whaack

Recently Guanacaste and other parts of Costa Rica were hit by a nasty rainstorm, Storm Nate. This storm truly sucked, it rained for effectively 48 hours straight. When a rainstorm like this occurs, rivers begin to flow all over the country, especially through roads. Mud slides occurred everywhere and bridges were rendered useless. Tamarindo did not get hit too hard, but neighboring towns such as Villa Real suffered massive damage.

An amigo of mine, John, was caught traveling when the rainstorm occurred. He described the roads as parking lots stretching for miles with people walking along side their cars, rendered useless, like some massive religious procession. He showed me videos of him driving in a car he hitch hiked. He was in a tiny little Toyota. You couldn't even see out of his side windows because muddy water was splashing so high. They were driving in such deep water that the water started to seep into the car through the bottom of the door. Their feet were in puddles. John was sick with a cold, and he said he kissed the ground when he finally made it back home to Tamarindo.

I was trapped inside my house for the storm, bored out of my mind. The power was out for ~30 hours, and I had no running water. I was caught naked without my computer charged and 30% on my phone. (Now I'll make sure to keep all my devices topped off with juice in case of any unexpected power outages.)

While the storm did create a nice swell, the wind was blowing onshore too hard on the beach for waves to form. In addition, the water turned to a murky brown color as the storm tossed sand up into the ocean and caused the estuary to drain into the ocean. I spoke to some locals, and I learned that when the water is that brownish color after lots of rain it is filled with bacteria. I recently recovered from an awful bacterial skin infection called impetigo, and the waves were not worth the risk getting sick again.

So for the 30 hours of no rain and water I decided to read and finished Cannery Row by John Steinbeck. While amusing at times, I have to say Cannery Row was probably one of my least favorite Steinbeck's. After finishing Cannery Row, I started reading Gabriel Márquez's 100 Year's of Solitude (in English.) I will try to reread it in Spanish when I'm finished.

After I got bored of reading I went to hang out at the Pura Vida hostel in Tamarindo. One kind Canadian friend of mine, Trevor, sacrificed his laptop power to charge a speaker so we could sit around listening to music. Hanging out at hostels is a must-do for anyone living in Costa Rica or perhaps traveling anywhere. Hostels are almost always 420 friendly and have a great group of young people from all over the world who want to hang out and share stories. We sat around candle light merrily smoking and drinking wine and eating profiteroles made by some other friendly Canadians from Montreal. Later we went out at night to the beach to squint and watch the massive 4 meter waves exploding on the rocks.

Later that night, after I had went to sleep, I got up to use the bathroom. As I was sitting on the toilette facing the revenge of the profiteroles the electricity came back on and I let out a scream of excitement. Sure going 30 hours without electricity or running water brings people closer together, but boy does it fucking suck overall. Amongst the other problems, I lost all the perishables in my fridge.

Here's to living in the age of power, and here's to Costa Rica getting its shit together regarding electricity.

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 7th, 2017 at 9:25 p.m. and is filed under Old Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.