Wow. Here I sit, in Williamstown, finishing up the latest version of our Puerto Rico blog. Seems strange. And it is.
We listened to "Muerte en Hawaii" at supper today, and all of us smiled at the weirdness of it.
The last day or so in PR went nicely - you already know a lot of it. Cleaning the apartment, eating the leftovers, leaving the place as we found it, as much as we could. To bed and awake, at 5:30, for the last leg.
The cab driver was perfectly on time, as was Marimer; I brought down most of the bags, and then she and I departed with Clarabelle to take her to the cargo area. We had a nice chat as we drove, and when we arrived at Delta Cargo, Clarabelle, to my astonishment, tail awag, trooped straight into her crate and laid down. Astonishing. She knew, apparently, what was about to happen: Climb in, relax, and in a few hours, they let you out again. I was so pleased that she hadn't been traumatized by the previous trip. Marimer then drove me to the departure gate, where I quickly found Janneke and the kids. Janneke dashed out to give Marimer the keys and a goodbye hug, and we hit the line.
Zoom. The San Juan airport is more efficient than JFK by a factor of ten, easily. Security (first time I get full-body scanned; Janneke noticed they were doing almost exclusively men), straight to the gate, then an improvised breakfast and some time to wait. Spirits high. Noticed some musicians, young, Spaniards, with electric guitar cases that they apparently planned to carry on. I thought of Milena, who told me that cello players often buy a seat for their instrument so they won't have to check it. And I thought, about the guitar players: That looks big. Surprised they let you carry it on. But, hey. What do I care.
They announced that this was an absolutely full flight, and that there might be problems with storage space for carry-ons; therefore, anyone who would like to check a carry-on, free of charge, was being asked to do so. We jumped on that baby and checked our largest piece. And then the boarding began; as we usually do, we hung back so we could spend as little time as possible on the plane. Never quite understood those folks who line up the second they announce the possibility. Dude, you have your seat assigned. Nobody's taking it away. The only thing you gain by getting on earlier is more time immobilized in a tiny seat. But, to each his own.
Somebody at Delta had done their job, realized we were all one party, and seated us all four in a row, unlike the trip to San Juan, when we'd had to horse trade to get next to the kids. We were almost the last people aboard. And as we sat down, the three musicians we had noticed earlier came up from their seats in the back to harangue the flight attendants. One of them counted the open overhead compartments out loud and said, "Tres vacíos. Tres." He held up three fingers to illustrate. The flight attendant was trying to close one, but the musician refused to move his fingers, held up in an illustrative manner still, as he apparently thought he had not made his point clear enough. "Tres." Apparently, as there were so many folks on board, they had asked - required, no doubt - the musicians, with their bulky luggage, to check their bags. And now that everyone was on board, it turned out that there had been, in the end, room for the guitars. Of course, there had been no way to know for sure ahead of time, and they had made a call. Now the guitars were checked, the doors were closed, and there was no getting them out. The flight attendants told them they were sorry, but there was no way now to go back and undo it, and would they please go to their seats.
Everybody sat down. Much zipping back and forth of flight attendants; an announcement or two. And then the two male Spaniard musicians walked all the way from their seats in the back to the front, to badger the flight attendants again. The flight attendants were as insistent as they could be, but the Spaniards argued on and on, and on, and on. A voice came over the PA, first in Spanish, and then in English: "Could all passengers please be seated. We can not leave the gate until all passengers are seated. Both the doors have been closed and we have permission to go to the runway, but we cannot leave the gate until all passengers are seated." Nothing - on and on, even more animated, now, insisting and interrupting, wagging fingers.
I'd had it. Every single passenger on this flight, with however many connections and further travel plans and relatives waiting for them on the other side, was now being kidnapped by a couple of spoiled, entitled whipper-snappers with annoying accents. I was somewhat surprised to hear myself doing it, but I suddenly, and very, very loudly said the words I had been thinking now in my fuming head for a couple of minutes:
"Sentate, gordo. Qué somos, 300 aquí, esperándote a TI?!"
(Siddown, fatso. What are there, 300 of us, sitting here waiting on YOU?!)
They both froze, went silent, and slooooowly turned around, mouths agape. And were confronted with all of our faces, some of them probably laughing, some of them probably nodding vigorously. And mine, glaring intently.
It was like magic - like the scene in Dune when the witch says to Paul "Come here", and he tries valiantly to resist, but her magic cannot be disobeyed, and his body herky-jerky, obeys the command and marches over to her despite his efforts to stop it. They slowly, silently, made their way back through the gazes pouring down on them, and when they got close to me, the nearest one managed to say, "Déjame preguntar, por lo menos." (Let me ask, at least.) I was impatient. "Qué pensás, que no te vimos preguntar las primeras ochenta veces? Cuántas veces vas a preguntar? Preguntaste, y te contestaron. Sentate." (What do you think - that we didn't see you ask the first 80 times? How many times are you going to ask? You asked, and they answered. Sit down.) "Con usted, no vale la pena meterse," he said. (It's not worth getting into it with you.)
Damn straight.
Janneke said she heard a female flight attendant say, "I don't know what happened, but I'm glad it did."
I have to say - the only word I regret is "gordo". He wasn't even fat - mildly soft in the middle, I'd say. And it probably further ruined his day. But, hey - it worked. And it kept him from further ruining mine.
Fly, we did - Janneke and I took advantage of the in-flight wifi to watch an episode of "Mad Men" on Netflix. Snoozed, had a bagel, and I slept through the landing! I was awakened by the applause. Best flight ever.
Off, where JFK frustrated us at every turn - emboldened by my experience on the plane, I said to a squat New Yorker and his squat family who had squatted square in the middle of the area where we all needed to get by in order to leave: "You know, if you guys move back JUST a little bit, you'll be blocking absolutely everything." And he snorted in reply - but then immediately started grabbing at his bags to move. I could get used to this.
Though it's wrong. And evil. And I should not do it. I should take the high road at all times.
Into the van that had come to get us, pick up Clarabelle, who never even whined and didn't even really have to pee; then on the road, stop for a sandwich, let the cat out of her box, watch her install herself on top of a suitcase in the open van and sleep all the way to Williamstown. Flawless.
And then Clarabelle went out back and got nailed by a skunk.
And the internet wouldn't work, so I had to get on the horn with a techie so I could get it going and look up the anti-skunk-smell recipe that worked so well last time.
(1 quart hydrogen peroxide, 1 cup baking soda, 1/4 cup dishwashing liquid. Wash affected area thoroughly and then rinse. Voila.)
But apart form that, it was smooth sailing.
Today we've been putting things away, assessing the house, paying bills, answering messages, making phone calls, trips to the bank, bla bla bla. And tomorrow promises to be damn near normal.
Do I have conclusions? No, I don't. Not this time. Because I truly believe it is not a closed door. I want to go back there, regularly. I want to make more friends there and do more projects there. I want to get the kids' accents to be thoroughly, irretrievably Puerto Rican. I want to adopt a cat form there. And a dog. I want to hunt invasive iguanas and mongooses with a slingshot.
OK, that last one is kind of weird.
But I want to continue this relationship with Puerto Rico. I am more interested in it than I was when I hadn't been there at all. I want to incorporate more of it in my classroom; I want to know more about its history, I want to compare it to Cuba, i want to interview all the Cubans and Dominicans I can who live there and see what they think about it, and what Puerto Ricans think about them...It's an infinitely expanding place for me, and I don't want four years to go by until I get back there again.
Thanks for sharing the adventure with us. For Janneke, Q, T, Clarabelle, Skittles, Vanna White, and the Johnstadt Dancers, this is Joe, signing out.
For now.
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Sunday, August 14, 2011
Denoument
Wow! Couple of days gone by and no blog. You can probably guess why: We fly out tomorrow, and have been a little busy.
Yesterday...Let's see...Ah, yes. We had Marimer (María Mercedes, in whose apartment we're staying) and Aurora (downstairs neighbor in whose apartment we stayed last time, and who put us in touch with Marimer) over for brunch. It was absolutely wonderful - they are both hilarious, sparkly, energetic individuals with whom we get on just fantastically. It seems strange, but this was really the first extended time we had ever been able to spend together socially, despite all the dealings around the apartments. And not that it should have come as a surprise, since they had both been nothing but wonderful in our interactions previously, but they truly felt like old friends - comfortable, easy to laugh with and to talk to. And they're coming to Williamstown this coming year! Just a great time had by all.
Then I went to say goodbye to my friend Basilisa, the owner of the botánica, whom I mentioned in a post or two a while back. It was Saturday, and she wouldn't be working Sunday, so this was going to be my last shot at seeing her, and between the Culebra trip and who knows what all else, I hadn't been able to get in to see her at all this past week. So we chatted a good hour or so, and she then invited us over for dessert. And for supper, potentially, but I told her Janneke would already be working on it. But we agreed: 7:30, her place.
We rolled in a little late, and she let us in - hair undone, in her nightgown. She had meant, and had probably said, the NEXT night! Embarrassment all 'round, but she wouldn't think of letting us leave. She showed us all around her house, offered us her downstairs mother-in-law apartment for our next stay, specifically directed the kids to go to her fridge and rifle through it looking for sweets...A very nice visit. And we agreed to do the actual, official visit today, at lunch.
Here's a shot from post-lunch:
And another, with her daughter, Lizzie:
Just the warmest, most welcoming people. And Basi made a point of letting Janneke know all the nice things I'd been saying about her.
Love it when a plan comes together.
The morning prior to lunch saw the epic of the rental car delivery. Went without a hitch - except that once I had taken a cab home ($15), I realized I hadn't detached the remote to Marimer (our apartment's owner)'s garage gate. So I called Enterprise, and the woman put me on hold while she went to find the car. She came back five minutes later. "It's not here," she said. "What? I turned it in twenty minutes ago! Did you rent it already?" (Sounds of clicking.) "No, it hasn't been rented out, but it's not on the lot." "Has it turned invisible?" "It could be on another lot," she said in an annoyed tone. (Can't blame her.) "I'll attach a note, and when we rent it out, which will probably be today, we'll try to make sure someone looks for the remote."
Not good enough. So I walked down the stairs and drew a deep breath in preparation for a run to Ashford Avenue to where the taxis hang out so I could get back there and find it myself - but there was, magically, a taxi waiting just outside our apartment building! He took me back to the car rental place ($16), and agreed to wait there while I searched the lot.
The car was thirty feet in front of the window through which the person I'd talked to could have looked. I talked to no one - walked up to the car, pulled the keys out of the door, took the remote, and walked back to the cab. Back home again ($16). So my forgetfulness cost us $32 today. Whatchagonnado.
The afternoon was spent by Janneke in packing, and by me in watching the kids frolic in the surf. And then we all trooped to the dog park so Clarabelle could get a good long run in before we stuff her into the cargo bay of a plane tomorrow. Poor thing - she probably knows something's up, just not quite exactly what.
And that's going to be it! We did a lot of debriefing in recent days around the trip home - both kids have come up to us independently to talk about how much they'll miss Puerto Rico, and what a good time they've had. I'd love to come back next year, but I think that still draws some skepticism from the other three members of the family. Luckily, I wear the pants.
Gotta go - Janneke's waiting for me to walk the dog and take out the garbage so we can watch Mad Men. I'll check in again post-trip!
Yesterday...Let's see...Ah, yes. We had Marimer (María Mercedes, in whose apartment we're staying) and Aurora (downstairs neighbor in whose apartment we stayed last time, and who put us in touch with Marimer) over for brunch. It was absolutely wonderful - they are both hilarious, sparkly, energetic individuals with whom we get on just fantastically. It seems strange, but this was really the first extended time we had ever been able to spend together socially, despite all the dealings around the apartments. And not that it should have come as a surprise, since they had both been nothing but wonderful in our interactions previously, but they truly felt like old friends - comfortable, easy to laugh with and to talk to. And they're coming to Williamstown this coming year! Just a great time had by all.
Then I went to say goodbye to my friend Basilisa, the owner of the botánica, whom I mentioned in a post or two a while back. It was Saturday, and she wouldn't be working Sunday, so this was going to be my last shot at seeing her, and between the Culebra trip and who knows what all else, I hadn't been able to get in to see her at all this past week. So we chatted a good hour or so, and she then invited us over for dessert. And for supper, potentially, but I told her Janneke would already be working on it. But we agreed: 7:30, her place.
We rolled in a little late, and she let us in - hair undone, in her nightgown. She had meant, and had probably said, the NEXT night! Embarrassment all 'round, but she wouldn't think of letting us leave. She showed us all around her house, offered us her downstairs mother-in-law apartment for our next stay, specifically directed the kids to go to her fridge and rifle through it looking for sweets...A very nice visit. And we agreed to do the actual, official visit today, at lunch.
