Day by the Pool.

Sounds like a divine Sunday, right?

Not quite.

Day by the Pool day had no pool in sight.

The plan for Day by the Pool day was spoiled almost immediately when we woke up to a drizzly morning.

Followed by “isolated showers”.

Isolated over us.

We ate our breakfast under a palapa roof as the rain came down around us. We were impressed that the palapa roofs never leak!

The clouds got thicker.

Mom, always the optimist, believed they would clear. Hmm.

We resigned to jackets and umbrellas for a wet hike of the medicine trail. My flip-flops were truly flip-flopping and squishing around.

Next was a slippery hike to the river camp.

Was that a break in the sky? No, only a tease.

A guide told us if the leaf cutter ants are working hard in the night, we should expect rain. He also told us if the cattle lies down, we should expect rain. I didn’t believe him. Yet the day before we had seen an army of leaf cutter ants and ALL of the cattle were taking a snooze. He told us it was only a legend. But the rain kept coming down.

All of a sudden the spouts from the sky dried up and the birds began to chirp. I opened my computer to blog on the porch. I typed one word… and the rain came down again.

I ran for cover.

My mom and I went to the bar for a mojito and a shrimp basket.

Then booted it up the hill to the spa, because we had 1.5 hour massage appointments at the spa. ‘The Coma’ – the massage is called. Perfect to escape a rainy day. We were given a sarong, a cold glass of water, and we sat and looked at the flowers that adorned every corner in the spa. My massage was in a palapa hut on a grassy hill overlooking the jungle. My mom’s was in a cloth-covered balcony. As I went in, I heard the trickling rain stop. My masseuse was from Austria. She had lived in Belize for 3 years. She said we needed the rain, because the land was too dry. Hmmm. Not if it ruins my Day by the Pool we don’t!

After our massages, we were all dozy and cared a lot less about the rain, and a lot more about eating and having an early night to bed.

The massages had tricked us into forgetting about our Day by the Pool day. We were even secretly hoping it would rain again so we would have an excuse for another.

But I was still hoping that the leaf-cutter ants were taking a night off.