Clever Name TBD

I just got back from a two-week break in Puerto Rico. My sweet and wonderful fiancé Kristen got to meet my family and master the art of playing dominoes.

We spent much of our time in Añasco, on the West side of the island, where my family is, and we went to the beach a several times. Playa Jobos in Isabela and Playa Crash Boat in Aguadilla are favorites.

We also went to the cinema a few times. Movies only cost $5.00 in Puerto Rico, but the downside is that you have to endure freezing temperatures and possibly way-too-loud audio.

There is a strange and annoying phenomenon that happened when people obtained the technology of climate control. It's often more about the other extreme than it is about comfort.

"It's bloody hot outside, so let's make it feel like the Arctic indoors to compensate." Never mind that because it's bloody hot outside, you are wearing shorts and a T-Shirt and being in the Arctic in shorts and a T-Shirt sucks ass. So everyone at tthe movie theater brings a fleece and a blanket, lest they spend the whole time shivering.

Kristen notes that the same happens in Canada, where it's bloody cold, so the inside of the shopping mall is made to feel like an oven. So you walk in wearing six layers and a heavy coat. By the time you get to a store, you've taken off so much clothing that you have no appendages left with which to carry anything you buy.

We also took a few days to tour the island on our own. We spent a couple of nights at my sister Kathy's house in Yauco, father South and a bit East, and went to nearby (a bit more East) Ponce to play tourist the day after Christmas. However, Ponce was a bit of a dud. Seems that right after Christmas, absolutely nothing is open—we couldn't even find food. So it was less fun than expected.

The next day, we went to La Parguera, where we rented a small motorboat and putted around in the Caribbean. The water off of La Parguera has many small islands scattered about. These islands and the mainland coast are covered with red mangroves and have small bits of sandy beach. There are many beautiful small houses that float on the coast of off of one of the islands. We found an island with a dock that encloses some water for swimming in and has a small park on it, and swam there for much of the day. Another, out pretty far from the coast, has a nice small beach on it and in the middle someone had built a rickety home out of some boards, equipped with a small portable TV, a kitchen, and so on.

That night, we took a tour boat (from the same docks that we rented our motor boat from) to the Phosphorescent Bay, which we had actually gone through during the day. There was a full moon out, which is problematic, but we were helped by the presence of many clouds that night. In the water are algae which phosphoresce when disturbed. Once my night vision ramped up, I could easily see the glow in the water as I swished my hand around. I could also pull some of the algae from the roots of the mangroves and have glowing bio-goo in my hand. If you ever make this trip, do not take the large tour boat; take the smallest one you can find, so you can reach into the water yourself. Unfortunately, the development of La Parguera has a lot of boats in the area and the algae are not as numerous as they once were. Apparently, the glow was once far more pronounced.

The next day, we drove to Fajardo, where we took a ferry out to Vieques. If you ever drive to the ferry terminal at Fajardo, go there with some patience. The signage is only marginally useful, and the town is a confounding maze of narrow one-way streets. It took us a few tries to find the right routing through the town.

The ferry itself is quite inexpensive at $2.00, but the ride is a bit rough, even on calm days. If you are prone to motion sickness, you may find yourself trapped in hell for an hour and a half. Kristen and I did OK, but a woman behind us on the return trip was returning her lunch to a ziplock bag for half the trip and decidedly unhappy well before then. You may want to explore air travel options. I, for one, will be renting a plane next time.

Vieques is pretty nice, but the town that the ferry takes you to is decidedly touristy. Many of the business owners seem to be native English speakers, migrants from The U.S. looking to start a business in a quiet little island. We stayed at a quant little hotel called Sea Gate Guest House, which is quite affordable and nice. It was more like staying at someone's home than a hotel; the owners make you breakfast and walk it up to your room, take you into town (which is a walkable distance), and so on.

I should mention that Puerto Rico has its own sounds, which you can't miss (whether you'd like to or not). The most unique is the coqui, a small frog native to and mascot of Puerto Rico which makes a surprisingly un-frog-like sound. You can here these in large numbers every night.

