More like cooling off. The temp. was at least 31 degrees Celcius.

We woke up early this day and motored to our next community, the salt mining and fishing village of San Evaristo.  When we arrived in the bay, we could clearly see the caravanas truck and all of the caravanas staff waiting for us on the beach.  We had breakfast and got ourselves ready for our next building and health care excursion.  We set up the day's clinic at a  very fancy community palapa on the beach.  The dentist and nurse's table was in the middle of the palapa, the optometrist set up in a little room at the back of the palapa, Chris set his chiropractic clinic up on the stone wall at the edge of the palapa using a cushion from the boat as a bed.  All we had to wait for was to find out where we were going to build the next palapa. 

After some discussion with the community liason, it was decided that the builders would make a two room clinic out of an existing brick building.  The boys and Lela unloaded all of the wood from the panga into a pick up truck owned by a man in the community.  He then drove the supplies to the future clinic and the builders prepped for their day of work.

Back at the clinic on the beach, there were many people sitting around the palapa waiting to see the doctors and the optometrist.  Our nurses were kept busy taking blood pressure, monitoring pulses and testing blood glucose levels.  The doctors had consultations with many patients that included dispersing medications for diabetes, hypertension, flus and colds and also used the ECG and ultrasound machines.  Patient confidentiality was thrown out the window here as community members just sort of hung out watching and socializing while the heath care work was done.  It was a wonderful feeling being there and seeing the importance of this work to the people. The one disappointing thing about this particular day was that almost all of the community members were apprehensive about seeing the dentist.  As a result, the dental assistants and the dentist were only able to offer tooth brushing seminars where they used chewable tablets (the ones that stain the plaque on your teeth red)
 showing people how to properly brush their teeth.  It was apparent that people here would rather get their teeth pulled than practice preventative maintenance.  This, as you can imagine, was very disheartening to the dental team.  So, rather than waiting around doing nothing, they went to see what was going on with the builders at the new clinic.

The health care work went on until about 12 pm when it was clear it was time for lunch and it was time to move on to the next destination.  When I arrived to check on the builders at the new clinic, they had finished the wall and were building some shelves and a giant bench for the waiting room of the clinic.  A man from the community, Jose, was there helping with the project.  It was clear that he was no stranger to carpentry.  He and the boys built the bench in quick time, with lots of help from Liam and Liz.  By the end of it, we had quite a lot of extra lumber.  We gave the rest of the wood to Jose and the community liason for use to build an awning on the clinic and for anything else that they might need to build on site. 

Once the building was done, we walked down the road back to the beach to wait for the pangas to take us back to the ship.  For the following days we would be without the services of the Caravanas trucks since the communities we would visit in the next days are not easily accesible by vehicle. We brought all of the medications and all but two of the Caravanas staff to the boat for the next three days. 

Everyone was thirsty and hot after a long and productive morning.  Before lunch we had time for swimming session to cool off.  The swimming included lots of jumping off of the boat.  Once lunch was ready it was time to motor again to our evening destination.  Along the way we encountered a medium sized pod of bottlenosed dolphins.  They were eager to play alongside the boat giving us a spectacular show. 

We arrived at a new place, where Panterra has never explored, Los Burros.  Once the ship had anchored some of us went on an excursion to the beach to explore the arroyo and beach comb.  Anna and Kraeg managed to find a dead chipmunk and a rattlesnake.  Sorry we do not have a picture of it as they were the only ones to see it.  The rest of the gang spent time searching for agates and skipping rocks until the pangas came to pick us up.  We knew it was then time for dinner.  After a delicious dinner and time spent reflecting on the work we had done that day, we set up the nightlight. To our excitement the light was visited by a large school of squid.  It was interesting to watch them feed on the larval fish and plankton that we had attracted with the light.  We tried to catch some squid for calamari, alas, they were too smart for us and we only caught a lonely mackerel.  It was too small for consumption so we threw it back. 

The group stayed up for a little while longer, socializing and enjoying the tranquility of the bay and the warm breeze from the mountains.  I have decided that this night was absolutely perfect and I hope to anchor here again.  It was off to bed by about 12 am for me.  We had one more big day of medical services and, after feeling the success of the day, I was excited to greet the next adventure in a new place.

Stasia

Just a quick note: Unfortunately we were a little shy with the cameras this particular day. However Day 3 is a whole different ballgame.