Power shortages

Last night we had an odd experience in our apartment in Quito. The electricity went out. Kind of. We were watching TV, a lovely dubbed version of Critters, when all of a sudden the lights started to dim. The TV didn't quite go off, but it went into a gray snow buzz. Armed with our hand-crank flashlight (thanks Uncle Bill and Aunt Pat!), we went in to action. We gathered our candles and headlamps and waited to be plunged into darkness...but it didn't happen. Instead, the lights just kept getting dimmer and dimmer, but didn't actually go out. We turned them out and had a fun evening by candlelight. However, it was just kind of odd. I didn't know we could have power...shortages instead of full of outages!

We actually met someone in Puerto Lopez a few weeks ago who warned us this was going to happen. He ran one of the hydroelectric power plants. Apparently, rain falls have been far below normal this year (thanks Global Climate Change!) and they've known for a while that this would happen. It's been in the papers for the last few weeks. We'll see if this becomes a nightly occurrence, or if it's a sporadic kind of thing.