Saturday, March 11, 2006

When's It Going to Stop Raining?


This year has been the rainiest year I've experienced since I arrived in Quito in August 2001. It has rained almost every day and every night since the beginning of November. Needless to say, everything is green, green, green, but alright, already, everything is also muddy, semi-moldy, and just, well, wet.

- And that's here in the Sierra, where everything is on the side of hills - or IS the hill, for that matter - and so the water runs off to wherever. Down on the coast, the weather's been pretty much the same, rain without letup, and so coastal areas from Colombia to Peru are turning into immense rice paddies, without the rice. I was down there last week, south of Guayaquil, and the edges of the roads have become a series of long, long cattle ranges, because the raised roadways are the only places where the poor beasts can stay reasonably dry.

Ecuador's largest city, Guayaquil has a fairly good drainage management system, luckily, but even so, there are large parts of the city which have been under water for days and weeks... Total, wet, bummer...

Attached picture: I haven't learned how to put on captions, but this one might read: But WE'RE doing alright!

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