Total Recall

One last entry, and the blog is complete! I didn't do this last night, because I didn't feel the cues - no air conditioner to turn on in our bedroom for a night of cool sleep, no bidet standing ominously in the corner as I brushed my teeth. I was distracted by this big weird house all around me, all this stuff we own but haven't used or seen for a long time, and had forgotten about. Nightly blogging isn't a Williamstown thing for me. But tonight, I'm doing it - I miss it, I find. People we know might read this, and that makes me happy. So here's one last hurrah:

Absolute clockwork was our trip home. The cab driver called around 6:00 to say he was in the neighborhood, and could come early if we wanted (we didn't); we were at the airport at 7:00, and had only one irratiting experience there, which was this: Everyone going out of Puerto Rico has to have their bags go through a big machine run by the Department of Agriculture before they can even ENTER the airport. Every single passenger and every single bag joins up in a huge line along the famililar, curved drop-off lane. My guess is that they were trying to prevent the illegal exportation of native plants, and also possibly to keep the coqui (Puerto Rico's national symbol, in some ways - a tree frog that squeaks out "Co-KEE!" all night long there) from infesting any other places, as it already apparently has done in Hawaii. Perhaps there's a giant coqui-killing laser that all the bags pass through. Couldn't tell ya. But the line does move fast, so if there is a laser, it must be very deadly indeed. The fast-moving line was good in that it didn't take us long to get in, but it was very bad in that there were two adults in our group, and seven bags, eight if you count Tess in her stroller. Quinn was a trooper, gamely shuffling bags ahead along with Janneke and myself, and the people in line behind us were very good about keeping us from leaving anything behind. But it was a workout.

Here endeth the reading of the troubling times on the trip. Bingo-bango-bongo, onto the plane and into the air in record time. Waited ten minutes, tops, for the bags to come off (last people on = first bags off), and then 30 minutes for Bernie, our driver from Williamstown, who had been delayed by an accident. (Not one he had participated in. Caused? Maybe. But not actually taken part in.) Then on the road, and back at Lindley Terrace by 5:15.

To find that a family of robins had set up a nest under the eaves of our front porch. There are four little ones in there, who appear to be doing great - Ronadh, who had been coming in to water our plants and occasionally swipe something, told us they had hatched no more than a week ago. I had brushed away the first makings of a nest at some point before we left, not wanting to deal with the poo and the guilty feelings every time you open your front door and send the mother panicking into flight. But they were persistent, and now here they are. And it turns out not to be a bother to use the side door instead of the front door. Of course, in two days we're heading to Wisconsin for over a week, so we don't have to put up with it for too long.

The house smelled stuffy, and it took me a lot longer to figure out how to turn on the water heater than it had taken me to figure out how to turn it off. But after a late supper, we were all asleep in our own beds, which really freaked me out in the middle of the night. For some reason, Janneke and I swapped bed sides in Puerto Rico, and now we're back. I was closer to the bathroom there. Now she is. This strikes me as unjust.

I also found our compost pile of last year's leaves to be completely reduced to humus, teeming with earthworms, so today I pumped up the tire on the wheelbarrow and spread a few loads around the yard. Which made the robins very happy - the earth worms came along for the ride, and the robins made quick work of a lot of them. Am I kind for offering this feast to our new neighbors? Or am I cruel for thanking the earthworms for their labor by sacrificing them to shrieking death from above? Tough call. I'm an enigma.

Quinn came home to an enormous Lego Star Wars ship, a birthday present from Grandpa and Auntie Jayne. A godsend, too, because he has no day care, and somehow we weren't up to the task of entertaining him today. But he just sat his bronzed, platinum-haired little self in front of it and was good to go for pretty much the whole morning and most of the afternoon. Tess, meanwhile, had half a day of daycare, which we did send her to. She was very excited to show off her new lunchbox, bought at Marshall's in San Juan, and her equally bronzed little self, so she happily marched off. (A classmate, Kiley, who regularly says things like "Hello, Tess, you look beautiful today!", met her at the door. "Tess! I missed you so much!") They were fine, but we were left to marvel at how strange to us our most familiar surroundings had become.

I'm noticing things I never noticed before. Grass is absolutely everywhere up here, bright green little creeping armies that pile over the edges of the sidewalks like pirates swarming over the gunwhales. That's kind of freaking me out, too - Puerto Rico is so hot that you have to water grass every half hour if you want it to grow. Bushes, palm trees, pineapples - they grow like nobody's business, but grass is too fragile. Here, though, it does great. Again: Am I the grass, or am I a pineapple? The mystery of Joe. Much to ponder.

I had forgotten which switch on the vacuum cleaner turns it on, and which one releases the back so it can fall over and hit you on the bare foot as you prepare to cut your hair in the bathroom. But I was quickly reminded. I had forgotten which way to turn the handle on our faucet to get hot water; I'd forgotten whether we keep the sandwich bags in the right, left, or center drawer in the kitchen. I stood there a while, and then started to tremble. Sank to the floor in a fetal position and rocked back and forth, moaning, until Janneke came home. Then I faked unconsciousness and claimed to have had a seizure.

Don't tell her.

Thank you all so much for reading! It's felt so cozy to have you to talk to every night. It gave the trip so much more focus for me, and I'll be grateful for weeks. Then you'll be lucky if I say hello to you on the street. Again: Enigma.

Say g'night, Janneke!

("G'night, Janneke!")



Our treasures, hard-won, wrested from the sea.



On the left: The book I bought months before going.
In the middle: The book I bought in San Juan, because
I forgot the one on the left.
On the right: The book I bought in San Juan because
the middle book sucked.

Not With a Bang, but a Whimper

You know, usually your last day of vacation is kind of anti-climactic. But that's not the way we do things around the Johnstadt clan. Ours was no mere anti-climax. Ours was a super, hyper anti-climax. So not climactic that it was kind of climactic. (But not so much that it would stop being anti-climactic.) This was the mother of all anti-climaxes - a Godzilla movie, only the Japanese businessmen are all riding the subway, falling asleep on each other's shoulders. Outside, the city rotates slowly by behind a child, who bounces a ball. And yawns. The End.

