Photos stories: Puerto Rico

A pebble rolled in from the surf. Beach view near Isabella on the northwest coast.

Road food! Trucks like these--or even a small tent with a picnic table--can be found on the sides of highways for snacks in this car-driven culture. We had "mofongo" here, which is a wad of green banana (and maybe some other tubers) mashed up around ground meat. Not the most attractive food, but certainly tasty.

The requisite tourist photo on the narrow brick streets of old San Juan. The houses are painted in festive colors like this, with ornate little balconies, and beguiling tropical plants. A pleasure to pad around indeed.

Haha, maybe the sign in the background indicates what happens if you have too many of these. This one was cucumber-infused.

"Breaded Fried Skirt Con Rice and Maduros"--gotta love the mix of Spanish and English. But skirt?

The botanic gardens of the University of San Juan were a sanctuary indeed. Here a heliconia flower bathes in the sun. I walked from bamboo to palms, holding a small cardboard cup of coffee, and blissed out on the glorious diversity of plant forms. Few people were on the grounds, and the place was thick with trees and trails, so one could meander so they felt lost...admiring the iguanas and listening to the birds. It was more church than church.

In the right conditions, some bamboo can grow up to 4 feet per day (according to my brochure)!

Driving the south-east part of the island was an experience wholly different from the rest of the land. Instead of lush thick forest or even thick cities, the area between Ponce and San Juan felt like the American southwest. Jutty hills and mountains formed a broad backdrop with no more ground cover than a few cacti and wizened yellow plants. The views were spectacular as we curved up and around and down along our smooth road.

The scene of my kayak trip last night. The clouds were absolutely captivating in this way, with the sun tinting only their edges, eventually fading the whole lot to a rosy purple.

Mi cama. Although no malaria here, one still doesn't want to sleep with the mosquitoes. I remember when my sister was little, she yearned for a princess style bed like this.

Pictures de Puerto Rico

Of course: I had to find a bike to rent in San Juan.

The view from our beach house. Sometimes I pretend we're on a cruise ship, forging off into the surf, like when my grandparents took me when I was a child.

The place where blogs are written.

Dry forest epiphyte.

The "trail head" (NOT) from which we emerged after picking through the pokey forest.

In the historic and charming town of San German...this church/museum was built in the late 1600's!

Anyone interested in a fixer-upper?

Our victorious road-side fruit-stand haul. Check out the size of that onion. Really?

Cacti and noisey noise

I just about cannot imagine anything more indulgent than this.

I've been living on the sea, in a beach house just about overhanging
the water. (west coast by Rincon) This place goes for $200 per night
but we are staying here for free. The owners of the bed and breakfast
farm in the mountains, where I spent a winter working and feeding
horses and harvesting bananas, own this place now. And there is not
much work to be done this week so we are hanging out.

Who is "we"? My biking buddy, Lady Elise, from my southeast Asia trip,
and her two friends. So we are 4 farm-working women, glorying in the
sun, loving the absence of winter. We seamlessly are preparing food
together: someone makes a smoothy, someone else a salad, and someone
else is washing the dishes. We've gone hiking, swimming, shopping
together, and much of it is done in companiable silence: no need for
chatter filler or unnecessary drama. We're like a little flock of
happy birds, just less frenzied. All of us unabashed lovers of fruits
and vegetables. After the few days alone in the capital city, I am so
happy to have companions, now a mix of alone and together time.

This morning, under the auspices of the moon still, we set off in the
early darkness for the dry forest of Guanica. This place is amazing,
for while the rest of the island gets plenty or a reasonable amount of
rain, this little rain-shadowed location has cacti. Cacti growing
right in the sand on the beach. Other small enduring low-growing
bushes, all prickly, ranged over the hillside. Epiphytes, like
vivacious up-does clung to other plants, while others drifted
gracefully towards the earth like many strands of beards.

Neither the guidebook nor any interpretive signs offered us anything
approaching a map, so we wandered on the marked trails we haphazardly
found, in quiet happy appreciation. Until by the middle of the day, we
found ourselves on a trail which was unceremoniously becoming more and
more insubstantial, until we found ourselves without any indication at
all of where to place our feet.  But we knew where the ocean was, we
could see it, and so we picked our way gingerly forth through the dry
mass. The forging was incredibly slow, given the pokiness of the
environment (cacti and all that). But I commented at least it wasn't
muddy. Not exactly the most forgiving forest to be ducking through,
but when we made it to the paved road I shouted indeed and there was
much rejoicing. I picked hairy sticky free-riders from my legs, and a
substantial star-fish like spine from my sneaker, and all was well.

