Karma, Puerto Rico Style

For the second weekend in a row, I was jet-setting off to a destination far away from my home of New York. Last weekend was my family reunion / graduation party in California. A few days later and I was off to the foreign land of Puerto Rico, my first trip to the Caribbean. Well, to be honest, Puerto Rico was only really foreign to me because of my own lack of knowledge of this place. I say "this place" because I'm sitting at the San Juan airport at 10:00pm on Sunday night waiting for my delayed flight to take me back to New York at the cozy hour of 2:30am :o| ....

Anyways...this was going to be a guys' weekend out with my friend Sean and another friend of his from New York. And it was nothing short of epic. I profess to have been quite ignorant about Puerto Rico before I came. I mean, I know it's a US territory, but I am not really sure what that means. So I went ahead and built a mental picture of this place based on my prejudices from seeing how the Puerto Ricans in New York live. I guess maybe this prejudice is also based on my experience seeing some areas of South America as well. I assumed that most of the roads would be downtrodden, the people would not be very well educated, and there would be poverty everywhere. I didn't know if I needed a passport to go there, or if they used US currency. I wasn't sure if the people would be friendly or not to the Americans or what the political situation would be between us and them.

After a few hours in town, I realized how wrong I was about everything. The people here are wonderful, very friendly, very well educated, most speak English perfectly, and, surprisingly enough, most of the Puerto Ricans really dislike the New York Puerto Ricans because they give them a bad reputation. To hammer home the point of the similarities between Puerto Rico and the US, I came across an Anytown, USA shopping center when I was on my way to visit the rain forest - complete with a Sam's Club, CompUSA, Target, Office Max, Home Depot, etc. etc. So, really, the similarities are quite signifcant, although the differences in culture are also quite significant, especially when it comes to music and dancing. Salsa, salsa, salsa, it's everywhere!

So Thursday night I got to town and met up with Sean at his hotel, the pure American bubble of the Marriot hotel / resort. These kinds of hotels typically disgust me because they make everything so much like America and totally disregard the local culture. In this case, I was willing to overlook that aspect since I was getting a free room thanks to Sean's company. This place was such a big bubble that they were playing Beyonce and Hillary Duff songs at the pool while the rest of the city was blasting awesome regaettano (I think that's what it's called) and salsa music everywhere. I guess I'm just bitter about places catering to us Americans too much. That's what I get for being spoiled by my friends around the world showing me the legit, local experience I've come to enjoy in their countries.

But I got more of that on this trip than I expected, as well. Since Sean's working down there, he knows a bunch of the people at his client. So one of them, Isabelle (from Montreal, but now working in PR), took it upon herself to show us a good time. Friday night she and her friends took us to a street party called the Plasita (not sure how that's spelled), which is at place where there's a bunch of watering holes and restaurants. They close down the streets and bring in live salsa bands and it's happy hour from 6-11:00pm. We're talking $1.50 beers! This is a very local gig, I'm pretty sure that we were the only gringo tourists who were there, and I definitely felt out of place at first, especially with the language barrier. But we met enough of their friends who spoke English that we didn't feel out of place for long. We didn't have anything to eat for dinner Friday, so we just ate a few pinchos, which are like little marinated chicken kababs, from the street vendor. We did that for a few hours, finally getting home at around 4:00am feeling pretty well.

Sunday, Isabelle again hooked us up, taking us and her friend Patricia (from Venezuela) on a topless (referring to her Jeep, of course) road trip around the north and eastern coast of the island. Again, we got a very local vibe on one stretch of road where there was shack after shack selling pinchos. There were so many, some of which we're burning kindling wood with the nails and everything to cook the meat. Hmmm...a little sketchy. But along with the pincho stands, there were a bunch of open-air bars/restaurants overlooking the ocean and serving up cold daqueries (sp.?) and appetizers, of which we partook, of course. Even in this off-the-beaten-path area most of the people spoke perfect English. But you know when you go to a place where they don't speak English, you're getting the real deal. And that was at one little stand that was serving beer (of course) and plates of rice/beans/meat meals. It was over 100 degrees outside by this point and humid as hell. We were just dripping with sweat, it was nuts. We pretty much all switched over to water in a hurry at that point, it was just too hot to be dehydrated. But the food was nice and greasy rice and chicken, I'm sure it took a few years off our lives, but at least it's worth it :) .

Friday I had to (ahem) "work", so I spent a few hours by the pool doing a project write-up. I tell ya, somehow I could see myself doing that kind of work for a few years sometime in the future :) . Afterwards, Brett and I took our rental car for a spin to the El Yunque rain forest, about an hour and a half away up in the mountains. It was very pretty up there, and very tropical. The pinnacle of the trip (other than finding the Home Depot and CompUSA shopping centers along the way) was running in our sandals about a quarter of a mile up and down a narrow cement trail along the edge of a mountain. At the bottom was the holy grail: a waterfall with a swimming pool (natural, of course) at the base of it. And of course I forgot my camera, because it would have been a perfect picture. You could sit underneath the waterfall and lose a few inches off your height because of the weight and volume of water pressing on your head. It was a great little spot, I could've hung out there for a few hours.

