Sometimes
around September 12th
2014, somewhere above the Pacific ocean, Odile was born (we are not
sure if Odile is girl or boy, some names in English are very
confusing for us). On Friday 13th
people in
La Paz already knew they should prepare for possibility of a
hurricane. Kids and teachers finished at school very early, people
who could, finished at work very early, for having enough time to
prepare themselves and
their houses for
a hurricane. Meanwhile, the residents of the house on the top of the
hill, next to the transmitter tower, lived their peaceful life
without knowing anything. These residents were: Barbora, Martin,
Maria – Jonn's girlfriend* and Krim, Jonn's dog, recovering from
his bad luck of the last few days: being bitten by rottweiler in Cabo
Pulmo (and probably cut in half if it wasn't for Martin being there);
then his master left and the people taking care of him now are nice
and friendly, but only until they start to tease him with this purple
spray they call 'disinfection' and spray it into his wound; and also
they mix this disgusting white pill into each of his meals, which
forces him to make this unpleasant decision every day: starve or eat
this nasty thing?
On
Sunday, September 15th
Krim is very nervous and doesn't leave the closet (small room without
windows) almost whole day. Maria goes to the city and when she comes
back (around 2 p.m.), she says: “I have two news for you, one is
good and one is bad, which one do you want to hear the first? The
good is, that I met my friend who works for a local newspaper and she
wants to make an interview with you, she'll call on Thursday. The bad
new is, there is a hurricane coming on us!” We consult this
information with Mr. Google immediately and see that there is a
hurricane of category 4**, at this moment to be found south from
Baja, and goes north. Supposedly it's going to hit the southest part
of Baja California, which is Los Cabos. (Los Cabos is the
….................................................................................................................................................................................
*
Jonn is the owner
of this house, currently somewhere in Belgium with his family. We met
him two months ago, while hitchhiking from the border back towards
Cabo Pulmo. He drove us to La Paz, we became friends and he asked if
we didn't want to do house and dog sitting for him in September,
while he is visiting his family in Europe. He also said he had met a
lady, and he thought she was special. Later we got e-mail from him,
that he had met with this lady again and she turned out to be very
special. They are in love like teenagers (Maria is in her fifties,
Jonn is in his sixties), it was the Love at the first sight. Now they
live together and they think they've always known each other :-).
**
The categories
are based on the wind speed, category 5 is the highest.
name
for Cabo San Lucas and San Jose del Cabo, two towns, which used to be
just fishing villages not so long time ago. But they were found by
developers who turned them into tourist resort for the rich and
chosen ones, with the big luxury hotels on the beach, each with a big
swimming pool, of course, many golf courses and so on. And higher
concentration of rich tourists usually attract poor people, who want
quick money, so the 'dark side' of Los Cabos are these poor
neighborhoods with falling shelters made from garbage, whose
inhabitants came from whole Mexico, just few citizens of Los Cabos
are originally from here.). According to the online news, many people
from Los Cabos had been already evacuated because of the coming
hurricane. And then, they suppose, the hurricane Odile is going to
direct to the west coast of Baja, which means we won't get the direct
hit, as we are on the east coast. But even being on the edge of
category 4 hurricane is not much fun and it's better to be prepared.
Truthfully, we (Martin and me) are excited that we'll experience our
first hurricane, safely in the house (I have this feeling that it
wouldn't be much fun being hit by hurricane on the bicycle or while
camping :-)), we only regret a little that we won't experience the
hurricane in Cabo Pulmo.
Even
though I've never experienced a hurricane before, my instinct says
“take inside everything you can”. So the big movement begins:
furniture, flower pots, decorations and other small things from both
of two terraces of Jonn's house (good it's so big). Then Jonn's
atelier (Jonn is an artist, painter), John wouldn't be happy if he
had to look for his canvases, brushes, colors... all over La Paz. And
here comes another challenge: how to protect the windows and glass
doors without having plastic windshields like those ones we put on
Gordon's house before we left Cabo Pulmo? So it's going to be
'McGyver's solution' - the tape. So we search the whole house for all
pieces of duct tape, masking tape, paper tape... which we can use to
put them on the windows. Martin wants to take down the big tarps
which are around the whole house for making shade, held by metal
ropes. But he doesn't know how. Maria and me convince him that it's
not necessary...
Since
10 p.m. the wind starts to blow stronger and stronger and by midnight
it's quite 'something'. The 'sound effects' are very intense,
Meluzina*** sings her loud arias, the windows, doors and tarp-shades
joggle... Now we see how useful it was to put all the
….................................................................................................................................................................................
***
Meluzina
[maloozeenah] is the word we use for those sounds which wind makes in
the house, blowing through the chimneys, pipes and so on. The story
says that Meluzina is name of the girl who cries in the houses every
time when it's windy. So now you learned something new :-).
things
inside, everything heavier than 80 pounds suddenly feels this urge to
fly away. We had a big wooden board (around 6x6 feet), which was
laying on the floor, weight down by big wooden beam (around 100
pounds). Suddenly the board just disappeared, we've never seen it
again. (The beam wasn't aerodynamic enough to fly away, but it was
moved on the floor like a hockey puck). I regret I didn't see the
board flying away, I still can hardly believe how such a thing could
just fly away. “Boom!” What was this? Oh, just big metal barbeque
grill fell from the terrace to the ground. “Boom! Boom! Boom!...”
