When It Rains...
The rainy season has a strong foothold in our weather – it rained most days last week, to where I didn’t leave the villa at all on three days, and I was dodging showers on the others.
For reference, we normally vacationed here in June or July, as the boys were out of school, allowing us to stay for 10-12 days (the max my employer would allow per year.) We never had nearly this much rain in a week!
When I did brave the elements, I found the old San Pedro Express Water Taxi Terminal in Central Park is gone! It had been posted for sale on Facebook for something very low, $10k or $20k. I don’t know if they found a buyer, or just demolished it. I’m not sure what will happen with that pier, although I did see our two new “Sargasso Scooper” boats docked there this weekend, already heavy with rust – how the hell does a boat rust in a matter of weeks…?! They allegedly cost $3.1M. It’s a not-so-funny joke that Hol Chan paid $100k for the boats, and someone there or in the government pocketed $3M. I have not seen them operate once, and as you can see in that photo, the sargasso is definitely making it to shore.
Friday after work, Nathan was itching to get out of the villa, so we headed to the Caribi Bleu Casino, which opens at 6. We arrived around 6:15 and they were still setting up and doing maintenance (“island time”), and I think we were the only customers until at least 8. Regardless, we had a fabulous time and even came home up a few hundred, always a bonus!
Saturday, I had a killer headache, most likely caused by free local rum and vodka drinks at the casino. It poured buckets most of the day, so we were absolute slugs on the sofa, binged garbage shows on Hulu, and tried to stop the rainwater flowing through our front door.
Sunday, we awoke to peeks of sunshine and opted to brave the elements – Nathan needed a haircut, then we went to lunch. We stopped at the same barber shop as his last cut, but found a different barber on duty – who spoke no English. Before long, a translator came in. When finished, Nathan’s haircut was $20US, not $20BZ like last time – our mistake for not clarifying before cutting. Upon closer review at home, one side of his head is blended and looks great – the other side, as he so accurately put it, is “more like Peaky Blinders”. My assumption is the barber just immigrated from Lebanon and is learing how to cut hair. And perhaps $10US went to the translator/trainer, and $10 to the barber.
We opted to lunch at Estel’s since they were on the water and had good rain coverage just in case. Breakfast is great there, as is dinner, but lunch was underwhelming. I should have ordered a breakfast entrée, they serve breakfast until 3, at least on the weekends. We watched another cell roll in, and when we saw a break, we drove home before the next front hit – and it sure did.
This bucket is partially sheltered by our villa, and it measured at 9” of rain this morning, just from Saturday/Sunday! I immediately dumped it over; the mosquitoes have plenty of spots to lay new heathens without our help! And they are fierce right now!
In better news, our septic pump breaker has not tripped, so Antonio found the problem and solved it!
Overall, a pretty boring week with the rain, I will try to find more excitement this week!