Here's a shot from post-lunch:
And another, with her daughter, Lizzie:
Just the warmest, most welcoming people. And Basi made a point of letting Janneke know all the nice things I'd been saying about her.
Love it when a plan comes together.
The morning prior to lunch saw the epic of the rental car delivery. Went without a hitch - except that once I had taken a cab home ($15), I realized I hadn't detached the remote to Marimer (our apartment's owner)'s garage gate. So I called Enterprise, and the woman put me on hold while she went to find the car. She came back five minutes later. "It's not here," she said. "What? I turned it in twenty minutes ago! Did you rent it already?" (Sounds of clicking.) "No, it hasn't been rented out, but it's not on the lot." "Has it turned invisible?" "It could be on another lot," she said in an annoyed tone. (Can't blame her.) "I'll attach a note, and when we rent it out, which will probably be today, we'll try to make sure someone looks for the remote."
Not good enough. So I walked down the stairs and drew a deep breath in preparation for a run to Ashford Avenue to where the taxis hang out so I could get back there and find it myself - but there was, magically, a taxi waiting just outside our apartment building! He took me back to the car rental place ($16), and agreed to wait there while I searched the lot.
The car was thirty feet in front of the window through which the person I'd talked to could have looked. I talked to no one - walked up to the car, pulled the keys out of the door, took the remote, and walked back to the cab. Back home again ($16). So my forgetfulness cost us $32 today. Whatchagonnado.
The afternoon was spent by Janneke in packing, and by me in watching the kids frolic in the surf. And then we all trooped to the dog park so Clarabelle could get a good long run in before we stuff her into the cargo bay of a plane tomorrow. Poor thing - she probably knows something's up, just not quite exactly what.
And that's going to be it! We did a lot of debriefing in recent days around the trip home - both kids have come up to us independently to talk about how much they'll miss Puerto Rico, and what a good time they've had. I'd love to come back next year, but I think that still draws some skepticism from the other three members of the family. Luckily, I wear the pants.
Gotta go - Janneke's waiting for me to walk the dog and take out the garbage so we can watch Mad Men. I'll check in again post-trip!
Friday, August 12, 2011
Domesticity Continues
As you may have guessed, we boarded Clarabelle for the jaunt to Culebra. She spent Tuesday night, all of Wednesday, and Wednesday night at DeVarona, where T and she had gone to camp. We were then to pick her up Thursday morning. So I drove over to do that.
Parked the car in the parking lot and saw two enormous iguanas scramble out under the fence, running for dear life. The facility is located in a mildly wooded area, so I guess it shouldn't have come as a huge surprise. But even so: wild iguanas aren't something that gets on my radar screen much. I admired their disappearance and headed in.
Said hello as I walked to the window area by the front desk that overlooks the doggie pool. Clarabelle was there with about eight other dogs, among them a bull terrier puppy, as well as the prettiest dog I've seen in a long time: jet black, with a shepherd-type face and ears, medium-length hair, all on a finely built, border-collie type body. Gorgeous.
But I didn't get much time to watch Clarabelle frolic. Just as I set up to watch her, she stopped dead in her tracks and looked out otoward the parking lot. She couldn't see it, as there's a big wooden fence there, but she moved toward the fence and lifted her head excitedly, scenting the air. Then she turned and trotted to the window, searching it, until she found me; she then leapt up and bounced against the window with her front paws, and grinned and waved her tail excitedly. She'd smelled me! I was very touched.
It took them a good 25 minutes to prep her for her departure - she came to me dry as a bone, and wearing a complimentary DeVarona bandana. I'd have taken her wet and bandana-less in order to be done quicker, but what can you do. They began to search for the collar and leash, but I had a memory of them handing them to me as I left when I dropped her off. I'd thought I would have left them in the car for when I eventually picked her up, but they weren't in the car. "Must be at home," I said, and took the dog with me on a borrowed leash as far as the car.
Drove home. 25, maybe 30 minutes with the traffic.
Looked for the collar and leash. Nowhere.
Called DeVarona. They searched more extensively. "Yep, they're here."
Back in the car for another hour of fun. But we did perform the celebratory ritual we always perform when we get Clarabelle back from boarding:
By the time I got home again it was noon, so we had lunch, followed by some lazing about the place. Kids doing projects (T has been making crafts), Q reading or playing his DS...And the weather wasn't bad, either. We just weren't up for much. The night before, I had been sitting with Janneke in the living room, and had simply declared:
"I'm done being in Puerto Rico."
We're spent. It's time to go home.
We rallied in the afternoon to get some progress in on the 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle we had begun; we were pretty close to finishing at that point.
And around 3:30 we managed to drag ourselves to the beach for a limited frolic. Back home again, where I took off to do some jogging. As I usually do after a jog, I hit the water; it cools me off a lot faster, and gets some of the sweat out of the clothes before I bring them back into the house.
'Course, I'm barefoot when I go in, and yesterday I drifted far enough out to where I was suddenly standing on rock. Or would have been, had I put my foot down for more than a delicate probe. Once I realized it was rock, the words "Sea urchin!" rang out in my head like a fire alarm, and I began to tread water in the pretty-shallow sea, keeping my feet out in front of me, which requires a lot of arm and hand motion to keep afloat. I was facing back toward the beach.
Now, the day before, when we'd gotten home, I'd been unable to completely re-attach the ear pieces on my glasses. I got one mostly in, but the screw didn't go all the way through to the bottom sprong; on the other piece, I couldn't get it even through the top one. So that one was held on with a paper clip until I could make it to a repair shop. Meaning that my glasses, while on for this particular run, weren't on especially tightly.
And as I treaded water there, an especially big wave came up from behind, caught me unawares, washed over my head and my face, and took my glasses off, clean as a whistle.
I fished for them madly with my right hand, and managed to bump them before they disappeared forever, down to Davy Jones' locker.
So I've got the contacts in now. It'll be a long day of travel in them when we eventually do go home, but I'll make it. It was time for a new pair anyway.
Home, supper, dishes, and the kids watched the first half of "Summer of the Colt", an Argentine movie Janneke found on Netflix. We were prepping them for a long time on the Spanish saying we'd help them if it got dificult - but then it turned out the thing is dubbed / spoken in English, depending, I think, on whether the actor involved spoke any. Bother. Still, a cute movie. At one point, the kids who come to visit their grandfather in the country are settling in to their rooms. One of them has misplaced the bag with his clothes in it. He enters the room and declares, "I can't find my sack!" Which left Q and T in stitches. And which has been quoted numerous times since then.
By the kids.
Thus will our last days be here: Uneventful. Tonight we plan on hitting the movies - "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" opens here for me and Q, and Janneke, whose turn it is to go with T (I saw "Zookeeper", remember), will see "Smurfs".
Janneke and T went out this morning for a sunrise breakfast on the rocks overlooking the sea down at the beach, and just walked back in, soaked to the bone.
It's raining quite hard on and off today. I had planned on going in to do some more project-type stuff in San Jiuan, but not on a day like today. Not with a borrowed camera. I'd planned on getting some stuff on the sort-of-feral cats of Old San Juan, but they'll all be in out of the rain, I'm sure. Less fun to film.
OK, then - unless something cataclysmic happens, I doubt you'll hear too much more of us. There won't be much to tell - cleaning, packing, getting nervous for the trip. But I'll try to keep you posted.
(We had one piece missing, and one extra piece.)
Parked the car in the parking lot and saw two enormous iguanas scramble out under the fence, running for dear life. The facility is located in a mildly wooded area, so I guess it shouldn't have come as a huge surprise. But even so: wild iguanas aren't something that gets on my radar screen much. I admired their disappearance and headed in.
Said hello as I walked to the window area by the front desk that overlooks the doggie pool. Clarabelle was there with about eight other dogs, among them a bull terrier puppy, as well as the prettiest dog I've seen in a long time: jet black, with a shepherd-type face and ears, medium-length hair, all on a finely built, border-collie type body. Gorgeous.
But I didn't get much time to watch Clarabelle frolic. Just as I set up to watch her, she stopped dead in her tracks and looked out otoward the parking lot. She couldn't see it, as there's a big wooden fence there, but she moved toward the fence and lifted her head excitedly, scenting the air. Then she turned and trotted to the window, searching it, until she found me; she then leapt up and bounced against the window with her front paws, and grinned and waved her tail excitedly. She'd smelled me! I was very touched.
It took them a good 25 minutes to prep her for her departure - she came to me dry as a bone, and wearing a complimentary DeVarona bandana. I'd have taken her wet and bandana-less in order to be done quicker, but what can you do. They began to search for the collar and leash, but I had a memory of them handing them to me as I left when I dropped her off. I'd thought I would have left them in the car for when I eventually picked her up, but they weren't in the car. "Must be at home," I said, and took the dog with me on a borrowed leash as far as the car.
Drove home. 25, maybe 30 minutes with the traffic.
Looked for the collar and leash. Nowhere.
Called DeVarona. They searched more extensively. "Yep, they're here."
Back in the car for another hour of fun. But we did perform the celebratory ritual we always perform when we get Clarabelle back from boarding:
By the time I got home again it was noon, so we had lunch, followed by some lazing about the place. Kids doing projects (T has been making crafts), Q reading or playing his DS...And the weather wasn't bad, either. We just weren't up for much. The night before, I had been sitting with Janneke in the living room, and had simply declared:
"I'm done being in Puerto Rico."
We're spent. It's time to go home.
We rallied in the afternoon to get some progress in on the 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle we had begun; we were pretty close to finishing at that point.
And around 3:30 we managed to drag ourselves to the beach for a limited frolic. Back home again, where I took off to do some jogging. As I usually do after a jog, I hit the water; it cools me off a lot faster, and gets some of the sweat out of the clothes before I bring them back into the house.
'Course, I'm barefoot when I go in, and yesterday I drifted far enough out to where I was suddenly standing on rock. Or would have been, had I put my foot down for more than a delicate probe. Once I realized it was rock, the words "Sea urchin!" rang out in my head like a fire alarm, and I began to tread water in the pretty-shallow sea, keeping my feet out in front of me, which requires a lot of arm and hand motion to keep afloat. I was facing back toward the beach.
Now, the day before, when we'd gotten home, I'd been unable to completely re-attach the ear pieces on my glasses. I got one mostly in, but the screw didn't go all the way through to the bottom sprong; on the other piece, I couldn't get it even through the top one. So that one was held on with a paper clip until I could make it to a repair shop. Meaning that my glasses, while on for this particular run, weren't on especially tightly.
And as I treaded water there, an especially big wave came up from behind, caught me unawares, washed over my head and my face, and took my glasses off, clean as a whistle.
I fished for them madly with my right hand, and managed to bump them before they disappeared forever, down to Davy Jones' locker.
So I've got the contacts in now. It'll be a long day of travel in them when we eventually do go home, but I'll make it. It was time for a new pair anyway.
Home, supper, dishes, and the kids watched the first half of "Summer of the Colt", an Argentine movie Janneke found on Netflix. We were prepping them for a long time on the Spanish saying we'd help them if it got dificult - but then it turned out the thing is dubbed / spoken in English, depending, I think, on whether the actor involved spoke any. Bother. Still, a cute movie. At one point, the kids who come to visit their grandfather in the country are settling in to their rooms. One of them has misplaced the bag with his clothes in it. He enters the room and declares, "I can't find my sack!" Which left Q and T in stitches. And which has been quoted numerous times since then.
By the kids.
Thus will our last days be here: Uneventful. Tonight we plan on hitting the movies - "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" opens here for me and Q, and Janneke, whose turn it is to go with T (I saw "Zookeeper", remember), will see "Smurfs".
Janneke and T went out this morning for a sunrise breakfast on the rocks overlooking the sea down at the beach, and just walked back in, soaked to the bone.
It's raining quite hard on and off today. I had planned on going in to do some more project-type stuff in San Jiuan, but not on a day like today. Not with a borrowed camera. I'd planned on getting some stuff on the sort-of-feral cats of Old San Juan, but they'll all be in out of the rain, I'm sure. Less fun to film.
OK, then - unless something cataclysmic happens, I doubt you'll hear too much more of us. There won't be much to tell - cleaning, packing, getting nervous for the trip. But I'll try to keep you posted.
(We had one piece missing, and one extra piece.)
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
Culebra
So, to get there, you have to take a ferry. Which leaves at 9:00 AM, but the tickets go on sale at 7:00 AM, so you have to leave your apartment in Condado around 5:45. So we did that.
