Roads Of Rivers

[lupestripe]

Typically, after wanting an easy morning, I managed to do twenty minutes of sightseeing before the heavens opened and it started hoying it down. This isn't English summer drizzle either, it's full scale tropical torrential rain, indeed had it not been for the light wind, this would almost be monsoon weather. June is the start of the six month wet season here (July and August are by far the wettest months, when it typically rains forever) and I had hoped I would just about avoid it. During my first two days here I largely did - the rain being confined to the night time when I have been told by many people not to venture out alone - but today things have taken a turn for the worse. Of course, I was going to have access to a car today, kindly offered by Louis's parents but that fell through as the driver isn't available. Judging by the weather, maybe that's a blessing rather than a disappointment.

It's frustrating but there's really little else I can do aside from sit in the hotel with a beer. Even an umbrella, which I don't have anyway, won't help as after fifteen minutes of this, the roads became rivers with water four inches deep and trash floating down it towards the drains. There is so much rain that it bounces off the surfaces and the drainage systems simply cannot cope. As I have said, the roads are now rivers with their own current systems and while cars are just about navigating through them, it is advisable to stay indoors and wait for it to relent. Sadly that could take hours, of Tuesday evening is anything to go by.

I did manage to have a look at nearby Paco Park and Cemetery though, a circular walled cemetery with a beautiful garden and fountain (the latter of which sadly wasn't working). Built in 1820 just in time for the victims of a cholera epidemic, the centre is dominated by the circular classical rotunda with gorgeous deep blue windows. The area is most famous as the place where Jose Rizal - doctor, author and reformer whose works lampooned the colonial Spanish in the late nineteenth century - was buried after his execution on 30 December 1896. He was accused of masterminding an armed uprising against tue Spanish in August of that year, even though he was a moderate. His "martyrdom" was the spark that ignited The Philippine Revolution. He was interned in an unmarked grave, but his sister observed guards standing beside a mound of freshly dug earth and she convinced the cemetery guardian to mark the spot as her brother's grave. In 1898, Rizal's bones were exhumed and given to his family until 1912, where he was buried elsewhere. The park is well-known for its serenity, or relative serenity at least as there is still a major road next to it on which stands a major factory, and I'm glad I managed to see it before having to dodge the rain, eventually having to take a tricycle the fifty yards back to my hotel to prevent myself from getting wet and my shoes from being drowned in the road rivers.

Comments

[skawinski.livejournal.com]

I imagine this rain makes a puppy sad...so there can be something to cheer about when it comes to English drizzle - it comes and goes, while this torrential downpour...that could drown you D:

[lupestripe.livejournal.com]

English drizzle is persistant though, at least the downpour soon went away. Sadly the flooding didn't though :(