First Rain!
At 4.30am on Thursday 13th April, I woke up startled to what I thought were the sprinklers in the garden of the nearby block of flats. But the sound of water got louder and louder until it dawned on me that it was very early in the morning, still very dark outside and actually raining! Pouring!
I got up to see this amazing thing. Since arriving in Chile in December it has not once threatened to be humid, let alone rain. I stood out on our balcony just watching the rain pour down, filling the streets with black or grey dusty, oily water. The passing cars seemed to make such a lot of noise and spray. It was a strange sensation of being back home in the UK! I don’t think i’ve experienced that smell of warm, fresh, wet air since St. Lucia in November last year.
I was beginning to wonder if it would ever rain here! With most people back from holiday now, the santiago smog has gradually worsened again. And the cool afternoon winds appeared to have decreased, leaving the city in a kind of limbo, a dusty, oily, dry one. The mornings and evenings were getting colder but this was not accompanied by rain. Until now.
They say in Santiago that it will always rain on Good Friday. Indeed, most Chileans, on this national holiday, plan to stay in their bed, feeling miserable, knowing that it will rain. I guess that suits the Catholic Good Friday feeling of uugghhhh and thoughts of arrrghhhh.
They were right- it always does rain on Good Friday…it did again this year. But I kind of enjoyed defying the tradition of feeling miserable by welcoming the refreshment of rain, standing on the balcony in my PJs chuckling at the mere sight of water falling from the sky for the first time in exactly 4 months and 14 days! What a sight for the chileans, I thought. But there weren’t many around at 4.30am.
Next morning, you’d never have thought it had rained. No indication whatsoever, except for the clearer, smogless view of the mountains.
Kim, Chris, Rachel and myself prepared to leave the city for the Easter weekend. We went armed with raincoats just in case. We didn’t need them. No surprises there.