Arrived, parked, got in line, waited until 7:00, bought tickets ($13 for a family of four for there-and-back hour-and-a-quarter open-ocean ferry service), settled in to wait at the docks.
The ferry's pretty big. Here she blows:
Speaking of politics: Saw a woman who looks EXACTLY like Leyla Rouhi. Here she is:
She gave me permission to publish her likeness, by the by. In writing. In perpetuity.
Kids got a little restless, and so did we, but eventually we boarded.
Found seats together inside, in the air conditioning, and settled in to wait for takeoff. Q heard a blast from a horn at one point, just as I was ready to take a picture:
Live for those moments. T was asleep before too long:
And there was a very dignified gentleman sitting near us, who was clearly begging to be photographed, and who gave me written permission, again, to use his image in perpetuity. (Same form as the other lady.)
And before you knew it, we were disembarking at Culebra:
It's an island, 'case you hadn't realized, that is very small, but is part of Puerto Rican territory, and is relatively untouched. Fumbled our way through town to a place that purported to be a bakery. They had a limited selection of donuts and diet sodas, so we settled in to wait out the ferry crowd - the thing holds 400, and hardly any seats were open. On a Wednesday! Imagine the weekend! So when we'd eaten and rested a bit in the coolness, and the crowds had gone, I set out to find a van to drive us ($3 a head) to Playa Flamenco, renowned as one of the best beaches in the world, according to the locals. And here's our approach:
And here's our landing:
It was great. Clean, fine, white sand, clear water (not as clear as I imagined it, but very clear) - and lots of people. I mean, quite a large number of people. Look around - and again, I repeat, this was a Wednesday. I said to Janneke that our tour book says "Culebra hasn't been discovered by the tourism industry yet", and that that seems like total crap. "Well, the book is four years old," she said. Aha. Hadn't thought of that.
The beach was great. But it was just for jumping around in the water, which the kids have had a lot of, and just a 20-minute hike from there, the book said, there's another beach, with great snorkeling. So after an hour or so and our bag lunch, we trooped them over the mountain to see this other beach.
Now, as we sat there, Janneke and I, discussing snorkeling, it occurred to me that I had not remembered to wear my contact lenses. And so I would not be snorkeling. I was remarkably sanguine about it, I have to say, considering how much I really do love snorkeling, and how I'd remembered to shave my upper lip down the previous evening. It just wasn't in the cards - I can't wear glasses under my swim mask! You can't do that - it won't work. The ear pieces would keep the mask from sealing. You'd have to get rid of the ear piec--
Wait a minute.
Leaping into action, I stayed exactly where I was and managed to unscrew the ear piece with my thumbnail from the right hand side of my glasses. Realizing this wasn't going to work twice - the other screw was a lot tighter - I scampered back down the fine-sand path and bought a diet Pepsi from a bartender, then asked him if I could borrow a knife so I could unscrew my ear piece.
"I have some of those really tiny screwdrivers," he said. And he walked out to his car and brought me back a complete set.
Lucky, I thought, to run into this gentleman today. I wasted no time, and soon the ear piece was off. "Now," I said to him, "if only I could find some rubber bands!..."
Which he produced for me forthwith.
Cha, ching. Skipping forward a bit in time, I'll show you what these babies look like head-on:
And in profile:
Brilliant. Mask seals right around 'em, no problem. 'Course, when you're not snorkeling, they do put kind of a lot of pressure on your nose. There has to be some way to remedy that!...Hey, T: Pass me your Gatorade bottle:
Two words: Mac. Gyver.
There were a lot of seagulls at this beach - first time we see decent numbers of them. Wonder why.
Off we trooped to the other beach. Whose name I can't recall, but which is awesome. Check it:
We snorkeled the bejeezus out of that place. A very lovely, clear water they have there, with a very wide variety of landscapes and formations to explore. Each of us saw many species of fish we hadn't seen when we snorkeled in Rincón. If I could do it over again, I'd do Culebra rather than Rincón, and I'd skip Playa Flamenco and head straight to this place again. There was NO ONE ELSE THERE. We had the whole earth to ourselves. Pristine.
Back to the bus when it was all over - but while we trooped there (me with a popped T on my shoulders), I realized one of my flippers had fallen out of my bag, and had to run all the way back to the beach to find it. The rest continued on without me, and I caught up with them back at Flamenco Beach, just as a downpour started. I was wearing my glasses around my neck now (they really do press hard after a while), and couldn't see well enough to look for them - but I heard them coming my way. We all four found shelter under the same eave at the same time, strangely, and were together again. Nice how that works out.
Hired a van, back to the beach, onto the ferry (after a somewhat complicated session of changing back into our civilian clothes after swimming, right there on the dock; Janneke was demure behind a screen of towels we set up for her, as were T and Q (I, though, made some token motions toward decency by going close to a trailer that kind of screened parts of me, but then just dropped trou and did 'em up commando style. Hey, if they don't want to watch, they can turn away. (yeah, right. Sure they can.))))
(I can't keep track of how many parentheses I had going there - it's too late in the evening. I threw in a couple extra, probably, for good measure. (Keep the change.)) (")" ?...)
Ferry ride to Fajardo:
...dinner at Burger King (hey, it's cheap(ish), it's fast, it's reliable, there are no surprises, and we were bushed), and home to San Juan, via Highway 66, which is a marvel of modern transportation.
WHOO! I am finished with le post! Off to shower and to bed. Janneke wanted to watch an episode of "Mad Men" tonight, but it's 10:08. I told her I wouldn't make it. She's probably in there watching some Masterpiece Theater piece about starvation in 9th-century Russia.
Aw, who'm I kidding. She's re-watching "The Real Macaw". I'll bet you anything.
Tell you what - One last treat before you go: Can' blink comfortably with the MacGyver glasses on, and they press on the nose. There's got to be some way, when not snorkeling, to put the pressure downwards rather than upwards - To take advantage, as it were, of the nose pieces of the glasses. Aha! I've got it!
That's how I ordered our meals at Burger King.
And nobody called the cops or tazed us or anything. What a lucky day!
Arrived, parked, got in line, waited until 7:00, bought tickets ($13 for a family of four for there-and-back hour-and-a-quarter open-ocean ferry service), settled in to wait at the docks.
The ferry's pretty big. Here she blows:
Speaking of politics: Saw a woman who looks EXACTLY like Leyla Rouhi. Here she is:
She gave me permission to publish her likeness, by the by. In writing. In perpetuity.
Kids got a little restless, and so did we, but eventually we boarded.
Found seats together inside, in the air conditioning, and settled in to wait for takeoff. Q heard a blast from a horn at one point, just as I was ready to take a picture:
Live for those moments. T was asleep before too long:
And there was a very dignified gentleman sitting near us, who was clearly begging to be photographed, and who gave me written permission, again, to use his image in perpetuity. (Same form as the other lady.)
And before you knew it, we were disembarking at Culebra:
It's an island, 'case you hadn't realized, that is very small, but is part of Puerto Rican territory, and is relatively untouched. Fumbled our way through town to a place that purported to be a bakery. They had a limited selection of donuts and diet sodas, so we settled in to wait out the ferry crowd - the thing holds 400, and hardly any seats were open. On a Wednesday! Imagine the weekend! So when we'd eaten and rested a bit in the coolness, and the crowds had gone, I set out to find a van to drive us ($3 a head) to Playa Flamenco, renowned as one of the best beaches in the world, according to the locals. And here's our approach:
And here's our landing:
It was great. Clean, fine, white sand, clear water (not as clear as I imagined it, but very clear) - and lots of people. I mean, quite a large number of people. Look around - and again, I repeat, this was a Wednesday. I said to Janneke that our tour book says "Culebra hasn't been discovered by the tourism industry yet", and that that seems like total crap. "Well, the book is four years old," she said. Aha. Hadn't thought of that.
The beach was great. But it was just for jumping around in the water, which the kids have had a lot of, and just a 20-minute hike from there, the book said, there's another beach, with great snorkeling. So after an hour or so and our bag lunch, we trooped them over the mountain to see this other beach.
Now, as we sat there, Janneke and I, discussing snorkeling, it occurred to me that I had not remembered to wear my contact lenses. And so I would not be snorkeling. I was remarkably sanguine about it, I have to say, considering how much I really do love snorkeling, and how I'd remembered to shave my upper lip down the previous evening. It just wasn't in the cards - I can't wear glasses under my swim mask! You can't do that - it won't work. The ear pieces would keep the mask from sealing. You'd have to get rid of the ear piec--
Wait a minute.
Leaping into action, I stayed exactly where I was and managed to unscrew the ear piece with my thumbnail from the right hand side of my glasses. Realizing this wasn't going to work twice - the other screw was a lot tighter - I scampered back down the fine-sand path and bought a diet Pepsi from a bartender, then asked him if I could borrow a knife so I could unscrew my ear piece.
"I have some of those really tiny screwdrivers," he said. And he walked out to his car and brought me back a complete set.
Lucky, I thought, to run into this gentleman today. I wasted no time, and soon the ear piece was off. "Now," I said to him, "if only I could find some rubber bands!..."
Which he produced for me forthwith.
Cha, ching. Skipping forward a bit in time, I'll show you what these babies look like head-on:
And in profile:
Brilliant. Mask seals right around 'em, no problem. 'Course, when you're not snorkeling, they do put kind of a lot of pressure on your nose. There has to be some way to remedy that!...Hey, T: Pass me your Gatorade bottle:
Two words: Mac. Gyver.
There were a lot of seagulls at this beach - first time we see decent numbers of them. Wonder why.
Off we trooped to the other beach. Whose name I can't recall, but which is awesome. Check it:
We snorkeled the bejeezus out of that place. A very lovely, clear water they have there, with a very wide variety of landscapes and formations to explore. Each of us saw many species of fish we hadn't seen when we snorkeled in Rincón. If I could do it over again, I'd do Culebra rather than Rincón, and I'd skip Playa Flamenco and head straight to this place again. There was NO ONE ELSE THERE. We had the whole earth to ourselves. Pristine.
Back to the bus when it was all over - but while we trooped there (me with a popped T on my shoulders), I realized one of my flippers had fallen out of my bag, and had to run all the way back to the beach to find it. The rest continued on without me, and I caught up with them back at Flamenco Beach, just as a downpour started. I was wearing my glasses around my neck now (they really do press hard after a while), and couldn't see well enough to look for them - but I heard them coming my way. We all four found shelter under the same eave at the same time, strangely, and were together again. Nice how that works out.
Hired a van, back to the beach, onto the ferry (after a somewhat complicated session of changing back into our civilian clothes after swimming, right there on the dock; Janneke was demure behind a screen of towels we set up for her, as were T and Q (I, though, made some token motions toward decency by going close to a trailer that kind of screened parts of me, but then just dropped trou and did 'em up commando style. Hey, if they don't want to watch, they can turn away. (yeah, right. Sure they can.))))
(I can't keep track of how many parentheses I had going there - it's too late in the evening. I threw in a couple extra, probably, for good measure. (Keep the change.)) (")" ?...)
Ferry ride to Fajardo:
...dinner at Burger King (hey, it's cheap(ish), it's fast, it's reliable, there are no surprises, and we were bushed), and home to San Juan, via Highway 66, which is a marvel of modern transportation.
WHOO! I am finished with le post! Off to shower and to bed. Janneke wanted to watch an episode of "Mad Men" tonight, but it's 10:08. I told her I wouldn't make it. She's probably in there watching some Masterpiece Theater piece about starvation in 9th-century Russia.
Aw, who'm I kidding. She's re-watching "The Real Macaw". I'll bet you anything.
Tell you what - One last treat before you go: Can' blink comfortably with the MacGyver glasses on, and they press on the nose. There's got to be some way, when not snorkeling, to put the pressure downwards rather than upwards - To take advantage, as it were, of the nose pieces of the glasses. Aha! I've got it!
That's how I ordered our meals at Burger King.
And nobody called the cops or tazed us or anything. What a lucky day!
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
A Couple of Days Off from High Adventure
Haven’t been in touch for a while – a direct effect of the lack of real news these days. Let’s go backward in time:
Right now the kids are watching the second half of “The Real Macaw”, easily the best Australian film ever made. About a parrot. That stars Jason Robards. And involves pirates. They started watching it yesterday in the evening, and continue tonight. Janneke and I have mercifully let the kids plug in the headphones, and are doing a little “Mystery Science Theater” action over the silent progress of the film.
It’s even less fun than it sounds.
