"I had heard a few people say that we were visiting in the beginning of the rainy season, but it took me several days to figure out that their idea of 'rainy season' and mine were vastly different. When I hear 'rainy season' I picture the Pacific Northwest - weeks on end of dull gray skies, the clouds emptying their contents in a multitude of forms and degrees... (drizzle, sprinkles, rain, showers, downpour)... with no concrete way of knowing what day it might stop, or when we might hope to see a glimmer of blue sky. Our driver to Mayfield Falls explained to us that the 'rainy season' in Jamaica means it rains every day... for 20 minutes or so... then it stops, and that's it. When it comes to time, it hardly puts a pause in the day's activities... but in terms of volume, what falls in those 20 minutes is well beyond the most excessive downpour we have back home. Watching the hard earth turn to mud and run downhill made me realize why they had raised sidewalks between the buildings up here on the mountain."