Raining on my parade (or at least, on my hike)

I had two fun outings planned for this past weekend, and so I was delighted -- delighted, I tell you -- when I went for a morning walk on Saturday and the skies looked like this. 

As I wrote to my family, "October is supposed to be the rainy month here in Panama, and we have indeed had a few torrential downpours, mostly at night. But we've also had quite a few days where the clouds clear and the skies are an amazing blue, with the blazing sun beating down and doing its own version of drenching me in sweat. I'm making good use of my big orange hat and my sunscreen!"

Palm trees, but of course. 
But Panama also has pine trees;
those are the trees in the second row back there.

But then: "Update: one hour after I took that picture, the skies clouded over and let loose. Thunder, lightning, and buckets of rain are all around me now, and it's only lunchtime."

This is a picture of pouring rain in the city.  

The friend I was supposed to meet sent me a picture of the rain pelting down all around her; she lives in Condado del Rey, surrounded by sky scrapers, and the rain is so hard you can't even see the other buildings.

It rained all the rest of Saturday, but fortunately weakened enough that she and I could go to a local "International Sloth Day" festival in the Ciudad del Saber.  We were both excited to see live sloths!

We didn't end up seeing live sloths, though.  There were taxidermied sloths, a human in a sloth costume, and a large white boa that I got to pet, but no live sloths. We had fun nonetheless.  

A cute tetris-like puzzle made from egg cartons and paint.

A nifty crocheted sloth-in-the-forest hat.

Another view of the hat.

Celebrating sloths!

We also went to an urban market with almost no stands . . . but there was a vegetable stand where I got to load up on root vegetables and a papaya. Lily bought me dried mangoes and dinner in the food court, and we talked and talked.

If it was going to rain one day of the weekend, I was glad it was Saturday, though, because our activities were mostly indoor activities:  on Sunday, I got ready for my hike with a friend Jessie to a nearby Parque Metropolitano.  With the torrential Saturday rains behind me, I was glad to walk to church under blue skies.  After church, some friends gave me a ride to the bus terminal, and along the way we gave thanks for our luck in having such a beautiful day.

And then, at 11:00, shortly before Jessie's Diablo Rojo bus made it to the terminal, the skies let loose again. It rained; it thundered; lightning tore through the sky.  Jessie and I walked through the nearby Albrook Mall, and then resignedly got on our buses to go back home.  

When I got off the bus, I walked barefoot (to keep my shoes dry), wearing my poncho and carrying my umbrella, through the little forest shortcut to my AirBnB.  This was several hours after the rain had started, and there was still lightning and thunder.  The river I cross in the shortcut had turned from a meandering stream to rapids (I got to see a turtle getting swirled downstream before finding an eddy by the bank).  

Once again, the rain lasted the rest of the day.  It gave me a chance to sabbath a bit (do a Sunday crossword puzzle, rest, catch up with some family members).  And Parque Metropolitano gets to remain on the to-see list, so we'll try again in November or December, weather permitting.