Where my parents live, there are also several roosters, which start making a lot of noise right around when we like to go to bed, and one of which has a remarkably weird and scraggly voice, and as a special bonus, several dogs which, when awakened, like to add their own chorus into the night.

If we were hoping for some quiet in Vieques, we had no such luck. The Sea Gate Guest House is also home to the SPCA in Vieques and several dogs and cats are on the property, as well as a couple of horses. These are fairly well heard at night, but not nearly so much as the apparent thousands of roosters in Vieques. It was like a massive rooster parade on the scale of Bay to Breakers was going on, with a huge choir of roosters progressing from one side of the hotel to the other. So much for restful sleep.

Due to inexperience (this was my first trip to Vieques) and therefore bad planning, we had to catch the ferry pretty soon after we woke up, so we didn't get to spend much time in Vieques. A return trip will have to include some time at the rumored-to-be-fantastic beaches and at the two phosphorescent bays in Vieques, supposed to be far more magnificent than the bay by La Parguera.

Back in Fajardo, we continued on to Viejo (Old) San Juan. Most tourists coming to Puerto Rico will spend much of their time in San Juan, which is where most hotels will be found. Unfortunately, it isn't all pretty. Old San Juan, however, is beautiful, and one can easily spend a few days there, preferably on foot, visiting the local shops and the many historic sites, including the large El Morro fortress.

We stayed at the thouroughly splendid Hotel El Convento, right in the heart of Old San Juan. We had dinner at El Picoteo, a Spanish tapas restaurant in the hotel, then checked in. El Convento is not an inexpensive hotel, easpecially in the high season ($400/night). However, if you come as a walk-in for that night and they have a room available, they can be quite accomodating. We got a room for $200 for the night. Having decided to splurge on a nice hotel in Old San Juan, that suited us just fine, and staying there proved to be a very good call. The hotel is remarkably pleasant, and you can't beat the location. Most importably, especially for Kristen, who was getting low on sleep (I kept waking up early), it was quiet. Really quiet. And the best was comfy. We got the best rest we'd had the whole trip.

But before sleeping, there was more adventuring to do. I called my cousins, who live in San Juan, and went to my Aunt Nancy's condo, as it was her birthday, and everyone was there for the party. Kristen got to meet even more family. My Cousin Carlos explained that she'd met the "country" side of the family out West, and now she could hang out with the city side. After a while at the party, we met Carlos and his girlfriend back in Old San Juan to go out for some live music.

We started at Nuyorican Cafe, where a couple of folk singers we performing, which wasn't quite what we were looking for. They stuck around for the next act, which was an excellent latin band, about eight members, including an 60-or-so year old guitarist who could rock out like nobody's business. After they were done, looking for more, we went to Rumbas, which I'd been to before. There was an act there performing some highly unusual music on a guitar and drum. If the sound guy knew more than "turn it up to 11," it may have been interesting enough to stick around for, but that wasn't the case. We got a bit more of a tour from Carlos, then went back to the hotel.

The next morning we made early use of the pool and hot tub, then were off to check out the city wall and El Morro, followed by some shopping and aquisition of munchies. Then we checked out and drove to Cataño, home of the Bacardi distillery, where we got a tour. The tour was fun, and we got a couple of free drinks. We discovered that we don't really like any Bacardi Rum (possibly any Rum) straight, and that the flavored versions of Bacardi are not really all that. We got the lamest Piña Colada (Bacardi Coco and pineaple juice) and Mojito (Bacardi Limón and soda) ever made, but we did learn that Sprite makes rum go down pretty nice. Bacardi isn't exactly Puerto Rican rum per se; it's made in Puerto Rico now, but it originated in Cuba, and is now headquartered in the Bahamas. Unfortunately, there aren't as many rum distilleries in Puerto Rico as there once were (Serrallés, makers of Don Q, have a sizeable operation), and tours of others are apparently nonexistant. We left with a bottle of Bacardi 8 to take back to Añasco.

The rest of the stay was back home at my parent's house, including New Year's, where we several visitors came to celebrate with us. Kristen and I proved our superior skills as a dominoes team by winning seven games in a row against many formidable competitors, who, much to their grief, admired Kristen's unbelieveable ability to master the game in a week. Perhaps we were just very lucky. Perhaps not.