These travel diaries are a little late; my father had a mild stroke while we were on vacation and I’ve spent the last week with my parents in RI helping out and generally being a bit frazzled – none of which I feel like blogging about here at pH. But I really wanted to document each day of our amazing trip so without too much further ado…
Sunday, November 15th
San Juan to Fajardo
We circled over San Juan, which peeked tantalizingly from behind
thunderclouds, for almost an hour before we landed in driving rain.
Welcome to rainy Puerto Rico! wasn’t exactly the mantra I’d been
repeating to myself for weeks while I mentally picked outfits for the
trip. Stuart began what would become an entire day’s worth of assuring
me, with varying degrees of patience, that the rain would pass and we’d
have our sunny vacation back.
We picked up our rental car – $500 deposit even when I’m paying with a
credit card? – and got briefly lost while trying to convince the GPS,
who we dubbed Petunia for her gratingly fake English accent, to take us
to an ATM. They call them ATH here, pronounced AH TEH ATCHEY! Thus
began my trip-long infatuation with saying things in wildly amateur
Spanish.
Once we found an ah-teh-atchey!, we decided to get some grub for the
road, to stave off the hangries. We ran into a pizzeria e panaderia and
found more pana than pizza. Stuart ordered what looked like an apple
turnover and some pork chitlins in a bag. I tried to be adventurous and
ordered the one called “queso e guayabe”, which really just tasted like
cream cheese and strawberry jam. So much for staving off the hangries;
the coke I bought kept me ticking over until we reached Luquillo.
We outran the rain, eastward on Route 3. On the motor way, our spirits
lifted as we parroted back the Spanish on all the road signs, and I got
my first kick out of being mistaken for a Boricua when the tollbooth
attendant addressed me in Spanish. In Luquillo, we didn’t have to
wonder where the famous friquitines were; the sign pointed
right off the highway for “kioskos” and we could smelled the fry stands
from the highway. We parked, marveling at the egret-looking birds that
stalked the pinchos stands, and started picking out fried foods
from the half-empty stalls.
I tried three different empanadas and some
sort of cheesy corn balls; Stuart was more adventurous and ate crab
sticks and something with beef and plaintains that he’s pretty sure
they invented for crazy gringos. We peeked at the famous Luquillo beach
and I realized how much the Puerto Rican landscape reminded me of West
Africa. Same half-tame packs of stray dogs on the beach, too,
mercenaries for your food.
Winding our way past Fajardo, we found the Passion Fruit Bed &
Breakfast and our poky little room; it took about 20 minutes for us to
decide to venture out for exploration and later, dinner. We took the
tiny road down to Las Croabas, and sat on the waterfront in the falling
dusk, watching the lightning across the sea in Culebra. Vendors set up
nighttime stalls selling more fritas and touristy things, although it
wasn’t always clear to whom. Men pulled out deck chairs from the backs
of trucks and popped open cans of Medalla. We contemplated eating at
the waterfront place, which looked busy with both gringos and locals,
but decided instead to venture into central Fajardo to try the food at
the Fajardo Inn. In retrospect – it was pretty middling hotel food, no
matter what the guidebook says – we should have stayed in Las Croabas.
We finished off the evening with a few rounds of mancala on the porch
of the B&B, as we watched the rain sluice down from the wooden
roof, and we were fast asleep in our poky little room – with its
incongruously spacious bathroom! – by 11pm. It was still raining.
