2004-02 Gran Canaria: A rainy day

Our trip thus far has been sunny, with the occasional cloudy half-hour. Not this day. Isaac and I awake on our living room fold-out sofa-bed, roused by what sounds like a peas-on-sheet-metal orchestra. Turns out that it's the raindrops hitting the folded metal spouts. Each units spout results in a slightly different tone, hence the orchestra.

Rose and Lila, in the bedroom, hear the roaring flood of rainwater into the back alley. My dear wife awakes wondering why I'm taking such a long shower :-)

Rain may slow down others, but not this bunch. We'd made a deliberate decision not to pack our rain gear, but I always travel with a stash of plastic bags, and get more during any stay. Here you see the kids dressed in their home-grown rain gear. This, plus some Ranger hats will be enough to get us to an early breakfast at Finnegan's.

Whilst the family is watching Spongebob Squarepants at Finnegan's, thanks to Bev and a complete lack of customers due to the downpour, I run over to the C. C. Yumbo" to the papeleria to pick up some spiral notebooks and colored pencils for the kids to draw, a small leather fanny pack for the new camera.

Then we return to the Supermercado Cordillo under Atlantis I. They've got these kid-sized shopping carts which make it much, much easier to go shopping with the kids. Here's Isaac beaming at having found a chocolate egg from a beloved German chocolate manufacturer.

Here's Lila at the cosmetics area, clutching her box of chocolate of the same brand. Notice please the back of her new purse, also from the C. C. Yumbo".

Early in the afternoon the sun came out, and I rushed the family down to the pool. The kids really needed to burn off some energy, and there's no better way. Rose wanted me to take photos of the strange hump-shaped clouds which chased us away an hour or so later. They were dramatic and easy-to-see in person; I'm not sure that the photograph does them justice.

Here's our little prince, drying off and running around after the clouds obscured the sun. The boy's got no fat, but he stands the cold water infinitely better than I did at his age (and same body type).

Lila, on the other hand, has more insulation but doesn't generally tolerate cold water. Today was a marked exception, when she stayed in for a very long time, and repeatedly dunked herself up to her neck. Here she is getting out of the pool once the fun (and sun) are all gone.

UPDATE: It's long past midnight. The rain seems to have stopped, but the high winds and lightning and terrific thunder continues. Charlie said he'd heard that it had been eleventy-eleven (111) days since the last rain; churches inland had prayer-of-thanks services. Rain is everything when you're trying to get agriculture to grow in such an arid clime.

Tomorrow, we spend a day with Omi Marga.

Have you found errors nontrivial or marginal, factual, analytical and illogical, arithmetical, temporal, or even typographical? Please let me know; drop me email. Thanks!

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