Sunday, June 29, 2008

Radical Rainbow

We've had four days of heavy duty rain here on Bonaire. I can't remember when the last rain before that was. It was quite a number of months ago. So the Kibrahacha trees should be bursting into bloom any day now.

The heavy rains also mean that the recently repaired dirt roads in Washington Park are very bumpy and rutted again. This makes for entertaining mountain bike riding, but also creates a killer rough ride in our trusty Suzuki Samurai.

I was treated to a nice bright partial rainbow on Saturday am, as I rode my bike north of Boca Onima. I was also enjoying the fact that it wasn't raining on me as I pedaled along. The sky was black over the south end of the island.

My bike riding sunglasses have polarizing lenses, and I noticed that the rainbow colors looked more intense with the glasses on than without them. I filed that fact away for future picture taking possibilities.

Then I put the glasses back on and tilted my head 90 degrees to the right and THE RAINBOW DISAPPEARED! I bet I looked like a bobbing head doll as I rode along - rainbow... no rainbow... rainbow... no rainbow. It was great. So those clever raindrops must polarize the sunlight in
addition to splitting it into all those nice colors.

1 comment:

FALPhil said...

Cameron and I saw the same rainbow. We must have been approximately an hour behind you in the park. We are pretty sure we saw your bike tire tracks on the exit road.