La furia del mar Last week a Cuban friend of mine emailed me some images from the neighbourhood where he grew up, Vedado, in La Habana: his whole street - and half the suburb - was under water, courtesy of Cyclone Wilma. This street (right) is Paseo - a grand, elegant boulevarde, that slopes down to the ocean. Traffic travels in both directions: separating the carriageway is a strip of parkland with trees and benches. But here, it looks more like a river than a road.
After the torment, some chiquiticas (below) pose in the water on a submerged Calle Calzada. I remember when I was a kid, growing up in Brisbane, Queensland, we would get so excited when a cyclone was on its way. One day, me and my brother and sister made a whole bunch of hand-drawn flyers (this was a long time before home publishing) with the words "Cyclone Daisy is coming" and a pretty rudimentary picture of a flower and put them in the letterboxes of our neighbours.
One time I waded knee-deep in water to get home from school. The biggest disappointment for us was missing the cyclone in 1974 - I forget its name. It flooded great parts of our city, but we were in Sydney on holidays, and missed it. We got an extra week or two off school as a result though. So we were pretty happy.















© Copyright Gabriel Wilder 2005