Rain

I'm sitting in an internet cafe, pouting because I don't have my computer. Bummer. Oh well, onward and upward.

I've probably said this before, but here goes again - you haven't seen heavy rain until you've been in the jungle. Wow, can it pour. It started three nights ago and has continued off & on since then. We can easily get a couple of inches in an hour. Right now it's mid-morning and we've had a relentless rain since 6am.

Our little house is quite comfortable and dry (by Belize standards). The humidity takes over everything and you have to get used to putting on damp clothing. Since our lives revolve around solar, we use a solar dryer for our washing (That's a clothesline folks). Things can feel dry when I take them off the line (I test them like my mother showed me by putting them up to my mouth) and put them away, but when we take them from a drawer or closet, they feel damp. You get used to it. When we came down as visitors we'd take clothes to a laundry in town where they have a gas dryer. Then I'd bring things home and store in plastic bags in our suitcases. That was luxury. That's the one thing I'm hoping for down the road, a butane dryer. Heaven!

Sitting in our living room the rain is so loud we can barely hear each other. our home has our wonderful pine ceiling, but the verandas are open. The rain on the zinc sounds as loud as hail in the midwest. With only screens for windows the sound is all around us. This may sound unappealing, but it's actually quite comfortable. The verandas give us a dry place to work and it's still quite warm. Even with the overcast, the solar panels keep producing electricity. We're running our chop saw, drill and sanders periodically and barely dent our available power.

We're very happy being off the grid. On the grid in Belize means long power outages and fluctuating power levels. We have friends who have a restaurant in Town and they periodically go a whole day without electricity.

The worst thng that we do suffer with the rain is our road. The long stretch that we had put in is great. It's heavy gravel and is solid, but the bottom part of this "government road" is a slippery, muddy mess. It's just a track of black gumbo, now with gooey ruts. We couldn't get down on Sunday because our neighbor was stuck sideways, blocking the whole track.

It's very much like being snowed in in Oreogn. Once our freezer is repaired, we'll be able to stay for prolonged periods without going to town.

What hurts me the most is that my computer is broken. During this rain I would be sitting at my laptop, writing this to all of you, but instead I have to write it by hand and then try to get down to an internet cafe to send. Oh the hardhips, LOL Such is life in the jungle