We Survived the Great Puerto Rico Power Outage

By Wednesday afternoon things got interesting on our vacation.  Apparently, a fire broke out at the main power plant in Puerto Rico, and all of Puerto Rico lost power.  The power was out for 2 1/2 days where we stayed, other places even longer.  We played board games at night by lantern.  We talked to a man in Old San Juan who had a conspiracy theory as to how the fire started.  He said he hadn’t seen anything like this in the 45 years he had been living there.  Another lady on the beach said almost the same thing.  Even during hurricanes, she had never seen anything like this in the 40 years she had been there.  Well, weren’t we just lucky!  Ha!  On the evening that the power came back on, we had just gotten back from snorkeling.  I took a shower (a cold one).  Shawn then suggested we should go out for dinner.  Well, with wet hair I didn’t want to go to a super nice restaurant, so we walked down to a Pizza Hut.  They had a generator.  Toward the end of our meal, it appeared the power was coming back on as the lights got brighter.  Everyone began to clap in the restaurant.  Within a few seconds, though, all the lights were killed, and we sat there in the dark.  A waitress came and held a flashlight over our table, and because they couldn’t accept credit cards they sent everyone to the ATM.  The ATM wasn’t working, so they cheerfully told everyone they got a free meal.  That night, after putting the kids to bed, I went out and stood on the balcony.  After awhile, I noticed flashes of light all around me.  I glanced inside our condo and saw the hall light on.  It was the sweetest sight!  Just then Cody and Anna came running out of their bedroom.  We threw our arms around each other in happiness, and there may have been some jumping for joy!  We knelt down and thanked God for the electricity.  Never take the “small” things for granted.