the great importance of napping

Alright, one more rag on staying in hostels. We're dying to tell you stories about all the people we've met and the experiences we've had living with total strangers...so maybe we'll change their names to preserve their reputation. So one of our favorite roomies is this surf god from Peru, we'll call him Eduardo. He braves the gnarly waves at Tallows Beach, where only the best surfers go. Chris and I jogged there the other day to check out the waves and fully expected to be stopped at the border - a speed hump right before the parking lot where a friendly Aussie has chalked "LOCALS ONLY," lest we try and surf their beach. Eduardo is the classic tough guy with accent and muscles to match his Spanish mafia swagger. One night over a bag of goon, we're all swapping horror stories of roommates past. Eduardo tells about this crazy Irish guy (why are they always Irish?) who wanders in drunk at 2 am and pees all over someone else's backpack. This is not a malicious act, but a simple case of mistaken toilet. Eduardo gives the Irishman a few words. Our two English roomies start joking about "having a wee" in awkward places, including one of their past roommates who didn't even make it past the bed. Eduardo provides us with some useful life advice in his best Spanish mafia accent: "If you wee in my bed, I will kill you." We all laugh, Eduardo doesn't. In all seriousness, he's a nice guy.

Our favorite story is about the spare room. All the eight bed dorms here have a private room attached, which is occasionally occupied by a couple who usually keep to themselves. Well, the other night there was a Welsh couple in there. No one had met them. At the usual hour of odd occurrences, 2am, we're standing around talking with our German roomies when the girl from the private room crashes through our sliding door, crying and shaking and fumbling with her keys. We all stop talking and watch awkwardly as she spends 30 seconds trying to get her door open. She slams it shut and starts screaming into her phone. Unfortunately, this is not entirely unusual...until she flings open the door and in the most dramatic fashion possible, throws a pile of condoms out the front door and goes raging back to her room. A little while later her guy gets home, sees the condoms on the ground and trudges to their car to set up camp. She throws him a blanket and all his things. It's clear he's been banished to sleep in the car. This was all quite amusing to the rest of us. Poor girl. We find out later from our roommate that they were all out dancing when the boyfriend, thinking his girl was in the bathroom, takes the opportunity to pat the tushie of another girl on the dance floor. Apparently this was the source of their argument, a tushie grab. All that was left of them the next morning was the pile of condoms.

I think we've mentioned before our favorite thing about this hostel is the beautiful pool. It's pretty customary to take one look at a hostel pool and think, "That's where chlamydia lives." But this pool is blue and clean and beautiful. And there's an outside bar. And there's a big screen where they host Dive-In Movies and sometimes rugby or surfing during dinner. We're still leery of their film selection, so far it's been Jaws, and Wolf Creek (stranded backpackers in remote Australia fall prey to a murderous bushman who offers to fix their car, based on a true story). We've also capitalized on their theme nights. Saturdays are limbo madness, Sunday Scattegories, and of course karaoke on Thursdays. These are fantastic because you're forced into teams of eight and wind up meeting new people and forming unlikely bonds with strangers in your joint efforts to impress the skeptical bartender/MC with witty alliterations. You will all be impressed to learn Chris is the latest victim of the bar's ploy to force otherwise shy backpackers to sing in an attempt to win free drinks. While he didn't win a free drink, he's now a karaoke star.

I love this sign outside our local pizza joint "The Byron Routine"- it encompasses most of our days. I am reminded that the title of my post was "The importance of napping." I suppose the stories leading up to this point do some of the leg work in explaining why napping is a critical part of a backpacker's day. Being a light sleeper and an anti-napper, this is difficult for me to embrace. But I'm happy to report I have two successful naps on record so far, and I plan to have many more. Here's a rundown of my weekend:

Friday
wake up at 9am
breakfast
read on the beach
fall asleep on the beach and sunburn my eyelids (who puts sunscreen there anyway?)
lunch
reading by the pool
cook dinner (a very peppery steak and garlic mashed potatoes)
poker and goon with our German roommates (using beercaps and filters because we had no chips)
drinks at the Beach Hotel, with live music and dancing
midnight excursion to the beach across the street
dancing with strangers on the street to live music
arrive home at 2am, talk with our German roommates
sleep at 3am

Saturday
wake up 10am
go running to Tallow Beach
breakfast (bagel and coffee)
shopping for surf boards
grocery shopping
nap time - 2pm
late lunch/dinner
hang with Canadians from next door
bartending at the Halloween Bash 10pm-3:30am
beers with coworkers after closing
sleep at 5am (Sunday)

Sunday
wake up at 8:30am - loud roommates checking out
jog to the lighthouse
free yoga at the lighthouse
nice American instructor gives me a free yoga mat!
swimming in the ocean with Austrian roommate and Canadian girl from next door
delicious pumpkin pancakes at Dip Coffee to celebrate my first shift
nap time - 2 pm
wake up 4:30pm, quick dinner
bartending at 5pm
catch up on serious sleep.