On the south bank of the Chicago River there is a plaque describing the 1915 Eastland disaster.  More than eight hundred people drowned right in the heart of the country’s second largest city, while people in skycrapers watched out their windows.  But when I was watching a show at the Oriental Theater, which lies only a few blocks from the Chicago River, I saw no plaque commemorating the Iroquois Theater Fire.  I had never heard of it.  On this date in 1903, more than six hundred people burned to death in a terrible fire at 24 Randolf Street.  The Oriental Theater now occupies that very spot.  I suppose modern theatergoers would find it unsettling to imagine heaps of charred corpses while they tried to enjoy Wicked.  Had I known that address’s tragic history, I would certainly have searched out all the emergency exits and fire extinguishers before the house lights dimmed.

We can visit Dealey Plaza or Whitechapel, understand their histories, and still not be too disturbed.  But something about the Iroquois Theater Fire troubles me deeply.

It’s basically impossible to park on the street in Old San Juan.  People do it–and do it very well–but finding an empty spot that isn’t a loading zone or reserved for a particular person or residence would require hours of searching, and some good luck to boot.  Once, when we thought we had gotten lucky, a policeman told us that the space, though unmarked, actually belonged to a bank across the street.  So, we opted instead to park in a municipal lot.  It was only a couple dollars for the whole day.

Our first stop was La Bombonera.  It’s a legendary bakery and restaurant on Calle San Francisco.  Miriam’s grandparents ate there, and La Bombonera made her parents’ wedding cake.  I’ve heard about the place for years, and was looking forward to seeing it in person.  There is a window out front with a variety of pastries and desserts on display.  Inside, people can sit at the long counter, or in booths.  Both were completely full when we arrived, but after a few minutes we took a seat.  Our waiter was a jovial old man.  He had no teeth, but that didn’t stop him from smiling.  He told us he had worked there for fifty years.  It is likely, therefore, that he served Miriam’s mother when she ate there as a small girl.  I wrote already about the mallorcas, but let me state again for the record that they are delicious beyond description.  Behind the counter is an ancient coffee maker, and a modern juicer.  The juicer required no human effort at all.  Rather, the machine grabbed an orange from a pile placed on top of it, dropped it into a hopper, sliced it in half, then crushed it.  It took a few seconds.  We ate at La Bombonera twice during our stay.

Just down the street from La Bombonera is Plaza de Armas.  It’s small for being so well known, and has a charming fountain.  Facing the square is an old municipal building where the mayor of San Juan once held a wedding reception for Miriam’s parents.  On a wall inside, the text to “En mi Viejo San Juan” is inscribed near the stairs.

Around the corner is the Cathedral of San Juan Bautista.  It’s fairly simple visually.  In fact, some of the architectural details inside are illusions, merely painted on.  But the church has a rich history.  Beneath a marble sculpture along a wall in the transept lay the mortal remains of Juan Ponce de León.  It was in this cathedral that Miriam’s parents were married.

From there we walked down to the old city gate, and saw the back of La Fortaleza.  On our second day in Old San Juan we were able to tour the castle.  Along with the two forts and the old city wall, La Fortaleza is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.  It has been the official residence and office of governors of Puerto Rico for hundreds of years.  We had what amounted to a private tour, accompanied by an official guide and a very large plainclothes guard who always walked about twenty feet behind us.  The garden was wonderful, and the eighteenth century facade–built to make it look less like a fort, which it was built to be–is handsome, indeed.  The view from the west side is splendid, and the east side faces a long street closed to traffic.