Earlier today, I drove to Fajardo, a little over an hour away, to try to buy tickets for the ferry to Culebra in the morning. We plan to go there and do some beach-hopping and snorkeling. Turns out, though, they only sell 50 advance tickets on the 400-person ferry; we’ll have to get there tomorrow at 7:00 AM and wait in line for tickets on the 9:00 ferry. What's that you say? I should have called first? I did. Probably twenty times. No one ever answered the phone. I finally called the station in Culebra, who said "You can try to call Fajardo, but I'm warning you: They never answer. The phone bites and is poisonous, apparently, in the Fajardo office." I pointed out to the dude in the ticket window there - that it could have saved me damn near three hours of driving. "They know," he said. "I tell them all the time. But I can't answer the phone and sell tickets." "Seems you need another person, then," I pointed out, helpfully. "Don't I know it," he replied.
Ah well. It let me listen to the radio a while. And I also discovered a shortcut to Fajardo – it’s the third time this trip I make that drive. You’ll recall we went there for the bioluminescent bay trip. The directions we had from the kayak company were almost incredibly bad, and they skipped entirely the much quicker and simpler route that avoids any number of towns and stops on a four-lane highway designed specifically for the purpose. Well tomorrow we get our revenge for all the time we’ve wasted up to now.
In the morning, Janneke was at the coffee shop, “working” again, and the kids and I tried to go to the San Juan municipal natatorium. Turns out, though, you need to get an ID and a doctor’s note and permission from the Pope before you can use it. So screw them. Didn’t go in. Hit the beach instead.
That was today. Yesterday? Um…Well, the cat’s been a bit sick. We took her to the vet because she’s had some loose stool action lately. That’s the reason we didn’t go to Culebra today; Janneke wasn’t comfortable leaving her at home with the loose stool action going on. This vet was a lot better – got an appointment and didn’t have to wait 4 hours at all. Couldn’t find anything wrong with the cat, and got some immodium-type medicine for her. All should be well.
On her way to the vet’s, Janneke noticed a municipal dog park, well-maintained, with a bunch of agility structures and all. So after lunch and an afternoon at the beach, we all trooped there to let Clarabelle have a run with some new friends. Many of whom were intent on humping her.
There are jokes to be made there, but I will resist.
Woops – They appear to have killed off the bird in the climactic final scene fo the movie, here, and I have two crying kids. We’ll have to see - I may need to intervene here…Wait – Now the father has jumped from the helicopter and they’re having a come-together moment in the sea, and the talking parrot is still floating on a piece of wreckage from the exploded boat where the evil archaeologist met his deserved end –
Believe me, I WISH I were kidding.
-OK, all appears to be well. They didn’t kill off the bird. What was I saying…?
So that was pretty much yesterday. It’s been a slow couple of days, to be perfectly frank. But come tomorrow night, I’ll have pictures and anecdotes that’ll put hair back on your head.
Besides, the kid and the macaw are now in South America returning the artifacts to the pyramid in the jungle whence they originally came, to the strains of an Andean folk band.
Still wish I were kidding.
Right now the kids are watching the second half of “The Real Macaw”, easily the best Australian film ever made. About a parrot. That stars Jason Robards. And involves pirates. They started watching it yesterday in the evening, and continue tonight. Janneke and I have mercifully let the kids plug in the headphones, and are doing a little “Mystery Science Theater” action over the silent progress of the film.
It’s even less fun than it sounds.
Earlier today, I drove to Fajardo, a little over an hour away, to try to buy tickets for the ferry to Culebra in the morning. We plan to go there and do some beach-hopping and snorkeling. Turns out, though, they only sell 50 advance tickets on the 400-person ferry; we’ll have to get there tomorrow at 7:00 AM and wait in line for tickets on the 9:00 ferry. What's that you say? I should have called first? I did. Probably twenty times. No one ever answered the phone. I finally called the station in Culebra, who said "You can try to call Fajardo, but I'm warning you: They never answer. The phone bites and is poisonous, apparently, in the Fajardo office." I pointed out to the dude in the ticket window there - that it could have saved me damn near three hours of driving. "They know," he said. "I tell them all the time. But I can't answer the phone and sell tickets." "Seems you need another person, then," I pointed out, helpfully. "Don't I know it," he replied.
Ah well. It let me listen to the radio a while. And I also discovered a shortcut to Fajardo – it’s the third time this trip I make that drive. You’ll recall we went there for the bioluminescent bay trip. The directions we had from the kayak company were almost incredibly bad, and they skipped entirely the much quicker and simpler route that avoids any number of towns and stops on a four-lane highway designed specifically for the purpose. Well tomorrow we get our revenge for all the time we’ve wasted up to now.
In the morning, Janneke was at the coffee shop, “working” again, and the kids and I tried to go to the San Juan municipal natatorium. Turns out, though, you need to get an ID and a doctor’s note and permission from the Pope before you can use it. So screw them. Didn’t go in. Hit the beach instead.
That was today. Yesterday? Um…Well, the cat’s been a bit sick. We took her to the vet because she’s had some loose stool action lately. That’s the reason we didn’t go to Culebra today; Janneke wasn’t comfortable leaving her at home with the loose stool action going on. This vet was a lot better – got an appointment and didn’t have to wait 4 hours at all. Couldn’t find anything wrong with the cat, and got some immodium-type medicine for her. All should be well.
On her way to the vet’s, Janneke noticed a municipal dog park, well-maintained, with a bunch of agility structures and all. So after lunch and an afternoon at the beach, we all trooped there to let Clarabelle have a run with some new friends. Many of whom were intent on humping her.
There are jokes to be made there, but I will resist.
Woops – They appear to have killed off the bird in the climactic final scene fo the movie, here, and I have two crying kids. We’ll have to see - I may need to intervene here…Wait – Now the father has jumped from the helicopter and they’re having a come-together moment in the sea, and the talking parrot is still floating on a piece of wreckage from the exploded boat where the evil archaeologist met his deserved end –
Believe me, I WISH I were kidding.
-OK, all appears to be well. They didn’t kill off the bird. What was I saying…?
So that was pretty much yesterday. It’s been a slow couple of days, to be perfectly frank. But come tomorrow night, I’ll have pictures and anecdotes that’ll put hair back on your head.
Besides, the kid and the macaw are now in South America returning the artifacts to the pyramid in the jungle whence they originally came, to the strains of an Andean folk band.
Still wish I were kidding.
Saturday, August 6, 2011
Playing Catch-Up
Well, let's begin with yesterday, shall we?
The morning appears to have gone by uneventfully, because I do not recall anything from it. So we'll just leave that there. Although I do recall this: I did project stuff, and Janneke went off to meet up with a Williams student of hers who is from Puerto Rico. And who says her family wants to have us over for dinner. I'll believe it when I see it.
Post-lunch, we loaded up the car and headed to Piñones, a spot up the coast toward the East from here that all the Puerto Ricans tell us we have to get to, but which appears to go unmentioned in most of the guide-book-type material we have or have seen. The idea is that it's home to a large population of Puerto Ricans of African descent, that they sell food in lots of kiosks, that the beaches are protected and lovely, and that there's some sort of walkway that you ride bicycles on. So off we went.
Zoomed there in under twenty minutes via the highway. Unbelievable, how fast the Kia Sol can get one around a place.
We found this funny:
"Postal police"? Do they really need a car?
Following directions I got from a guy on the beach a couple weeks ago, we drove until we saw a school, then found a spot to park on the right hand side of the road; the left hand side, where there were bushes, would lead to the beach. So we pulled into the parking lot of a roadside eatery, where two elderly men were sitting at the rear of the parking lot. I approached them and asked if they allowed people to use their lot.
"We do," one of them said, "but we ask for three dollars in return."
"Fair and reasonable," I proclaimed, handed him $3, and gave him a firm handshake.
He smiled broadly. "Con toda confianza," he said. "Lo estaremos vigilando desde acá." Don't worry, we'll be watching it from here.
Both men were black, as was everyone working in or lounging in front of the restaurant. So far, the rumors were true.
Across the road there were stairs that led over the bushy dune and onto the beach. (There was also a dead cat and a lot of garbage.) And once we topped the dune, we could see that the beach was very different from Condado - Thundering surf, and strewn with all kinds of (mostly natural) ocean flotsam. (Or is it jetsam?) Coconuts, logs, leaves, shells, sea glass galore. And quite a bit of garbage. And, like I said, a thundering, pounding surf, with a number of surfers bobbing off shore.
Less true, that bit about the protected beach. Here it is:
Very pretty, but very far from calm. Still, we had passed a beach where there was a natural stone wall that divided an area, thirty yards across and four hundred long, from the pounding surf; we'd kept driving because it was so crowded. So maybe I had misheard the directions slightly. This beach had going for it the fact that apart from the surfers, who stayed out to sea a bit, we had the place to ourselves. And which also made us regret not bringing Clarabelle.
Though getting past the dead cat without the kids noticing would probably have been a lot trickier.
So we all frolicked in the heavy waves, which was a lot of fun. Like a carnival ride, throwing you up and then down. Kids enjoyed it, as you can see:
I was enjoying myself all the more with the strange thrill that one (apparently) gets when running around in public in one's underwear, as I had somehow neglected to bring along my bathing suit. We were probably there an hour, and then decided to head back to the restaurant for some grub before comparing and contrasting this beach with the protected one. Had some chicken pinchos:
Good stuff. And cheap. Off, then, to the proteced beach. Pulled in to the parking lot, off into the grass a bit, and Janneke opened her door, exactly over the corpse of a dead dog, reeking and boiling with maggots.
You've never seen anyone close a door so fast in your life. Nor anyone shift so quickly into reverse. Luckily, no one had stepped behind the car - although, to be honest, maybe they did, I don't think I would have noticed, it was all kind o a blur - and we rocketed to the opposite end of the parking lot. And walked from there over to the beach, where Q and T swam out to the rock shelf that protected them and explored it. Behold!
The glory of the zoom. They found a few parrot fish beaks, and brought them back (no pics, sorry), as well as a number of shells and washed-up, broken-off bits of coral. Janneke and I were content to stay on shore this time. We passed the time quietly, tenderly berating each other for our failings and muttering over a series of long-standing grievances. It was nice.
On to supper, where we ordered far too much food, for which we paid far too much, at a restaurant called...Well, read the menu:
Some of the food was done over a wood fire:
And some of which was served in coconuts, freshly macheted open:
It was OK stuff. Better be, for what we paid for it. Then into the car (some locals had parked us in, forcing me to back out and come within millimeters of scratching their car. Millimeters. Though it could have been centimeters - I wanted to make a point. They had parked frickin' perpendicular to the obvious orientation of the lot and of the people (us) already parked there. Bastards.
I then missed an exit, forcing us to go across a bay we'd never crossed before, into a region of the city we knew well, whence we were able to easily find our way home again. Probably 25 minutes all told in the car getting back. Not bad. To bed! To rest for the coming day!
Today. Which began in the morning, with a trip to the Children's Museum, where a cupcake-decorating workshop was to be held. The museum would open at nine or ten, so we were into the old city pretty quickly - and it turns out, you can park aaaaaaaanywhere at 9:20 AM down there. That's the key. We parked and strolled in a leisurely fashion to the children's museum, located, some of you will recall, on the world's most beautiful street.
The museum opens on Saturdays, turns out, at noon.
No matter! Off to explore a bit of Old San Juan! Snapped some potential Christmas Card photos, found a little public park with a public basketball court and tennis court, and a little pink building with volunteers working inside, and two dozen cats lounging about in the grass and among the trees outside. A big sign there said that they were a charitable organization, run by volunteers, that dedicates itself solely to (1) trapping, (2) sterilizing, and (3) caring for, in ways both alimentary and veterinary, the feral cats of Old San Juan. Many of which, it appears from our chin-scratching survey, have now become very far from feral. Some great, beautiul cats prowling around down there - and they adopt them out to good homes, if any of you are interested:
There was also a mango tree dropping ripe fruit in that park. I ate some. Great, great stuff.
And there was a pelican:
And a tunnel:
And a guy selling piraguas (Puerto Rican snow cones):
And a bench upon which to sit while eating piraguas:
On to do some souvenir shopping. Q, interestingly, really wants a large, detailed map of Puerto Rico for his room. (BY THE WAY: Q is about 50 pages into an adventure novel for young people set in Puerto Rico and written by a Puerto Rican author and he's reading it IN SPANISH! We are so excited we can't breathe!) We didn't find a decent map, but we did find a gift, which T sneaked over to me and whispered that she wanted to secretly buy for Mami. So Q distracted her while we bought it, and then we presented it to her as we sat at the table outside of a place where we had a nearly-noon snack:
The owner of which has adopted one or two of the formerly feral cats, and accepts donations for the care of the yet-to-be-adopted:
And on to the dang children's museum, where the cupcake workshop had been postponed. Why? "Porque la persona que iba a liderar el taller, está de viaje." (Because the person who was going to lead the workshop, is on a trip.) Veeeeery weak. But we went in anyway, to learn that the men's bathroom wasn't working, and the kids' favorite display / manipulative learning area was out of order. Much less enamored of that museum are we right now. Still, they did some crafty stuff and had fun.
