6am - 10:30am, daily: Rooster time. Sometimes the rooster goes off at 4 in the morning, sometimes in the afternoon, but mostly he is consistent and on schedule. Flores is too tightly packed and paved to have many roosters-in-residence, so the fact that my windows overlook one of the few small yards that houses one is a special auditory privilege. I guess.
7am, daily, and sometimes again shortly after 8: A woman circles the island selling newspapers, her voice mechanically repeating the same words, at the same volume, with the same inflection, day in and day out: "¡Periodico, el diario, la prensa! ¡Periodico, el diario, la prensa!"
Monday (Tuesday, Wednesday...): Somewhere just at the edge of audibility, Whitney Houston's I will always love you plays on repeat, all day long. Sunday and Thursday it was unchained melody. I wonder if I am going crazy. I wonder how those closer to the music are not.
6pm, Saturday - All day Sunday: the plonking piano and unending, nasal, poorly harmonized singing of the evangelical churches. Some of these sounds are from just up the hill, some carry from San Miguel across the water. All are irritating.
Dusk (5:30ish), daily: the ugly, scrungy looking blackbirds come out and made a racket - honking, tweeting, clacking, twippering, xylophloaming. They are nothing much to look at but they make an incredible variety of noises, at incredible volume. They gather in the park at the top of the island, lining the trees and the telephone lines, pooping on unsuspecting tourists, and singing their mad chorus, until a few short minutes later they flap off again and disappear until the next day. This description pretty exactly matches that given to me by my grandparents who spend the winter on the Arizona/Nevada border... but they didn't know what kind of birds they were, either.
6pm, Saturday - All day Sunday: the plonking piano and unending, nasal, poorly harmonized singing of the evangelical churches. Some of these sounds are from just up the hill, some carry from San Miguel across the water. All are irritating.
Dusk (5:30ish), daily: the ugly, scrungy looking blackbirds come out and made a racket - honking, tweeting, clacking, twippering, xylophloaming. They are nothing much to look at but they make an incredible variety of noises, at incredible volume. They gather in the park at the top of the island, lining the trees and the telephone lines, pooping on unsuspecting tourists, and singing their mad chorus, until a few short minutes later they flap off again and disappear until the next day. This description pretty exactly matches that given to me by my grandparents who spend the winter on the Arizona/Nevada border... but they didn't know what kind of birds they were, either.
Always: televisions.
Always: people yelling to each other up and down the street, between rooms in houses, across rooftops.
Occasionally: the sound of keys clacking on a typewriter, or the jitter of an old dot-matrix printer.
Always: my fridge. It is loud. It sounds like it is trying to brew coffee. At night, sometimes, I am thankful because it is a bit like white noise, and it drowns out the tvs and such still blaring nearby, but it switches on and off, so I can't rely on its soundblocking properties.
When everything else is quiet enough: the sound of lanchas bustling across the water, ferrying people back and forth to San Miguel.
Friday night: rain.
