I’ve traveled to a lot of different countries, and experienced a lot of different weather, but nothing else quite compares to the storm we experienced last night in Havana. The rain came down so hard, so fast, followed by super loud thunder and bright lightning. It was insane how quickly the weather changed.

One minute we were hanging our clothes on the windowsill to dry, and the next minute the wind was throwing them across the floor. An hour of the clothes drying progress gone, but it was totally worth it. We wanted to go outside to experience the weather, but we could barely open the door to our room, because the draft from the wind was so powerful. It took us a minute to realize we had to close the windows first. Clearly we know nothing about environmental science.

The lobby was more full than I’ve ever seen it, everyone standing under the awning, waiting for the weather to mellow out. I’m sure for the people trying to get home from work it was a nuisance, but for us it was exciting. The streets filled with water in no time, the spray from the cars aggressively shot up over the sidewalk. Even the lobby began to flood, and the hotel employees had to use mops to push the water back outside, which wasn’t very effective.

It actually really surprised me that the rain was so cold. It was refreshing after around six days of hot weather to experience the cold. I really wanted to run around in the puddles and take pictures, but unfortunately cameras and water generally aren’t compatible.

Experiencing a tropical storm has been one of the more interesting experiences we’ve had so far. In California, any amount of rain has people thinking the apocalypse is upon us, but in Cuba crazy weather is the norm. We asked a girl in the lobby weather whether (ha ha, get it?) or not the Cuban people are afraid of storms, but she shrugged it off, saying they’re used to it.