Home again, where we divided & conquered: I took Clarabelle for her travel health certificate, and Janneke took the kids shopping and to the beach, where we would meet up.
Except that it took me four hours to get the certificate.
FOUR HOURS! THey don't accept appointments at this place, they just have you come in and you're attended to in the order of your appearance. Four friggin' hours! Long story short, we have the certificate, and I was home in time for supper and a movie. And now the kids are in bed and tomorrow's friggin' Sunday and I am going to rest myself heavily and well. It has been a long day. A good one, to be sure, but a long one.
Sleep well, gentle reader. I hope I do.
The morning appears to have gone by uneventfully, because I do not recall anything from it. So we'll just leave that there. Although I do recall this: I did project stuff, and Janneke went off to meet up with a Williams student of hers who is from Puerto Rico. And who says her family wants to have us over for dinner. I'll believe it when I see it.
Post-lunch, we loaded up the car and headed to Piñones, a spot up the coast toward the East from here that all the Puerto Ricans tell us we have to get to, but which appears to go unmentioned in most of the guide-book-type material we have or have seen. The idea is that it's home to a large population of Puerto Ricans of African descent, that they sell food in lots of kiosks, that the beaches are protected and lovely, and that there's some sort of walkway that you ride bicycles on. So off we went.
Zoomed there in under twenty minutes via the highway. Unbelievable, how fast the Kia Sol can get one around a place.
We found this funny:
"Postal police"? Do they really need a car?
Following directions I got from a guy on the beach a couple weeks ago, we drove until we saw a school, then found a spot to park on the right hand side of the road; the left hand side, where there were bushes, would lead to the beach. So we pulled into the parking lot of a roadside eatery, where two elderly men were sitting at the rear of the parking lot. I approached them and asked if they allowed people to use their lot.
"We do," one of them said, "but we ask for three dollars in return."
"Fair and reasonable," I proclaimed, handed him $3, and gave him a firm handshake.
He smiled broadly. "Con toda confianza," he said. "Lo estaremos vigilando desde acá." Don't worry, we'll be watching it from here.
Both men were black, as was everyone working in or lounging in front of the restaurant. So far, the rumors were true.
Across the road there were stairs that led over the bushy dune and onto the beach. (There was also a dead cat and a lot of garbage.) And once we topped the dune, we could see that the beach was very different from Condado - Thundering surf, and strewn with all kinds of (mostly natural) ocean flotsam. (Or is it jetsam?) Coconuts, logs, leaves, shells, sea glass galore. And quite a bit of garbage. And, like I said, a thundering, pounding surf, with a number of surfers bobbing off shore.
Less true, that bit about the protected beach. Here it is:
Very pretty, but very far from calm. Still, we had passed a beach where there was a natural stone wall that divided an area, thirty yards across and four hundred long, from the pounding surf; we'd kept driving because it was so crowded. So maybe I had misheard the directions slightly. This beach had going for it the fact that apart from the surfers, who stayed out to sea a bit, we had the place to ourselves. And which also made us regret not bringing Clarabelle.
Though getting past the dead cat without the kids noticing would probably have been a lot trickier.
So we all frolicked in the heavy waves, which was a lot of fun. Like a carnival ride, throwing you up and then down. Kids enjoyed it, as you can see:
I was enjoying myself all the more with the strange thrill that one (apparently) gets when running around in public in one's underwear, as I had somehow neglected to bring along my bathing suit. We were probably there an hour, and then decided to head back to the restaurant for some grub before comparing and contrasting this beach with the protected one. Had some chicken pinchos:
Good stuff. And cheap. Off, then, to the proteced beach. Pulled in to the parking lot, off into the grass a bit, and Janneke opened her door, exactly over the corpse of a dead dog, reeking and boiling with maggots.
You've never seen anyone close a door so fast in your life. Nor anyone shift so quickly into reverse. Luckily, no one had stepped behind the car - although, to be honest, maybe they did, I don't think I would have noticed, it was all kind o a blur - and we rocketed to the opposite end of the parking lot. And walked from there over to the beach, where Q and T swam out to the rock shelf that protected them and explored it. Behold!
The glory of the zoom. They found a few parrot fish beaks, and brought them back (no pics, sorry), as well as a number of shells and washed-up, broken-off bits of coral. Janneke and I were content to stay on shore this time. We passed the time quietly, tenderly berating each other for our failings and muttering over a series of long-standing grievances. It was nice.
On to supper, where we ordered far too much food, for which we paid far too much, at a restaurant called...Well, read the menu:
Some of the food was done over a wood fire:
And some of which was served in coconuts, freshly macheted open:
It was OK stuff. Better be, for what we paid for it. Then into the car (some locals had parked us in, forcing me to back out and come within millimeters of scratching their car. Millimeters. Though it could have been centimeters - I wanted to make a point. They had parked frickin' perpendicular to the obvious orientation of the lot and of the people (us) already parked there. Bastards.
I then missed an exit, forcing us to go across a bay we'd never crossed before, into a region of the city we knew well, whence we were able to easily find our way home again. Probably 25 minutes all told in the car getting back. Not bad. To bed! To rest for the coming day!
Today. Which began in the morning, with a trip to the Children's Museum, where a cupcake-decorating workshop was to be held. The museum would open at nine or ten, so we were into the old city pretty quickly - and it turns out, you can park aaaaaaaanywhere at 9:20 AM down there. That's the key. We parked and strolled in a leisurely fashion to the children's museum, located, some of you will recall, on the world's most beautiful street.
The museum opens on Saturdays, turns out, at noon.
No matter! Off to explore a bit of Old San Juan! Snapped some potential Christmas Card photos, found a little public park with a public basketball court and tennis court, and a little pink building with volunteers working inside, and two dozen cats lounging about in the grass and among the trees outside. A big sign there said that they were a charitable organization, run by volunteers, that dedicates itself solely to (1) trapping, (2) sterilizing, and (3) caring for, in ways both alimentary and veterinary, the feral cats of Old San Juan. Many of which, it appears from our chin-scratching survey, have now become very far from feral. Some great, beautiul cats prowling around down there - and they adopt them out to good homes, if any of you are interested:
There was also a mango tree dropping ripe fruit in that park. I ate some. Great, great stuff.
And there was a pelican:
And a tunnel:
And a guy selling piraguas (Puerto Rican snow cones):
And a bench upon which to sit while eating piraguas:
On to do some souvenir shopping. Q, interestingly, really wants a large, detailed map of Puerto Rico for his room. (BY THE WAY: Q is about 50 pages into an adventure novel for young people set in Puerto Rico and written by a Puerto Rican author and he's reading it IN SPANISH! We are so excited we can't breathe!) We didn't find a decent map, but we did find a gift, which T sneaked over to me and whispered that she wanted to secretly buy for Mami. So Q distracted her while we bought it, and then we presented it to her as we sat at the table outside of a place where we had a nearly-noon snack:
The owner of which has adopted one or two of the formerly feral cats, and accepts donations for the care of the yet-to-be-adopted:
And on to the dang children's museum, where the cupcake workshop had been postponed. Why? "Porque la persona que iba a liderar el taller, está de viaje." (Because the person who was going to lead the workshop, is on a trip.) Veeeeery weak. But we went in anyway, to learn that the men's bathroom wasn't working, and the kids' favorite display / manipulative learning area was out of order. Much less enamored of that museum are we right now. Still, they did some crafty stuff and had fun.
Home again, where we divided & conquered: I took Clarabelle for her travel health certificate, and Janneke took the kids shopping and to the beach, where we would meet up.
Except that it took me four hours to get the certificate.
FOUR HOURS! THey don't accept appointments at this place, they just have you come in and you're attended to in the order of your appearance. Four friggin' hours! Long story short, we have the certificate, and I was home in time for supper and a movie. And now the kids are in bed and tomorrow's friggin' Sunday and I am going to rest myself heavily and well. It has been a long day. A good one, to be sure, but a long one.
Sleep well, gentle reader. I hope I do.
Thursday, August 4, 2011
Night-Life. With Children.
Another dreary day in boring-ol' San Juan for us downtrodden, travel-weary hoboes.
Not really, though. In the morning Janneke trooped off to do some work, and I cleaned the apartment, as I think I mentioned in the post I wrote earlier today. Not completely, mind you - no bathrooms, no linen changes, no ceiling waxing. But I got the major areas, including the desk I use as my little office, which was just coated in dust. And I changed the kitty litter and cleaned the box, rearranged and condensed the trash / recycling / poop bag area, swept pretty thoroughly around the -
Hey! Wake up!
Man, your attention span is for shyte. So while I cleaned, T and Q played and played and played, either on the computer (limited time for that) or with each other. They just get on so dang well, those two. It's a real joy. And it gave me time to finish up the dishes. There's no dishwasher here, see, so the system I've come up with is the following: The right-hand sink, I use or the washing, while the left-hand sink -
Hellooooo!? Eyes front! Heads off the desks!
Jeepers. Anyway, Janneke came home near noon time, and we switched off: I took off on a run, and following that, had the lunch that everybody else had already finished. And then I was out the door to go do project stuff.
Got some good stuff. Met some nice people.
Back to meet the fam at the beach, where I took a soothing dip in the waves. And home again, for an afternoon snack.
Not supper, though. For I had learned in my foray to the market that there would be music there this evening. (I had already kind of known it.) And my friend Basilisa suggested that I bring the family so they could see the festivities. So I did. We had supper there, at a restaurant called El Popular, amid the teeming crowds listening to from two different stages and getting drinks from any number of night-time juke joints that either operate out of outward-facing kiosks in the market place, or surround the marketplace. (The vegetable vending area was closed for the evening.) The whole block becomes an open bar in the evenings on weekends, and from what we saw, it is a beautiful, lively scene, purely Puerto Rican (I personally saw no gringos there) and fairly family-oriented. As family-oriented as a bar scene can be, I guess - there were a few kids in strollers and holding hands with parents there. Check it out:
So we settled in at El Popular. Here we are:
Here they are, I should say. The kid in the background with the earphones was there with his parents. He said nothing to them the entire time, and they said nothing to him, and they said almost nothing to each other. Lovely scene. Hey, I guess, at least they were together. (I mean that sincerely, by the way. It's like the guy we saw at the recycling center the other day who just dropped off his bag of cans and didn't bother to put them into the bin like everybody else, just dropped them and drove off, hardly even stopped. I thought, "Jerk!" And then I added, sheepishly, "...who drives all the way to the recycling center with his sorted recycleables rather than just toss them in the trash.")
And here's our food:
Good stuff. They were out of fish, unfortunately, so Janneke just had the rice and beans. (She had suspected as much, so had loaded up on veggies before we left the house.)
My only real complaint is that the music was so friggin' loud. In between acts, they piped dance beats at ridiculous levels through the amps. Here, let me show you:
I mean, holy canole. But our evening ended with a nice stroll home, and dessert in the house. (We had tried to find a guy selling piraguas whom we'd seen before dinner, but he'd called it a night or otherwise disappeared before we got done with supper.) T wanted to troop to the top of the building we're staying in to check out the skyline view, so she, Q and I did that while Janneke dashed back to the apartment to enjoy the air conditioning. The view was nice, and Q had the idea that we could take the elevator back down to the ground floor and then up to 2, which would be less walking than going down the 6 floors from the roof to 2. I agreed to it.
But I should have realized that once we got out of the elevator on G, we would have no access to the stairwell without the keys, which Janneke had back in the apartment. So we had to buzz her to come let us in to the stairwell. She came down, in her pajamas. You should have seen the look on her face.
I did not take a picture.
And here endeth the blog post. Its nearly 11:00, and I have a 7:00 AM appointment for project stuff, so I'll be hitting the hay. Keep the porch light on for us, folks. Won't be long now.
Not really, though. In the morning Janneke trooped off to do some work, and I cleaned the apartment, as I think I mentioned in the post I wrote earlier today. Not completely, mind you - no bathrooms, no linen changes, no ceiling waxing. But I got the major areas, including the desk I use as my little office, which was just coated in dust. And I changed the kitty litter and cleaned the box, rearranged and condensed the trash / recycling / poop bag area, swept pretty thoroughly around the -
Hey! Wake up!
