No water, No air conditioner, no power - WE LOVE IT HERE?!?!?!

As you probably know we cheaper out and flew out of vegas because it was something like $500 cheaper per person.  It was a LONG trip.  The flight was shorter but the layover in Houston was 3 am to 10 am I thought I was going to lose my mind I was so tired and couldn't sleep.  I did watch some fun Amazing race though and got to see Gdansk Poland, and not just Gdansk but Mormons in Gdansk.  That was really fun.

We finally arrived and at first they said they didn't have a car for us but when she realized it was us, (very good repeat customers) she scrambled to find something.  It wasn't what we wanted, its a bit of a gas hog but better than no car.

We always go straight to the 2 grocery stored.  We try to get most of our stuff at the local store but there is a bigger americanized store we can find almost anything.  While we were there the power went out.   It was find for shopping they have sky lights but there was no power to run the registers.  Evidentaly the power has been going out a lot lately.  Some problems with the Power creators (both people and machines).  So we finished up just about when the generator kicked in and we were able to check out.

We got to our house and immediately started with washing dishes, bedding etc. everything that has been sitting for 9 months.  I can't stand the thought of sleeping or eating off of things that have been sitting for 9 months.  I was fortunate enough to be able to get our sheets washed and dried before the power went of AGAIN.  It was sweltering hot, but we had a lot to do so we sort of cleaned in the dark with flashlights and were grateful we had clean sheets.  We had cold cereal for dinner (and it wasn't healthy ceral, it wasn't even lucky charms, it was my least favorite, captain crunch, oh joy) We have a water filter and we always set that up first so we also had some drinking water.  We did not have water to shower though. When we don't have electricity we don't have water because the water is pumped to the house with a pump that uses electricity.  So, we had about 1 gallon of stored water from last trip and we used that to sprinkle shower.  Yikes after being in airports, and sleeping on the floor of the airport, yes I was that desperate that I slept on the floor.  It was GROSS but I was desperate.  I did manage to get about an hour of sleep.  Anyway we were so exhausted I went to sleep at 8:30 and slept until 8:30 the next morning.  I had taken PMs and between them, the exhaustion and the heat, I really had trouble waking up.  Tom kept telling me get to get up and I just couldn't.  Finally we got up and had cold cereal, not much else to have with no power.   When we were up and about we learned that the rest of the Islands power had been restored but our street.  How does that happen??  Well, it turns out all the on again off again power situation burned out the transformer that services our street.  They worked on it all day and then told us they couldn't fix it and it was the Home Owners Association's responsilbity to fix it.  So we held an HOA meeting in the street and decided we wouldn't and couldn't afford to buy a new one.  The Pres. called RECO (The roatan electric company) and told them they had to fix it.  Tom and I left to go snorkeling.  It was fun we cooled off, at dinner at bananarama and when we were coming home we were following a back hoe (I didn't even know they had those on the island) and a truck with a transformer in the back.  We pulled into our driveway to see all the neighbors out watching to see if we would have power by bedtime.  (its about 6:30 at this point).  The neighbors across the street (the ones with power and the ones storing our meat in their fridge) offered us a shower, we decided to wait it out so we could shower at home.  Sure enough at about 9:00 they power came on!!  You wouldn't have thought it was new year's eve.  There was cheering and yelling and whistling and there were only 7 of us without power.  But let me tell you, its pretty miserable sleeping without air.  I mean I think San Diego is miserable without air but Roatan is 10 times worse.

So we have a shower, we have air conditioning and all is right in the third world.