West Coast weather on Lagonav

Is this the island of Lagonav in Haiti or the west coast?  I spent seven years on Vancouver Island, so I know what it is like to have weeks on end of rain and cloud.  That is never the case on the island of Lagonav.  In the winter months is it sunny and clear nearly every day.  If we get rain it comes in the late afternoon or evening hours.

But today we got wet.  The skies were cloudy as we made our way up the mountain we could see the rain falling out over the water.  We were thankful for the shade and resulting cooler temps, but we did not know what was in store.  We made our way past Nan Mangot on our drive to the furthest churches from our guest house in Ansagale.

It started to rain and the roads got a little slick.  The Mule handled everything like a champ.  I did have to put it into 4-wheel drive and lock the differential on a couple uphill sections that were wet.  On the drive up to Lapye we always have a nice view of the mountains.  As you can see in the picture, by the time we were up at about 1500 feet the hills were shrouded in rain clouds.  The last climb up to Lapye at elevation 2600 feet was done in the fog.  We were soaked by this time and cold.  Whenever we were going more than 5 miles per hour the wind made it even colder.

We ended up visiting 3 churches.  We had planned on visiting Bwa Pen as well as Lapye, Plenn Mapou and Nan Kafe, but the rain really started coming down.  The picture at right shows the few saints who gathered to greet us up on Lapye.  We sheltered under the overhang to get a brief respite from the rain.  We are thankful for report that very few people from the churches died in the quake.  The five hours out on the road was made worth by the time spent talking with and praying for the saints at these churches.