The Johnstadts Invade Puerto Rico: The Capital Falls

Another hot and windy morning in San Juan. Up at the crack of 7:00, and everyone gave Quinn huge fiestas for being the birthday boy. He was mostly interested in watching cartoons with Tess until they got old, while Mom and Dad did some concurrent newspaper searching to find out where there would be fireworks, if any. No luck there (three newspapers, one in English, and none talked about fireworks), but the guys in the gas station up the street knew there would be some in Old San Juan, the colonial city. Told us where to pick up the bus, all that. So we plotted out the day thus: Swimming in the morning, lunch at home with birthday cake to follow, then some playing in a park up the street, followed by Tess' nap; then off to Old San Juan for birthday supper and fireworks. Great line from "Deadwood", which we watched last night: "Saying your plans out loud? That's a great way to hear God laugh."

And even though I recognized that as the moment to make a joke about plans going awry, taht's pretty much the way the day shook out. We swam until 11:00 or so and came back to the house, from which I sallied out to pick up the birthday cake while Janneke made lunch. Lunch was had, birthday cake eaten, walk to park was taken. I again saved the day by helping a height-challenged grandmother to hoist her two-year-old out of a swing. Her legs had both accidentally gone down one leg hole. I swear, I should wear a friggin' cape. Tess fell asleep in her cardboard-covered stroller (actually asking to have the cardboard put over her this time), and then Quinn and I spent an hour of Tess' nap back at the beach, swimming.

Mostly we threw the football back and forth to eachother while dodging waves, diving for catches, throwing from your knees even as a wave crashes into you, etc. Quinn said it was good practice for football, or rugby, because "te hace mas tough". Phun with Physics: A football, thrown in a tight spiral toward a particular point, will suddenly veer when a wave approaches it. There's a pressure wave of air that goes ahead of the wave. Every time I tried to make this happen, it wouldn't, but I could see it happening accidentally several times.

A little Puerto Rican girl motioned for me to throw the ball to her, so I did; she then threw it to Quinn, and I quickly ditched them. Soon they were playing catch. I swam around, watching, and eventually the little girl's mother came over and said something to them - she saw me and came over to tell me that she just wanted them to make sure they didn't go too far down the beach, since the waves sweep the ball westward every time it gets to float for a few seconds. I sat in the shade with the girl's older sister and her mother for a while as the two lovebirds got "mas tough". It turns out the girl is 8 and lives about an hour from San Juan, was just in town for the day with the family. She and Quinn talked a lot while they threw the ball. When they finally came back, her sister asked her what her new friend's name was. She said, "Wen." A warm goodbye, and Quinn and I went back to the apartment. Quinn's observation: "Toda la gente en Puerto Rico tiene, como, un acento." How true that is.

We all got dolled up and hopped the A-5 bus into downtown San Juan, to the colonial part. Gorgeous. One of the main plazas had a stage and a series of bands playing (an operatic version of "God Bless America", with a very thick Spanish accent, was applauded thunderously), with flag-waving people all over the place, merrily celebrating. Quinn's birthday seemed to be as big a deal here as it is in Williamstown. The beaches were absolutely jammed, and traffic was very, very crowded and slow. The most popular flag to wave around during the celebrations was one that had both the Puerto Rican flag and the American. Saw a guy wandering around trying to sell a four-foot-tall plug-in air filter, like the ones you see in Sharper Image. Holding it under his arm, gesturing toward it, trying to catch your eye. Strange.

We walked around a while and found a pretty affordable restaurant in a fabulously restored old mansion; Janneke had grouper, I had "asopao de pollo", which is a chicken stew, and we shared a banana-based torta called "mofongo", which is really, really good. Postre: Flan de coco.

Walked to the Castillo de San Cristobal, one of the two forts that used to protect the city from pirates. Quinn has been fascinated with this topic, but Tess has been in need of constant reassurance that the pirates are no longer a threat. Quinn was disappointed, as we walked the parapets, to learn that they were never manned by knights, but his heart leapt when I described how swords and axes and bayonets were still used back then, since guns were so slow, and their range was so short - fire one, then draw something, because there's no time to reload. He loved that. We walked the old wall that extends between the two forts for half a mile or so, waiting for the fireworks. It really is a spectacularly gorgeous old city. Policemen absolutely everywhere, and very little trash in the streets compared to what we've seen of Latin America. We love how it feels like a different country in all the ways we like, but feels like the US in all the ways we like. That's very broad strokes, but basically true.

Just before the fireworks started, we saw another man, different guy, older, strolling about with a four-foot air filter under his arm, trying to sell it. Methinks these two fellas might know each other, and that they might have somehow broken the law. Recently.

Tess talked big about being able to handle the fireworks ("fuegos de artificio", which she has internalized as "los aire frescos"), how they were going to say to her, "We're your friends, we make big noises, but we're beautiul!". But she pretty much fell apart at the first "boom", and had to be hustled away by Mami. Quinn and I enjoyed the show - though I do have to say, Gays Mills, WI puts on as good a fireworks show as San Juan, Puerto Rico. And afterwards, Tess said that the red ones had said to her, "We want to be your friends!", but Tess had replied, "I'm shy with you today," and they had said, "That's OK, we can still be friends, maybe we can try tomorrow, and we can come to your house and dance with you." She told that story with a conviction that made me believe it was 100% true.

Taxi cab home. The driver told us about another cabbie he knows who's 50 or so and who fought in the first gulf war. Never left Kuwait, never wounded, but every so often he calls in to the dispatcher to say "Come get me, I don't know where I am." And they have to have him describe things until they figure out where he is, then they come get him and drive him home. Often he turns out to be at the airport, which is right across from where he lives. This guy says openly he was never wounded - but says that the army gave him a lot of injections that they never bothered to explain to him. Which led to the driver telling us that there are 250,000 Puerto Rican children with unexplained mental problems, about sky-high rates of caner on Vieques, and about the US secretly injecting people with radioactive substances to see how long they would survive. In light of the recent CIA documents that have hit the papers, it seems pretty believable to me.

Observations:

Gasoline is sold in liters in Puerto Rico. 73 cents a liter.

The Puerto Rican word for "weekend" is "wiken".

Puerto Ricans really do use "l" in many spots where the rest of us use "r", and vice versa.

Off to bed to nurse our sunburn. Pictures as soon as the little white cable that connects the camera to the computer turns up! We got some good ones today!