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SAN JUAN – Where ever it is that you live, you can probably depend upon a certain minimum level of traffic control.  Street signs, traffic lights, medians, dividers, lanes, and so on.  In Puerto Rico, those things are rare luxuries.  Put simply, this place is Thunderdome.

Each morning, we walk across the street in front of our hotel to the lot where our rented Nissan waits for us.  Parking isn’t a problem.  It’s expensive, but spaces are ample.  Depending on where we’re going, we turn either right or left.  Left takes us into Old San Juan, or the highways that lead to the western and southern portions of the island.  Cities like Arecibo and Aguadilla are reached via PR-2, which roughly follows the contours of the Atlantic coast.  Ponce, near the Caribbean coast, requires a journey south, via PR-52.  To reach the eastern portion of the island, we turn right out of the parking lot, travel down some two-lane roads past public beaches and vendors selling all manner of Puerto Rican cuisine, and connect to PR-3, which leads to Fajardo.

Some of these highways are limited-access freeways like the Interstate system.  Elsewhere, they are more like standard American highways, with at least two lanes in each direction, but intersections and direct access from shopping centers and local streets.  Some have tolls, though they are spread far apart, and are inexpensive.  The highest I encountered was $1.50, and most were half that.

Depending on where you’re going, however, these highways may get you only half way there.  The center of the island is rural, rugged and mountainous.  Though the peaks don’t generally exceed a few thousand feet, they do so from sea level and are quite steep.  The two-lane roads that connect the small towns in the interior are unlike anything I’ve ever seen in the USA.  First and foremost, almost none have lane markers.  (That goes for many of the main highways, too, where the first few hundred yards on either side of an intersection have no lines of any kind.)  This means that drivers move freely across the surface of the road.  On a four-lane highway, it’s bad enough to constantly fear that the driver in the lane next to you will try to move over.  On narrow roads high in the mountains, a car in your lane as you round a corner may mean certain death.  Meanwhile, these rural two-lane roads in the mountains are narrower than an average American driveway.  Imagine the door of your two-car garage.  Now, imagine coming around a blind corner fifteen hundred feet above the forest floor, finding a car in what should be your lane–if there was one–and having to pass in the space of that open garage door.  Imagine doing that at speed, where a false move will send you down into a ravine.  That happens a dozen times every kilometer in Puerto Rico.  (Curiously, distances are measured in kilometers, but speed limits in miles per hour.)

Meanwhile, the narrow, lane-less roads are invariably in terrible condition.  Huge potholes dot every street, rural or urban.  In cities, drivers must avoid these, while simultaneously dodging deep-set manhole covers placed in a seemingly random fashion, and wide metal grates which aid in drainage.  One such grate awaits those who exit PR-26 at Isla Verde.  If you know it’s there you can try and slow down, because hitting it at forty-five miles per hour would be devastating to tires.

Making things worse, Puerto Rican drivers do not use turn signals.  Ever.  You never know what anyone is going to do until they do it.  And they practice something Miriam refers to as “nudging”, in which, when leaving a shopping center or trying to change lanes at an intersection, they just push the noses of their cars into traffic, forcing others to either let them in, or crash into them.  Nudging may be so necessary and frequent because the names of streets are seldom indicated with visible signage.  If you’re lucky, you’ll see some faded tiles on the side of a corner building.  But you will frequently go for blocks in a city without seeing anything indicating where in the world you are.  It’s indescribably aggravating.

Add to all of this an innate Puerto Rican recklessness, and you have the recipe for disaster.  And yet, after seven days and almost nine hundred miles of driving, I saw only one accident – on my very last day.  I’ve never made the hour and a half drive from Gainesville to Orlando without passing at least one accident.  This afternoon, after watching a bicyclist charge blindly into traffic on a busy Ponce street, I came to a conclusion: God loves Puerto Ricans and protects them from automotive disaster.  The combination of bad roads and bad driving here made me expect to see corpses piled high beside shredded wreckage, but, no.  Some divine hand is keeping them safe.  May it be ever thus.

Filed under: Geography, Transportation, Travel on August 20th, 2009 | 2 Comments »

SAN JUAN – I feel bad about not writing more about my many adventures since arriving in Puerto Rico a week ago, but the truth is that I have been in a state of almost constant motion.  Each day has brought something new.  Yesterday, for example, we explored the northeast portion of the island, particularly around Fajardo.  I got to see the house that Miriam lived in until she was eighteen years old.  Then, at dusk, we climbed in a kayak and paddled across a small bay, through a natural channel surrounded by mangroves and trees, and into a lagoon unlike any other I have ever seen in my life.  It glowed.

I’ll write about it all, I swear.  But, right now we’re headed south, to Ponce, to see the historic town, and see the Caribbean Sea.

Filed under: Travel on August 20th, 2009 | No Comments »

SAN JUAN – The flight from Orlando to San Juan takes approximately three hours.  The plane was over the Atlantic coast of Florida in a matter of minutes, and followed the shore until somewhere near Fort Lauderdale.  It was a half hour or so before I could see any of the islands of the Bahamas, but they were beautiful from the air.  The deep blue water of the open ocean fades to a bright turquoise within the shallow lagoons.  In some places, the patterns in the sand below the surface of the water made it seem as though the Creator had taken a giant brush and painted a scene in broad strokes.  From the shore, or even a ship, the design must be imperceptible, but from 39,000 feet it’s gorgeous.