Out of bed, and into the packing regimen. Which consists of staying out of Janneke's way for pretty much the whole day. We were semi-successful at that; puttered around the house in the morning, had lunch, ushered the kids out the door soon thereafter and hit the beach.

Some Canadians who have been regulars on our same stretch of beach were petting a puppy and taking pictures of it when we arrived. We set up shop nearby, and after a moment the puppy scampered over to us, and comically lay down in the shadow I cast as I got down on one knee and started digging a little hole to put Tessie's inflatable ring in. (So that it wouldn't blow away in the wind.) And of course the Canadians, sisters who could be 17 or could be 24, in that weird area where it's hard to tell their age, think this is adorable and immediately drop to start taking pictures. Now, we say hello when we pass on the beach, having seen each other daily for the better part of a week, but crotch photography was not the next step I had foreseen. Maybe that's how they do things up in Canada.

That's it, folks: The excitement for the day. Janneke joined us on the beach after a couple of hours, and from there on it was meals, dessert, Dominoes, and bed. Little photographic evidence is necessary.

I did take a spin around the neighborhood to get shots of some of our favorite places here before we leave, and it was poignant. I like this little place, I've gotten to know it kind of well, and it's sad to leave it. I'm ready to go, make no mistake, but it feels very odd to think that I've seen this street in the daylight for the last time. Although at supper, Janneke and I both had a simple feeling that we'd be back. It's just so easy to get here, we really like the place, it offers so much for us and for what we want for the kids, we'd be able to take much better advantage of everything because of the experience we've had...It seems almost assured that we haven't seen the last of Puerto Rico, if not this particular street. It reminds me of when I took the Lenox seniors to Ecuador in the spring. Our last morning there, while they slumbered, I ran (literally) across the narrow neck of the city to check out our old neighborhood, and our names were still next to the doorbell. Eight years, folks. Names still there. It was so weird to be back there, but it felt natural as well, as if it had been foretold. Like they had known I'd come back to look. That's how this feels now, only it's the front end of it - We'll be back. Don't bother to cancel our Pueblo card. This place is under our skin. In a very pleasant way, like a tattoo of a baby's face. Not like a chigger.



I took this picture to see if the camera was working, and then wound up
really liking it.



Bebo's, Quinn's favorite restaurant of all time. Yep:
That's what it's come down to. Restaurant logo
photography. Hey, I warned you right up there in the title.



This is Tess watching the video for "Penny on a Train Track"
by Ben Kwelller. You can get an idea for what the video is
like from what's on this one - Tess seems pretty weirded out
by it, but in reality she is this woman's groupie. "What's
her name? Can I dance like that? Is she still alive?"
I'll be honest: She was dancing along with it when I started
filming, and she stopped, making the film a lot less interesting.
But I still think it's cute. And here it finally is: Naked celebs.

Batidas: Great for Hangovers. Just Ask Tess.

Quinn and Tess both accompanied me on my morning EBCRD run, Tess because she wanted a picture in front of the statue of an Indian in the park where I exercise, and Quinn because he didn't want to miss the chance to be in a picture. By the time we got back (when there are kids involved, things go slowly, what with all the pigeon feathers to pick up and lizards to stop and watch), it was mid-morning, and time to head to the Santurce market for batidas.

The neighborhood, which I had previously described as so filled with character, is just that, but now we were going in on a Saturday, which usually follows a Friday night. And the guidebook, now that I thought about it, in a separate section had mentioned that the area around the market is an unofficially open bar for weekend partying - bars in almost every building, and people who walk from bar to bar with their open containers without the police really doing anything about it. So the streets around there were fairly heavily littered. But not so much as you might think - businesses which were open (and there were a lot) had swept up in front of their own places, and somehow the market itself had escaped any harm. I mean, no urine smell anywhere, no vandalism - it appears to be a party district with a heart.

The market is ten times as charming in the daytime, and the batidas were out of this world. Milk, sugar, fruit, in proportions that are absolutely perfect. (I know, I don't do dairy products anymore. But on special occasions, I get a little crazy.) Quinn had about half of his, then said he didn't want any more - and the woman who'd made them came scurrying out of the cafe to where we were sitting in the shade and asked, "Doesn't he like it? Did I forget to put sugar in it?" It was adorable.

But they were both still hungry, so we walked into the market and bought them each a cheese empanada. And Quinn was still hungry after that, so we said, "OK, here's a dollar. Go get another one." Which he was able to go do, eventually, and given an escort to the actual stall from Mami.

The market is sucha neighborhood staple - people stopping in for a late breakfast and bumping into six people they know before they can sit down to eat it, swarms of happy weekend late-risers showing up for coffee and pastries, and of course all the vegetable sellers. It was like an Ecuadorian market, only cleaner and grander. And much smaller. It seems to be going well as it is, but the city seems in some respects to have passed places like this by. It's really the only one around.

We went to the park and played some hacky-sack, then came home for some lunch. Tess and I settled in for naps (hers was longer than mine), and then Quinn and I headed for the beach. Where we swam very briefly again before Quinn asked to hit the sand and build forts. We started in on one, and then divided forces: I started in on the pyramid, and Quinn worked on the wall to protect the pyramid. Results below. It is definitely true that those damn things get exponentially harder as they get bigger. I could figure out the weight of the sand I moved for it, but as a guess I'd say it was about a million pounds. Janneke arrived with Tess around 4:30, and with the camera to take a picture, but the camera had no batteries. So she went back for them, and the evidence is below. I think the pyramid thing is pretty much out of my system.

Home, supper, Dominoes, bed. Tess, this morning, said "Are we going on a plane today?" Janneke said "No, tomorrow. Today we have one more day in Puerto Rico!" And Tess said, "Aw, I want to go home today!" And part of me agrees with her. This is fun. But we're ready.



The market - open this time.



View through the main door.



Our batida joint



Tess and her batida



Quinn's batida, destined to be consumed by others.



Hand-rolled Puerto Rican cigars.



Depending on who you are, this picture probably
either gives you cravings, or makes you want to barf.



I asked this guy, as he sat down next to us,
if he was a Packer fan. He looked at me like
I was speaking Norwegian. Apparently it's just
a shirt.



