Meet me at 4'o'clock in the middle of that big field

Two widely different diving forms lead to widely different splashes, but equal surpluses of fun.

For the last week, SUNNY mornings cloud over and rain down on us at 4pm. It sneaks up on us. We are used to silence punctuated by cars honking "Holas" to each other, chaotic fits of barking dogs, and both birds and street vendors advertising themselves with sing-songy voices. But then a white noise creeps in from the tree tops and pans to the pavement with a loud crescendo and everyone/thing disappears from the street. Side streets fill up with water and become impassible. Plastic bags and frog-eggs alike ride the rushing storm water to the rivers and the sea. Its as though the loud drumming of tropical rain erases The Outside.

If we are in the living room we turn off the music and listen. If Ruby's dog friends are over they wrestle in the mud and dig indiscriminate holes. If Mercedes, the maid, is over, she worries whether the weather will keep buses from making the trip up the dirt highway to her mountain home. Once it caught Chris on a bike ride, so he stood in a park's gazebo with an eclectic group of Machete-wielding laborers, old men with thermoses, and an armed security guard. Yesterday it caught us on the edge of Pico Bonito park were we watched it from a restaurant's covered patio.

The city's above-ground storm sewers have swollen with water and life. On a walk with Ruby we saw frogs with puffed out chests conducted a call and response through a storm culvert. The stretch of stormwater drainage by the grocery store is filled with shredded plastic bags and car fluid, yet it is filled with aquatic insects, minnows and at least two different vivid dragonflies. Also with the rains come ticks. We have removed a total of ~30 ticks from Ruby.

Yet this isn't the rainy season. Or it is, depending on who you talk too. Most votes say it begins some time in August. Others say not till October. Still others say in May! The literature says that the rainy season is in August through November with a bad bout in January. March, April, and May are the reliably dry months, and now we are in a typical cycle of dry days and late afternoon thunderstorms.

We hope it takes a break Thursday night in the jungle, when we will be trapping and collecting insects with the curator of the local insect museum (Museo de Mariposas). But I suppose it can rain all it wants this weekend, because we'll be underwater with Brian and Kurosh in Utila. Though some beach time would be good.

Interesting Fact:

All of the pineapples that we buy twice weekly from the fruit/veggie stands, come from Guatemala. Though La Ceiba is surrounded by Dole's pineapple plantations, all the harvested Pineapples are sent to America. It is cheaper to transport "generic" pineapples from Guatemala. We hear that many other fruits and veggies fall under this same scenario.