind which we brought and now is gone) became a bedtime ritual. But that only addressed (partially at best) the bugs.  If the bites, buzzing, and itching didn't wake you at night, the itching and scratching drove you crazy all day.

As the heat increased, sleep decreased - making the mid-day siesta that much more entising.

Fans - in Mexico, most houses are outfitted with fans  - for heat and bugs. So we started keeping the ceiling fans on high all night, and literally re-positioned the beds to be directly underneath them. This helped, but was not enough for Amy, so she brought in the 'big guns' - high speed, portable floor fans that - at their highest setting - sound similar to a jet engine. And it turned out, she wouldn't have it any other way. Ceiling fan on high, jet engine, on chair, on high, bedside. With this, Amy could sleep. (And we know Amy needs her sleep : )

But these tactics ignore those dangers that are undeterred by things like jet engines - like scorpions, land crabs, giant moths, iguanas, geckos (their barking is our early morning alarm clock), and of course the famous 'la cucaracha' and a variety of other large, crawling and flying creatures that we don't have names for - all of which apparently take the view the very Mexican view that "mi casa es su casa."

Two of these land crabs (they live underground all year and then emerge when trigger by the thunder - the beginning of the rainy season) moved in recently. Not huge, probably 6 inches from pincer to pincer. Very fast. Everything here is very fast.

The smallest scorpion bit Jeremiah on the arm, and then scurried (again, very quickly) to neck and head. I don't know what hurt Jeremiah more: the scorpion sting, or  Joseph's frantic pounding all over Jeremiah's upper body in a effort crush the poisonous little beast. Jeremiah survived both bite and beating, and has earned yet another new nickname - Scorpion Boy. These are the three that we have killed so far. For the Bogaards, sharing space with wild animals is not, it turns out, extended to scorpions.

This is a moth. It's wingspan is over 6 inches. It was flying around our patio one afternoon. At first, I could not decide whether it was a bird or a bat.

This is a photo Amy took of a tarantula. OK, so she found this six miles from our house, but who knows...