Mucho trabajo en el Hotel Backpacker

We fell asleep last night to fish jumping out of the water, que bonita! We finally figured out a comfortable bed using a couple of pads and our net tied between some bunk beds. Nobody is staying here in our dormitory right now so we have it all to ourselves. Showers and bathrooms all to ourselves. Looking out over the river with a hammock outside the door. The kitchen and main building is right across the way and when people get partying it is pretty loud but luckily we are tired from working all day and fall asleep anyways.

The next picture is looking out over the river towards the largest bridge in central america. It is pretty impressive they got so much concrete and steel here. I'm not sure how high it is but I certainly would not jump off. A lot of people like to stop on the top and tranquillo (chill) with their friends and usually an ice cream bar and drink a lot of beers. Nobody seems to mind this even though they are blocking quite a bit of the road. The trucks are no joke here, I've seen semis here that are just as big as anything in the US.

This morning I, Rebecca, was given an amazing suprise.... we had tamales for breakfast!!! Andy prepared our plates; frijoles negra con crema, a triangle of white cheese, tortillas and the tamale. Ademas, we finally found the salsa hidden in one of the refridgerators. Now, we eat like the King and Queen we are! Everyone said we were going to hate the food here, because it is mostly rice, beans and tortillas cada dia, but what these people didn't realize is that is exactly what we choose to eat everyday. AND we get half price beers from the bar which is the normal price in town, but we do get a river side view. Andy fished with the other cooks in the kitchen again today. But it seems he only hooks the ones that are too big to fit through the hole in the floor. He just too good... But Reyna catches enough for all of us. Andy concedes that she is the champ. We worked side by side today shelling about a hundred shrimp. (Mom, I thought of you, and how you could have eaten them all yourself. )

After work, we got a ride across the river from our new friend, Miriam. Her boyfriend, Manuel, picked her up from work in their lancha so we hopped on for the ride. It was a blast. We are in the process of figuring out how we are going to get our own sweet lancha, so we will let you know when that happens. Fronteras was muy bueno today, except that Andy got slightly side swiped
a motorcycle! That just made us realize that we should be cruising down the streets in a motorcyle too, you know, preventative measures. We also found a groovy tienda that sold fishing supplies. We picked up some line, hooks and weights. That's pretty much all we need to catch the fish here, so we are about set. The man at la tienda said they sell lanchas there too, so we will be talking to him some more...

I (Andy) noticed the guy tied a pretty interesting knot to attach the hook to the line. It involves a bunch of twisting and overhand knots that makes the end result look pretty thick. It would never work in Oregon because it looks really obvious. The fish here don't seem to care, they will eat bread off the hook in two seconds. The hard part is hooking them before this happens. In the kitchen we catch tiny fish on 50 pound test line that is doubled up and twisted. We could easily catch enough to eat well every day.

We also stopped at the pharmacy today to get some cream to rub on insect bites. The man recommended a cream that looked like a normal over the counter antibiotic but had gentamycin and two other hard core antibiotics. He seemed to be a bit hurt that we didn't take his suggestion, but I don't think we need to be jumping into the hard core anti biotics just quite yet.

Also in town I have been looking for a camera or memory card adapter for my phone. I brought my phone down to use as a camera, calculator, and for playing sudoku. Turns out it was a good idea since I lost my camera on the bus ride here. They only seem to have kodak cameras and everyone wants 200 dollars or so for them. I found a new 2gb card for my phone that came with an adapter. The guy wanted 250 q. for it and punched it into his calculator. He turned the calculator towards me and I promptly divided the number by 7 to approximate the dollar equivalent which was around 35. He must of thought we were bartering because he then typed in 200 on the calculator and asked if that was ok. I said yes and we walked away with the deal. I figure 28 dollars is a pretty good deal on a memory card and it was probably the only one in Fronteras. Needless to say I will be employing this technique in the future.

We will exit this days blog post with some pictures for ya'll. Enjoy. Tranquillo mis amigos!



The bridge over the Rio Dulce. View from our room looking towards Fronteras on the other side.











We had dinner one night at what looks to be the nicest place in town. Some good crab and fish. They have their own six year old greeter as well.

















Wassup with Walmart? This isn't even inside a Walmart, its the biggest store in Fronteras which is not very large. Did they really have to keep the title "Item Spanish Description"?

I wonder if it is really 3x3 meters like the sign says, or if its 2x3 like the box says....