el huracán

Hurricane Alma passed almost peacefully. I went with Amilcar and Maynor to visit Matt during the worst of the rain. We made it back to our house drenched but safe.

I´m kind of worried that I´m telling all of my good stories here and that I´ll have nothing left when I return. Grrr. Anyway, here goes.

I did make it to the swimming hole with Emily and others. After a good half-hour walk through trees and along a rocky streambed, we saw the little lagoon 30 feet below, over the edge of an enormous rock with all of the creek water flowing over it. Needless to say, it was a lovely 30'foot jump and the water was amazingly refreshing. Getting back up was challenging but fun. The second time in was also good.

Feeling not entirely challenged, Dan, Anna, and I took a trip up the nearby mountain-hill with Frederlinda´s son Maynor and two of his (and our) young friends. Maynor is 12; The two girls are about the same. The trip up was rocky and scary, but the view of Sabana Grande was amazing. It really is a plain surrounded by mountains. The trip down the other side of the mountain-hill was also incredibly scary; I was sliding down pine needles on the seat of my pants. I probably didn´t need to be quite that cautious (Maynor and the two girls were running), but it freaked me out. Dan says that he´ll be climbing a farther mountain soon. I think I´ll take off my flip-flops and put on my hiking boots for that one.

Alex and I were playing a game this afternoon where we bounced a coin off a wall and tried to land it within hand´s reach of the other guy´s coin. It is fantastically easy to amuse Maynor and the other kids here. I have a little LED which has a strobe setting, and I freaked out Maynor and Marlen with it at night. It really is freaky to see somebody´s strobing face creeping and then speeding toward your own. I also freaked out Marlen (and Marisela) with a frog that was sitting by the porch. I´ve never caught anything larger that a firefly before, so I didn´t know what to expect. Fortunately, the frog-toad-thing had a nice backbone to grip. I was afraid that it was exploding when I first grabbed it (I nearly dropped it!), but it was only croaking.

The food here continues to be delicious, and I did find another egg in my window. It was part of my lunch today. Scrambled, not sunny-side-up. I´m looking forward to helping Dan construct his solar cooker and (most likely) replacing one or a few tiles in the solar center´s tiled (they´re called tejas) roof. Matt and I will also probably be planning a gutter system, even if it doesn´t end up being constructed this summer. There´s always time.

ciao!
Pete