Quinn built a smaller pyramid next to mine, which
started to get washed away before the camera got there.
But it was a really great one, basically the same thing
in miniature. Way cool.



This got washed away before I could see anyone's
reaction to it, unfortunately.

The Turtles Knew

Vacation-ending illnesses are setting in. I've been headache-depleted and queasy for days, and today Tess was complaining of the same thing - she said it was like when she was in the car, only she wasn't in the car. Which describes the feeling I'm going through exactly. Janneke has got the same thing, and it's icky. But it didn't really keep us down.

I went out and bought a paper again this morning, and there were several really cogent items. The first was an article about the "spiraling crisis" of beach garbage in Puerto Rico. THANK YOU! It's not just me! Apparently in 2004, a scuba club did a garbage pick-up and got 174,000 pounds of garbage off a certain set of beachs after a holiday weekend. And this year, they did it again, to see if a number of public awareness campaigns had done any good. And they got twice as much garbage.

An editorial called for the police to step up and start fining people, since the people appear not to be prepared to do the grown-up thing on their own. Of course, it's difficult to catch someone in the act of leaving garbage behind - all they have to do is look about themselves for policemen before they drop it, and once they're ten feet away, who's to say whose garbage that is? You'd have to catch them on video. Police representatives, when interviewed, estimated that they had given out between $1000 and $4000 in beach littering ticketing last YEAR. At $250 a ticket, that's....let's see...carry the seven....Between four and sixteen people. Not exactly breaking their backs over this one, are they? And of course, estimates are all they can give, since they "don't keep statistics on that". Which is the biggest bull!@(#*!@ excuse ever - Look it up! Can't be that tough! It's called a spreadsheet.

There are garbage cans EVERYWHERE. They are well-maintained, emptied every day, lined with black plastic bags. At least every 50 yards at the top of every public beach I've been to in Puerto Rico, there's a garbage can in perfect working condition. That is not the problem.

Me, if I were grand poo-bah, I'd ban all food on the beach. Hand out tickets for possessing food items on the sand. That's easy to catch people at, and would get the message across pretty clearly. I'm sure I'd be a wildly popular politician, particularly at bonfires.

Another item in the paper said that yesterday, on Condado beach, the beach two blocks from our house, there was an unexpected hatching of sea turtles in the middle of the day, from a spot where they weren't known to have laid eggs. The people on the beach ushered them to sea, and when an Environmental Agency truck showed up, they took 20-some still-unhatched eggs from the nest and put them in a cooler, and started to take them away. The people gathered there protested, and were told that the eggs would be re-located to a spot less heavily touristed. But the folks apparently raised a ruckus and refused to let them leave, claiming that this was a lie and that they actually planned to sell them. (The eggs are considered by certain insecure hairless half-man troglodytes to be a manhood enhancer.) The police were called in and arrived by the dozen, polished to a gleaming sheen, and in the end the eggs were put back.

All this just behind our house, on a day when we were lolling about at el Escambron. "If that was right where we usually swim," I told Janneke, "I'm going to be really mad."

Janneke hit the road for a 10:00 AM meeting with the person we met on the bus whose father was a Russian cartoonist. Remember her? The meeting was actually with her husband, and Janneke was fascinated. She's been researching him since, and seems excited about the possibility of some further study, for some colleagues if not for herself.

While she was away, the kids and I played "Shop", where they arrange everything in their room in categories as if it's all for sale, and I come through and pick through it and decide what to buy. I pulled one of those dirty teacher tricks where I made them do all the thinking for me, by just saying that I was really into Africa, so I'd buy anything in there that they could show me had to do with Africa. Between all the categorizing and arranging to be done pre-shopping, totaling up the prices, the haggling, and the re-set so that someone else can be the shopper, that game can go on forever. Thankfully, though, Janneke came home, which broke their concentration, and I was able to escape in the confusion created by a smoke bomb. Utility belts, man. Can't say enough about them.

Lunch, Tess to sleep, Quinn and I to the beach.

Where it turned out that the turtle story had happend about 150 yards from our usual spot. Argh. I did see some folks gathered there and took some pictures of the news crew and hangers-on that came to interview people about the incident, but I'd give a thousand of those pictures to have seen leatherback turtles thwapping their way seaward. Ah well.

Made another pyramid. Quinn, while I did that, sculpted a really cool Darth Vader in the sand, which was a kind of bas-relief deal that didn't photograph as well as I would have liked. But it's below, you can check it out. The queasiness and overall malaise chased us off the beach around 5:30, and Janneke bravely cooked up supper for us. We snuggled and talked snakes after supper (Tess brought them up), then played Dominoes. Quinn won the first game, and we started a second. The kids were a bit squirrelly and whiny going to bed, but in the end it was just me and Janneke, sprawled out on our bed, watching John Stewart highlights on the computer in the air conditioning. After ten minutes, Janneke said, "I feel a lot better."

I glanced over toward the room where the kids slept, and will be going to hell for what I said next:

"I know what the problem is. It's them."

We laughed. But I'm still going to hell.



It's bigger. It's badder. It's...Another pyramid.
I put Quinn in the same spot to show the size difference
between the last one and this one. I poured my soul into it.
Lots of folks took pictures. I mean, hey, if I can make just
one person's life better, it's all worth it. I'm not in this
for the glory. It's really all about the kids...



Quinn's fort against the waves. He sat there quietly,
narrating some grand story to himself, for a good
half hour. Love that sensitive little boy.



Quinn's Darth Vader. Appreciated by fewer - not
too many people were floating directly over it.
The pelicans probably thought it was awesome.



Tess clings to my neck. I'm calling for
a nail clipper.



The folks gathered around the turtle birth scene.
The orange fencing now protects the turtles.
Or, you know, shows the poachers where they are.



The TV crew.



T-shirt of one of the people interested in
being filmed.



Kids warm up - no matter how warm the water, in the
wind, it's a cold thing being wet.

Set a Course For Adventure...

Old San Juan in the morning, swimming at one of the beaches we've liked in the afternoon. GO!

We rode the A5 in to Old San Juan, waiting all of three minutes before its prompt arrival. Friday is also some kind of holiday, though I haven't bothered to find out which; that combined with Wednesday's holiday means that a whole lot of people aren't working today, so the bus schedule was a workday schedule, but with very few riders. Best of all worlds for us, bus-wise.

