Lights Out

All I can say is it is rainy season again. EVERYDAY it rains, sometimes the whole day is cloudy and dreary but generally we have bright sun, beautiful skies and birds singing in the early morning. At about 10 am, the darker clouds start building and by around two in the afternoon, we start hearing thunder at a distance, moving closer and by evening it has either rained and cleared, or is into serious storms. I suspect this has a lot to do with the heat in Rio and the Macacu valley (reserve) pumping inland and up into the cooler air in the mountains but regardless of Mother Nature's reasons, for us it means NO LIGHTS, telephones or Internet. EVERYDAY! we have an outage of electricity at some point. The last 4 days it has happened right at dusk, duration of an hour to 5 hours. For all of you that live in a city, this means dinner by candlelight, solitaire with cards (for you fellow addict - no spider solitaire), no 'law and order' and COLD showers. Compensation, we get to wake to a view of the valley that takes your breath away. The world washed clean of smoke and haze, and the forest a healthy bright green.

All that TV and Computer is bad for your eyes anyway. Yep! bed by nine and awake as the sun rises - that's the way to live(?).