The other UNESCO World Heritage Sites we visited were the two great forts: the massive San Felipe del Morro (which everyone calls El Morro), and the huge, but not quite as huge, San Cristobal.  El Morro lies at the tip of Old San Juan, jutting out into the water.  It was the first thing I spied from the airplane as we were about to land, and it’s impossible to miss.  Before it is an open field where people fly kites and picnic.  Through the gate is the ticket counter, of course.  The major historic sites in San Juan are managed by the National Park Service, but, like almost everything in Puerto Rico, the tickets were cheap.  The compound is almost too big to see in one visit if, like me, you have been already fatigued by walking around the city.  Plus, there are an almost unlimited number of steps and ramps.  There is an almost comical lack of safety apparatus at El Morro: no bars or railings prevent one from tumbling a hundred feet from the gun deck to the rocky shore of the Atlantic Ocean.  People are free to climb out onto the high walls, even though the wind blows hard and steady.  Elsewhere, deep troughs–probably originally intended for sanitation–are open and unguarded, so that someone (let’s say me) not paying close attention might easily stumble into one.  Up near the nineteenth century lighthouse built atop the fort, Miriam overheard a funny conversation.  A family was exploring the site, when the teenage daughter began to climb on the rampart.  “Be careful you don’t fall”, the dad said, before casually walking away to take photos.  The mom, who was with the daughter, responding to something innocuous, like the camera malfunctioning, exclaimed loudly, “oh no!”  With little hesitation, but no enthusiasm whatsoever, the father asked the mom, “what, did she fall?”

Deep under San Cristobal, a maze of tunnels lead to different areas of the fort.  In one room, a former dungeon, ancient art is still visible on the wall.  Modern–but still old–graffiti lines other tunnels.

Between El Morro and San Cristobal are two of San Juan’s most intriguing and intimidating locales: Cemetaria Maria Magdalena and La Perla.  The former is just what it sounds like; the latter is the city’s famously colorful slum.  La Perla sits on a sliver of land between the Atlantic Ocean and the old city wall.  Because of the danger, tourists are advised to steer well clear, which, given the limited access, is easy.

The Museo Pablo Casals sits on Plaza de San Jose.  It’s a modest two story building that holds images, documents, and artifacts related to the cellist.  They have, in fact, his piano and cello.  The young man working there must surely be the world’s foremost Casals authority.  All the brochures were in Spanish, so when we asked if he could just give us a little information in English, he proceeded to give us an hour-long lecture about Casals’ life and career.  This guy knew everything, and was incredibly nice, too.  Admission to the museum was something laughable, like a dollar.

San Juan is an amazing old town, and if you ever get the chance, you should go.  Just hire a taxi.

As I mentioned in a previous post, one of the first excursions out of San Juan that we made was to the mountainous interior of the island.  On the same day we went to the Arecibo observatory, we had also planned to visit the Parque de las Cavernas del Río Camuy. Alas, when we reached the park gate, the attendant told us that all that day’s tickets had been distributed.  We would have to return later in the week.

We left San Juan early on a Sunday morning to make the drive back to Camuy.  We reached the park and got two of the limited number of tickets that would be distributed that day.  Once inside I understood why they had to limit access.

Visitors wait at a covered area near the park entrance and wait for their number to be called.  When it’s your turn, you line up on a wooden ramp before boarding a motorized tram.  The tram follows a winding path down the mountain and stops at the bottom, where everyone steps off and the fun begins.

Through a narrow opening in the rock, a path leads into the cave.  Near the opening, a little sunlight peeks through and some vegetation grows, but deeper in it becomes dark, and nothing does.  Some electric lights prevent total blackness and inevitable injury on the sharp limestone formations that cover the floor.  After a short walk you come upon a domed chamber of overwhelming size.  I can’t give any technical details, but believe me when I say it was enormous.  The tallest building in Gainesville could easily have fit inside with room to spare.

We were warned repeatedly not to touch anything in the cave, and at a low spot near the end of the cavern we saw why.  All the water that flows down the walls of the cavern makes its way to a pool near the opening at the far end.  In that pool are micro-organisms that live only in that cave, and nowhere else on earth.

Exiting the cavern at the far end, you find yourself near the bottom of an extraordinary sinkhole.  It isn’t anything like the sinkholes you find in Florida, which are wide and shallow.  This was a pit hundreds of feet deep, with a narrow opening to the sky at the top, ringed by trees.  A waterfall splashed down to the floor, which was still some distance below us.  Some way off you can see the opening of another cave that looked to be smaller than the one you just exited.  But as you approach that cave, you realize that it is huge.  A large aircraft could have flown comfortably through the opening.  We were not allowed to get near that cave though, which is off-limits to all but a few trained spelunkers.

