8th September

We've been stuck in the Posada most of the day. The rain has been beating down all night and most of the village is flooded. The hurricane is called Ivan. We've been watching the satellite picture on the news. The outskirts of the eye passed close to Isla Margarita and, this morning the weather reports were saying that it was heading for Aruba. Los Roques sits right between the two.

I thought about calling Mum, dithered for hours, because I knew it would scare her witless, and then all the power and telephone lines went down. By this time a rabble of travellers that had been camping on the beach because of the extortionate prices here were huddled in the dining room of our posada. A Swiss girl who is travelling South America with her brother and her boyfriend was sobbing uncontrollably. A British couple had arrived that morning with a really nice Ozzy couple – Alison and Damien. They had been camping together. They’d taken off to the shops to try to get as much food in as possible before it became impossible to venture out. Lunch and dinner will be crisps and biscuits. It will make a change from fish and rice, which we’ve had every day twice a day since we arrived.

The owner of the posada and her son seem to be taking everything in their stride. All they’ve been doing is sweeping gallons of water out of the dining room onto the dirt road outside. They don’t seem even slightly worried. ‘No hurricane here’ they keep saying. They, like us had been glued to the news watching the satellite picture of the eye heading right this way, however they are putting their faith in the fact that there hasn’t been a hurricane this far south in 800 years. Great – no hurricane in 800 years and then we get here. What they are not taking into account is global warming. I decide it’s probably best not to try to explain that one – not at this stage and certainly not in my very limited Spanish. I wish the Swiss girl would stop crying. I feel for her. I’m scared too. I’m really scared for the people who live here in such flimsy houses. And I’m trying to push back dark thoughts that are telling me I should have called my mum. But what can we do? I push down a rising panic and decide I have to wake Tim. He was in our room nursing a hangover. I woke him and we packed?? I have no idea why we did that. Chained our packs to the concrete bed and worked out that if we sat in the concrete cupboard on the wall with our backs up against the inside we might survive. As silly as this might sound, you need to see these islands. They are so flat. The posada is one of the very few, sturdy, stone buildings here. There’s a small hill in the centre of Grand Roque but it has a really old tower on it. I was concerned that it might crumble on us when the weather was glorious, never mind with the winds lashing the way they are. The bows of the trees are touching the ground. I guess it’s our plan B

The locals put their faith in faith. They are very religious here, and I too am starting to think about God. Their way of coping with things is to get roaring drunk. It’s crazy. I can understand a feeling of helplessness, but if that eye comes this way, they are going to need to sober up pronto. What they don’t seem to understand is that another massive hurricane is blowing so strong that it is pushing Ivan south…and there’s a first time for everything. It's only 3 days in! Surely we can't die already?