Never Put Your Feet Down

The flight from Miami was, for the most part, uneventful. Crystal caught most of the travelers enjoying a relaxing airplane sleep. Lyle seemed to have the best plane sleeping technique. All the bags showed up in Santa Cruz, but someone opened my plane box and took the transmitter out. They did put it back, but did not strap it in, so it smashed around lose in the box and broke the plane to pieces. I am not happy, but I haven’t had time to make a good assessment of the damage.

Marg met us at the airport and off we went on our micro. All the luggage fit inside the bus, so there was no need to lash any of it to the

roof! Corinne embarrassed Jenna right off the bat with a packing story which I won’t repeat here; suffice it to say, “don’t burn any garbage or pack any bags without checking them first.” Jenna returned the favor by describing all the items her mother had packed that Jenna then had to remove for her dear mother before they left. The highlight of the list for me was the 8 mile long ball of binder twine, but I will let Corinne tell you why she thought it was necessary.

We left the Viru Viru airport in Santa Cruz at about 9 a.m. and continued to drive, stop, eat, drive, stop, buy (repeat often) for the next 7 hours. Our final stop for today was the Hoogland homestead where we got settled in. We then decided to go for a swim before dinner since we were all very was hot and tired. Walking

through the jungle to get to the river provided Wilma with the opportunity to take many fungus pictures. Once at the river, Marg and Corinne were first in followed by all except Lyle. I think the talk of the hook fish scared him, but eventually we had him wading in up to his knees. At one point I looked over at Brent who still had a grin on his face you couldn’t have knocked off with a 2x4! When I asked how he was feeling, he simply replied “I don’t have words for it.” After 30 minutes of great swimming,

Wilma thought that things were getting a bit dull, so she stepped on a stingray and took a nasty stab to the leg, and that was the end of that. Lyle felt vindicated, but he didn’t gloat too much. Marg is preparing a great supper as I write this, then I suspect we will all fall asleep. That is all for now, I will try to post again soon.