Once back in that fair city, we split up - Janneke and Tess to the childrens' museum, where Tess had had such a grand time and was eager to return, and Quinn and I to the other great fortress of the city, at the other end of the seaward wall: San Cristobal. Although as we walked out of the bus station, we saw an absolutely enormous cruise ship docked only a block or so away, so Quinn and I detoured boatward first to check things out.

The old city is so small, and the cruise ship is so big, that it suddenly seemed the place was crawling with non-Puerto Ricans, much more so than the last time we were there. People who were always a few blocks away from their hotel rooms - cameras and wallets, but no bags of useful junk, such as we always carry with us. These were leisure travelers, no doubt. And by and large a sort of uninterested, cursory-glancing bunch as well. I saw lots of families, a large number with teenage children, much more than with quite wee ones - that time in life must be when cruises are more attractive. A lot of languages being spoken as well. These were certainly not all Americans.

But they didn't make the fortress crowded - in fact, it had considerably fewer visitors than El Morro had had when we visited. The Spanish military does not fare very well in the exhibits there - one mentions that the effective range of the Howitzers in place at the fort in 1898 when the Americans attaced was 11,000 meters. They also mentioned that the attacking gunships were within 2,500 meters, and that none was hit during the attack. But Quinn was much more interested in the older aspects of the fort, and imagined pirates everywhere.

We were to meet Janneke and Tess at noon, at the same place where we'd eaten miserable, dry, microwaved tacos on our last visit to the city center. I determined I would scout out a better option on our way to the rendezvous, and found one - 19th-century kiosks on the square fronting the mayor's office. We had walked past them many times without realizing there were active businesses inside, because the kiosks have been left completely unchanged and unadorned by signs. Lovely, tastefully-decorated buildings, that served crepes and other affordable lunchtime items.

We got to the children's museum with about 25 minutes to spare, so QUinn, who was footsore, sat in the park in front of it while I explored a bit around, checking back with him every 5 minutes or so. I entered the church that's the "protectora de Puerto Rico", and which has been so ineffective in its protection that its gold ornaments have all been stolen so many times over that the inside is really pretty barren. I also checked out a hotel in the nearby former convent, and it is enormous, gorgeous, and much better represented on its website (http://www.elconvento.com/) than it could ever be here. Check it out, it's really gorgeous. So much so that I went back to the park and rousted Quinn out of his Gatorade guzzling to make him come see it. I mean, it's on Calle Cristo, the most gorgeous street on Earth. How could it not be?

We met up with Janneke and Tess and steered them to the new luncheonette, and all enjoyed some very, very deep fried items, as is fitting with our having gone native and all. The kids fed pigeons while Janneke did some souvenir shopping, and then we all walked back to the bus station - strolled, really, reveling in our last visit to the lovely old place. The merry racket of construction rang down many of the streets we gazed longingly up and down, an indicator of how much nicer it may still get - it's all renovation of old stuff, no new hideous construction anywhere. They've got a gem here, and they know it.

The wait for the bus was short as could be, and in twenty minutes we were all in the water at El Escambron. I have to say, though, I think I'm a landlubber. The salt water still seems to give me headaches, and I'm pretty content to sit in the sand and watch the kids bob about, though I'd be happier reading a book there, or snoozing . But we're not quite there yet with Tess. (Although she is now pretty well safe in the water, as long as she's not out of sprint distance.)

Walking away from the beach, a man staggered up to me and gave me a sob story about being 90 cents short of being able to buy some apparatus that would help him breathe. I told him no, and he shuffled off. Quinn asked what he'd wanted - I said money. "How much?" "A dollar." Quinn smiled, amazed, eyes widening. "Papi!", he said, dumbfounded at my greed. So we had a pretty interesting conversation about why people should or shouldn't give money to street people, how likely it is that their sob stories are true, how likely it is in this particular case (we were able to observe the man at a distance and talk about him some), etc. Pretty interesting topic to tackle at age 7.

We hit the beautiful park near Escambron for a half hour or so after the swimming, but both kids were droopy, so we hit the bus stop pretty directly - and had to wait about 2 minutes this time. Three for three. And by the way, guess who was on the bus? The panhandler from the beach, droopy-eyed and smiling, head lolling back and forth, same tin can in his hand as when we'd seen him earlier. Looks like he scraped together enough to buy him a shot of whatever particuar "medicine" he was after. We didn't point any of that out to Quinn, or bring it up - That's a bit too much for age 7, methinks. Addictions are a subject I'll broach... Oh, let's see...How about...Never. How's never for you?

By the time supper wound up around 7:40, we had two bed-ready kids. They could barely keep their eyes open for Dominoes - actually had to poke them a couple of times. (I, by the way, have recently pulled into the lead. And Quinn calls me "El milagro" because of my come-from-behind prowess, shown tonight as well as last night, when I came back from having to draw five dominoes and came within a point of winning the round. So there.)

We are really very saddened to leave Old San Juan behind. On a future trip maybe we can stay there, even, and maybe the kids can appreciate it more. Or maybe we'll buy a vacation home there, and we can get to know it as residents. Or maybe a giant hummingbird will zoom up to me and speak to me in French, and I'll leap aboard and ride to Andromeda for some pound cake.

Pictures!



Quinn and the big boat. He was honestly concerned that
they'd never fit enough food on there for all the people
staying in all those rooms.



La protectora. Doing a hell of a job.



Quinn in the castle - I didn't focus on him, but on his having
been in a real castle, oft besieged by pirates. He'll be
bragging that up, and he'll need proof.



Our luncheonette. Approximately a billion times
better than last time.



Kiosks from afar - Come on, does there look
to be an actual business in there? It looks like
a tourism info booth, fer cryin' out loud.



Fifty cents a bag. There were five - FIVE - men
competing to sell people bird food, all within
about 100 feet of each other.



I am glad I speak a language where a confectionery
is called a "Bombonera".



There are all kinds of trees like this, that seem to drip
roots and tendrils across themselves and then re-absorb them,
making for these great Lord-of-the-Rings-ready
trunks. Several different species do it, judging by the leaves.



