The neighbour, Marcos, has been warning me about ”tormentas tropicales” ever since I got here, and today I think he finally got what he was waiting for. After a quiet and half-sunny morning, in which Marcos complained about weird weather and cold (I didn’t notice, but I suppose he is better tuned in to the weather conditions of Zarcero than I am), it felt like all hell broke loose in the afternoon. The rain started falling in buckets at around midday and it is still falling in buckets now, close to midnight. The wind is scary, and I'm rather happy the house has no more than two floors and feels well built…
At 16:00 the electricity disappeared, while I was cooking dinner. Luckily the noodle-soup had been heated enough to get cooked after about ten minutes in the pot even if it never boiled (my first impulse was to cook it in the microwave – yes, I feel stupid). So I took my dinner upstairs to eat it whre I could see it, then wrapped myself in a blanket and tried to read a bit in the light from the window, hoping the electricity would come back before it got dark and planning what I’d do if it didn’t. I found one single candle in a drawer and was very pleased with myself for having had the good sense of buying a mini-torchlight a few days ago.
Thinking it would be a good idea to light a fire in the living room (heat, light and possibilities for cooking – all in one) I decided to brave the weather and walk the two metres from the backdoor to the garage for firewood before it got completely dark (the firewood is full of cockroaches and other bichos I find rather disagreeable, so I prefer seeing what I’m touching…). As I was rolling up my jeans and putting on my shoes however, the light came back. Since this didn’t really help with the cold I decided to make a fire anyway, which turned out to be much more complicated than I had imagined. I already don’t like open fireplaces - they may look nice, but they are horribly impractical and very difficult to actually light a fire in. Especially if the firewood isn’t dry, which, of course, mine isn’t, seeing as it has only been in the dry garage for about three days, that is, since Marcos discovered that stacked against the outside wall it was absolutely not protected from the elements... I did, after a lot of work, manage to more or less get the fire going, and the rest of the night I've spent in relative warmth, but coughing and crying in the amazing amounts of smoke that fill the whole house and kept me cleaning my glasses over and over until I realized it really wasn’t going to make a difference.
I've now spent some time trying to connect to the internet, but after about an hour in which all I have managed to do is open my hotmail and find that I have no new emails, I have given up and so I'm writing the draft for this post instead. Hopefully tomorrow I will either have a somewhat stable internet connection for more than ten minutes or, alternatively, the energy to drag the computer in to Zarcero and hook up to a slightly faster connection there. If the weather tomorrow is anything like today however, I will definitely not risk bringing the laptop outside, and would probably not bring myself either if it wasn't for the fact that I am running out of toilet paper and other, less essential but still rather useful household items like milk and kitchen soap. Having already learnt from experience (no, the weather has not been this bad before, but it has rained a lot...) I know to postpone my shower until I’ve been outside (at the moment I smell like a campfire, so I'm thinking a shower will be absolutely necessary - just hoping I won't have to clean all my clothes as well), and I have been considering whether it is advisable to walk barefoot around here, since that would be the footwear-option that makes most sense in this weather.
According to Marcos, and I am now rather inclined to listen to him, September and October will be worse, weather-wise. Does anyone know of a good way to make waterproof questionnaires?
