De dant-de-dant-dead-ant.....

Went out to wash my car early Monday AM while it was still cool - there's lots of dust in La Manz, when ouch -no, not another scorpion, but a big black ant gnawing on my left ankle.  I aimed the water spray at it and managed to knock it off.  I stopped and took a Benadryl cream break That's when I realized the ground around me  was moving, black with ants, soooo many ants!

Mary had told me they were on their way up from her house and, indeed, I had seem them on the stone steps below yesterday when I walked back up from the beach. Apparently they do scorpions for lunch - yay!

I have a short brick wall around my car park spot so I hosed it down - ants aren't wild about water nor are scorpions.  That is when I noticed a big old scorpion running for its life with hundreds of ants behind it on the top of the bricks.  I discouraged it with a stream of water in front of it and it turned around - right into their path- great!  They then had it surrounded but it escaped over the side.  I went back to washing the car but shortly after, there it was now on the wall in front of the car. I redirected it with water once again and again it escaped the approaching ants... then I realized there were two big old scorps - one seemed to be a female - fat body!  Yech!  Well, they are good at playing possum and I watched for awhile as they sat motionless pretending to be somewhere else, but this was getting in the way of washing my car before the sun came over the mountain.
The ants never did manage to catch them on the brick wall, so I finally went for the Raaaiiid!  Pssst ... and finished washing the car.

So, home before dark...

Back in La Manz again.  Sunny hot and humid day... but even with the delayed flight, we are home in time to make the bed up for the night if I hustled. 
Marcia dropped us at Pam & Greg's where Greg reconnected my car's battery and bingo! off I drove.  My road was excellent (thank you, JR) so no prob there.  In the door and the first job is to clear the furniture off the bed, put down the mattress, find sheets, etc and be done before dark.  Desperate for some moving air, first I went out to the patio to remove the window tarps. That done back in I headed, but as is now the norm, (loss of focus) ... I spied the broom and decided to sweep some of the leaves and debris in the doorway. 
Well, that revealed a scorpion - quite a good size, too, (3") so I swept it out of the leaves it was hiding in and made to stomp it.  Of course, I missed a perfect footplant with all the debris and its tail whipped up and bam (or maybe bam-bam), it got my next-to-little toe!  Oh the pain!   It got a second stomp!
I was just outside the door and my pack was on the hall table with (TG) the few remaining Benadryl tabs I had in WR.  I took two, found a bit of water, grabbed my car keys, rushed out - didn't lock the door, forgot my wallet, left my suitcase sitting up by the car park and zoomed down to Dennis & Mary's, who live below me.  Mary came with me to the pharmacy - no help there, then on to the Centro de Salud (clinic) and luckily the DR was still in.  By this time, I could feel the pain travelling up my leg and my throat was closing.  It is a long story of details (killer pain killer, Clorox, milk, mj) and in the end, I'd had three anti-venom injections at ± hourly intervals, and spent the night in Mary's guest room.  I had so many meds in me by then, it felt like I was sleeping on the high seas.
Bright and early Sunday morning, Mary took me to get my car which we'd left downtown when it looked like we might be on our way to the clinic in Cihuatlan (Dennis came to drive) and I went home to make my bed and start cleaning/airing the casa.
I was going to take a photo of the scorpion but the ants, etc had been busy in the night and there weren't many pieces left intact.

Back in La Manz, October 27, 2012

Well, I am here and finally on line - took a whole week compared to other years' two days - but here I am reporting in!

The flight was eventful.  and it all started before I even got on the plane.

The Board Room in Vancouver is apparently no longer available to first class Alaska Air passengers (take note G&L) so I had to start my very early AM with no free (haha) latte. 
Our stop in LAX was a long one as it took forever to balance the huge amount of luggage which they finally managed to do in both cabin and cargo holds, they said.  The little tractor thing pushed the plane from the gate and BAM! clank, clunk!  the tow rod broke and hit the plane.  We then had to sit for another 45 min while they, the aviation folks, decided what to do.  In the end we were deemed good-to-go and we lumbered off an hour and a half late. 
When we arrived ZLO some of us discovered after everything was unloaded that several pieces of luggage were left behind in LAX (my tote was one) - no wonder we were suddenly light enough to fly.  Happily, Marcia was kind enough to wait and wait for us (Pam and Greg and I) to come through the door.On Monday afternoon, my tote finally arrived half way up the stairs to my door, broken, half-open, taped with three diff kinds of tape and looking like it had been kicked all the way from LAX or maybe dragged behind a burro.  Some good stuff was missing, of course, and thesalt and sugar-free peanut butter in a plastic tub had broken open and welded everything else to the bottom. 
What a sticky mess!

Needless to say Alaska has heard from me and their initial response was that it could take at least a month to hear back with a solution or compensation... like a decade of free flights?
At least I am warm!