This year Ixtapa Zihuatanejo is getting a really good dousing of rain, much needed after not having had much of a rainy season at all last year. Our rain gauge registered a fall of about 7 cm (2.75″) from last night into this morning, a lot of it coming down in a steady downpour early in the evening. On La Ropa Beach we neither saw nor heard much of the thunder and lightning in the distance, but we did get wet!
At this stage of the rainy season, about two serious months into it, we begin to feel a little soggy. The humidity is high all the time, the wood in our houses becomes impregnated, door and window frames swell and we can’t quite close those drawers or cupboard doors all the way or, if we can, they’re almost impossible to open again. Shoes and unventilated clothing begin to grow a bit of green or white fuzz. Even the best-constructed roofs drip and the seams between floors and walls begin to allow trickles — that can quickly turn into streams — of water to course through your house. The smell of recently dampened earth that we enjoyed when the rains first began now reminds us more of mold and mustiness than of renewal. The beach is more often strewn with seaweed and other detritus spewed up with the waves. Brick walkways become slick and treacherous.
On the other hand, the hills and mountains around us are thick and lush and a shade and intensity of green never seen here in the dry season. The sun still shines through and burns our bodies if we’re stay out there too long between the rains. The skies are often hung with high, billowing clouds that make for the best sunsets when the sun does break through before sinking over the horizon. We still have mangos and sweet watermelon and when we do get caught in the rain, it’s warm water that caresses our skin.
There are a lot of Mexican national tourists in town right now, hailing from the interior, from Morelia and Leon and Mexico City, many of them coming by buses that line Paseo de la Boquita and other downtown streets like a thick and rumbling herd of beasts. The visitors trundle their wheeled ice-chests and suitcases between bus and hotel room, bus and beach. They will continue here until next weekend, the final weekend in Mexico’s summer holiday season. School begins on August 23rd, and the return to classes will bring calm and quiet and available parking places once again to the streets of downtown Zihua..
We’re half-way through the rainy season…
