Puerto One Week-o

Oh, the plans we had for the day today. Jump the B21 bus that I found out about the other day, ride it an easy 20 minutes to Plaza Las Americas, a gimungous mall complex, where we'd purchase a few necessaries, and then on to the vast public park complex across the street. Lunch there, all packed and ready to go, followed by another quick bus ride home and the beach to help us all unwind from so much unbridled fun.

So around 10:20 AM, having gone through our usual leisurely morning routine, we walked to the bus station. The signs indicate that the B21 runs past there every 20 minutes, so we all took guesses as to how long it would be before the next one. Tess thought two minutes, Quinn thought four, Janneke, five, and myself, ten.

I came closest. It came an hour and twenty-seven minutes later.

Of course, by that time we had long since given up. A5 bus after A5 bus rolled past, but no B21. And, in fact, at least two B21s went by in the wrong direction, but none was coming our way. After about 53 minutes (yes, I did have the stopwatch running) we decided to send Janneke home with the children while I stayed behind and held out for the bus. I would go to the mall and make the purchases, and check out the park against possible future patronage. The family disappeared into the heat distortion and rounded the bend, and then it was just me and the bus. Locked in a death match. Think you can starve me out, bus? You want to play it that way? Bring it on. You may have chased off a few of the senior citizens, but I'm in this for the long haul.

Pretty soon, a young man came up to tell us all assembled at the bus stop that there had been a detour, and that the bus was going around us and rejoining the route a few blocks south. No one from the bus company, mind you - just some friendly, generous young man who saw us all there suffering (the others were suffering - I was calm, collected, like a cobra, waiting to strike). One of the older women there turned to her left and said to another that the only solution was to take one of the maddeningly common A5s up to Ponce de Leon, and get on the B21 there. Then she turned to her right, to say the same thing to me, but to her amazement, there was nothing there but a vaguely me-shaped cloud of dust. By the time she caught sight of me, shading her eyes and squinting into the heat distortion, I was disappearing over the hill.

"Ponce de Leon", I thought to myself as the regular-speed humans whizzed past me, little more than flashes of color - "The same street that Marshall's is on! Not six blocks from here - and I know a shortcut!" Faster and faster I went, eager to catch the very next B21 without having to wait around for an A5. And sure enough, just as I trotted to the bus stop on Ponce, a B21 rolled to a stop. I leaped aboard just in time.

And there, in front of me, was the same older woman from the bus stop I'd just left. She smiled at me and waved. "Did you take the A5?", I asked, amazed and out of breath.

"Oh, no," she said. "The B21 came right after you left. They must have re-opened the detour."

Very unfortunately, the Puerto Rican bus system is designed like an American bus system. Cover all the bases, make the routes go throughout the city - but make it a system that no one in their right mind would actually WANT to use. Take no one's convenience into account. Make all the routes circuitous and unnecessarily slow, with stops every 100 feet, weaving back and forth, back and forth, east to west, while graaaaaaaaaadually working your way south. If you don't have a car in this society, you're really, really screwed. I felt this boiling up inside me as I wove east-west across sooo much of San Juan, feeling more and more like the poor and the elderly are not seen to at all, and how offensive and infuriating that is, until I finally - Finally! - got off at Plaza Las Americas.

Which is a fine mall. Got my books, had lunch.

The park across the street is very difficult to access - I had to sneak through the parking lot of Puerto Rico's biggest baseball stadium, cram my way through a wide spot between two bars in the fence that separates it from the park, walk all the way around a fenced-off amphitheater, and then cross a little bridge into the public park. Which is big and well-maintained, and easily available to anyone who owns a car. But by the time I got there I had long since decided it wouldn't be worth it for the kids at any future date. The bus leaves you some three-quarters of a mile from it, across a ten-lane interchange and on the far side of a huge stadim parking lot. I found a chin-up bar, had my way with it, and slunk home.

Where we all hit the beach for a fabulous afternoon of fun in the sun. I tell you, sometimes it feels like it's just not worth it to try to do anything else. Just hit the beach.

So tomorrow we're going to the children's museum.

This should be far easier - we've been there before, it's the one on the prettiest street I've ever seen. And the A5 goes there. You know, the common-as-mud A5s. So damn common that ten minutes ago, when I crossed the hall to drop our garbage off, there was an A5 standing by the elevator, whistling, looking bored. When it saw me, it said, "Hey, ya wanna go anywhere? Please?" When I said "No, thank you", it became suddenly sullen. "Sor-ree," it said, sarcastically, rolling its eyes. "Guess you'll wait for the 'B21', huh?" Then it snorted and took the elevator down.

I felt really sorry for it.

Observations:

The Prius is quite popular in Puerto Rico.

So is the Mini.

So is the chihuahua.

Here are some pictures from supper at Bebo's, the local chain 1.5 blocks from us that serves comida criolla! Great stuff, particularly the mofongo.



Tess has really got to get over this papparazzi thing.
It's the price of fame.



Janneke's a vegetarian, so she ordered the
bean asopao. As a bonus, it included
both chicken and pork!



Mofongo. What more need be said?