Man, your attention span is for shyte. So while I cleaned, T and Q played and played and played, either on the computer (limited time for that) or with each other. They just get on so dang well, those two. It's a real joy. And it gave me time to finish up the dishes. There's no dishwasher here, see, so the system I've come up with is the following: The right-hand sink, I use or the washing, while the left-hand sink -
Hellooooo!? Eyes front! Heads off the desks!
Jeepers. Anyway, Janneke came home near noon time, and we switched off: I took off on a run, and following that, had the lunch that everybody else had already finished. And then I was out the door to go do project stuff.
Got some good stuff. Met some nice people.
Back to meet the fam at the beach, where I took a soothing dip in the waves. And home again, for an afternoon snack.
Not supper, though. For I had learned in my foray to the market that there would be music there this evening. (I had already kind of known it.) And my friend Basilisa suggested that I bring the family so they could see the festivities. So I did. We had supper there, at a restaurant called El Popular, amid the teeming crowds listening to from two different stages and getting drinks from any number of night-time juke joints that either operate out of outward-facing kiosks in the market place, or surround the marketplace. (The vegetable vending area was closed for the evening.) The whole block becomes an open bar in the evenings on weekends, and from what we saw, it is a beautiful, lively scene, purely Puerto Rican (I personally saw no gringos there) and fairly family-oriented. As family-oriented as a bar scene can be, I guess - there were a few kids in strollers and holding hands with parents there. Check it out:
So we settled in at El Popular. Here we are:
Here they are, I should say. The kid in the background with the earphones was there with his parents. He said nothing to them the entire time, and they said nothing to him, and they said almost nothing to each other. Lovely scene. Hey, I guess, at least they were together. (I mean that sincerely, by the way. It's like the guy we saw at the recycling center the other day who just dropped off his bag of cans and didn't bother to put them into the bin like everybody else, just dropped them and drove off, hardly even stopped. I thought, "Jerk!" And then I added, sheepishly, "...who drives all the way to the recycling center with his sorted recycleables rather than just toss them in the trash.")
And here's our food:
Good stuff. They were out of fish, unfortunately, so Janneke just had the rice and beans. (She had suspected as much, so had loaded up on veggies before we left the house.)
My only real complaint is that the music was so friggin' loud. In between acts, they piped dance beats at ridiculous levels through the amps. Here, let me show you:
I mean, holy canole. But our evening ended with a nice stroll home, and dessert in the house. (We had tried to find a guy selling piraguas whom we'd seen before dinner, but he'd called it a night or otherwise disappeared before we got done with supper.) T wanted to troop to the top of the building we're staying in to check out the skyline view, so she, Q and I did that while Janneke dashed back to the apartment to enjoy the air conditioning. The view was nice, and Q had the idea that we could take the elevator back down to the ground floor and then up to 2, which would be less walking than going down the 6 floors from the roof to 2. I agreed to it.
But I should have realized that once we got out of the elevator on G, we would have no access to the stairwell without the keys, which Janneke had back in the apartment. So we had to buzz her to come let us in to the stairwell. She came down, in her pajamas. You should have seen the look on her face.
I did not take a picture.
And here endeth the blog post. Its nearly 11:00, and I have a 7:00 AM appointment for project stuff, so I'll be hitting the hay. Keep the porch light on for us, folks. Won't be long now.
Corn Ice Cream
Howdy, folks - Quick post here, as there's not too much to tell regarding yesterday. The most exciting part came in the mid afternoon, when we trooped out to Rio Piedras, the "Manhattan" section of San Juan. It's got the "Golden Mile", as it's called, of all the bank headquarters and skyscrapers, followed by the University of Puerto Rico campus. Which might be beautiful - hard to say: it's all sealed off behind walls and gates. The area surrounding it, though, is immediately evident as a university town, what with the cafes, restaurants, bars, and bookstores. But it's also very urban, in the euphemism sense: tagging everywhere, and I mean everywhere, and a fair number of vacant buildings, some trash on the street. It's kind of exciting and depressing to be there, all at the same time.
Still, there is a nice plaza area in Rio Piedras, where we spent some time after hitting the bookstores. Q got a youth adventure-type mini-novel in Spanish, written by a Puerto Rican woman, and T got a book of poems written by a Puerto Rican poet when she was a little girl. She's reading it as I write this, out loud, asking for no help. Very cool. I got a couple that I thought the kids might be into at a later date, and / or might be useful for me in the classroom.
Once at the plaza, we found an ice cream shop that has all the great local flavors - parcha, banana, pineapple, guayava, etc. And one that I would not have thought of: Corn. Plain-ol' maíz. I tried that one, and it was my favorite of the three we got. You could taste the corn flavor in there, but there was plenty of sugar involved as well to keep it ice-creamy. Learn something new every day.
The tropical storm has been a bit of a disappointment. It rained steady and hard in the morning yesterday, and the gutters overflowed on a few streets nearby. But around noon it stopped raining completely, and it's just been overcast since. So the island breathes a sigh of relief, even if osme of its tourists are mildly disappointed. I'd rather have an exciting storm than cloudy skies and cool temperatures. How much fun is that?
Clarabelle is happy with it, though, because now her quick walks are on the beach instead of on the street. Nobody goes to the beach when it's cloudy, so we walk her up and down with impunity. It's helping me a lot with my sea glass collecting. Got a few fistfuls yesterday.
And that's it - a lot of domesticity otherwise. We didn't go anywhere until the rain abated because the street flooding can actually be quite bad, as we learned last time. It did give us time to decide that we pretty much do want to get out to Culebra next week, though. So that should make for some more exciting blog posts.
Trying to get in to see the vet. You call, and they say, "The person who knows how to run the system isn't in yet" or "She went to lunch" or "She's about to go to lunch" or "The doctor is in surgery, so call back around 2:30" or "Call back around 4:30", on and on. And in the end they said, "We don't really make appointments - people just come in, and we treat their pets if we have an opening." So I guess we'll head there to do that come the 6th, which will be 9 days before we leave.
Off to clean the apartment. I know: I live on the edge.
Still, there is a nice plaza area in Rio Piedras, where we spent some time after hitting the bookstores. Q got a youth adventure-type mini-novel in Spanish, written by a Puerto Rican woman, and T got a book of poems written by a Puerto Rican poet when she was a little girl. She's reading it as I write this, out loud, asking for no help. Very cool. I got a couple that I thought the kids might be into at a later date, and / or might be useful for me in the classroom.
Once at the plaza, we found an ice cream shop that has all the great local flavors - parcha, banana, pineapple, guayava, etc. And one that I would not have thought of: Corn. Plain-ol' maíz. I tried that one, and it was my favorite of the three we got. You could taste the corn flavor in there, but there was plenty of sugar involved as well to keep it ice-creamy. Learn something new every day.
The tropical storm has been a bit of a disappointment. It rained steady and hard in the morning yesterday, and the gutters overflowed on a few streets nearby. But around noon it stopped raining completely, and it's just been overcast since. So the island breathes a sigh of relief, even if osme of its tourists are mildly disappointed. I'd rather have an exciting storm than cloudy skies and cool temperatures. How much fun is that?
Clarabelle is happy with it, though, because now her quick walks are on the beach instead of on the street. Nobody goes to the beach when it's cloudy, so we walk her up and down with impunity. It's helping me a lot with my sea glass collecting. Got a few fistfuls yesterday.
And that's it - a lot of domesticity otherwise. We didn't go anywhere until the rain abated because the street flooding can actually be quite bad, as we learned last time. It did give us time to decide that we pretty much do want to get out to Culebra next week, though. So that should make for some more exciting blog posts.
Trying to get in to see the vet. You call, and they say, "The person who knows how to run the system isn't in yet" or "She went to lunch" or "She's about to go to lunch" or "The doctor is in surgery, so call back around 2:30" or "Call back around 4:30", on and on. And in the end they said, "We don't really make appointments - people just come in, and we treat their pets if we have an opening." So I guess we'll head there to do that come the 6th, which will be 9 days before we leave.
Off to clean the apartment. I know: I live on the edge.
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
At Least There Are Pictures
Well, 9:42 PM and it's still not raining, or wind-whipped, or under water. But I still hold out hope.
Up in the mornin', for some fairly extended lounging and puzzle-completing. T, who took the late night on the chin more than the rest of us, slept in quite late. We sneaked in and took a picture of her in repose, and I posted it here earlier, but I had mercy on future T and took it down. A bit much perhaps. I mean, you could still see the beer cans and cigar butts lying around her. It wouldn't have done her political career any favors.
Lunch at noon; Janneke took off with the kids to do grocery shopping in the early afternoon, and I set out with Clarabelle to reconnoiter a bit and see where the vet's office up the street is. We'll have to get a health certificate for Clarabelle in a few days - they want it to be from within 10 days of travel. So we walked up and found it.
There's really no more to that particular anecdote.
The fam came back from shopping, and I hit the market, where I spent some serious quality time with Basilisa in her botánica - no filming or anything, just shootin' the breeze - and we really enjoyed each other's company. Long chat about life and happiness and what makes people valuable to each other. Nice.
I also met someone who agreed to let me include him in the project, starting tomorrow at 7:00. very exciting.
Back home, where we all worked the puzzle, ate supper, and then settled in to watch the tail end of "Booky's Crush", which the kids and Janneke had begun in my absence the night I went to see "Harry Potter". I slept through it, honestly - it's one of those odd, low-budget Canadian productions that are just so...I don't know, Canadian. Wholesome and predictable and dull, filled with actors who aren't THAT good-looking or talented or interesting. I'll give you a list of films to watch and you'll probably see what I mean about this Canadian cardboard-colored film universe.
And that's friggin' it, man. That's the day it was. I wish there were more to tell you. But actually, I don't, because then I'd be even more sleepy than I already am. And I still have to walk the dog. Remember her?
Right, that's the one. Lucky I don't have to walk the cat. Remember her?
Right. Trying to place the lady holding her, though. I know I've seen her somewhere before.
Up in the mornin', for some fairly extended lounging and puzzle-completing. T, who took the late night on the chin more than the rest of us, slept in quite late. We sneaked in and took a picture of her in repose, and I posted it here earlier, but I had mercy on future T and took it down. A bit much perhaps. I mean, you could still see the beer cans and cigar butts lying around her. It wouldn't have done her political career any favors.
Lunch at noon; Janneke took off with the kids to do grocery shopping in the early afternoon, and I set out with Clarabelle to reconnoiter a bit and see where the vet's office up the street is. We'll have to get a health certificate for Clarabelle in a few days - they want it to be from within 10 days of travel. So we walked up and found it.
There's really no more to that particular anecdote.
The fam came back from shopping, and I hit the market, where I spent some serious quality time with Basilisa in her botánica - no filming or anything, just shootin' the breeze - and we really enjoyed each other's company. Long chat about life and happiness and what makes people valuable to each other. Nice.
I also met someone who agreed to let me include him in the project, starting tomorrow at 7:00. very exciting.
Back home, where we all worked the puzzle, ate supper, and then settled in to watch the tail end of "Booky's Crush", which the kids and Janneke had begun in my absence the night I went to see "Harry Potter". I slept through it, honestly - it's one of those odd, low-budget Canadian productions that are just so...I don't know, Canadian. Wholesome and predictable and dull, filled with actors who aren't THAT good-looking or talented or interesting. I'll give you a list of films to watch and you'll probably see what I mean about this Canadian cardboard-colored film universe.
And that's friggin' it, man. That's the day it was. I wish there were more to tell you. But actually, I don't, because then I'd be even more sleepy than I already am. And I still have to walk the dog. Remember her?
Right, that's the one. Lucky I don't have to walk the cat. Remember her?
Right. Trying to place the lady holding her, though. I know I've seen her somewhere before.
Midnight Kayaks in the Moonless Mangrove Forest
Another day, another tropical adventure.
Yesterday we all got up, as you know, since I blogged about it a bit, and worked the jigsaw puzzle while Janneke worked the academic system. Thence to the beach, where the kids found a log, sixteen inches in diameter and six feet long, bobbing in the waves, and waded out to push it to shore so they could play with it. Which quickly turned into Q rolling it T-ward, over a leg; T howled, I scrambled over and rolled it back.
Onto Q's leg.
What a barrel of monkeys that was. No one seriously hurt, thankfully, and we got to talk about why floating things are so much easier to manipulate than non-floating things. Didn't go the Erie Canal direction with the discussion. Though I could have.
