Otres Beach

 Anita, Ernie and Mike are having happy hour waiting for the sunset while I take the picture and Tim is up at the bar talking to Lars, the owner.

 Sunset on Occhiteal Beach isn't hard to take (especially with a drink in your hand).

 Anita and I doing the sunset pose.

 Our hotel pool. It's not big but it's a nice courtyard to enjoy.

 Anita is just outside our poolside room. We'll have to move in a couple of days to another room because we've decided to stay until a week from tomorrow. We're just too busy to leave yet.

 This morning we walked down Occhiteal Beach, over a little bridge across Shit Creek (literally - it flows out of the sewage treatment plant which apparently isn't totally effective. Anyway, there's a small area of black stinky water in the sea. After the bridge we walked up and over a little hill and we were at Otres Beach. It's not really far and it's an absolutely beautiful beach, not nearly as busy as Occhiteal. We looked at renting a little beachfront bungalow there for $30 per night but we were concerned that the mosquitoes might be bad at night. Anita's bites swell up when the rest of us don't feel anything. We're better off to stay at the Orchidee and just tuktuk down to Otres when we want.

Anita is just finishing lunch at Otres Beach. We had some almonds with us and paid a beach vendor $2 for a pineapple and a mango, which she sliced for us. After lunch we walked more to the east and then back to the west end of the beach where we had come from. We were getting tired so we decided to get a tuktuk on the road behind the beach shack restaurants there. I haggled with one tuktuk driver and didn't get the price I wanted so I moved on. He kept following us for awhile and shouting at the other drivers. Finally we walked far enough that he gave up. We got another driver for $2.50 but when we drove past the first tuktuk a bunch of drivers started yelling at our driver and asking us how much we paid. We wouldn't tell them but they had quite an argument going on. Finally our driver promised to pay them 50 cents and they calmed down. Apparently we had chosen a town driver who had just dropped somebody off and the Otres Beach drivers didn't like that. In the end, we paid our driver $3 anyway for his trouble. The drivers have an informal territorial system because they're all having trouble making a living. The first driver had started bargaining at $5 and got down to $3. Really, $3 was a fair price but we didn't know that. Anyway, you have to bargain with these guys or they'd be quick to label you as a sucker but you have to shake your head once in awhile to realize that you're bargaining with a very poor person over 50 cents. I don't mind paying the going rate but I don't want to be preyed upon. It's just an odd situation.
Tonight we're going out to the beach for sunset and then to Red Sky restaurant for more $4 per entree seafood. Tomorrow it's deep sea fishing for the day.