Excerpt from a letter home

Hey all,
I have had a lot to say lately... but not the access to the web to be able to say it (unlike Kev:) The following is an excerpt from a letter I wrote home but thought that you all might enjoy it. Thanks to Kristin for sharing her letter...not like she really had a choice. ;) So here is the letter:

"Didn´t know until just now that this white paper looks like a yellow legal pad in candle light. I highly encourage you to light a candle and read the rest of this by candlelight just to be able to enjoy the color change. I thought I had grabbed the yellow pad (I have a yellow one too) but it is the white one. Go on, get out your candles and check it out. I will wait while you get one.
Still waiting..... waiting..... hello there Necio (a puppy at our site)

Got one? Good! Ok, so now that we are both in beautiful candle light, I feel like I should write something worthy of candlelight. Thinking.... should have been thinking while you went for the candle. Thinking... the stars are beautiful here. The Milky Way is quite clear - in it´s ¨milky¨ way. Clear nights are rare - well, clear moments happen often, but that doesn´t mean that they coincide with when I am outside because the weather travels and changes fast. What is clear now might be cloudy in less than an hour - or the other way around. Kevin and I have both noticed that the moon seems very bright here - a clear night with a full moon casts clear bright moon shadows. .

I don´t think I have told you about the fireflys here, but I lose track about what I put into letters and to whom and what went into my journal, so if I did tell you about fireflys you can skip the next part.

Staying with me? Ok, so I was very excited to find that there are fireflys here just like home. Somehow it was calming familiar - just good. I was even more thrilled to find that there are 2 types of fireflys here. The normal one that you know from home and a bigger one. The other one is more orange in color (vs the yellow green of ours at home) and it flashes faster - tends to fly higher and faster and seems larger. Best I can tell, it is a light about the size of my fingernail - but I don´t ever get to see it up close because it flies high and fast and I am slow and not as good as it in the dark. Some day I will catch one. The first time I saw it I was shocked - sooo cool to see a big ass firefly / lightning bug.

Also in the realm of cool night sites - when riding in a boat at night some times there is fosphorescence (or however you spell it - I swear my english is going downhill). Anywho, there is sometimes phosforecence in the water, at times just little glints in the water curling back from the bow of the boat, and you wonder if you are imagining it or if it is really glints of moonlight reflected for a moment by the water. But there are also moments when the entire curl of water streaming away from the bow of the boat lights up like a line of flame from a gas stove only more torquise than blue and a part of your heart gasps at the sight as your mind rushes to believe and record it - you want it to go on and on - but jus as quick as thought it is gone and you are filled with doubt that it was ever really there.

As if that wasn´t enough the water is glossy smooth all around you, the land in the distance on every side looks like a cutout stage prop - too perfect to be real and the ever present Panamanian Thunderstorm is looming over land on one side adding its own light show to the beauty - yellow pink in color and far enough away to not feel worried about getting wet - just yet anyway. Soon dawn will start adding its own touches of beauty to the scene as you watch - fighting a sleepy feeling in the cool but balmy air.

On that note, I will let darkness take this lettre for the night and wish you sweet dreams.