Also read the paper there, where I learned that a tropical storm was bearing down on Puerto Rico, due to arrive Tuesday night. Very exciting stuff - it wasn't a named storm yet, but had a shot at becoming one. I got kind of excited about the prospect, though I'm quite sure it would mean hunkering down in the apartment for a good long while afterward. These power lines in Puerto Rico look like they might just collapse onto the street with no wind at all, let alone if there's a doozy on the way. Saw one hissing and sputtering and spitting sparks just the other night; when I walked past there with the kids yesterday, they had strung some police tape around the area. But the sparks continued to sputter.
Home for lunch, and then I trooped off to work on my project at the market for a while. Got some good stuff. I'll let you know.
Back to the homestead. Did some cleanin', Janneke warmed up dinner (leftove Bebo's food), and we all then set out for Fajardo and the bioluminescent bay.
What's that? It's a mangrove swamp, shallow bay, where microscopic organisms in the top several inches of the water glow when they're moved. So if you stick your arm or your paddle in the water and move it, it sends up shimmering light. We hadn't made it there on our last trip, so we determined to get there this time.
It took a little over an hour from San Juan. Shockingly, there was a bit of a traffic problem at 7:00 PM on a Monday night, so we were a titch concerned we wouldn't make it for our 8:30 scheduled arrival time. But it cleared up just past Carolina and we made great time the rest of the way, where we followed somewhat cryptic directions through Fajardo itself to the municipal park where the tour companies set up shop.
It's on the shore, and seems like it probably commands a nice view during the day. The hills above the bay are covered in houses, and the park itself is crawling at that time of night with at least three different kiosks or tents set up by different companies that lead kayak tours. We parked, found our company, and checked in; then at 9:00, we all assembled - probably 20 of us - to get our sea kayak instructions. T and I would be in one, Q and Janneke in another.
T was very excited about the whole prospect. She got a tiny life jacket with an amber light affixed to it - the only tourist with a light affixed; the rest of us had whistles stuck to our life jackets in case we got separated, but T got the light. And she and I were assigned the position at the front of the column, so the guide at the front, who had a blue light affixed to his back, would always be close to her. Pretty good system. Another guide was permanently at the middle of the column, and another at the back.
We were all assisted into the kayaks, and paddled out to the middle of the bay, where our guide latched onto a parked sailboat and we all held onto each other's kayaks via a short rope at the front, end-to-end like a a string of elephants, until the whole crew was assembled. And then the guide let go of our rope, said "Follow me!" (in English), and we were off.
I was immediately sea sick. The bay where you start is deep enough for sailboats, and unprotected enough to get some wave action, so between the darkness, the rocking, and the need to constantly focus on the sickly-glowing blue light twenty feet in front of me, I was pretty durned uncomfortable to start. But soon we crossed through the sailboats and glided through an opening in the tree-shrubs that surround the interior of the bay, and snaked through a tunnel of vegetation.
Total darkness, almost. I said to T that I was amazed the guide could find his way without a light; she said he's probably done this many times, and can see landmarks (though she didn't use that word) that the rest of us wouldn't even know to look for. Smart kid.
Ten, fifteen twenty minutes? Hard to say. But it passed pleasantly, going with the current through tunnels of mangrove, until we came into a large, circular (appeared so, anyway, in the moonless, starlit dark), almost-perfectly-flat bay. The water was amazingly warm; as we made our way to the center, I noticed that the glowing was happening with my kayak paddles.
It's very, very cool: it looks a lot like the trails of bubbles you sometimes see coming from your canoe paddle, that same formation, but it's all over the paddle, and it sparkles around it in a diminishing way the farther you get out form whatever moved the water. I informed T, who dipped her hand over the side and wiggled it, and giggled at the glow.
They called us together in the middle of the bay and tied us all into a floating pod, whereupon we got a fairly interesting talk on what the organisms are and how / why they do what they do. One theory is that if they all glow when the water moves, this will make other, more delicious bits of food in the water (apart from the microorganisms themselves) more obvious to predators, who will then choose to eat whatever made the motion rather than the organisms that pointed the motion out. Or that they blind a moving fish by glowing all around it, rendering it an ineffective predator. Could be. Then they turned us loose to paddle about for five minutes or so.
We'd drifted close to the edge by this time, and there, the effect is almost zero. So we paddled back to the center and splashed about for a very short time, it seemed, before being summoned together again by a long note on a conch shell. We formed up again and slid back through the tunnel toward the bay.
Right up at the front of the column, I got a great view of some incredibly incompetent paddling by the rear pair in the tour group ahead of ours - it is so, so frustrating to watch people flounder, with al kinds of energy, trying to get in one direction, and almost making it, but then not quite catching on to the way in which the kayak is a moving target, its motion affected continually by whatever you do, needing anticipation and variation in the sort of the placement of your strokes...It's something you can catch on to right away, but can also just utterly escape you. And that's what happened with these two, apparently teenagers. Poor kids - they really looked like they were suffering. But they were stoic and never whined or complained.
Thus did we wend our way back; T, incredibly, was asleep at her end of the kayak when we arrived. They bundled us all into a group again and talked at us for a while before helping us, boat by boat, to the shore; this last gab session was particularly frustrating to me, because I was again bobbing in the boat harbor waves, and was thus again sea sick. But because T was my partner, we got off first, and the quease gradually waned.
They had a litle machine available for us to squeeze our own orange juice, which is a neat, but terrible, idea, because with 20 people, and the time it takes to squeeze each orange half, there's just no way everybody's going to get some. Luckily, though, again, we were with kids, so we went first. The kids drank it (we didn't think it prudent to make everybody wait for Janneke and me), and soon we were changing into dry clothes and sorting through our directions to get back home.
In bed by 1:30 AM. Wow. Fun, great evening, but we're paying for it now. And when I try to, I can still call up some sea sickness; it hangs around in my skin and seeps back down to affect my stomach for some time after the initial bob, it seems. Wonderful.
No pictures - they just don't turn out with the low-level glow. You'll have to trust us.
Yesterday we all got up, as you know, since I blogged about it a bit, and worked the jigsaw puzzle while Janneke worked the academic system. Thence to the beach, where the kids found a log, sixteen inches in diameter and six feet long, bobbing in the waves, and waded out to push it to shore so they could play with it. Which quickly turned into Q rolling it T-ward, over a leg; T howled, I scrambled over and rolled it back.
Onto Q's leg.
What a barrel of monkeys that was. No one seriously hurt, thankfully, and we got to talk about why floating things are so much easier to manipulate than non-floating things. Didn't go the Erie Canal direction with the discussion. Though I could have.
Also read the paper there, where I learned that a tropical storm was bearing down on Puerto Rico, due to arrive Tuesday night. Very exciting stuff - it wasn't a named storm yet, but had a shot at becoming one. I got kind of excited about the prospect, though I'm quite sure it would mean hunkering down in the apartment for a good long while afterward. These power lines in Puerto Rico look like they might just collapse onto the street with no wind at all, let alone if there's a doozy on the way. Saw one hissing and sputtering and spitting sparks just the other night; when I walked past there with the kids yesterday, they had strung some police tape around the area. But the sparks continued to sputter.
Home for lunch, and then I trooped off to work on my project at the market for a while. Got some good stuff. I'll let you know.
Back to the homestead. Did some cleanin', Janneke warmed up dinner (leftove Bebo's food), and we all then set out for Fajardo and the bioluminescent bay.
What's that? It's a mangrove swamp, shallow bay, where microscopic organisms in the top several inches of the water glow when they're moved. So if you stick your arm or your paddle in the water and move it, it sends up shimmering light. We hadn't made it there on our last trip, so we determined to get there this time.
It took a little over an hour from San Juan. Shockingly, there was a bit of a traffic problem at 7:00 PM on a Monday night, so we were a titch concerned we wouldn't make it for our 8:30 scheduled arrival time. But it cleared up just past Carolina and we made great time the rest of the way, where we followed somewhat cryptic directions through Fajardo itself to the municipal park where the tour companies set up shop.
It's on the shore, and seems like it probably commands a nice view during the day. The hills above the bay are covered in houses, and the park itself is crawling at that time of night with at least three different kiosks or tents set up by different companies that lead kayak tours. We parked, found our company, and checked in; then at 9:00, we all assembled - probably 20 of us - to get our sea kayak instructions. T and I would be in one, Q and Janneke in another.
T was very excited about the whole prospect. She got a tiny life jacket with an amber light affixed to it - the only tourist with a light affixed; the rest of us had whistles stuck to our life jackets in case we got separated, but T got the light. And she and I were assigned the position at the front of the column, so the guide at the front, who had a blue light affixed to his back, would always be close to her. Pretty good system. Another guide was permanently at the middle of the column, and another at the back.
We were all assisted into the kayaks, and paddled out to the middle of the bay, where our guide latched onto a parked sailboat and we all held onto each other's kayaks via a short rope at the front, end-to-end like a a string of elephants, until the whole crew was assembled. And then the guide let go of our rope, said "Follow me!" (in English), and we were off.
I was immediately sea sick. The bay where you start is deep enough for sailboats, and unprotected enough to get some wave action, so between the darkness, the rocking, and the need to constantly focus on the sickly-glowing blue light twenty feet in front of me, I was pretty durned uncomfortable to start. But soon we crossed through the sailboats and glided through an opening in the tree-shrubs that surround the interior of the bay, and snaked through a tunnel of vegetation.
Total darkness, almost. I said to T that I was amazed the guide could find his way without a light; she said he's probably done this many times, and can see landmarks (though she didn't use that word) that the rest of us wouldn't even know to look for. Smart kid.
Ten, fifteen twenty minutes? Hard to say. But it passed pleasantly, going with the current through tunnels of mangrove, until we came into a large, circular (appeared so, anyway, in the moonless, starlit dark), almost-perfectly-flat bay. The water was amazingly warm; as we made our way to the center, I noticed that the glowing was happening with my kayak paddles.
It's very, very cool: it looks a lot like the trails of bubbles you sometimes see coming from your canoe paddle, that same formation, but it's all over the paddle, and it sparkles around it in a diminishing way the farther you get out form whatever moved the water. I informed T, who dipped her hand over the side and wiggled it, and giggled at the glow.
They called us together in the middle of the bay and tied us all into a floating pod, whereupon we got a fairly interesting talk on what the organisms are and how / why they do what they do. One theory is that if they all glow when the water moves, this will make other, more delicious bits of food in the water (apart from the microorganisms themselves) more obvious to predators, who will then choose to eat whatever made the motion rather than the organisms that pointed the motion out. Or that they blind a moving fish by glowing all around it, rendering it an ineffective predator. Could be. Then they turned us loose to paddle about for five minutes or so.
We'd drifted close to the edge by this time, and there, the effect is almost zero. So we paddled back to the center and splashed about for a very short time, it seemed, before being summoned together again by a long note on a conch shell. We formed up again and slid back through the tunnel toward the bay.
Right up at the front of the column, I got a great view of some incredibly incompetent paddling by the rear pair in the tour group ahead of ours - it is so, so frustrating to watch people flounder, with al kinds of energy, trying to get in one direction, and almost making it, but then not quite catching on to the way in which the kayak is a moving target, its motion affected continually by whatever you do, needing anticipation and variation in the sort of the placement of your strokes...It's something you can catch on to right away, but can also just utterly escape you. And that's what happened with these two, apparently teenagers. Poor kids - they really looked like they were suffering. But they were stoic and never whined or complained.
Thus did we wend our way back; T, incredibly, was asleep at her end of the kayak when we arrived. They bundled us all into a group again and talked at us for a while before helping us, boat by boat, to the shore; this last gab session was particularly frustrating to me, because I was again bobbing in the boat harbor waves, and was thus again sea sick. But because T was my partner, we got off first, and the quease gradually waned.
They had a litle machine available for us to squeeze our own orange juice, which is a neat, but terrible, idea, because with 20 people, and the time it takes to squeeze each orange half, there's just no way everybody's going to get some. Luckily, though, again, we were with kids, so we went first. The kids drank it (we didn't think it prudent to make everybody wait for Janneke and me), and soon we were changing into dry clothes and sorting through our directions to get back home.
In bed by 1:30 AM. Wow. Fun, great evening, but we're paying for it now. And when I try to, I can still call up some sea sickness; it hangs around in my skin and seeps back down to affect my stomach for some time after the initial bob, it seems. Wonderful.
No pictures - they just don't turn out with the low-level glow. You'll have to trust us.
Monday, August 1, 2011
Working Through the Pieces
It's a fine day for a post. And you deserve it.
