Claudia in Paradise: My First Tropical Storm-Nate

Here I am! I survived my first tropical storm, and it was a doozie. For us it was Tropical Storm Nate. It was not yet a hurricane.

Costa Rica is now in the rainy season, and October is the rainiest month of the year. At first, I thought it was just the October thing. Heavy rain for longer than usual. Then when it was time to go to bed it did not stop at it's usual time of 9:00. I have never in my life heard rain like that. The dogs and I went upstairs to go to bed, and the noise was horrific. I do have a metal roof, and the only thing sticking above this little house is my bedroom and 1/2 bath, so the noise and wind would be more noticeable than down stairs. Took me less than a minute to figure out this was not in anyway normal rain. Even, Gigi, who has never been scared of storms was unnerved. It ended up pouring for two days non stop. The news reported that is was the worst storm Costa Rica has had since 2010, and I was here for it....wild!

I live right outside of Puriscal in Barrio Carit. Puriscal is on the list for towns that are still in danger of continued problems. My particular neighborhood is not in danger. We came out of this storm virtually unaffected. The only thing that happened to my house is the flashing on one side blew off, and I had a leak over the stairs that Manuel come over this morning and got out on the roof and caulked. I do have friends all around that have real problems. Carit has its own water system just for the few houses here, so we are among the blessed ones that have water. The entire town of Puriscal and Barbacoas have been without water for 3 days because of landslides and crushed city wide water pipes. The electricity is back on for everyone in my area. There are roads that have collapsed that have some of my friends trapped. The road that leads to my friend, George's house, has collapsed. There is a back way out, but it's difficult. The county is already working on it to make it passable once again.

I was getting low on some things, so I decided to drive into town early yesterday morning. The road from my house to Puiscal was in pretty good shape. No mudslides and only one large tree had fallen across the road, but someone had already chopped and moved it to the side. There was a large seam running across the road that was raised about 3". I guess if it had continued to rain it would have split like other roads, and we would have had a collapse. There was a large group of bamboo trees that had been blown and bending over the road. It looked like a tunnel.

In the entire country of Costa Rica 8 people are confirmed dead, 7,000 people are in shelters, and 500,000 have no water. Then there is the Crocodile problem! This is not close to me, but Costa Rica is known for having thousands of crocs in the rivers all around the country. I drove over Tarcoles River several weeks back and took pictures of the crocs below it. This river has flooded, and the crocodiles are everywhere in the neighborhoods. It was on the news that some people there had to literally sleep in the trees around their flooded homes before anyone could get them out.

Today is absolutely gorgeous. The skies are blue, the air is fresh and everything is green. Around my neighborhood it looks like nothing ever happened. I wish it was the same for everyone.