Lots of rain in Cyprus... and lots of mosquitoes too

Every cloud, as they say, has a silver lining. And sometimes it seems as if the reverse is true. We've had one of the wettest winters I can remember in Cyprus, in the past couple of months. Oh, there has been plenty of sunshine, and the daytime temperatures haven't been TOO cold. We keep having a week or two when it's mostly dry and sunny, then out of the blue, yet more rain.

Today it came on to pour just after lunch. For about five minutes, it was absolutely torrential, and even included some hailstones:

I was glad not to be outside in it. Glad, too, that the reservoirs are filling up, and the water table doing better, and that, with the new desalination plants currently being built, water shortages in Cyprus should (probably) be a thing of the past.

So, the clouds in Cyprus do indeed have a wonderfully silver lining. But the resultant rain brings another problem, which I hinted at when I wrote about going for a walk to the Aqueduct.

Yes. All this rain, and relatively mild temperatures means that there are also more mosquitoes than I can remember at any time of year, let alone January. We don't normally expect them at this time of year at all. But for the last few nights, I've been awakened by that annoying bzzzzzzzzzzz in my ear more than once. I've been here long enough that mosquito bites no longer cause pain or even itching, but it was a bit of a shock to discover, yesterday morning, just how many bites I had on my face.

Today there were even more. I look almost as if I have chicken-pox. I even took a very unflattering photo of myself, enlarging the middle area to demonstrate my current spottiness:

And there are more on my forehead:

There are some on my arms, too. None of them itch, but they're not very pretty.

This morning I did manage to squash THREE mosquitoes that were resting on the bedroom wall, low enough for me to hit them. While I don't like destroying any living creature, I'm afraid I have no compassion for mozzies. Particularly since it was evident on their demise that they had, indeed, been biting me...