Back in the giant cavern, you head along a different path and soon hear the sound of rushing water.  None is visible anywhere, but the sound becomes louder until it is clear that a raging river is near.  That river is, in fact, down a deep, black crevasse.  I had a terrible vision of falling down, and being washed into the abyss.  I realized I was in Xanadu:

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.

I believe that that cavern may be the single most impressive natural wonder I have ever beheld.  Alas, the darkness within the cave made photography extremely difficult.  That is why I have few good pictures.

For similar reasons, I have even fewer photographs of another natural wonder we visited near the end of our trip.  At the far eastern end of the island, near the town of Fajardo, there is a small city park along the water.  It looks a lot like any waterside park in Florida, with picnic areas and a boat ramp.  But shortly before dusk each night, trucks hauling trailers loaded with kayaks line up along the sea wall, and the tourists begin donning life jackets.  The guides distribute collect shoes, distribute paddles, and assign kayaks, and as the sun sets, everyone begins rowing across the marina.  At the other side, you enter a narrow channel through the mangroves, which tower over your head and in some places form a tunnel over head.  Moving with the tide it takes about twenty minutes, and when you arrive in a large open lagoon it is already dark.

The first thing I noticed was the sky.  Except for some low fog around the mountains that circle the lagoon, it was clear, and I saw more stars than I’d seen since I was a child.  The guides turned off the glowing sticks mounted to the rear of each kayak, and then the only artificial light came from the lighthouse on the mountain.  Looking down, it was immediately apparent to me why this lagoon is so special: the water glows.  Microscopic animals living in the water emit a powerful light when disturbed.  Scooping the water in my hands, I could discern each individual point of light, though the animals themselves are much too small to see.  When I ran my arm through the water, all the individuals shined together, and it looked as though there was a bright blue light beneath the surface.

The tour guide, in his own kayak, explained how those organisms required very particular conditions to live, and how that lagoon was one of only a handful of places were they could be found.  Two similar environments could be found elsewhere in Puerto Rico, but they are not as well protected and one, in Ponce, has been virtually ruined by motorized boats and swimmers.  In Fajardo, swimming is prohibited, and only kayaks and canoes are allowed in.  Moreover, the lagoon was practically a secret: Miriam grew up in Fajardo and never heard about it while she lived there.

After about a half hour, we began paddling back to the marina.  The tide was against us, though, and it took almost three times as long to make it through the mangrove maze as before.  We were further slowed by kayakers from another tour coming in.  In the mangroves, it was almost totally dark.  We made it back to the park where we had left our car, and began driving back to San Juan.  It was hard to get that glowing lagoon out of my mind.

Near Aguadilla, at the far west end of the island, we visited where I rode a horse for the first time.  The Paso Fino is an easy-to-ride horse that originated in Puerto Rico, which was good for me, because I wasn’t sure what to expect.  My horse practically rode herself.  When I pulled back on the reins she stopped, and she never refused to move to what ever side I directed her.  I was placed at the back of a short line of horses because my horse apparently didn’t like having other horses behind her.  But Miriam was two horses ahead of me, and I wanted to catch up.  I wasn’t supposed to, but I did it anyway when our guide wasn’t looking.  We had set out from the ranch, rode across a grove of trees, over a dune, and were on a deserted beach.  The horses didn’t seem to mind trotting through the water, though it was a little scary when they got close the the edge of a dune.

After about twenty minutes or riding along the shore, we reached a rocky outcrop.  We tied the horses up to some trees, and climbed along the rocks to near the entrance of a sea cave.  The tide was too high and the surf was too rough to get any closer, but it was still fun.

The ride back was hard.  Someone at the front of the convoy made his horse run, then all the horses wanted to run.  Paso Finos a smooth riders, but the trotting still made my shoulder hurt.  Still, it was a fun and memorable experience.  I had never done more than pet a horse before, so getting to ride one along a beach was wonderful.  And getting to ride one along a remote beach, away from anything man-made, was even better.

The caverns, the bio-luminescent bay, and the horseback riding were the highlights of our vacation to Puerto Rico.

