Hurricane? What Hurricane??

Well, you may have heard about the hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico and wondered just what these mean for those poor Peace Corps Volunteers in Central America? Heck, even WE heard about them and we get almost no news...well we get news via radio daily in very fast Spanish but we always wonder just exactly was said.

As for the current hurricane, Felix, I don´t know anything for sure, but I am guessing that those in Honduras (217 vols), Belize (62 vols), Guatamala (179 vols) and Nicaragua (172 vols) have probably been put on alert or consoladated to a safe place until after the storm passes. I hope that they and thier communities come throught this hurricane without major difficulty.

As for Panama, we are not in the path of the major hurricane routes. We don´t tend to get hit by the hurricanes which tend to run through farther north. We may or may not get rain from the storms (I am still confused by the various answers I get in Spanish about if the rain we had a little while back was just normal or due to the last hurricane.)

Here in Panama we do occasionally get inpressive rain, and flooding is a more common problem than hurricanes. It should help our moms to relaxe to know that flooding is not a major issue on the island as there is not much distance between any point of land and the gulf so water drains quickly here. In many ways we feel very safe on our island...crime is almost unheard of, it is a small town feel, and the most sever weather threat is lightning...and we are not going to go standing on the peaks durring storms.

Take care....may you get the rain you need and not much more.