Dust In Nevis: The Storm

Since I began my stay in Nevis back in August, I hadn't yet experienced the true 'tropical storms' that everybody warned me about. This past Saturday, that all changed. I had been studying on campus all day and night, and finally decided to call it quits at 2:30am (which was heavily influenced by the fact that the rain had FINALLY subsided, after hours and hours of torrential down-pour, and crazy gusts of wind). My roommate and I hopped in the island jeep and began our trek. Little did we know, we would soon be headlights-deep in water that was rushing down from the mountain side. Nevis experienced flash-flooding, and we were caught in the worst of it. After barreling through waist-deep water, the island jeep called it quits at the top of the hill by Oualie Beach. We coasted down the hill, parked it there, and called our landlord (Bobby) to come pick us up because we couldn't get the island jeep started. I received a call 10 minutes later from Bobby telling us that there was no way he was going to cross the "gut" -- the "gut" is the part of the road up to our house where water runs across as it drains from the top of the mountain after a big rain. We know Bobby, and we know if he's not crossing the gut in his truck, it's flowing pretty hard.

We managed to get the engine of the jeep dried out enough to get it started, and eventually made it back on the path to our house. We were feeling adventurous, per usual, and thought maybe we could give the gut a try with the island jeep. We pulled up to the river of water flowing across the road, and wisely decided to park the jeep back at the top of the hill and cross it by foot. We wrapped our backpacks up in garbage bags to shield them from the drizzle, and headed for the gut. Thinking it was only going to be a few more inches than normal, I began to cross. Before I knew it, I was thigh deep in running water, wondering if I was going to reach the other side! Thankfully, we both manage to make it across the gut in one piece!