Don and I have been working on our Spanish and it paid off a bit last night. So let me start from the beginning of The Night of The Spiders.

Last night was going ok in Casa Papaya; we stayed up hanging out until about 11. We turned off all the lights in the house and kept only the kitchen light on in order to try to lure all the bugs there. It seemed to be working because there was a quite a collection of various flying bugs there. We were ok if they stayed there but I think we were all a little afraid to go to bed. Don had an idea of making a bug trap we saw on YouTube. Basically you cut a plastic bottle in half and put the top of the bottle upside down into the bottom half. In the bottom half of the bottle you put water or something sweet to attract bugs. We put a mixture of water, juice, and beer. Then we put the bottle on top of a flashlight pointing up. Then we turned off the kitchen light so the only light was the flashlight. We all got on the couch and got under the mosquito net to watch if the bug trap would work.

Basically this trap works by the light attracting the bugs down to the bottom of the bottle. Once the bugs are in there they get stuck in the water; if they don’t get stuck they have a hard time find their way out because the only way out is the small opening of the bottle.

We were having fun and laughing at how ridiculous this was. We were also laughing at the fact this was the latest we had been up all vacation and it was due to making a bug trap. Don would get up and make adjustments to the trap while Kelsey and I stayed in the safety of the net. No bugs were coming near us but we just felt safer in the net.

After about probably 30 minutes to an hour of talking and watching more bugs get trapped we were becoming more tired. Don turned on the kitchen light and we were about ready to call it night when Kelsey pointed to the window at the bottom of the stairs and said “What is that?” I looked over and saw a trail of what looked like ants coming out from the window. Don went over to investigate and confirmed they were not ants, but spiders. This freaked us all out. Don started spraying the spiders with bug spray and they were falling but not dying. He started stepping on them and hitting the ones on the wall with a flip flop. Kelsey and I were hiding under the bug net on the couch. It seemed that a spider hatchery was occurring in our house. The spiders were about the size of a dime so how big was the mother?!

I could see that there were spiders on the floor moving towards our stuff so I got out of the net and Kelsey curled up inside the net. She would yell when one got close to one of us or our stuff.  I was stomping on spiders now too. I don’t know how many we killed. Maybe 50, maybe 100, but they kept coming. I noticed that spiders were on the opposite wall now. How long had this been occurring? We had been sitting in the dark focused on a bug trap we made while spiders infiltrated our living space. They were not stopping and Kelsey and I made the call that we could not stay here. I felt extremely disappointed and blamed myself for picking out this place. How could I have known though. If you know Kelsey, you know she is extremely afraid of spiders. She pretty much screams if she sees one. She handled it pretty well though, but I knew even if we were able to kill them all it wouldn’t be good to stay here. What if more came throughout the night when we went to bed?

As Don kept killing we started looking for a new hotel. By this time it is after midnight. Thank God we had WiFi. I found three places that looked good. They were all down in the town of Playa Samara. It’s only about a 5 minute drive. Don called the first one and no answer. Next we called a place called Rancho De La Playa and a man picked up. He did not speak very much English. Don used his Spanish to ask if there was a room for 3. He explained our situation with the arañas. The man understood and told us to come.

We packed up our stuff so fast, while still making sure no spiders were on our stuff. I cleaned up dishes that we used and we made sure the house was back in order except for the excessive amount of bugs and spiders dead everywhere.

When we went outside it was raining and extremely dark. This was like a scary movie. We got to Rancho De La Playa and the man helped us park in the secure gated parking. Then he allowed me to check out the room before agreeing. The room was good, not the best but good. I talked to the man in my minimal Spanish about being able to stay for 2 additional nights. He showed me that we could definitely have it for one more but we will have to talk to the day staff for Friday night.

We got settled in it was about 1:30 am. We were all pretty amped up still. Kelsey and I decided we might as well have some beer. Don went to bed. I stayed up with Kelsey. We talked about the crazy night, passed the bottle back and forth, and then eventually we fell asleep together. The lights remained on through the night.

I know you’re probably wondering about all the crazy pictures we took of the spiders…well sorry no pictures.  It was so creepy and crazy we didn’t even think about documenting it until later. Kelsey, however, did try to take some pictures of dead bugs before we left.