The Rainy Season has begun
In most of The Philippines there are two seasons, The Hot Season, and The Rainy Seaon. In North-Western Philippines there are often three distinct seasons; Winter from December through February which has dry, cool weather, Summer from March through May with dry, hot weather, and the Rainy Season from June through November marked by thunderstorms and typhoons, or wet weather. Here in Cagayan de Oro City, Northern Mindanao, we have just two seasons.
About 4:30 PM today the sky let loose and it rained and rained, and then rained some more. Thunderstorms rolled overhead, and we suffered a couple of brief power outages. Filipinos refer to power outages as “brown-outs”, and don’t seem to understand the term “black-out”. In America a brown-out is a mild version of a black-out. Here, even if the power was out all over the place for days, it would still be called a brown-out.
Not having a car, and riding my scooter, this was my first experience with needing to be somewhere at a certain time and needing to ride my scooter in the rain. Fortunately, I have at least a dozen pairs of shoes here. It looks like I’ll need to migrate a couple of pair to the office, along with a few pairs of dry socks. I did obtain a nice scooter poncho for about 180 pesos (less than $4 USD) that keeps most of me dry on the scooter, but it just does not do the job on the feet.
Just one day into the rainy season I am not yet bothered by it, but it will probably get old after a few weeks and I’ll start wishing I had a car or pickup.