Throwing Down in Cabo Polonio

The OMG’s are happening less now during our South American adventure as we’ve become more accustomed to the culture and the perceived random acts of ridiculousness. Fortunately, we can still be caught off guard. Our first morning in Cabo Polonio was a bit slow to start as we all got our coffee, hung around chatting and stared at the ocean. Then it turned all National Geographic on us.

A snake came whizzing by on the sand in front of us grabbing our attention. Then, we noticed his prey. A poor unsuspecting frog hopping just in front of him. We immediately grabbed our cameras to capture the frog’s pending doom. ¹

Don’t worry, our frog was the champion of this battle. After the snake latched on, the frog continued to hop around to get himself out of this mess. It worked as the snake gave up after a little while. Our frog friend walked away a little beat up, but still had his hop and his eye.

The frog-snake battle certainly woke us up! We got our acts together and headed off to play on rocks and find some sea lions just around the corner. We took our time climbing from rock to rock until we encountered the sea lion colony. We found them playing in the surf and lounging around like sea lions do.

After the frog-snake throw down, boulder climbing fun and sea lion sighting, we were ready for some grub. Little did we know that Arlo and Oksana had other plans…rum. They brought a bottle back from the one room shack known as the supermarket and insisted that Stephen, Stephanie, Dusty and I share it with them. Now, I’m not sure if all Russians are similar to Oksana, and I’m trying not to generalize since I know all of two Russians, but they can pour a mean drink! It became a running joke that the Russian-Alaskan, was always “accidentally” pouring too much. “Oh, oops! I didn’t mean to pour so much. It’s this strange bottle top!” Uh huh. One bottle turned into two and the antics began.

Our rum induced ramblings actually produced something of awesomeness. Stephen and Stephanie once had a blog called Two Stephs Take Chile. We all decided that the name was too limiting to just one country…and so it was on this day that Steph Infections was born. You never know when a great idea will strike! We were so stoked by this creation that we worked off our buzz by cartwheeling on the beach. When that got old (read: hurt), we took to frisbee tossing so that Arlo could justify carrying it around for the past several months.

Later, Dusty and I insisted that we have a bonfire on the beach, since it was on our list of 25 things we wanted to do or see in South America. No one was against this, of course, so we put our pyro abilities to work.

It was more like a campfire since there was little in the way of dry wood around us. We bought as much wood from the market as our budget would allow but it just wasn’t enough to make a raging bonfire. Stephen found a large stump on the side of the road somewhere but by the time it actually caught fire, we were pooped. We found it still burning in the morning.

¹ We hope to show a video of the frog vs. snake action as soon as we find internet powerful enough to upload it.