Bahía de la Luna

The beach at 6:30 in the morning.
The view from our cabana.
Our cabana. This is an eco-resort, so each of the cabana's had a palm roof (even on the inside), no air-conditioning, no hot water, and mosquito nets over the beds. We knew all of this in advance, and I warned the family before we booked it. We thought the lack of hot water would be the thing we liked least, but on those sultry nights, we really wished we had some AC.

The night we checked in, a troop of leafcutter ants was busy at work and crossed the path to our cabana. Otherwise, the cabana was fairly bug-free. The next day, the ants were no longer there. But that evening we discovered them again. For some reason, their newest path went right into our cabana, to our bed, and over our mosquito netting. We had the ceiling fan on full blast, so the leaves they were carrying acted like sails and would either blow the ants around, or the ants would lose their prizes to the top of the netting. The ants would then try to go out and get their leaves, but the fan would press them against the netting, pinning them there. We're not a very bug-fearful family, but we made certain to tuck in our mosquito nets firmly. A few managed to wander inside out nets, and we'd smash them and toss them off. It made for poor sleep all all-round. The next morning, Raul and I looked up to see we had a canopy of leaf detritus and dead ants. The maid cleaned it all up, and we didn't have a bug problem after that.

Bahía de la Luna is located right on the Boquilla beach -- a fairly secluded beach in this very protected bay. Because it was so calm in the bay, there was excellent snorkeling, kayaking, and swimming. We could let the girls swim and play with no fear of their drowning. The other nearby Pacific beaches boasted fierce waves, good for surfing but terrifying for families. It was not uncommon for us to get up at 6:00 with the sun and go down and swim before anyone else woke up. Breakfast at 8:30 was always appreciated.



The only real disadvantage of staying on a beach in a bay was that there were no good seashells to collect. But Zorra and Nevara discovered a nice little workaround. There were thousands of hermit crabs, from tiny little things to great big monsters. These hermit crabs had the same problem that the girls had: no shells on the beach. But being aquatic animals, they would go collect their shells from the sea floor, then climb up on the beach here. The girls found that if you put the hermit crab down on the ground but held onto the shell while he tried to crawl away, he would eventually sacrifice the shell to escape. We ended up with a lot of great shells due to this cheater method, and we wish those poor hermits luck in finding new homes.
The hotel had a Hermit crab race track, and the girls gathered a big box of crabs, then went to the other guests (about 6 other people) and the managers Anna and Pablo and had them pick out a crab to race. Anna declared the winner would get free dessert, so Zorra picked out a crab that had already won earlier that night. Sure enough, she has a good eye for winners, and Zorra had free dessert.

Here's a poor naked hermit crab.