Tess, on the bus, suddenly pulled her dress straps down
off her shoulders. I thought she was trying to take it
off and asked her what she was doing. "Yo
soy Belle", she responded. For reference:





Private Tess and Private Quinn with our long march gear.
Everything we needed for a whole day of San Juan fun.
Though it's pretty slow going when they're weighted down like that.
And when Janneke's in the stroller.

Going Native

The days are ticking down! We're trying to squeeze every last morsel of fun out of this place, twisting Puerto Rico like a boa constrictor of appreciation. And it's been largely successful.

I bought a paper this morning, and in it read a number of fascinating things. Such as the fact that Puerto Rico is doing enormously well at the Pan Am games in Rio de Janeiro, garnering the same number of medals as much larger places, like Chile and Ecuador. And that the electric power currently cooling me comes from a nuclear power plant, built thanks to the expertise of a Puerto Rican who got his doctorate in such things in the US and came back to design and build the reactor. (He died recently and had a helicopter drop flowers over his funeral.) I also learned that the government, trying to help out PR's dairy industry, is placing tarriffs on the milk that is sold in vacuum-sealed boxes, since that milk is cheaper - because it's imported from countries where people work for nothing. Of course, the poor and the elderly are the principal consumers of this milk, so it's going to hit them harder than anyone. And I also learned that today is the anniversary of the signing of Puerto Rico's constitution.

What I didn't see, because it wasn't there, was the subtitle of the article about the anniversary of the constitution. It would have read thus: "EVERYTHING CLOSED". But, again, because that wasn't there, we sauntered out to the market where Janneke found the best fruit smoothies in Puerto Rico for the kids' mid-morning snack.

The place is gorgeous, in a very character-ridden (in a strictly good way) neighborhood about a ten-to-fifteen-minute walk from our house. That walk is kind of excruciating in the heat we're seeing here, so it was particularly disheartening to arrive and find the lovely old place shuttered in celebration of the constitution. We prowled the neighborhood briefly, looking for another option, but in the end decided to just bolt to Ashford Avenue, six blocks away or so, and buy the kids ice cream at Walgreen's. Bold of us, I know.

They held up incredibly well on the walk, and were rewarded by a fudgecicle apiece, which they consumed in the nearby park where we'd not played hacky-sack yesterday. We settled in for some more not-playing-hacky-sack, and then wandered home for lunch. Thereafter things unfolded like yesterday: Tess out to walk and to nap, Quinn and I to the beach.

An ice cream salesman (and again, this isn't really a dairy-product-laden ice cream; it's more a thick fruit-ice-sugar whip) made his way up the beach, and Quinn and I bought one coconut-flavored and one parcha. We ate them and then swam a while; Quinn was into making a castle for a little while, but went back to the water. I stayed behind, though, headache-depleted, and pondered what sort of cooler castle I could make. Forcing myself to remember to look up every 30 seconds or so, so I could see whether Quinn's T-shirted torso was still bobbing around, I set about constructing a rough replica of a Maya temple. See for yourself whether you think it was successful - it inspired varying reactions from passers by, as you'll see in the pictures.

Not long after, I picked up a bag that went floating by and filled it with other trash, then walked the lot up the hill to the garbage can. On my way down, I saw the same ice cream salesman (who was doing very well today, what with all the constitution-day revelers) trying to drag his two-flavor cart up the steep rise to the street, and making little headway. I sprang into action.

Materializing as if out of nowhere behind his cart, I warned him with a "Jefe, le doy empujando" (Hey Chief, I'll give you a push), and then applied just enough force to the back of the cart to help, but not so much as to intimidate or frighten him. And the two of us got the cart up the rise in short order. I was surprised, though, at how quickly we stopped once we reached the top - he practically jumped out from in front of the cart, as if afraid I'd run him down. Had I applied too much force after all - more than any normal man could possibly possess? Was my secret revealed...? He opened up his cart and said to me, "Se ha ganado un helado de parcha." (You've earned yourself a parcha ice cream.) I laughed, and protested meekly, but then stood waiting while he prepared it, and giggled my way back to where Quinn was swimming, happily scooping it in. Great stuff.

Soon thereafter, I heard a cry for help, and looked up to see a parasurfer motioning toward me. I disappeared in a cloud of smoke, then reappeared behind him; he explained that his parachute, floating some 100 feet above us, would need to be held down once he guided it into the sand. Could I do that for him...?

I did, needless to say. (Those sails turn out to be inflatable. Didn't know that.) He thanked me and went on his merry way. I swear, I don't know how that beach could have gotten by without me. What they've done without me on the previous 49 Constitution Days, is what I want to know.

Janneke and Tess showed up not long after, and the rest of the afternoon was spent in the pounding surf or on the sunny beach. Enjoyment galore.

As we were preparing to go home, we sprung it on Quinn that we would be eating at Bebo's again tonight, and he nearly popped with joy. He absolutely loves that place, though he has the same thing every time. It was good, but I have to say I'm getting a little tired of comida criolla. It starts to feel like it's all the same after a while. Really, really good, but I need to spread it out more. Have some Chinese in between, maybe.

Janneke has practically gone native, by the way. It's like in that Ray Bradbury book where the colonists on Mars slowly turn into the Martians. She's picking up all kinds of Puerto Ricanisms in her Spanish, she's completely changed color, and right now she's out in the living room - the non-air-conditioned living room! - watching TV. We may wind up staying here forever.

We have kicked around the idea of somehow finding a way to be here more long-term, but for now it isn't really feasible. A vacation spread would be nice, somewhere out in the country a bit, but we have that in Wisconsin. And when we do travel, there are so many new places we'll want to see - I can't see our vacations always being in one place, just because we own a place there and feel obligated to make use of it. Still, I fantasize sometimes about having a few acres out near Manati. It's just bloody gorgeous over there. And affordable, from what I understand.

Observations: Puerto Rican men, unlike other Latin American men with whom we've had experience, do not leer at women. We've heard no piropos since we came, directed toward anyone, and by and large the respect level for women seems, in everyday street interactions, to be set just where we're used to. That's definitly been easy.

