21, 22 November 1998
Arco Iris is a beautiful little hotel/lodge thing on a hilly lot of Santa Elena. "Arco Iris" apparently translates to "rainbow" in English. The husband and wife team who are owners and managers of the place exemplified wonderful customer service. They were friendly, helpful, and they knew 5 languages: English, Spanish, German, Dutch, and Italian!
They had a goat and a weird plant in the front yard of their lodge. Also a banana tree.
One night I was chillin' in their office and the man (whose name I have forgotten), whose features reminded me of Robin Williams, impressed me twice. The first was a simple statement in casual conversation about the lodge.
He said something like, "and the amazing thing is, for all 6 years that we've lived here, we have used the honor system for people to pay. And it works!"
The second time he impressed me was a bit more involved. I heard a rather large insect make a crash landing into the wall and then plunk back behind a lamp. We went over to investigate, and when he saw it he offered, "oh that isn't a very nice one."
This was a big black wasp looking thing, about 4 times bigger than any wasp I have seen.
"They're not aggressive, but if they sting you, it certainly doesn't feel particularly good."
He didn't get excited; he didn't kill it; he walked to the kitchen and got a small drinking glass to capture it. Following this huge droning wasp around the room with a glass, ducking each time it flew toward him, he systematically moved stuff and shut the blinds, etc and caught it under the glass.
"Well just keep him in jail for the night," he said.
Once it was captured he offered the following story:
This is a really unique animal; it does a very funny thing. [ed. note: by "funny" he didn't mean "funny ha ha" but more like "funny uh oh"]It will find a tarantula, and taunt it until it rises up on its hind legs. When it does, the wasp stings it in the belly. This doesn't kill the tarantula, but only stuns it. Then the wasp lays its eggs in the tarantula's abdomen, and the tarantula wakes up and walks away.
The tarantula lives for a while no problem with the eggs in its abdomen.
When the eggs hatch, they eat the tarantula from the inside out and fly away.
[Ed note: eeeeeeeeWWwwwwwWWWEEEWWwwwwwwwww!!!!!!!!!]
With a piece of cardboard, he took the glass into the restaurant portion of the lodge (no one was eating, but a few people were chilling in there) and he told the same story in German.
While we were there, I really wanted to get a picture of me with the goat. I tried to get a self portait of he and I, but was not quite able to get us both in the pic. He was pretty fiesty, and I was worried about his horns jabbing me! Finally I had Kathryn get a pic of the two of us.
One afternoon-ish, after watching hummingbirds or something, we went shopping. Despite odd looks from locals, I took two pictures of cereal (another) just for you!
As we were leaving I got a pic including Kathryn, the goat, and two random guys.
