For those of us who live in the ‘real’ Merida and not one of those multi-million dollar restored and icy air conditioned turn of the century colonial charmers, this is the time of year many of us want to run screaming and sweating from Merida in search of someplace dry and cool.
In the closet, leather belts and shoes, along with luggage and camera lenses, come to life with the sudden appearance of a thin growth of fine green hairlike mold that only sunlight will kill, while producing a lovely odor of decomposition that makes one want to throw everything on a bonfire.
Outside, the chimenea where you would make that bonfire is soaked through and through and everything you try to burn sputters for a brief moment and then goes out in a puff of white smoke.
The morning newspaper that the Diario man thoughtfully puts in a plastic bag before tossing it in the general direction of your door, wilts in your hand like a piece of San Jose Costa Rica McDonalds lettuce.
As a snail crawls up your kitchen wall, oblivious to the fact that it is completely and absolutely out of context there, you sample a previously opened box of Zucaritas and find that the sugared flakes have melded together and are now one limpy lump.
Your bedside novel, a paperback by Michael Pollan on the Omnivores Dilemma, is slowly doing a Cirque du Soleil-like contortion act, it´s covers bending impossibly back upon themselves like an overly ambitious Argentinian acrobat.
Your dryer works overtime as the regular method of sun-drying your clothes on the line is not working; the items hanging there remain humid and develop a rather nasty smell that will necessitate a second washing.
Yes, it’s July and we are in the middle of our rainy season. Torrential downpours and black skies in the middle of the afternoon wreak havoc with visitors and locals plans alike, turning a potentially relaxing beach vacation into a mosquito-infested exercise in staving off cabin fever. Those who remain in the city, battle the flooded streets either on foot, wading through knee high muddy water and getting thoroughly doused by passing buses whose drivers take a perverse pleasure in inflicting wet misery on pedestrians, or in their cars, whose electrical systems threaten to short out as they traverse the rivers that once were streets in Merida’s drainage-challenged centro.
With the rains, come angry black clouds of mosquitoes that can cover a bare leg in seconds, causing its owner to leap and slap like a Tirol lederhosen-clad folk dancer. The official solution is to drive a small truck with a pesticide spraying machine in its bed, through towns and streets, to the consternation of environmentally conscious foreigners and the complacent acceptance of most Yucatecans who know that this smelly solution is better than a bout of dengue fever.
This is a good time of year for those planning to move to Merida to actually spend some time in the formerly white city, to get a feel for the more humid side of Yucatan life!