A sign for a dry cleaning service had "Dry Cleaning" and "Laundry" in English, but then had "Sastreria" (taloring) and "Zapateria" (cobbler) in Spanish. Same sign, same business. I'm still wondering what the deal is there. Janneke suggested that the latter two businesses aren't typically patronized by gringos, and that well may be. But I think that every laundry sign I've seen has been in English - it may also be that the Puerto Rican words for "laundry" and "dry cleaning" are "laundry" and "dry cleaning".

Tomorrow: A last hurrah in Old San Juan, and swimming at the Escambron beach, where there will be decent snorkeling.

Pictures!




The vegetable market - Note the closed shutters.



The place is gorgeous - we're going back Saturday.



A mural underneath Highway 26 celebrating the
native ball game. We passed under 26 in two
spots today, and both underpasses were clean
and smelled not at all of urine. If they were
in Ecaudor, they would be the only two such
spots in the country.



"El jibaro" is the quintessential semi-mythic Puerto Rican country
bumpkin / sage / salt of the earth. You see him everywhere.




Big crowd on Constitution Day. They didn't really
want to go to the beach; they kind of had to.
(It's in the Constitution.)



My pyramid. Funny fact: It turns out to be illegal to
cut the beating heart out of a pigeon, no matter
where you do it. Pyramids are not exempted, apparently.
Weird.




Quinn saw the waves damaging the pyramid and tried
to build a wall to save it.



Tess sees the pyramid and recruits people to
help her destroy it.

Burn. Peel. Repeat.

That's the cycle we're on, I guess. A week in the car and we're all more susceptible to the sun: Quinn and I got burned yesterday. Quinn woke up painful this morning, and I felt that way last night. The real culprit, though, is the sunblock. The stuff we had before felt like Elmer's glue as far as texture, but once it was on, it stayed on all afternoon. This new tube goes on like a dream - everyone loves it for that. But after an hour, it's gone. We didn't realize that yesterday, and are paying the price today. I'm downright purple - Quinn is more evenly roasted, and probably won't peel. Neither of the kids has this trip. Janneke's peeling is over, revealing a coconut-brown Tahitian goddess of...You know what? I think I'll stop right there, before anything bad happens.

Because that would ruin the run we're on. We've gone a whole day here with no disasters or even difficulties. We planned on heading to the park nearby for some fun, coupled with a visit to a local vegetable market. The market turned out to be farther down the street than we thought, so Janneke went on alone and checked out the market, while the kids and I headed over to Ashford Avenue, the main tourist drag in Condado, to get a snack before returning to play in the park. We also bought a replacement mask and snorkel - the spot where the strap attaches to the mask popped off our last adult pair. They're pretty cheap, so they don't last that long, but before they break, they do work well.

Janneke reports that the market is adorable, filled with regulars sitting at tables playing dominoes, stalls that sell fresh vegetables, and an herbal remedies vendor. There's also a place that supposedly makes the best banana mango fruit shake on the island. We really, really need to go back there. But they didn't have anything that would make for a good gift for people back home. In the park, we sat in the shade while the kids played around on the playground equipment, until it dawned on us that we could again be playing hacky-sack, like we did at Burger King the other day. So we pulled it out and started to play, but before long Quinn came over, wanting to take part, and then Tess. And as you can see from the video, the game came to a screeching halt. It seems counter to the hacky-sack ethos to bar children from playing, but that's about what it comes down to. Otherwise, you're just dropping a bag of beads on the ground over and over.

Lunch at home - we're taking up the philosophy that all swimming will cease before 11:00 AM and will not resume until well past 2:00. And Tess did a marvelous job of falling asleep in her stroller, protected by her cardboard heat shield, despite the absolutely roasting temperatures outside. So that meant that Quinn and I hit the beach for some men's time, each clad in a tee-shirt so we wouldn't burn further.

We swam for ten minutes, and then Quinn wanted to make a castle. I got him hooked.

Janneke and Tess joined us for the late afternoon, and by the time all was said and done we weren't back at the house until 6:15. So we had a late, delicious supper of home-cooked chicken, and the evening ended with another rousing game of dominoes. That's something we're thinking of turning into a recurring family tradition - the version we play is simple enough so that Tess can basically understand it, it's random enough so that the winner can't truthfully gloat, and it's long-term enough to where a game can stretch out for a week or more. We'll see how it goes.

On to the pyrotechnics!



Hacky-sack with young-uns. Viewer discretion is advised:
This is really dull to participate in, let alone to watch.
Although some may find humor in my obvious discomfort at
having to bend down and touch the ground.



A new game the kids have come up with called "Workshop".
They sit in the kitchen with their respective boxes of sea-borne
treasures, and sharpen, arrange, scrape, and otherwise
fiddle with them.

Fortaleza Fuerza Falls

First order of business today: Return the rental car.

The gas station across the street has coin-operated vaccuum hoses, so I rounded up $4 worth of quarters and headed thataway. (Quarters here are called "pesetas", by the way. I wonder when that started to be the term - since the money here used to be the peseta, this being one of the very last of the Spanish colonies.) Cleaned out the inside and noticed some stains from kids' feet and from the various times we'd eaten in the car. I would need to clean the seats, which would require scrubbing with water and the use of a hair dryer, which we have on hand to use in blowing up Tess' air mattress. So I asked our building super if he could loan me an extension cord.

He's a very nice guy, and turns out to be from the Dominican Republic. He's been here 15 years and is going back after 3 more to retire. He says there's a lot less violent crime in the DR, and that the economy is more stable. I took this with a grain of salt the size of a pumpkin. Why, I thought, are you here, then? But enough about him. On with the day.

Cleaned out the car and brought it back, and they complimented me on how clean it was. No damage, no additional charges, security deposit credited back. What a load off our minds. Walked back to the house, rounded up the family and headed to our beach.

We cavorted in the waves until noon, then had lunch. And then back to the waves.

Today was the first day when the other members of the Johnstadt tribe shared my enthusiasm for castle-building. Particularly for the sort of castle that's designed simply to be a bulwark against waves, resisting them as long as possible. Not sure what happened, but Tess and Quinn, and eventually even Janneke, jumped in on the project. Quinn named it "Fortaleza Fuerza", which if you speak Spanish is kind of funny. In the end, the fort fell, but it was a valiant struggle against nature and time. Like life.