Our first stop was the Arecibo Observatory.  Operated by Cornell University, it is one of the largest radio telescopes on Earth.  Pictures don’t do it justice.  It is really enormous.  I seem to recall the tour guide saying something about twenty-five football fields fitting inside.  Astronomers chose this specific location for a few reasons, of which the most significant were the proximity to the equator, and another being the big hole that existed naturally between the surrounding mountains.  The had to do only a little blasting to fit the reflector.  Looking at the different antennas from the rim of the reflector you cannot tell how large anything really is.  But when a man passed in a basket over head, his tiny size gave some indication.  The short film we watched in the visitor center explained that the round sub-reflector suspended high in the air is the size of a three story building.  The pointy antenna next to it is almost a hundred feet long.  Three colossal concrete towers support the cables, and those cables are embedded in massive concrete anchors.  The air at Arecibo was fresh and in the shade I felt so cool and comfortable that if I closed my eyes I could imagine that I was in the North Carolina mountains.

Our next stop that day was to be the caverns in Camuy, but we arrived to find that all the tickets had been sold for the day.  We decided to head instead to the nearby Caguana Ceremonial Ball Courts.  The Taíno lived here in pre-Hispanic times, and left petroglyphs which are on display and are fascinating.  Now, a cynical person might say, “well sure, this place is interesting, but while the Taíno were drawing on these stones, the French were building the cathedral at Riems“.  That may be so, smart guy, but as Jared Diamond points out in Guns, Germs, and Steel, geography and technology are crucial to the development of any society.  Europeans lived in the most fertile place in the world, had horses and access to almost unlimited resources.  The indigenous people of the Caribbean had to cope with frequent hurricanes, occasional earthquakes, land that was far too rugged to sustain substantial populations through agriculture.  The ball courts at Caguana are fascinating, and you could see how the stones surrounding them were brought up from the river running through the canyon below.  All around the site were enormous Ceiba trees, which were easily over a hundred feet tall, with massive trunks that dwarf a man. The park was practically deserted, and the weather was lovely.

The drive back to San Juan gave me another opportunity to experience awe and terror, as I passed gorgeous scenery, and treacherous driving conditions.  At one point, a convoy of ambulances approached from behind with lights flashing.  I moved over to allow them to pass, but they didn’t go any faster than anyone else.  I concluded that emergency vehicles in Puerto Rico must always just travel with flashing lights.  Meanwhile, when I did hear a police siren, I looked around expecting to find a patrol car.  Rather, I discovered a motorcyclist and his girlfriend, using a police siren to attract attention.

We joined our friend Maggie, who lives in Puerto Rico, for dinner at a restaurant with a cool Egyptian theme.  At the conclusion of the meal, a belly-dancing girl came out and entertained everyone.  I can see why that custom is so popular.

It was after ten o’clock when we arrived back at our hotel, and I was ultra tired.  The next day we would explore San Juan.

We arrived in San Juan in the early afternoon, and took the short taxi ride to our hotel, the Intercontinental San Juan Resort and Casino.  We were shocked when the front desk clerk told us we must pay a $500 deposit “for incidentals”.  We had purchased a vacation package months ago, which included our airfare and hotel.  We knew we’d have to pay for parking and taxes, but didn’t expect to pay such a large sum up front.  It cut into our walkin’ around money quite a bit.  To make matters worse, to pick up the rental car we’d reserved we had to pay a $400 deposit.  At the end of the week, Avis would refund the deposit less the rental fee.  Thankfully, that was the end of our troubles for the entire vacation (save one rainy morning).  The desk clerk gave us a sweet room upgrade on the eleventh floor with a beach view.  Plus, the girl at the Avis desk–conveniently located in the hotel lobby–upgraded us to a Nissan Rogue.  It was quite nice, and made us feel better.

We spent that afternoon hanging out near the hotel, deciding to take it easy.  There were several restaurants across the street, so we ate, and got directions to the nearest supermarket from two police officers.  Pueblo is quite similar to Albertson’s.  I was fascinated by all the exotic products.  Brands we know well in the USA make items for the Latin American market that we never see here.  And items that we do have look different.  Two-liter Pepsi bottles were tall and slender, and Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes are called something else entirely.  Soda was less expensive than in the USA ($1.07 for two liters), but dairy products were much more: milk cost $5.99 per gallon.  The Puerto Rico equivalent of Merita or Hostess is called Holsum, and I bought a package of their little donuts with powdered sugar called “Donitas”.  They were delightful, and over the course of our vacation I must have eaten eighty little donuts.  I even wrote a song about them:

Donitas, me gusta comer Donitas.
Te quiero, mi amor, Donitas.
La comida de Dios, Donitas!

