July Weather Report

Total rainfall for July (at our house) was 14.6 inches. Who would have thought that we would have had eight whole days without rain! (We would have, but that was before we arrived). Of course, we had seven days with over an inch of rain. August looks to be equally wet. This week’s weather forecast, as reported in the Tico Times reads “Rain, a thunderstorm”, “rain and a thunderstorm”, “cloudy with thunderstorms” and “a couple of thunderstorms”. I’m not sure which daily description we should fear the most.

The largest rainfall we recorded was 2.8 inches on July 20th, and that fell mostly in one particular hour which happen to be when we were trying to get to a potluck dinner and Bible Study at 6:30 pm. We were unsuccessful. Our first clue should have been the water flooding into our front foyer, but we shrugged that off to a lack of weather stripping. We made it to the Panasonic corner just fine but after we turned onto Lindora the traffic stopped. The street was flooded in areas, but we managed to turn around. We asked our friend the Navigator to get us to Santa Ana (Tico pronunciation: Santana) by another way; “he” refused to speak to us (again), but plotted out a route which we soon realized directed us in a big circle to the same spot on Lindora. When we returned to Panasonic, Lindora was filled with cars and the line went all the way back to the Coca-Cola sign intersection, on the unnamed road. The traffic lights were now out so getting back home through the winding, intersecting roads was hazardous. We could have tried the long way around, going three sides of a rectangle, but that would have included driving on the outer belt of San Jose. Since it was Tuesday and our license plate ends in 3 and it was before 7 in the evening, we were not allowed to drive our car downtown or on the outer belt (which is at the edge of San Jose). Costa Rica has tried to reduce traffic congestion in town during work days by restricting cars from entering. On lunes, cars with license plates (which are 6 digit numbers) that end in 1 or 2 are prohibited from entering the city (including the outer belt)(martes 3 &4; miercoles 5&6; jueves 7&8; viernes 9&0).

We had a little family conference when we got back home to sort things out with the Navigator. He is back on speaking terms with us, and we have agreed to believe him when he tells us that there is traffic ahead from now on. Now if he could just do something about all this rain!