Home around 3:00, where Janneke made us all a pot of hummus as a snack; then we played Dominoes, which Janneke had bought in Cayey. They've got the Puerto Rican flag on the back. The kids got into it pretty well, though Quinn more than Tess, for obvious reasons. Settled in for an early supper of fish and rice, then a game Quinn initiated where we go around the room taking turns telling stories from our lives of something that was either "chevere" (cool) or "raro" (strange). Tess made all of hers up; they mostly involved walking through woods and meeting monsters. Quinn's were about odd plays he remembers from baseball games he's attended, or times when he thought he couldn't go under the water but then when he did by accident, it was OK. You kind of had to be there.

Kids to bed, adults to masked and caped crime-fighting.

It's really hitting us now that we're going home soon, but not in a panicky way at all. We're kind of ready to be done, but quite content to have a few more days left. It's winding down splendidly.

Pictures!



Fortaleza Fuerza.



High-stakes dominoes. The stakes:
These kids both cry when they lose.




Guess which kid just lost.

Never-Before-Seen Heart-Pounding Action!

Boy oh boy - Where to begin. The ever-changing and constantly fresh excitement of tropical adventure kept us racing along all day on a tsunami of eye-opening cross-cultural hijinks. Here's the quick run-down - Hold onto your hats...!

Got up. Kind of late.

Did some shopping.

Drove around some, missed an exit, got kind of turned around.

Couldn't go to the beach anyway, because it rained.

Had pizza and watched a movie.

Went to bed.

We're turning in the car tomorrow, after a final day in which we would have done OK without it. It was nice for getting to the mall, but we couldn't think of anything to do there, so we didn't go. We did some shopping at a better-stocked supermarket than our local one for food-based treats to bring back for family and friends, which was made much more convenient by the car, but that's the only way it made our lives better today. I kind of can't wait to get rid of it - undamaged, clean, full of gas. If we had older kids, or were just here on our own, we probably could have done a lot more, but as it stands, we're out of ideas for the car, and out of energy, frankly. This past week has been great, but we're pretty bushed. The first two weeks were far more relaxing, and we're looking forward to having another one like that.

Observations:

Blockbuster's and Pueblo, the Puerto Rican supermarket chain, are linked - the family who founded Pueblo brought in Blockbuster as a tag-along business, and you won't find one outside of a Pueblo. That's where I got our movie tonight - I bought "Cars", which we'd been meaning to buy anyway. The Spanish sound can be selected to play one of two ways: "Espanol", or "Espanol mexicano". I can see a very interesting Spanish Club activity coming - Compare and contrast the two. I assume there won't be any real swearing, though that would probably be half the fun.

A guy I assumed to be homeless - of the party-ready sort, an aging hipster with black clothes and a dog, still trying to ride the wave of partying in the party town where he probably got marooned years ago - was in the park this morning about 8:00, washing himself in the little faucet set up so people can clean the sand off their feet before they leave the beach. I was there, doing my exercises with the EBCRD, another couple of people walking their dogs, somebody doing yoga. And a cop on a motorcycle pulled in and parked (flagrantly illegally) on the sidewalk, got off and walked around as he talked to someone on his cell phone. After he finished his call, he kind of sauntered about, checking things out, and as he walked past the homeless guy, he made a gesture toward his dog and said something sideways. The homeless guy nodded and hurried up, gathering up his shirt and his dog. The cop sauntered back to his motorcycle.

I have to say, there's something wrong with hassling this guy and his dog - On a leash! - while all up and down the street, there were drivers parking along the sidewalk in ways that made it completely impossible for people to walk there, let alone anybody in a wheelchair. Or hurtling through red lights with a cursory glance in either direction to make sure they'd not hit anyone. Or changing lanes at 90 miles an hour out on the interstate with no signal, and two feet of clearance between their vehicle and the next one. When we went to the big supermarket today, every single handicapped parking spot was parked in, and I saw no stickers or tags or anything on any of the cars that said the driver was handicapped. No fear on the part of anyone, it seems, of actually being ticketed.

But the cop feels his most pressing duty then is to make sure the homeless guy knows he has his eye on him. "And your little dog, too!" Maybe I don't know the whole story, but the impression he gave off, with his mannerisms and his choice of targets, was pretty clear. What a feckless bully.

Someone in a pickup truck stopped next to Janneke and Tess, with her six braids and her sunglasses, as they were walking to Pueblo this morning, and rolled down his window. He was in his 40s, and his wife was in the passenger seat, two kids in the back. Looking at Tess, he said:

"Que linda que linda que linda!"

Twice.

Ah, rest! No car to worry about! Quinn asked at bed time if we were going to go to a different beach, or to "our beach". He's eager to get back to the old rhythms too.

No pictures - though I would have gotten one of the family playing dominoes, if the battery hadn't been dead. Oh, the humanity!

Never Trust a Book

As related earlier, the plan was to drive past Ponce to a place inside a National Forest in the south of the country, from which one can ride a ferry out to an island with mangroves, rocks, beaches, and lots of snorkeling. The island is called Gilligan's Island (or "Guilligan", as they write it around here, making some concession to Spanish orthography), and it's mentioned in our book as a great getaway.

We had decided to put that trip off to Sunday, and to take Saturday for shopping and around-San-Juan things, since we want to be able to get out to the mall and to the larger grocery stores before we're deprived of a car. And then in the evening, we would drive an hour out to a spot recommended to us by Aurora, whose house we're staying in, for a night-time cruise out to a bioluminescent bay, where the microscopic organisms in the water glow blue when you run your arms through it. There's a better-known and larger one on the other end of the island, but apparently its luminescence is much faded. But around 9:00, Janneke called the fellow who'd been recommended to us as a cruise captain, and he quoted us the prices. That changed our minds, and we decided to head to Gilligan's Island today.

We were on the road by 10:00, on the very large and straight and not-at-all-illness-inducing Highway 52, but Tess was still convinced it was making her sick. We had to pull over every 20 minutes or so because she claimed she was on the edge of being sick, and let her walk around and de-contaminate. So we made terrible time, ogling the amazing scenery as we went; but even so, we would have been there on time for the 1:00 ferry - the book says they leave every hour, on the hour.