I would like to make a music video for my song in a very Univision style, with lots of blown-back hair, camera zooming, and a scene where I pick my face up out of a pile of powdered sugar, like the scene from Scarface where Al Pacino lays face down in a  mountain of cocaine.  I can’t say enough good things about Donitas.

But, even better than Donitas was a treat I had for the first time ever the day we spent in Old San Juan.  The historic eatery called La Bombonera sells something called Mallorcas, and they are a gift from heaven.  They look like small spirals of dough sprinkled with powdered sugar.  You can get them in this soft form, but I had mine grilled, without the cheese or meat that others prefer.  They were indescribably good, and I wished I had a larger stomach so that I could have eaten more of them.  More about La Bombonera later.

After dinner our first night, we went down to the beach, then swam in the pool after dark.  The constant breeze and cool water was completely refreshing.  The pool, which was huge and had a waterfall and a bridge over it, was open all day and night, but we sometimes went down too late to get towels from the gazebo, and had to feel very cold coming up in the air-conditioned elevator.  Then, back in the room, we opened the sliding glass door to the small balcony, and delighted in the breeze that blew back the curtains.  Most of the time that we spent in our room was with the door open.  Some nights we could see the cruise ships leaving San Juan and heading east, and the sight of their bright lights sailing toward the horizon was enchanting.  So ended our first day in Puerto Rico.

More to come.

Not to put too fine a point on it, Puerto Rico is, in many respects, the third world.  True, many luxury hotels line the Atlantic coast in San Juan, and while there, Miriam and I could walk around the corner to Pueblo, which felt remarkably like an Albertson’s.  At the same time, however, a level of poverty exists there which is simply unknown in the the USA.  And that poverty is pervasive.  Unlike in America, Puerto Rican slums and projects stand right beside the homes of the wealthy, and slums stand on beachfront property.  Thus, Puerto Rico often felt like a foreign country to me.

As we drove from Orlando International Airport to Miriam’s parents’ home, the wide, safe, well-lit, properly maintained highway seemed to me like a vision from a futuristic utopia.

While I am glad to be home, and enjoy the luxuries of life in the United States, I am aware that I just took a legendary vacation that I will remember fondly for the rest of my life.

The number of people selling food in Puerto Rico is impossible to exaggerate.  Where ever one stands here, several dining opportunities are within view.  At street corners, men and women sell fruit.  At roadside kiosks, vendors sell all manner of fried and roasted meat.  Restaurants fill every building.  I know that seems like hyperbole, but when I say that you can’t turn your head without finding a place to eat, I mean it.  In people’s homes, from people’s cars, from stand-alone structures and on foot, food is for sale.

Perhaps the most unexpected thing I have found amidst the huddled masses, baking in the heat here is a kind and jovial politeness.  Almost without exception, everyone with whom I have come into contact in Puerto Rico has been very nice.  Even in situations in which one might expect a degree of curtness or even aggression, there is none.  For example, Miriam and I attempted to access the former United States Navy base called Roesevelt Roads on the east side of the island.  At three different checkpoints we were turned away.  But, each guard with whom we spoke was friendly and polite.  In America, security guards are so often complete jerks, that I was taken aback.  And, even when it sounds like Puerto Ricans are angry and shouting at one another–and people here are loud, to be sure–it isn’t what it seems.  On a sidewalk beside a vast expanse of lawn that sits before San Felipe del Morro, as we enjoyed delicious piraguas, we saw a family pass.  The children were shouting as children always do, and the mother seemed to be speaking sternly to them.  But, what they were really saying, in Spanish, of course, was how beautiful the kites were, and how nice the weather was.

Puerto Rico is crowded, dirty, and poor as can be.  But the people here are warm and friendly.  I will miss this.

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.

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.