Thursday night, after I got to town, Sean and I walked over to a little outdoor cafe that looked over a park and had some latin music playing before the tunes switched over to the DJ playing ambient downbeat chillout music. Of course all of these events took place in shorts and sandals, it was warm and humid outside 24/7. We had a few drinks out there and chatted it up with some of the other tourists who were there, but it felt very relaxing and very local, even though it was just a few minutes away from the Marriott. The waitress promised to teach us how to salsa if we came on Saturday night for the live salsa band.

Of course, our intentions were good and we planned on going back there on Saturday night, but those plans changed. Saturday we woke up about four hours after we went to bed, sometime around 8:00. We headed downstairs and ate the ridiculous Marriott-priced breakfast and then headed out 100 feet to the beach. We setup shop there and pretty much didn't leave the whole day. We had a giant umbrella to somewhat protect our white bodies from the sun, though Sean and Brett got hit pretty hard with the UV rays. I was cowering from the sun, mostly because I glow in the dark I'm so white. I new I'd fry if I was in direct sun for long, so I spent most of my time in the water and hidden under the umbrella and towels. I doused my back once in the morning with the awesome Bull-Frog 38 SPF spray-on gel and didn't have to put anymore on and I didn't get burned. I highly recommend it for you other whities out there.

After swimming in the 80 degree water and enjoying the "scenery" for a few hours, we headed back to the pool and chilled in the moderate shade of the palm trees while enjoying some more scenery and cat-napping. We went back and forth from the pool to the beach pretty much the whole day until around five. Our new friends, a mom and her 20-something daughter on vacation from North Carolina, headed back and we decided to meet up later that night in Old San Juan, the historical downtown area with beautiful narrow streets, clubs all over the place, and Spanish architecture galore.

After chilling for a few more hours and preparing for the night, we headed downtown to a recommended restaurant called Baru. The dishes were all tapas styled with lots of options. We went for the Sorrento ham, skewered prawns with yuca, goat cheese risotto, and dessert: filet mignon. We chatted it up with our neighbors a Puerto Rican guy who lived nearby and his British wife and her British friend. Between each dish we ordered drinks, so by the time we were done I had drinken sangria, a Red-Bull and vodka (we were tired from our day in the sun!), the most amazing mojito I've ever tried, and, to cap it off, a glass of port. Talk about a mixture from hell. And that's how I felt after that combo along with the rich dinner. My finely-tuned, sensitive pallet can't handle being overwhelmed with tastes like that ;o) . After all these drinks, Sean and Brett started to get obnoxious and that's when Sean got hold of my camera and took a ton of random shots, as you can see in my photo album.

And they also came up with the brilliant idea that only one person was going to pick up the Manhattan-style tab, over $200 :-| . I was down with a little excitement and a free meal, so on to credit-card roulette it was. All the credit cards went into a folded up napkin and then they were mixed up and one was drawn by our waitress. And the winner is.....drum-roll please....Me! Oh, wait. That sucks. You would have thought the other two won the lottery with all the noise they were making. All I knew is that I wasn't buying another drink the whole night, they had me covered :) . On our way out, we met some local felines at the bar for a drink and tried to figure out where our next destination was. We had decided to meet up with our Mom and daughter friends from earlier in the evening at the NuYoRican Cafe down the street, which had a live band playing salsa music and a vibrant atmosphere.

We met up with them down there, but at 1:00am the Mom was not in a stellar mood and clearly wasn't having fun, so they took off. We hung out, listened to the tunes, pretended to dance, and chatted it up with some other tourists there. Whenever there's a vacation, there's always Germans, so I got to practice out my conversation skills for the first time in a long time. Like always, they were astounded that there was an American that could speak German. That's my competitive advantage, you could say ;o) . Eventually, the boys were ready to pass out so we headed back to the hotel at about 2:00.

Brett, the addicted compulsive gambler headed to the Blackjack table when we got back and I just went with him to watch. I decided to have some fun, though, and that's when I got the karma on my side. I slapped down $20 at the $5 table and about an hour and a half later I walked away with $275. So I was the big winner that night: I won credit-card roulette, I took it to the casino with the jackpot, and I even won the coin toss for the bed as opposed to the roll-away bed when we finally did head back to our room.

So that was my weekend in a nutshell. And now it's back to the grind, hopefully I get caught up on my sleep, since I got a total of about 15 hours over the last four days. Man, do I live a tough life or what :) ???

Exhausted,
J. Riley