It is noisy here, at this beach house. One might expect the endless
crash of surf to be the dominant sound-track--and even that is so loud
we must raise our voices to be heard even in the living room. But over
the surf are a karaoke bar, a salsa club, and a disco-tech above us on
the hill. The grace-less sounds of their merry-making are indicators
of humans as capable of great celebration but also of irritating
disruption. Noise is fine if YOU are having the fun. It's also very
loud noise, as is the case for most noises in Puerto Rico.

This noise situation actually encompasses a truth of this island: an
enchanted greenly beautiful tropical ocean-surrounded nugget that is
also one of the most densely populated areas on earth. (Taiwan, for
instance, does top the island) Loud salsa music and crashing surf
illustrate this.

The girls handed me plush over-sized earplugs on my first night, and I
was sure I would need them because I could hear, in full detail, the
parties just up the hill. But, as an experiment, I tried going without
them. So the first night--astonishingly--I fell asleep amidst a salsa
dance, and the second night I drifted off to the bass-heavy
irreverence of reggaeton. (I'm rather proud of myself)

Navi-Land

Posing next to the chicken-footed camels and cookie-eating bears at the bizarre Navi-land. Feliz navidad mi amigos!

The most bizarre Christmas

I'd seen large lit signs for "Navi Land" on the edge of the old capital city, near the pier. At first this bemused me: some sort of activity center for those serving Navy duty and their families? But that didn't make sense... Then I realized this was Navidad Land, Christmas Land!, and I padded over in the dark, drawn by the glowing lights and blasting music.

So thus evening I experienced the most bizarre Christmas, Puerto Rico style.

The park was decked out in tents, miniature gingerbread houses, cut-outs of camels (the three wise men?), oversized candy canes stuck in flower planters, and Christmas lights on....palm trees. For someone conditioned for Christmas as fat snowflakes, hot chocolate, and tasteful hymns, this was hilarious and strange. Parents held plastic cups of beer while their children ate cotton candy and played in the decorative houses; a giant cruise ship slid by in the night. Permeated throughout all of this was blasting chincy Christmas barf music: the type with overly perky child choirs singing cloyingly of santa claus.

I walked around enjoying the surreal-ness of this (I was the only "tourist"--this was thoroughly a local draw) until I couldn't stomach it any longer. But too strange not to write about!

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!

The beautiful supper

I had one of the happiest nights last night, since a long time. Nothing tectonic: just a dinner party. But the dear simple pleasure of good company, lovingly prepared food, and a cozy house in the winter.

In the small town of Moscow Idaho, in the empty moonscape of endless wheat fields. After biking out of town around these fields earlier that day, it put into light how dear it was to be cozy humanity together.


This made me celebrate the path my connection with these people had taken. Originally, they were just Mr. Baritone (and Mrs. Artist) and Mr. Tenor (and Mrs. Austria) from my Episcopal choir when I used to play here. I could have been "just their organist" and left it at that. But now I was returning to visit after a time away, never imagining what dear friends and inspiring models these people would be.

I thoroughly enjoy being around people who've had more time living than I have: to be inspired by their wisdom and histories, to see that brightness and happiness continues onward. We were scientists and an artist and a professor and the conversations meandered interestingly. And as model couples, both of them--man and woman--it's like watching the successful epilogue of a romantic movie, seeing them together. I was glowing to have Mr. India with me there (we failed our break-up, a break-up due to circumstance, not hearts), and for these moments I pretended I could have this too.

The creative energy and beautiful presentation that Mrs. Artist brought to this meal inspired me to want to grow up and host a dinner party myself. Candles, Spanish wine, jazzy music, and food served in courses: pear walnut salad, gallette, kale-sausage stew, and rich vanilla icecream with huckleberries.

There is something about music that is a glowing frosting for a gathering. I sat nested in the middle of them all, everyone squinting at a small hymnal, and hammered out Christmas carols on a cranky, yet obliging piano. Then we set out on a group foray--inspired by an application on Mr. India's phone which can "hear" and then name a song--to find the words and chords for the charming and little known Cherry Tree Carol. We tripped through this a few times but then eventually sounded pretty good and congratulated ourselves. And even I was inspired to sing--and that takes a lot for me.

I can't stay here. But I have learned what to strive for when I live in a place.