No Hay Luz

Today I switched cabañas. Previously, Adriana and I were staying in Cabañas Ana Cristina. We had a small apartment with two bedrooms, a kitchen, and a bathroom that was way way high up in Santa Rosa. The pictures are the view from our balcony (the one with me is a bit blurry, since we were trying to get lots of mountains in the pictures while simultaneously providing proof that I am actually alive). However, Adriana went back to Caracas today and is being replaced by Juan Carlos (the prof), Nelson (the lab tech), and Ivan (the nice guy who invited Sarah and I to the beach). They should be arriving any moment now. I hope so, anyway. And later I'll post pictures of the new place!

There have been a series of power outages here in the past few days. Last night, we had an outage for about two hours, and there was another for two hours this afternoon. I found out that the afternoon outage was actually a planned rationing step. It was a bit frustrating, since most of the things that I needed to get done today involved electricity -- light for drawing my map sites, a computer to apply for image acquisition, electricity for laundry. There is a Spanish post-doc here who sat on the bench outside the lab and commiserated with me, and then we were joined by a very nice prof in entomology who starting raving about the Ithaca music scene. He knows the guys in Donna the Buffalo (whose CD Marne gave me) and loves the Trumansburg music festival. He visited Yale in the late 90's and he thinks that New Haven is pretty, if a bit rough. I raised my eyebrows and asked "and Caracas?" and he conceded the point.

When I was packing for Venezuela, Marylee (Ryan's mom) insisted that I borrow her Swiss Army knife. These things are the ultimate in gadgetry, and it has turned out to be the single most useful item that I have ever brought with me on any trip. We've used this one to chop up food, to cut open packages, to open cans and bottles, and to put batteries in our devices. I've even used the magnifying glass to read the teeny print on one of the maps that I have. And yes, I'm pretty sure that using the magnifying glass on a Swiss Army knife to fix a real problem makes me way cool.