La Epoca de lluvia

Everyone kept telling me that we were on the verge of "la epoca de lluvia" the rainy season, a fact the brown landscape around me seemed to be denying. There are only two seasons on Nicaragua, summer and winter, dry and wet. Sure enough, it was like someone had turned a switch to winter. The air filled with anticipation and then with little warning it began pelting rain. Coming from a state notorious for rain, I thought I'd seen it all but the rain here is warm and there is not the pretense of rain as often fills WA days, it just rains as if it's got a job to do. It is proceeded and followed by a suffocating, sticky mugginess that clings to your body and oozes out your pores. It is cruelly ironic that with all this rain, my family in Santo Tomas is still without water. No bathing, no laundry, no washing dishes, nothing.
On Tuesday Dawn and I took a van to Managua to the hotel I was staying at across from the airport. On the way there we began to see mounting flashes of lighting accompanied by occasional claps of thunder. Then biblical rains began to fall. The lighting cracked so close that I felt like a cartoon character; my heart leaping out of my chest, followed by my skin, and leaving my naked body behind. We bid our fellow passengers a hasty good bye and good luck and sprinted from the van to the hotel; in the 50 seconds it took to make the dash it looked as if I'd decided to take a swim backpack and all. I am now a believer in the epoch of rain.