Fun in the sun ... until crispy

This morning was our first yoga class in the yoga studio here at Duce Lunas. It is a beautiful studio with lots of large windows overlooking the hotel grounds, which are packed with tropical plants. The class was a mix of vinyasa flow with some bikram poses and corepower abdominal work thrown in. My mom is a yoga rockstar! With some assistance she got up into a headstand from crow posture and also did an awesome inversion in locust pose. It is quite hot here, however. I now understand how they do open air bikram classes! It is so warm in the studio that even without heaters we were sweating up a storm

On the way back to our rooms after the class, we spotted an amazing spider hanging out in its web between two trees over the walkway.
I wandered around the hotel grounds a little this morning before the surf lesson to take pictures of flowers. They are all so beautiful here! I am not sure what types these are, but here are just a few of the ones I saw!


This afternoon we had our first surf lessons. It was so much fun; I actually got up on the board quite a few times and started working on turning. I did, however, take quite a few face plants into the water! When I was just starting to turn, the instructor kept telling me to "turn left, turn left" so I finally got my board around to the left and ... surfed smack dab into my mom! I tried to bail, but I knocked her off her board in the process (yes, gracefulness runs in my family in case you were wondering). Despite liberal application of sunscreen, after 2 hours out on the board, the back of my legs achieved a lobster-red coloring. ugh! This evening I was instructed by another visitor to put vinegar on the burns to reduce swelling etc. I now know how a salt and vinegar crisp feels ;-).

The beach was gorgeous with both black sands (from the nearby eroding lava flows) and lighter quartz sands (probably quartz, but not entirely sure).