Puerto Rico

I am in Puerto Rico.

To eat mangoes and enjoy sun, marvel at tropical plants and dance to salsa from passing cars, and to have two fewer weeks of winter in central NY.

My dear father woke up at the offensive hour of 3:30am to whisk me to the airport this morning. And by lunchtime I found myself in the wildly different world of a tropical island. My parents may be wondering with lament what about my education has made me such an incorrigible traveler, but they still support and love me and for that I am exceedingly grateful.

I write this using the focused yet still inaccurate sticky tap of thumbs on wee screen. This is no smart phone, mind, but an iPod touch with a cracked screen and some hope of garnering wifi.

People may see me sitting here, by the bay with pink sunset clouds, thinking I am madly texting. But no, I am playing writer.

I wonder if i travel alone because it makes me write. I get all full of solo observances and need to put them into words.

I sit here in this park in the capital city, with the biggest pour of rum $3.50 ever bought someone, listening to the car alarms, the Spanish chatter, watching the groups of tourists--both white and local alike--meander about. Soon I shall go to one of the food trucks and eat something cheap, authentic, and fattening.

The plane landed to shouts and applause; that's how it is here. There are 4 million Puerto Ricans on the island and 4 million of them living elsewhere and there is palpable love of this island as home, problems and all.

I felt like an air-feeding plant upon leaving the air-conditioned falsehood of the airport: the air so gluey and wet I could survive by it alone lacking water from the soil. Then I set out to roam the capital (capitol?) city, the unaccustomed kiss of sun on my skin, the carribean breezes dismantling my hair. I just walked and barely did any thinking: it was mostly a meditation in observing this strange new world I was finding myself so suddenly in. Air travel makes these astonishing contrasts possible. Houses painted pleasing bright colors, tropical plants in unabashed jubilation. The men here sport pristinely buzzed haircuts and many tattoos, the Dont Mess With Me Women are also tattooed. People watching is always a favorite past time.

Unlike my previous experience in the tropics (Vietnam), here I can drink the water, feel no worry of malaria, and have a molecule of hope to understand at least a few words in the language. I can read some signs at least!