Rain and cats

The place where they gather weather information near here is the airport in Limon, about 40 km away. According to their records, this area gets 3.1 meters, or just over 10 feet of rain every year. It doesn’t matter if you grew up knowing your finger is 3 ½ inches long, or 2 cm wide – that is a LOT of rain. Dianne, standing on my shoulders, would still have her nose under water. Hence the name “rain forest”.

Being the kind of guy that does his homework as much as possible, I knew this fact long before we left and made sure we had rain jackets, ponchos, umbrellas, and plenty of dry socks packed in watertight plastic bags. (something else to take home unused) After years of being a Scouter, I try to “be prepared”.

Since we’ve been here, it has been a long procession of perfect sunny days. We’ve had a bit of rain, in the night, about once a week, which just serves to get the dust off of everything, and give us clear morning views over fantastic greenish blue waters. I’m thinking we are about due, but come on – nobody even wears socks, let alone dry ones, so how bad can it be?

Yesterday I had my coffee looking at some trees and noticed a fine mist of rain against the dark background. 100% humidity, condensing, 30 degree C ambient at 6:00 AM, dust from passing vehicles – the perfect computer environment if you’re Dante. At least static electricity isn’t a problem, which is lucky because they keep the memory sticks in a bowl on a shelf. I put my umbrella in my pack, just in case, and wandered off to work.

We’ve seen this sort of morning before, and it always clears by 9:00 or 10:00 AM. Yesterday was not really an exception as there was some clearing, but the humidity never let up. Long before lunch I was wet – not from rain, but from sweat that didn’t evaporate. Dianne took a break from the serious business of shopping and counting sand dollars for the afternoon, and rinsed some clothing and put it on the line. She’s found a cookbook of Costa Rican recipes, in Spanish of course, and experiments using my little translator and her phrase book. We had another amazing meal (she’s very good at this) and watched the full moon for a bit – the clouds had not returned.

Early to bed Costa Rica style (we really don’t miss TV) and after a bit of reading under the mosquito netting, we turned out the lights. (your turn. Um.. I’m pretty sure it’s yours. Heads or tails? While you’re up getting that coin, could you turn out the light?)

And then the rain came. A gentle patter on the roof, increasing in intensity, still increasing, pounding (Is that hail? No, dear), shouting to have a conversation, deafening, serious rain. I have a little hearing loss in my left ear, so with the right ear on the pillow, the sound level is just under a space shuttle launch, but still not exactly conducive to dropping of to sleep. The most popular roofing material here is metal, and you have to ask why. Houses do not have attics – we look at the underside of the tin roof from our bed and understand where the idea for the steel drum came from. The rain continues. (So what do you want to do now? Just relax and enjoy the sound, dear) Eventually the intensity dropped off and so did we, but we wonder what it’s like in the rainy season. 10 feet. We likely got an inch. Without using a calculator, that means similar downpours 120 times over the course of the year, or every third day. Since we’ve had 2 days worth in the last 20, the implication is that sometimes the noise will continue for days at a time. No wonder everybody plays Bob Marley really loud.

My shirts are well rinsed too. Still on the line, they’ll likely be dry by April. If not, well, I still have those waterproof plastic bags…

The bedroom

More Fluffy than Mange.

Just a quick update on our kitty. He’s looking much better. He’s really filling our now. He’s still very skinny, but he really looks like a cat. His mange spots are healing and he’s starting to pounce bugs and do silly cat things. Just one problem left to solve, fleas. When Charles and I were in Puerto Viejo we found a really large grocery store. It’s still smaller than any thing we’re used to, but big for here. We were so excited and wandered up and down the isles looking for stuff we might need, and lo and behold, flea powder! Poor Mange! Yesterday was powder up the cat day. I took him out behind the cabana and dusted him up. Experience has taught me not to do this in or near my house cause just like rats jumping a sinking ship, the fleas will desert a flea-powdered cat. So there he was poor trusting, purring creature, rubbing against my ankles when poof, poof, poof. Powder everywhere! Cat not impressed. (What makes annoying cats so much fun?) He wandered a few feet over there, thinking I wouldn’t follow, silly kitty. I now had to hide the container of powder cause if he saw it he was gone, so I filled my hand with stuff and petted him and rubbed it in everywhere. Finally he’d had enough and just left. Charles and I sat down for supper at the usual time. He was telling me about his day when Mange decided to show up. He was quite annoyed with me, but I guess he could find it in his heart to forgive me if I had a plate of food. He munched his food took a few steps, shook and poof, huge cloud of white powder drifted skyward. Hahaha I thought we were going to die laughing. This morning he has returned and decided to let us feed him breakfast. Cats are such forgiving creatures, as long as you have food. Do you suppose he wandered about in last night’s storm to get rid of the powder? Or spent it under something still sneezing? He looks really good. His fur is looking really white and, dare I say it, fluffy. Hmmm, Fluffy, what a great name for a cat!