The Sweet Spot

As everyone in the Northern Hemisphere enjoys the balmy summer days and warm nights, the Southern Hemisphere faces winter. 

For Curitiba, don´t think White Christmas. Think something resembling the middle of autumn. Some days are pleasant and sunny, but most are cloudy, cool, and rainy. The absence of indoor heating here means that you need to find another way to keep warm.

The hot shower. 

Although some in Curitiba have gas-powered water heaters, the more economical version is an electric contraption you connect to your shower head. There are only two kinds of people who know how to install them: Either you have a degree in electrical engineering or you have no understanding of how electircity works. Anything in the middle means you are unqualified for the task. I am somewhere in the middle of the spectrum, which means I can only marvel at this technology and speculate as to how it works.

Mastering the opeartion of the electric shower heater, or ducha loca as Peace Corps volunteers affectionately refer to it, is an art form. There is a fine balance between finding a water temperature that will allow you enough water pressure to do everything you need to in the shower. At the same time, you run the constant risk of electricuting yourself. 

If you don´t turn the shower on enough, you will not activate heater. Once you turn the water on enough, you will hear a rush that reminds me of the sound of a waterfall. That signals the beginning of the dance.

Now that you have turned on the heater, you need to find the ever-elusive sweet spot where you balance pressure and temperature to achieve the maximum shower experience. The water pressure where you activate the shower is too high to get it hot enough. So then you have to back track a bit, turning the handle ever so slightly. If you turn it too much, you will turn off the heater and be standing under a stream of frigid water. If you don´t turn it enough, you will remain under a tepid flow of water that is not quite comfortable enough to consider a warm shower.

So the dance continues until you achieve the nirvana that is the perfect shower with the electric shower heater. 

Keep in mind that I am unqualified about how these things work, so the previous five paragraphs is pure speculation. If you have any ideas as to how I can do this any better, please let me know.

As I learned from my time in Ecuador, anytime you walk out of a hot shower into a chilly morning, you are bound to be hit by gripe. But the thirty minutes of gripe-related discomfort are totally worth it for the escape that the shower provides.