The Urban Pantheist

At one point I figured we'd seen about all that we could in the botanical garden, but my dad wanted to keep walking. We found this little pond, and there was a couple on a park bench by it. Just a couple feet in front of them was another (maybe the same?) great egret. This was a pretty imperturbable bird! We moved quietly closer, and saw that there were also ducks and at least one gallinule near the couple. They were eating, and tossing some bread crumbs to the birds. The ducks and gallinule were happily eating the bread. They tossed some near the egret, which took a predatory pose and struck, and came up with a big fish! When my snapshot alarm went off I set the self-timer so that I could get a shot of my dad and myself, with this story in the background.

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We had to walk by this view on our way from our room in the convent to the elevator.

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Much of December 30th was spent in the car.

( but no more of these pictures are from there )

My dad likes lighthouses, so I found one on the map: Punta Tuna. We followed yet another tiny winding road to a locked gate: the lighthouse was closed for the holiday week. A rough footpath through some scrubby woods along a drainage ditch seemed to go in the right direction, so we took a chance and went. A short while later we found ourselves on a beautiful beach, with this lighthouse overhead.



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As seen in my sneak preview post, this is my Dad on the balcony of Casa Cubuy, the lodge we stayed for two nights. This place is way way at the end of a tiny road way up in El Yunque National Rain Forest.

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We got to Puerto Rico just as the sun was setting on the day after Xmas. It took a long time for the shuttle to arrive to take us to the car rental place, and that was our first real discomfort--not really knowing where to go, wearing our Boston clothes in the 80 degree night. Then a quick course in driving in San Juan in the dark; I brought my GPS, which was helpful but there were a lot of roads that are parallel to one another, so I had to make good guesses about which ones I should be turning onto. We actually managed it relatively smoothly, and ended up in the resort area, pulling up to what was probably the cheapest and nastiest hotel available.

To be fair, the man who checked us in was friendly (the first of many to immediately sense I was over my head trying to speak Spanish), and the room was clean but very small. I had lingering nervousness from things a friend told me years ago--he said San Juan was "like New York but with more crime," and that he was mugged by a couple on a date. Fortunately lots of other people had told me that the North American worries about crime on the island were way overblown. We were on a side street which felt a little dangerous, but after a while we went out to explore. I love to go shopping for regular stuff on my vacations--it's fascinating to me to see what's different and what's the same about, say, Walgreens. What's different: local music played at what I now realize is a very modest volume, and lots of booze for sale. I foudn myself somewhat fascinated by xmas stuff--I feel like if you have a tropical climate, you really don't need to have a winter holiday. I bought traveler's kits of toiletries, and we went looking for a place to eat.

The streets were crowded with American tourists, a few beggars, and tons of cops. It didn't feel dangerous at all. We lucked into a restaurant selling local cuisine (I had goat stew) and began our project of depleting the island of all rum. We wandered up and down the main drag, stopping at various kinds of bars which all had different ambiance but all seemed to have giant TVs with NFL games on. I also noticed that I could hear the calls of the coqui frogs coming from the street trees and landscaping. I had imagined that urban conditions of San Juan would be too harsh for most amphibians, but at least one species (of 13-16 on the island) was heard over the traffic noise. Dad suggested we go look at the beach, so we walked about two city blocks with the hotels behind us on soft sand. According to the tourist guide we consulted later, that was the most dangerous thing we did, as apparently the beach is where drug deals take place. We only saw other tourists. I walked in the water a bit, which was delightfully warm for December 26th. The city lights were pretty, and there were holiday decorations everywhere.