"Bajo el Cielo mas Puro de America"

The above words in Spanish is the first line of the national hymn of Santa Cruz: Under the purest skies of America....... pure skies?
Often when I've shown people pictures of Santa Cruz, they comment on the how blue the skies are. Well, not so these days. It hasn't rained for over 2 months and this is the season that the farmers burn their fields with the harvesting of sugar cane. So the air is filled with smoke and due to the dry weather and terrific winds there have been terrible fires, gone out of control in many farming areas just outside the city. The smoke in the atmosphere is causing not only gray skies, but serious health problems and even poor visibility for driving. We are keeping our windows closed with the air conditioning going to keep out the smoke. I do not remember experiencing anything like this before. It has been awfully hot as well. Officials are doing what little they can, but until we get a good hard rain there won't be much change.

Other news..... Daniel and I visited the fair, ExpoCruz 2007. We didn't take the camera because we took lots of pictures last year impressed by all the glamour and glitz. Wow! What a difference this year. It was just fabulous! The only negative being the crowded stands and lines. We went on a week night thinking it would be less crowded and there were reported 45,000 in attendance that night. We stayed from 8:00 to closing at midnight and only got to see about 1/2 of it all. We were really impressed with the atmosphere, the use of technology with the different displays, and the music, etc. Several countries like Brazil and Argentina and USA have entire buildings for themselves. Impressive stands were Indonesia and Kenya. We wanted to go back a second night, but the crowds were so thick we changed our minds.

And a final note... Daniel's cousin's son, Rodrigo, is coming to live with us for a short time. He has taken a job here in Santa Cruz (he's from La Paz) . He's Andy's age and very much like him - in personality and career focus; it will be interesting to have someone here with us again. We pick him up at the airport tomorrow.