I'm singing in the rain

Let me tell you about Nazca. Not the famous stuff (lines, cementeries etc.) but the mundane, every day stuff.

Like how, after being told that Nazca only gets 30 minutes of rain a year (yes, a year - that's not a typo), the skies open on my second evening and it rains for several hours. In fact it rained so heavily that one of the local rivers (the non-polluted one) burst it's banks and the town was flooded. The locals started calling it Venice. There were people wading around barefoot with their trousers rolled up and sandbags at road junctions and in doorways to control the flow.

Once the water went down and that took a couple of days) it was apparent just how much damage the water had done. Roads that previous had been smooth and level were full of potholes, roadworks that had previously seem stable had collapsed leaving foot deep trenches across the road and pavements that had been safe to walk on, now had to be watched carefully because slabs had disappeared leaving unexpected holes. And despite all this, life went on. The bicycle stalls were wheeled around town (central Nazca is extremly small), taxis pretended to be 4x4s and the few actual 4x4 charged around as if they owned the place.

The rain happened on Saturday night and there seemed to be no real knock-on effects on Sunday. But, of course, Sunday is a down day (although not dead) and come Monday the wrinkles started appearing. Several of the locoturios (shops which sell telephone calls) had no connection to the outside world (and I needed to make several important calls on Monday morning), shops which had remained closed on Sunday had to clear out mud and water (using more water) and the market was very subdued. Yet the locals took it in their stride, no misery, no moaning and a great deal of smiling - now compare that with "the wrong type of snow".