What the book doesn't say is that this place is jammed to the absolute gills on weekends. Both sides of the road had parking lots, and both were full to capacity. Janneke went in and asked about the ferry, but the one to Gilligan's Island wasn't running - "No hay", was all she could get out of the woman. But lots and lots of people were lined up on the dock, so I imagine it was more a case of being sold out, or having reached the maximum number of people allowed out there on a given day. She offered us another ferry ride to "bahia de la ballena", but that was too much of an unknown quantity, so we decided to head out to the end of the road we were on, where there's a beach that the book says has great snorkeling.

And once we got there, we saw that the "bahia de la ballena" is actually along the coast of this same island, easily reached by walking from the road. Our instincts were right on the money. We avoided being fleeced.

About the great snorkeling: The book was wrong for the second time in one day. The beach itself has fairly rough, not-very-clear water, and the snorkeling possibilities are exceedingly limited. To about a forty-foot strip of a rocky promontory, of which about ten feet are actually populated by fish. Pretty big disappointment on that front.

Plus, the beach is well-usd by the public, who have not shown themselves very responsible when it comes to picking up after themselves. Janneke and I cleared away probably 5 pounds of garbage from our immediate area of the beach to make it palatable, and on various strolls around while we were there we probably picked up 10 more. The usual: cans, bottles, plastic wrappers, juice boxes. You have to get yourself to where you're pointed at the sea, or in it, and can't see this other stuff before you can really enjoy yourself. And even then, every so often a donut wrapper goes floating past your goggles.

Travel books don't tell you this stuff. The books are written with a few things in mind, one of which is the simple, probably quite demonstrable fact that the book that paints the most positive picture of the place in question is the book most likely to sell. So none of the many available travel books, or few, by a sort of marketing-strategy, unspoken collusion, will tell you how crowded things get or how much garbage there is on the beach. People who buy the books have already decided to go, I'll bet, and they're counting on the book to make the trip wonderful. "Ponce is great", "this beach is a natural wonderland", etc.

But the drive through to the beach, and the scenery surrounding the beach (past the garbage), were beautiful. This is a desert forest area, growing right along the beach - an ecosystem that's unique in the world, from what I understand. (Thought it was pretty similar in aspect to the scrubby woods areas in the lowland coastal areas of Galapagos.) I got a few pictures on a stroll I did into the volcanic-stone-covered hillocks just behind the beach, and it's an amazing place. Like a moonscape, because of the sharp, jagged rocks (which are very lightweight, being volcanic), but covered in life. And also in seashells, strangely enough - lots of hyper-dry, white, thinning old shells of tidal-flat snails, the occasional shattered old bleached-out conch. Even though in elevation, it's a good 40 feet over the sea.

Part of the mystery is solved when you crest the low ridge and find a brackish pond, 200 to 250 yards across. Maybe big, big surges during hurricanes fill this area up much higher than it is now, and the organisms and eggs that come with it fill the place with life while it lasts; then, as the waters recede, things give up the ghost and cover the rocks with their bones.

But there was life in there - I was repeatedly dive-bombed by several very odd black and white shore birds with jet-black wings and long, pinkish legs trailing behind them. They peeped at me the whole time, coming within about ten feet of me before pulling up. I got some pictures - when we got home, it turned out to be a black-necked stilt. And they turn out to be very common, though not in Massachusetts.

We also strolled as a family up the beach to poke around in the sea grass growing along another stretch of the beach, and Janneke found a beautiful sea snail, big as a softball, which we all looked at for a while. I found a sea star, which Quinn was amazed to see moving, and we all looked at the shells of living snails on the rocks on the shore. The kids had water shoes, so it was a lot easier for them.

We had had enough by around 5:00, and wound up the day, heading back to the baking car. Our system for not getting sand in our shoes, or in the car, is a little labor-intensive, but it works - we walk barefoot back to the car, and I bring a pail of water from the ocean. Then one by one, I wash off the feet of the family members as they hang out the car door; when they're wet, but clean, they pull them in and close the door. Then I bring one more bucket for myself, and pour it over my own feet before withdrawing with the bucket into the driver's seat. There's probably some reeeally simple trick we're not smart enough to have figured out, but for now, this is the way we do it.

We drove for forty-five minutes or so, and saw a seafood restaurant on the side of the road that looked good. Ate there - things were expensive, but the cheaper items on the menu also turned out to be very good. Saw two puffer fish in the shallow water just off the restaurant's dining room, and then piled into the car for the final stretch home. The kids watched "The Incredibles" on our portable DVD player on the ride; we tried to get a picture of the blue glow on their faces from the screen, but weren't smart enough to figure out how to do it. We did know that the flash wouldn't work. That much we were clear on.

We got passed so many times, so dangerously, by people in SUVs. They roar past you at 90 miles an hour and then very nearly clip you as they weave through the tiny space between you and another car in another lane. I can't stand that. It happens in the States, but it seems to happen much more here- it almost seems to be the norm. It really does tick me off. The glorious moment came, though, when one of those SUVs - it may even have been one of the same ones who'd passed us - was pulled over on the side of the road just as we pulled into San Juan. I'm hoping there was a tazer involved. Maybe a cavity search.

The Netflix account we had switched to this address finally started kicking in as well, and we had a movie waiting for us when we got home. Put the kids to bed and settled in to watch "The Chorus", a French movie. Janneke liked it more than I did, but I did like it. And there we are.

Sunday will be "Shopping in San Juan" day. Plus the beach. But a local beach - known quantities are very, very attractive right now.

Pictures!



Some day we'll get this whole windshield photography
thing down. Until then, here's what we saw out the
window going along the Caribbean.



The landscape of the southern desert forest



Really - right on the ocean. Like, right there.



Cactuses and everything.



Dead sea snails at the base of the cactus. And I didn't plant them.



The pond behind the hillock.



The deadly black-necked stilt swings in
for another attack. Luckily, I had my
football with me. It's kind of
like when you hit those lizards, apart
from the feathers everywhere.