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Creatures of Peace Beach

Monkeying around during Yoga

I started teaching yoga classes to the Amanwella guests last Friday… Oh dear, what day is it even today?  We start at 8 on the yoga platform which is in the coconut grove right in front of the shimmering Indian Ocean. 

During my second yoga class, we were joined by a couple of members from the Peace Beach Dog Gang.  As we melted into our meditation at the beginning of our practice, our deep Ujaii breath was accompanied by by some smelly dog breath.  3 dogs curiously tip-toed across our mats sniffing the yoga students.  It was as if they were protecting their beach by investigating the newest arrivals.  They must have approved of the yoga students becuase they vanished off into the coconut grove after a few minutes of investigation. 

As my students lay in peaceful savasana at the end of class, their relaxation was not only accompanied by the sounds of breaking waves, but of palm tree branches being ripped apart and thrown and coconuts falling from 40 feet in the air.  I caught a glimpse of several grey monkeys swinging about the coconut grove reaping havoc!  Their tails stick straight up in the air like the monkeys from The Wizard of Oz.  The same monkeys that almost caused a 6 tuk-tuk pileup on the road the other day as i went into town.  We had to wait as a line of monkeys crossed the street!

Other tiny (or not so tiny) creatures I have encountered

I constantly walk with my attention at my feet!  There are little caterpiller creatures EVERYWHERE! And they are kind of cute, they are black with yellow stripes, kind of like catipillers.  They even crawl over the yoga mats, and I felt one during Warrior I the other day and took the weight out of the arch of my foot, avoiding squishing him!  Then of course there are the usual ants and mosquitos.  Then there are the Kurmila, the giant black beetles!  I have seen a few, either soaring in the air, or struggling on its back waiving their feet in the air.  I always help him out by flipping him over if I see him on his shell.  Earlier, I described the lizards in the rooms, which actually I found out are geckos.  They don’t bother me, they are rather cute! 
Then there are the SPIDERS!!!!  Not so many, but the two that I have seen are enough to make me jump out of my swim suit bottoms! One night in my room I found a very large spider in my bathroom.  Its legs were probably two inches long!  I don’t like spiders, but I don’t like to kill them either.  So what I usually do is cover it with a glass, then slide some paper underneath it, carry it outside, then set it free!! Well this time, I did all of the above, however the mouth of the glass was too small to fit over the entire spider!! So out stuck its poor legs.  I had used an Amanwella postcard as the base, and as I walked out to my porch to free it, I realised I’d have to set it very far away if i didn’t want it coming back.  So I had no choice but to throw the glass and postcard off into the distance.  The next morning, I found the glass and postcard on my porch, one of the landscaping guys must have found it in the brush, and knew it had to have been mine.  oops!  Then at last, the second spider I saw, eeeeeh I can hardly even write about it, was HUGE!  It had been raining all day so of course many of the little creatures had to find places to sleep, out of the rain.  I found this particular spider inside of my shower.  I could see him in the dark he was so big.  His body had to be at least an inch and a half, with legs stretching over 3 inches!!  I froze in my footprints! I almost started crying i was so scared!  I called housekeeping in the middle of the night and they told me to just spray it with the bug repellent I had in my room.  “Nooooooooooooo way! Please send someone to help me!”  Until they came, I kept looking back in the shower to make sure it didn’t move.  How awful would that have been if it dissapeared and I had no idea where to!!  Finally someone came, and as much as It scared me, I didn’t want it to die.  But there was no choice, he squished him in a towel and carried him away.  I spent the next half hour with on of the workers pointing at places in my room for him to check for bugs. 

In addition to the spiders, mosquitos and geckos who have developed a liking to my room, I share my porch with the same dogs from the yoga platform!  There are particularly three that have hairried up my lounge mattresses.  This is a photo of my favorite one, which I have named Rupee,  he is demonstrating his yoga abilities for the camera and is showing where the term “Downward Facing Dog” comes from. 

 The froggies!! They are soooo adorable!! They come in all shapes and sizes.  There are some from the size of my baby finger nail to the size of my palm.  There are a few outside of my room and I fall asleep to their melodic croaking, along with a mixture of exotic birds (including peakocks and others which I will discuss upon further observation) geckos, and the ocean waves!



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