As I've mentioned before, we live in a noisy place. Noises from the street: buses, vendors with amplified tunes or sales pitches (Homemaker, let us do the work for you: we bring the freshest tortillas, still warm...). Radios and boom boxes. Dogs barking (including our own). Burros braying in their always-melancholy way. The pigs in the criadora behind our neighbors' house squealing in complaint when they are bathed and in fear when they are led to the truck taking them to their slaughter.
Even without humans, it would be noisy here, visually as well as for the ears. Especially in the rainy season, life tumbles over itself, plants push and shove against each other slurping up water, birds sing and cackle and scold, insects hum and click and buzz, butterflies crowd each other, caterpillars devour and move on and water roars perpetually. In the dryer months of the year, the sound of the waterfall recedes to the background. Now, in this year of abundant rain, it is the sound of a multi-engine freight train. But sometimes the rain slams around us with such force it drowns out the sound of the waterfall. The night before last, it rained so hard and so long that today, two days later, our falls are still broad and white and extremely powerful.
A photo from yesterday afternoon. Not much different this morning.
Yesterday around noon we took the dogs down to the bridge to go for a walk down the path we usually walk down before we go for our run, but it had turned into a stream. We crossed back over the bridge and went down the other side. It was soggy and lush and noisy, too, with cicadas the noisiest, except for the water. Here are some photos of what we saw.
Usually peaceful and small as it makes its way around rocks, the river has turned into a torrent, obliterating everything in its path.
The dam in dryer times is very visible and with parts not covered by water at all. You can usually walk part way across it. Now it is hidden.
Today, the day after our walk, the morning is bright and sunny as it was yesterday morning. Last night it only drizzled a bit, enough to create drapes of fog on Acamalín. Sunny mornings are deceptive. It could storm tonight again, enough to wake the gods.