A weekend in Puerto Rico- que rico! It wasn't so flavorful the last time I was there, fully 14 years ago, a stop over on our honey moon (spent sailing the Grenadines- She has put up with a lot). Naturally because I don't do beach vacations we rented a car and I started driving the hell out of the little island as soon as we landed on Saturday at 4am, Atlantic Time at La Mercedita Airport at Ponce ( pro: Pon-say, not "ponse" as English speakers tend to; in British English that would be suggestive). It was pitch black and my wife and I were tired, not nearly as worn out as the third member of our little troop, a colleague half our age and twice as exhausted, who had never been outside the USA. I know Puerto Rico, la colonia, is part of the US, but it isn't in any cultural terms other than shopping and currency. It was a fine place to step outside oneself, even if only for a short weekend.
In the viewing tower in the Caribbean National Forest.It was a hallucinogenic drive after arrivng so suddenly from the order and banality of urban South Florida to find ourselves darting through villages, under spreading canopies of imposing trees, dodging drunk drivers, getting lost in picturesque towns with Spanish Colonial plazas and helpful islanders who took pity and kept re-directing our Toyota full of gringos, Spanish speaking its true, but unable to decipher the multiplicity of vague roadsigns.
We found a hotel overlooking the Caribbean, facing east down a slope of green to a deep dark sea below, the island of Vieques on the horizon and we fell asleep Saturday morning. We awoke four hours later, to a world neither my wife nor I remembered, 15 years of prosperity have created a new more self confident, Free Associated State, with cleaner streets, better roads and happier people, it seemed. Our young colleague spent the 48 hours struggling to absorb a culture that she had never even come close to encountering, never having been further from Florida than the venerable state of Oklahoma, which though a fine place in many respects is poor preparation indeed for Puerto Rico, the enchanted island.
The whole weekend was a series of wild trips, El Yunque, San Juan the capital, seen at night, la Ruta Panoramica across the mountains and roast suckling pig eaten under the pines of the highlands, in Cayey, where else? A series of wild postcards, plopped into two very full days living, and a sudden undramatic flight back to Fort Lauderdale before dawn Monday morning with reinsertion into our daily, sub tropical lives. From 90 degrees to 70 degrees in two lofty hours. Here's Cabo Rojo at the southwestern tip of the Island at sunset, as mosquitoes descended in hordes to ravage us. Quick! A Medalla Light for him and a Rum Punch for her to revive their bloodless bodies! You don't see cliffs like these in the Florida Keys.
One excellent feature of my eccentric job is long alternating weekends, one of work followed by one of freedom. This trip was an experiment to see if two red eyes connected by unplanned travel might work. It did, and I have tons of stories and pictures for my diary. Que sabroso!