And what was this? We'll see in the morning...
We
are still checking the satellite images online to see where the
hurricane is heading. It looks like the supposed direction isn't
changing and now it's said we'd have 'only' category 3 in La Paz. The
center of the hurricane is supposed to hit Los Cabos around midnight.
But at that time we cannot check it online anymore, because the power
just shut off. Being on the top of the hill and having this beautiful
view of whole La Paz, we can see that we are the first ones without
power, the other parts of the city are still having power. But not
for very long. Suddenly there is a green lightening above the city
and another part of La Paz stays dark. We saw a few of these green
lightenings, caused by the short circuit on the part of electric
power line. Within an hour there is just one small part of the city
which still has light left. (Probably they have their electric power
lines underground? We don't understand why they don't put more lines
underground, strong winds which cut the wires not being so unusual
here...).
We've
been told by locals, that there are two types of hurricanes here:
first which brings very strong wind and second which brings more
rain. The second type is less dangerous during the hurricane, but
brings lot of damage after, creating big floods. Odile is the first
type. But each hurricane brings both – wind and rain, the question
is, how much and how strong. Around the midnight it starts to rain.
Which makes the whole situation even more intense, bringing new sound
effects and new 'entertainment' for us – moping the floor. Since we
came to Mexico, we haven't seen a water resistant house yet. For
creating the window or door they just make a hole in the wall and put
the window or door there. That's it. No sealing or filling in the
gaps (or just very little). Therefore it's nothing unusual to find a
gap between the door/window and the wall which is a few millimeters
thick. So we are having small waterfall under the door, which brings
also leaves and mud.
The
rain is becoming weaker, the waterfalls under the doors are caught
into the towels, we have already got used to all those strange sounds
and vibrating of the windows and doors and we are tired, so it's time
to go to sleep. Maria said, that without the tape the windows would
be already broken. Although this house is protected from the south
side (where the wind comes from) by high concrete wall. Maria had
already experienced one hurricane, when the windows were broken by
strong wind and her legs were cut by pieces of broken glass. That's
why she rather goes to sleep in the closet without windows, with
Krim. Martin and me go to the bed in the guestroom, which is in
another part of the house, so we need to walk ca. 40 feet through
outside. The outside conditions are not very pleasant, I must say...
:-)
We've
been sleeping maybe for one hour, when we were waken up by loud
“boom” directly into our glass door, 4 feet from our bed. What
happened? Martin's worries became true – the big shade above our
entrance had broken, and now one of it's metal corners, which were
supposed to hold it in the wall, is not in the wall anymore, but
hitting our door. Another “boom” and for the first time during
this hurricane, we are scared. If the door breaks, we'll get the
'rain' of broken glass pieces directly on our uncovered bodies (even
during the hurricane it's still very hot, especially inside of the
concrete building without the air condition). Before the heavy metal
piece hits our door next time, we run into the bathroom. It's 3 a.m.,
hurricane Odile is in his/her stronger phase here. The sound effects
were intense and interesting before, now they are super intense and
very scary. Every once in a while we hear another 'boom sound' or
breaking sound. What was it? The tape couldn't hold the window
anymore? What did just hit the roof? What is Maria doing? Is she ok?
Now we are regretting our decision to come here, we feel trapped. And
those wind blows are just incredible! We make our “bed” from the
towels and pillows in the shower, because it's the best protected
area of this part of the house. One more “boom” to our door from
the metal corner of the tarp and then the whole tarp finally falls on
the ground. We are grateful for that.
What's
going on? The wind is little weaker for a while... that's our chance,
now or never! Cross the paddle of water, leaves and mud on the floor,
carefully open the door and hold it strong, so it doesn't get blown
away and run, run, as fast as possible, cover the head with the
hands, just in case of some flying objects... The concrete path is
completely covered with leaves, branches, pieces of broken flower
pot, concrete, looks really apocalyptic, but there is no time to look
around. And we don't see much, the whole La Paz is in darkness now.
When we closed the door of the house, we are finally feeling some
relief, we are safely inside. All the windows are still ok, even
though vibrating vigorously, but still holding together. Maria and
Krim are lying on the ground of closet together, Maria says the whole
floor is vibrating. She is grateful we are here and we helped her to
prepare for this (she wouldn't put inside all the things we did) and
my masking tape saved the situation too... We hope that the windows
and doors can hold it longer...
After
moping the paddle of the water in front of the door, we make our bed
in the bathroom (there is no more room in the closet :-)). Listening
the wind blowing and hitting sounds and feeling the vibrations of the
whole house I cannot fall asleep for a long time. But we are all
sleeping before the dawn.
Later
we found out, that Odile was the strongest hurricane La Paz has
experienced in the modern history. It was category 3, but very close
to category 4, the wind speed 22o km/hour (140 miles/hour). Quite a
wind. I can't even imagine what category 5 must be...
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