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Make your eyes twinkle. Be mischievous. It feels good.
Several of you have asked whether Hurricane Dean will affect us here in Honduras. At this point on Saturday morning, all the experts are predicting that Hurricane Dean will pass well to the north of Honduras.
I did have a momentary scare this morning when I woke up. It was very dark about 8 a.m. and the darkness was coming from the north, the direction of the ocean, but it quickly passed over. That was rare as our storms almost always come from the east. Having never lived near the ocean before, somehow I thought that the storms would come from the direction of the sea.
I quickly checked the hurricane alerts and there has been no change as far as predictions for Honduras go. The Crown tropical weather site seems to pull together all the various tropical storm information onto one page and I've been checking that pretty regularly. It's too bad that when we really need to know, there probably won't be electricity or internet connection to do so.I am a weather sissy as 3 inches of rain (8 cm.) in Dallas is (used to be?) a major weather event. Here in La Ceiba, even the normal rain storms that don't merit the "tropical storm" designation tend to scare the beegeebers out of me. Here in Honduras, we can get 3 inches in the first 10 minutes!
Part of the scariness is that with these flimsy, poorly made aluminum windows, it doesn't take a lot for the rain to start pouring into the house and the wind makes these really scary ghost-like howling noises as it comes through the joints in the windows.
Our house is located about 2 miles from the ocean (3 km.) and very high in our colonia. The surrounding streets, which do look like torrential rivers during a rainstorm, all slope down away from our house. There is a creek behind our house but it is some 20-25 feet (6-8 m.) below the level of our house. So all in all, we feel very safe from flooding.
Two blogs that I read are in the direct path:
Jen on the island of Dominica, from the Living Dominica blog, is really, really, scared.Kingston Girl on Jamaica, was making preparations yesterday.
Click on this map from Hurricane Alley and you can see a large map of the day by day predictions.
In Baracoa, Cortés, Honduras, two cattle rustlers were found dead from gunshot wounds in the bed of a pickup which had been used for stealing cattle. One neighbor said that the shooting went on for 25 minutes.
Vigilante neighbors chased after another truck. The driver of the other truck with six more abigeos (cattle thieves) lost control on a bridge and the truck was left dangling off the edge (photo above). Four of the men were supposedly killed and thrown into the river, while two fled injured.
During the shootout, three of the stolen cows were killed by gunfire. Neighbors decided to make the most of the situation and quickly butchered and shared the meat among themselves (and this is different from stealing cattle how?). The other four animals were returned to their owner.
Neighbors asked authorities to patrol the area or they will continue to take justice into their own hands. Today's La Prensa indicated that the investigation was in process. The other bodies have not been found and as far as the vigilantes go, the witnesses are not talking.
Well, it is true that there is no security in Honduras, even in the towns, much less out in cowboy country. Justice is very hard to come by even when criminals are caught. I would be surprised if you couldn't buy a judge for a side of beef. But these six rustlers learned their lesson the hard way and maybe that will be a warning to others.Sometimes I say that being in Honduras is like going back to 1950. Some days it is like going back to 1850.
Make your eyes twinkle. Be mischievous. It feels good.
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