Still hot

This 2008 hot spell is never going to end.

We have moved to hell or hell has moved to La Ceiba and there is no getting out. The heat is the major focus of conversation wherever I go. Even Ceibeños are marinating in this heat. My sister-in-law says that her house is like a fuego (fire). My neighbor says that hers is like the inside of an horno (oven). The water man prays for rain. I arrive at meetings with my hair dripping with sweat, leaving big wet raindrops all over my shirt. Of course, everyone knows that the only rain is coming from my sweaty head.

Oh, but nobody can describe the heat in Honduras like Lorenzo Lee Belveal:

"Whatever the weather does in Honduras, it does too much of it."

"During a so-called hot-season that lasts roughly from January through September, the entire country approximates the seventh ring of hell when the devil leaves his door open. If deprived of shade between the hours of sun-up and sundown, humans and animals simply wither, vaporize, and disappear upward in the shimmering heat waves that radiate from every inanimate surface. By mid-morning each cloudless day, ornamental backyard fishponds contain boiling water. Asphalt streets dissolve into molten rivers of black bubbling tar. Chickens pant like lizards and lay soft-boiled eggs."

From Payment in Kind; A Hair Raising Tale from the Spanish Main, by Lorenzo Lee Belveal


Ardent, baking, blazing, bleak, blistering, boiling, broiling, burning, choleric, cruel, distressing, exhausting, fiery, glowing, grilling, harsh, humid, intense, muggy, onerous, oppressive, overbearing, peppery, pungent, raging, rigorous, roasting, scalding, scorching, searing, severe, sizzling, soggy, sticky, stifling, stuffy, suffocating, sulfurous, sultry, sweltering, torrid, tropical, tyrannical, violent heat.