Every morning my eyes popped open to the same sun-soaked, chirp-filled backdrop of palm and cedar trees. Not that I’m complaining. It’s hard to imagine a better alarm clock. Sun-shy, I wished, to little avail, for a few clouds during my early morning walk. The lack of humidity put pep in my step, and I cut my time by a breezy five minutes.
Some days, I could see the elusive Gulf of Nicoya. It was the dry season. I loved it, and wanted to sing its praises, but I couldn’t get excited enough, since it was perfect. I lacked the passion that only negative feelings inspire.
A view of the Gulf of Nicoya
The dry season is over now, though the meteorologists insist it isn’t. They say we’re in transition. What do I know? Almost every day, it rains. Turn your back, and the grass is up to your knees. Thunder bounces from one side of the mountains to the other, causing my poor dog Buddha to quiver.
We’re rushing once again to unplug our computer, which we recently had to replace. Why? A bolt of lightening materialized out of nowhere and blew it out, along with the modem and wireless router. We’ve begun to experience electricity blackouts. I’m losing time on my walk again, impeded by the slippery spots on the road, and feeling way less spry than I did two weeks ago. And I have to get my wash on the line early, since it could rain by noon.
Now that it’s gone, I’m remembering the real reason I love the period between December and April. Can you say insects? The gnats, except for the ones that always seem to hover around the compost pot, just about disappear. No more strings of dead ones dot my computer desk each morning. No termites drop out of the ceiling and land on me. Far fewer spiders set up snares at face height in doorways.
One of the dreaded harbingers of the rainy season, and one of the banes of my existence, is the June bug. Except it should be called the April bug, because that’s when it starts diving, Kamikazi style, into the glass panes and screens of our windows. This beetle flies into things, get stuck, and eventually dies. There’s not a single endearing thing I can say about it, except that, after two weeks, it’s gone. If only the rest of the pests would follow, I wouldn’t mind the rainy season at all.