Yesterday was the 31st of July, which was the last day of our original car rental. We had planned to have a car for all of July, but then be carless for the two weeks of August that we'll be here. And when I say "we", I mean "Janneke", who had been concerned about the cost of renting a car, back in the planning stages. As well she might be - it ain't cheap. But as we've seen over the course of July, we get so much out of it, that it's absolutely worth it. We have the entire city - Nay! The entire ISLAND! - at our fingertips with a car, whereas without it, we're crippled and hobbled and stranded.
Case in point: I drove out yesterday to Enterprise Rent-a-Car, which is past the airport. It took me probably ten or eleven minutes to get there. Knew exactly where to go: it's in Isla Verde, a sector of town with lots of hotels and casinos and long, sandy beaches. Four years ago, during one of the three out of four weeks when we didn't have a car, we had tried to get to Isla Verde to check out the beaches by using the bus system. You can look up the post if you like (here), and learn just how frustrating it can be to try to get out to where a car can get you as if via Star Trek transporter beam. We may head out there tomorrow - we've bumped into several Puerto Ricans who say that we just must see Piñones, home of a long, protected beach, and a large population of Afro-Puerto Ricans, with lots of food kiosks and hospitality galore. I saw the exact exit with the highway that they told us we should follow. It'll be like taking candy from a baby.
Dropped in to Enterprise, where I'd been told we wouldn't have to change cars; I had a reservation number from the lady on the phone, and would just have to get the new paperwork and drive home again. They didn't tell us that they would inspect the car prior to signing it out again; had they told me that, I'd have had a different attitude about the whole business. Because there is a scratch on the car.
Now, before you faint, hear me out: We have rental car insurance through our credit card. I'm not sure how it works, exactly, but I'm told we have it. The lady at Enterprise said they have to charge the deductible, and then they start haggling with the credit card company. I tried once to get hold of someone at Visa (and I'll try it again today), but after half an hour at $.10/minute, I'd given up. So I wound up having to transfer everything from the old car to the new one (snorkeling gear, Q's scooter, all the recycling we've been saving up). Bother.
But a nice car.
Drove home again, to find he fam making lunch. Partook thereof, and then we worked on the jigsaw puzzle a while. Janneke had purchased a thousand-piece one at Borders the other day, and it has been an absolute hoot. It's some shclocky scene of nighttime parks with fall foliage and city lights glistening through the trees. Hideous. And hard. But we're managing - the kids are very much better at it than I am. More patience, more methodical piece-sorting, I don't know. But they're good.
Janneke decided that with all the laundry she has to do, she won't have time to make supper, so she suggested we hit Bebo's, the kids' favorite restaurant here. We all heartily agreed.
Thence to the beach, which was absolutely jammed. We took Clarabelle, and did our trick of heading left to the rocky portion to avoid the crowds. Worked like a charm, and Q, with his new water shoes, was walking across the rocks (with me, I must admit), when he stumbled and caught himself with his hand - and filled the end of one finger with sea urchin spines. Just can't win, this kid, where sea urchins are concerned. He and I walked back to the apartment to try to get some of them out - we got maybe two of the six or seven out of there. He decreed the rest not to be very painful, and we returned to the beach.
Janneke did a good long walk up and down the beach, then we switched off, and I went home, left Clarabelle (it's a bit of a drag to be on the beach alone with her and the kids; hard to pay enough attention to either), and went out for a run.
Early on, there was a couple coming the opposite direction on the sidewalk, who were portly and stiff and seemed flabbergasted about what to do when faced with a jogger. Fine, I thought: I'm young(er), quick(er), and considerate(r): I'll jump off into this patch of long grass and jog through that so they can continue to waddle along in their current formation. What could possibly go wrong?
"Clang!" The grass is six or eight inches high, and hidden among its blades is a steel post, about four inches high. I caught it with the inside edge of my foot, just where the big toe meets the ball of the foot. No blood, but a lot of soreness. Onward!
I ran my route quickly and happily, and then went back to the beach, where Janneke and the kids had moved. I knew this; when I took Clarabelle home, I'd taken the keys, and then jogged back to find them so I could leave the keys with them, and had found them a hundred and fifty yards farther east, where the water's rock-free and it doesn't matter how many people are around because they no longer had Clarabelle. But when I finished the run, somehow it seemed to me that they would be to the right of the culvert that drains rainwater into the sea. I looked and looked among the bikini-clad hordes, and looked and looked and looked, and looked, but couldn't find them. So I looked some more, and then concluded that they'd gone back to the apartment.
While looking, I'd been soaking in the sea, and my heart beat had been returning to normal, my muscles cooling down, my adrenaline draining out of my system. And when I decided to walk to the apartment and left the water, my right foot, where I'd hit the post, was throbbing. It was along walk - felt that way, with my foot, though it was a block and a half - to the apartment, where I got no answer. So I trudged sorely back to the beach - my foot was purple where I'd hit it - and found them, not twenty yards to the EAST of where the street enters the beach. Duh.
Back to the healing waters, and then me back to the apartment to start the showering process; kids and Janneke followed soon thereafter. Once we'd all gotten tidied up, we headed to Bebo's, a two-minute walk away.
The place was jammed, which we expected, but we did not expect to wait 25 minutes to be served our drinks. It didn't get much better form there, service-wise; she seemed attentive, our waitress did, when she was around, but every one of the tables around us - all four of them - had people arrive after us, get served, pay, and leave before our oddyssey ended. The food was great, but we decided we definitely needed to send a message with the tip. Which got a bit awkward - or could have - when she pesented us with the bill, and asked quite up-front, "Are you going to put in the suggested gratuity?" "No," I said, "we'll take care of that in cash." This seemed to set her aback a bit, which is the point. Lady, we aren't blind. Put a wiggle in it next time.
Home and to bed. The whole family these days piles into our room before bed to read in the air-conditioning. It's a nice time. No pictures, though; considerable percentages of the family usually participate in their underway. And some of us have a love-handle problem we're trying to work through.
And now it's Monday morning. Janneke's taking the morning to do work, and I'm going out in the afternoon to visit the market again; the kids are breakfasted and are currently doing this:
The U-shape in the middle of the pieces is a strategy Q came up with last night: When there's a particularly odd-shaped piece that you can't seem to see, but you know must be in the mess somewhere, you slide them all over one by one, thus sorting them into a "searched" area and a "not yet searched" area. And the piece just can't escape.
T asked me to take one just of her, so here it is:
And, in the interest of fairness:
Yesterday was the 31st of July, which was the last day of our original car rental. We had planned to have a car for all of July, but then be carless for the two weeks of August that we'll be here. And when I say "we", I mean "Janneke", who had been concerned about the cost of renting a car, back in the planning stages. As well she might be - it ain't cheap. But as we've seen over the course of July, we get so much out of it, that it's absolutely worth it. We have the entire city - Nay! The entire ISLAND! - at our fingertips with a car, whereas without it, we're crippled and hobbled and stranded.
Case in point: I drove out yesterday to Enterprise Rent-a-Car, which is past the airport. It took me probably ten or eleven minutes to get there. Knew exactly where to go: it's in Isla Verde, a sector of town with lots of hotels and casinos and long, sandy beaches. Four years ago, during one of the three out of four weeks when we didn't have a car, we had tried to get to Isla Verde to check out the beaches by using the bus system. You can look up the post if you like (here), and learn just how frustrating it can be to try to get out to where a car can get you as if via Star Trek transporter beam. We may head out there tomorrow - we've bumped into several Puerto Ricans who say that we just must see Piñones, home of a long, protected beach, and a large population of Afro-Puerto Ricans, with lots of food kiosks and hospitality galore. I saw the exact exit with the highway that they told us we should follow. It'll be like taking candy from a baby.
Dropped in to Enterprise, where I'd been told we wouldn't have to change cars; I had a reservation number from the lady on the phone, and would just have to get the new paperwork and drive home again. They didn't tell us that they would inspect the car prior to signing it out again; had they told me that, I'd have had a different attitude about the whole business. Because there is a scratch on the car.
Now, before you faint, hear me out: We have rental car insurance through our credit card. I'm not sure how it works, exactly, but I'm told we have it. The lady at Enterprise said they have to charge the deductible, and then they start haggling with the credit card company. I tried once to get hold of someone at Visa (and I'll try it again today), but after half an hour at $.10/minute, I'd given up. So I wound up having to transfer everything from the old car to the new one (snorkeling gear, Q's scooter, all the recycling we've been saving up). Bother.
But a nice car.
Drove home again, to find he fam making lunch. Partook thereof, and then we worked on the jigsaw puzzle a while. Janneke had purchased a thousand-piece one at Borders the other day, and it has been an absolute hoot. It's some shclocky scene of nighttime parks with fall foliage and city lights glistening through the trees. Hideous. And hard. But we're managing - the kids are very much better at it than I am. More patience, more methodical piece-sorting, I don't know. But they're good.
Janneke decided that with all the laundry she has to do, she won't have time to make supper, so she suggested we hit Bebo's, the kids' favorite restaurant here. We all heartily agreed.
Thence to the beach, which was absolutely jammed. We took Clarabelle, and did our trick of heading left to the rocky portion to avoid the crowds. Worked like a charm, and Q, with his new water shoes, was walking across the rocks (with me, I must admit), when he stumbled and caught himself with his hand - and filled the end of one finger with sea urchin spines. Just can't win, this kid, where sea urchins are concerned. He and I walked back to the apartment to try to get some of them out - we got maybe two of the six or seven out of there. He decreed the rest not to be very painful, and we returned to the beach.
Janneke did a good long walk up and down the beach, then we switched off, and I went home, left Clarabelle (it's a bit of a drag to be on the beach alone with her and the kids; hard to pay enough attention to either), and went out for a run.
Early on, there was a couple coming the opposite direction on the sidewalk, who were portly and stiff and seemed flabbergasted about what to do when faced with a jogger. Fine, I thought: I'm young(er), quick(er), and considerate(r): I'll jump off into this patch of long grass and jog through that so they can continue to waddle along in their current formation. What could possibly go wrong?
"Clang!" The grass is six or eight inches high, and hidden among its blades is a steel post, about four inches high. I caught it with the inside edge of my foot, just where the big toe meets the ball of the foot. No blood, but a lot of soreness. Onward!
I ran my route quickly and happily, and then went back to the beach, where Janneke and the kids had moved. I knew this; when I took Clarabelle home, I'd taken the keys, and then jogged back to find them so I could leave the keys with them, and had found them a hundred and fifty yards farther east, where the water's rock-free and it doesn't matter how many people are around because they no longer had Clarabelle. But when I finished the run, somehow it seemed to me that they would be to the right of the culvert that drains rainwater into the sea. I looked and looked among the bikini-clad hordes, and looked and looked and looked, and looked, but couldn't find them. So I looked some more, and then concluded that they'd gone back to the apartment.
While looking, I'd been soaking in the sea, and my heart beat had been returning to normal, my muscles cooling down, my adrenaline draining out of my system. And when I decided to walk to the apartment and left the water, my right foot, where I'd hit the post, was throbbing. It was along walk - felt that way, with my foot, though it was a block and a half - to the apartment, where I got no answer. So I trudged sorely back to the beach - my foot was purple where I'd hit it - and found them, not twenty yards to the EAST of where the street enters the beach. Duh.
Back to the healing waters, and then me back to the apartment to start the showering process; kids and Janneke followed soon thereafter. Once we'd all gotten tidied up, we headed to Bebo's, a two-minute walk away.
The place was jammed, which we expected, but we did not expect to wait 25 minutes to be served our drinks. It didn't get much better form there, service-wise; she seemed attentive, our waitress did, when she was around, but every one of the tables around us - all four of them - had people arrive after us, get served, pay, and leave before our oddyssey ended. The food was great, but we decided we definitely needed to send a message with the tip. Which got a bit awkward - or could have - when she pesented us with the bill, and asked quite up-front, "Are you going to put in the suggested gratuity?" "No," I said, "we'll take care of that in cash." This seemed to set her aback a bit, which is the point. Lady, we aren't blind. Put a wiggle in it next time.
Home and to bed. The whole family these days piles into our room before bed to read in the air-conditioning. It's a nice time. No pictures, though; considerable percentages of the family usually participate in their underway. And some of us have a love-handle problem we're trying to work through.
And now it's Monday morning. Janneke's taking the morning to do work, and I'm going out in the afternoon to visit the market again; the kids are breakfasted and are currently doing this:
The U-shape in the middle of the pieces is a strategy Q came up with last night: When there's a particularly odd-shaped piece that you can't seem to see, but you know must be in the mess somewhere, you slide them all over one by one, thus sorting them into a "searched" area and a "not yet searched" area. And the piece just can't escape.
T asked me to take one just of her, so here it is:
And, in the interest of fairness:
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