The river

In town the streets looked like this.




Normally dry river bed looked like this.

There is also usually a bridge and a highway where the expanse of water is.
The flood washed out bridges from our town all the way North to Tijauna and South of us as well. We are a little island right now. All those visitors that I wrote about a couple posts ago are stranded here in Baja Mexico untilthe River becomes passable.
Because there is nothing going in and nothing going out supplies of food, water, gasoline and propane are in short supply and high demand.
We managed to get to town to fill our gas tank before every Pemex in town ran out. The lines were so long, Nathanael had a very long wait. We weren't so lucky with the propane and are down to half a tank. We are good for food but the toilet paper situation may reach emergency status rather shortly.

Its definatley not good news for the big farms down here who produce a lot of the vegis that us northerners enjoy throughout the winter. The Driscol strawberries and the Los Pinos farms will be very interesting in getting some sort of bridge built. Lots of fruit and no where to send it. We may get some cheap strawberries out of the situation though. Looking ahead the long term advantages if this rain will likely outweigh the immediate challenges.

During one point in the flood we saw strawberries floating down the street at the orphanage. The kids from the orphanage ran out and started picking them out of the water!

A brand new river where only gravel was a few days ago.

My bombero husband packing medical supplies to sent across the river on a cable.

They also sent across people on a zipline they constructed. As you can imagine there are alot of people who are stranded on one side or another and have children waiting needing them to get across.
There are also emergency medical situations that required some over the river transport.
Two pregnant women made the flight over the raging river on stretchers to get the hospital for c-sections. For people who are generally afraid of heights (stairs, balconies, bunkbeds) and don't swim this was hysterically frightening for these poor women. I would have been terrified myself and I come from a culture of people who pay good money for this type of thrill.


Nathanael worked SO hard this week. His days began with setting up breakfast with the visiting group at 6.30 and he was running until evening. On Thursday (the worst of the rain) I didn't see him except as a passing blur. He was soaked to the skin from 6.30 am until 9 pm at night when he finally came home. He was either organizing the 65 visitors , working to keep the flood waters down or going to help transport people at the bridge. It's been a crazy busy week for him.

I've been going crazy too but in a far less exciting way. My ragged nerves were brought on by mindnumbing boredom while surrounded (in very close proximity) by children with gratuatis amounts of energy.