An Island Without Power

We were awoken this morning at 6:30 by the familiar but never welcome sound of the click of all the appliances, fans and air conditioning units turning off as they lost power.  At first we thought it was just our neighborhood but as we drove Arianna to school we heard on the radio that it was island wide.  A short up in West Bay caused a system wide failure that affected the entire islands grid.  The outage would last most of the day and this evening parts of the island still remain without power.  We finally got it back around 2:30 p.m. and are holding our breath that it wont go out again tonight as has happened to a couple of our friends who got it back for a few hours and now have lost it again.  We went snorkeling early in the day with Russ and Gail at Sunset House.  Around 8:30 we were re-joined by Arianna who's school had closed after an hour and a half of waiting for the power to return.  We all headed over to Camana Bay which had generators and was up and running.  While there, we saw more people at Cafe Del Sol (which had a generator and wifi) than we had ever seen before. The whole island was out looking for A/C and Internet access and Camana had both.

Late in the day we got another unwelcome surprise, the government is looking at introducing taxation of work permit holders.  It looks like a 10% flat tax but we don't have the full details yet.  Never-the-less it does look like our tax free existence is coming to an end. In the coming days they will release the full details of how much and what income is subject to it. 

Here are some shots from our snorkeling with GG and Russ the last few days.