Our cruising altitude was nearly 40,000 feet, but for the most part I wished it could be much lower.  At that height, and at nearly five hundred miles per hour, one has a hard time discerning anything very specific on the surface of the Earth below.  Superhighways and large buildings are clear, but identifying an individual vehicle is impossible, and even entire cities pass by so quickly that you have no time to venture an informed guess as to its name.  On a flight last year to Chicago, I flew over what I believed might have been Indianapolis (it had a large racetrack), but I couldn’t be sure.  This trip, however, small monitors on the back of each seat allowed passengers to view the plane’s location in real time, similar to what I experienced on a flight from Paris to Miami long ago.  I suppose the high cruising altitudes allow for faster, more stable flight.  And it’s true that once the scene outside my window became one exclusively of white clouds, the urge to nap was strong – made possible by the smooth and steady flight.  But, just as I began a dream, I was jolted by heavy turbulence, and the gasp of a hundred passengers around me.  The plane jerked violently and suddenly dropped.  The sensation of free-fall, familiar to anyone whose been on a roller coaster, filled me with instantaneous dread.  We leveled out almost immediately, and I doubt the whole affair lasted more than fifteen seconds, but a quarter of a minute can feel like a quarter of an hour when, half-asleep, you are jostled and made to fear for your life.

From so high, the open ocean is a deep blue blanket.  But, upon our descent into San Juan, the white caps of waves became apparent, and near the island were omnipresent.  The captain had said that winds at the airport were a steady twenty-five miles per hour, so I can imagine that on the open sea the water was quite choppy.  Near the island, small boats and giant cruise ships soon appeared, and, while I had not yet spied land from my seat on the port side of the aircraft, in an instant the peninsula of Old San Juan, with El Morro at its tip came into view.  It was thrilling, just as it was to make the river approach into Washington-Reagan Airport, where the fields, forests and neighborhoods of Maryland and northern Virgina suddenly give way to the famous monuments in the heart of the District of Columbia.

The airport in San Juan was crowded everywhere, and the lines outside the bathrooms were long.  We had no checked baggage, so made our way outside to hail a taxi, but a hundred other people had the same plan, and the wait was long.  Meanwhile, around us were hundreds of others, there to pick up friends and relatives.  Since no one without a ticket is permitted inside, they wait patiently outside, noses pressed against the glass, staring at the baggage carousels.  It was refreshing to be given a printed receipt for our taxi ride even before the driver took our luggage.  The ride to our hotel would be $12, and there were no surprises, except, perhaps, that our hotel is so close to the airport.

Our hotel sits along a vast strip of dozens of other hotels and resorts that line the section of town called Isla Verde.  The compound is lush with trees and flowers.  The lobby and common areas are typical of this level of accommodation, which is to say that there are floral arrangements on tables, and appropriate but relatively pedestrian art on the walls.  It cannot match the Omni Shoreham in Washington or the Westin at Hilton Head Island.  Our room is large and attractive, the bed enormous and plush, the furniture handsome and stylish, the seating generous and comfortable, and the view beautiful and still more beautiful.  If it cannot match the stunning panorama of the Marriot in Salt Lake City, with its sweeping views of two snow-capped mountain ranges, it is nevertheless the best ocean view we’ve had in the United States.

Coming up: the city, the mountains, the caverns, the rainforest, and the beach.

Filed under: Transportation, Travel on August 18th, 2009 | No Comments »

SAN JUAN – As I write this, I am seated on a balcony overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, which, here on the north side of Puerto Rico, shifts from deep blue to turquoise, and, near the shore when the sun hits it right, emerald.  The waves right below me are mild, but a few hundred yards beyond the beach, out to perhaps a quarter of a mile, is a shallow reef, and the surf there is rough.  A light but steady breeze is blowing from the east, and the sheer white curtains in the room are waving in concert with the palms below.  The air is much cooler than I would have expected, so if I close my eyes and ignore the sound of the waves, I feel for a moment like I would on an afternoon in early March back home.

The hour is past eleven o’clock, but we haven’t wasted half our day.  Rather, we have gotten in some relaxation, which is much needed after our adventures of yesterday, and the hectic pattern of hurry-wait-hurry-wait that dominated our Wednesday, when flew here from Orlando.  In a few minutes we will hop in our rented Nissan and journey a few miles down the coast to Old San Juan, where we’ll see sixteenth-century architecture, eat desserts and pastries, look out over the sea, visit museums, and maybe listen to some live Salsa music.

When I have the opportunity, I will write about our perilous trek into the remote mountains yesterday.  We faced death literally around every corner (and I don’t use the word “literally” unless I mean it).

Filed under: Musings, Travel on August 15th, 2009 | No Comments »

ORLANDO – Airports are fascinating places.  But they are no longer fun places.  When I was young, you could go to the airport, make your way out to the terminal, and watch planes land and take off.  You could accompany your loved one to the gate, or wait there for her arrival.  Those days are long gone.  Now, the best you can do is drop someone off at the ticketing area or wait for them at baggage claim.  The security screening process is a hurried and intimidating experience.  Will they harass me about my toothpaste?  Oh, no, the next guy’s bags are coming off the X-ray conveyor belt and I haven’t got my shoes back on!  I wish that lady on the intercom with the grating voice would stop trying to make people feel guilty about not giving up their seats.  And I wish the Licorice family would report to Gate 107.

Filed under: Rantings, Transportation on August 13th, 2009 | No Comments »