How Dry is the Dry Season Here?

It's dry here.  

Yeah, yeah - we're in the jungle, the rain forest and all that.  Other than 2-3 small showers, it hasn't rained in 2-3 months.  This time of year is the dry season.  Most days, if we have running water at all, it's barely a trickle.  A lot of days we don't have water at all.  When we need to clean, do dishes, flush the toilet, BATHE - we head to the lake.  Fortunately for us, our place is on the lake.  Makes it easy for us.  Or 'easier' anyway.  Everyday we see our friends in the village, our neighbors, walking five-gallon buckets of water up the path to their homes.  No easy task. 

Living like this certainly changes ones perspective.  

Merida, the village where we live on Ometepe, is at the base of Volcán Maderas.  Water supply to the village is all runoff from whatever happens up the slopes of the volcano.  If it rains up there, the village has water.  If it doesn't, there is no water.

Let me tell you a little about our home.  Lake Nicaragua is huge.  Depending on the list you look at, it's ranked as somewhere between the 19th-25th largest lake in the world.  (Note: some lists include the Red Sea, the Dead Sea, etc.)  Suffice it to say that the body of water that contains Isla de Ometepe, where we live, is large.  

• The surface area of Lago de Nicaragua is almost three times the size of Rhode Island;  
• When I was in the second and third grade, when I was 7-9 years old, my family lived in Guam in the south Pacific.  Dad was stationed there for the US Air Force.  The area of Guam is 209 square miles.  You could fit over 15 Guams in the lake;
• On average, the lake holds a volume of about 26 cubic miles of water - miles!!

The people of Ometepe are, by and large, farmers and ranchers.  Water is key and many of the larger fincas (finca = farm, plantation) have pumps that pull water from the lake when necessary.  Between that and evaporation from the heat this time of year, the water level has dropped dramatically.

The following pictures were taken almost exactly two months apart from just about the same spot.  They give you a really good idea of how much the water level has dropped in just two short months.

Pic. 1  March 2014

Pic. 2 May 2014

Obviously, the rock the bird is on (Pic. 1) and the exposed rocky bed of the lake (Pic. 2) are the most glaring indications.  True.  But notice the background - how much less green/more brown the landscape is this time of year.

May is the month the rain is supposed to come.  With that, the water issues will be rectified.  

And then some!