Recalculating...

Obligatory picture of an iguana crossing the road (and also an obligatory apology for not posting for a while. its surprisingly difficult to maintain. Don't worry. I'm still alive!) I'm not sure how long its been since I posted, but its been 2 weeks and 1 day since I've been here. Time has flown so quickly! Cut to confession: after my second night here, I wondered if things would ever get easier. I sent emails to past-Bondermans, I called the parentals, and, to be perfectly frank, I panicked. I was convinced that each day would begin and end with a small count-down in my head--how many days until i can go home? I'm pleased to announce that at this moment in time, my countdown looks a little bit different--its how many days until i fly to peru? or how many days until i meet someone from cuszco? my "how many days do i have left" isn't so negative now--my "how many days do i have left" is finally ready for this Bonderman trip! And hey, for the first time time in this entire process, I'm actually beginning to think I can do this :)

This, however? Something I cannot do.

You've seen this beach before--it's La Concha, just right up the street from my hostel. The flipper is Brenden, who just left to take care of Army duties this morning. Again, I'm amazed at how travel takes you places that are simultaneously ephemeral and long-lasting--you meet people for just a week, and then they're gone (or you are). but i'd be hard-pressed to forget the genuine, human interaction I've found in Puerto Rico thus far. 

Take Rosaligia, for example. Rosaligia is a member a Servas, a world-wide organization that believes that by building minute, interpersonal relationships through home stays and day hosting, we can cultivate a deep, mutual respect for each other and our respective cultures--world. peace. I highly recommend joining if you ever find yourself planning out some long-term travels. Rosaligia was my day host last week--and she is truly, truly remarkable! She studied clinical psychology in NYC, and now makes home visits around San Juan, visiting mostly the elderly, with a few exceptions. This woman's generosity abounds! The first day we met up, Rosaligia sent me home with an extra sandwich ("so that you don't starve!") and a box full of cakes ($40 value, mine free). In actuality, I got so much more than that Groupon could have possibly predicted. I picked her brain about Puerto Rico's election, which is going on now. I asked her about great places to go (Rosaligia's been everywhere! A world traveler, who made time for her own happiness). Rosaligia even took me to a feminist ecological conference, which was just--gah. Just SO cool. It was all in Spanish...but the powerpoints helped.  Puerto Ricans speak way fast! (especially impassioned ones).

Speaking of passion--there are 5 questions that inevitably come up when you're traveling (usually in this order). 

1. Where are you from?

2. What's your name? (Sometimes, this doesn't matter. I get "Seattle-girl!" a lot).

3. How long are you here?

4. Where are you going next?

5. Why?

Why indeed.

A lot of people that I've met have had some trouble understanding why exactly the Bonderman Fellowship exists--what's its purpose? After about 5 minutes of me struggling out an answer, they usually just change tactics--alright, so what's YOUR purpose? What are you doing with this?

My snarky answer is usually, "Call me when I finish." 

That's code for "I have no stinkin' idea."

When I explained this to Rosaligia, she told me to follow passions--not just my own, but all passions. Follow them, find out what I like, and if i can't begin to piece together what I want to do with myself, so be it. Find out what I don't like. Bondergoal #432: Follow this advice.As long as I'm working toward passion, I'll be okay.

So that being said, here is it! The passion of Puerto Rico that I've been chasing these past few days! This is a picture of the No Holding Back 3 break-dancing competition I went to a few days ago. If anyone's got passion, its these guys and gals. This was the final set of the 3 day, partner-competition.Over 18 teams competed from across North and South America--needless to say, they were good.

They were also sassy.

I've also checked out a few art museums while I've been here--free every Wednesdays! Woot woot! On the 4th, they have a conference of writers coming in and giving lectures about Puerto Rican literature. Bet your bonnet I'll be there.

One of the more popular mediums for art in Puerto Rico made its way into the arena through a style influenced by posters and pin up flyers. They're easily accessible to the public, and you can produce them in mass quantity--perfect for expressing whichever passionate message you carry. The one below is a civil rights poster promoting equal rights for the slaves freed in Louisa, which to this day, hold most of Puerto Rico's black population. 

This one's called "The Pact." It covers the entire wall, and its probably the most anxiety-producing thing I've seen in a while. 

In contrast, here's one of the most peaceful things I've seen in a while. The Puerto Rican sculpture park is huge, lovely, and again--free!

I'm running out of time, so here's a quick flash-view of the rest of my week, and the passions that inhabited it. This painting advocates for Puerto Rican pride (symbolized by the plantains, which is a huge genre of art here).

This piece is a response to Duchamp called "Duchamp in check." It amusingly takes his own abstract style and satirizes it via this chess board. The hostel I'm in now doesn't have a chess board...but there have been fighting words. I can only hope that someone makes an investment soon and quits taking SMACK (Louis).

I  also made it back to El Yunque this week with my two-day roommate, Cassie (another Seattleite, woop). It was really relaxing to make our way through the trails at a leisurely pace (unlike my first time, which was full of hustle, bustle, and the need to book it toward the biobay). This is me at the Coca waterfall! Hi, me!

Cassie and I also took a quick hike to the peaks of the rainforest. Hi, view from observatory! 

After the rainforest, we made our way to Luquillo beach, which had the calmest waters of any beach I've seen. Don't get me wrong, the waves are nice, but if I were a fish, I'd live here. It was nice to just float in the water and watch the sun set. When your ears are in the water, the only thing you hear is your own pulse. 

Shout out to Sylvia Plath. 

I am, I am, I am. 

Missing you all! 

ak

If Google Maps Fails You, Just Turn Left. Right?

Why did the cows cross the random road in West Puerto Rico?

is it:

a) to get to the other side?

b) to confuse me for 5 minutes as I attempted to problem-solve a situation I'd only half expect to see in a ridiculous applied-math word problem?

c) to make the road smell like..well.

or, d) to simultaneously make me feel guilty and hungry about all of the meat i've been chowing down on. 

This is real life. 

The answer is e) all of the above. 

The answer is also f) to help me introduce day #8 to all of you, but that's okay if you didn't get it. that was a tricky one.

Where does the time go? Or better yet, where doesn't it? I feel like I've done more than I'd ever expected or planned on in just one week! So now what? What do you do when all of your expectations have been met, but you've got 2 weeks left? I left my planner at Posada San Francisco (hear the music in your head) so I guess I'll know where to go when we get there! In the meantime, this is where I am today :) And what a cray day it has been.

Last night I went out to Old San Juan and met up with a few friends from my 1st hostel (miss you, Mo!), so I'm not kidding when I say that this morning came early. Like, 3 snoozes, black coffee, cold shower kind of early (and I've never been a morning person, so early AM departures are already sucky in my book). Still, Rincon, Puerto Rico is a two hour drive, and someone from my hostel was heading that way today-- making this early morning a must.

Oh, Rincon.

Too bad we only spent 30 minutes there.

Don't get me wrong, Rincon is beautiful! (obligatory picture of Rincon beach below) We just got a little...lost.

A lot of people have said that the best way to get around Puerto Rico is by car.

They are lying.

The best way to get around Puerto Rico is with someone who knows how to navigate around bumpy roads, one-way streets, and cow-lines. 

Well, maybe not the best way--I did have a pretty great time.

But having someone in-the-know is certainly the safest! (someone without road-rage would also be awesome [we're talkin' seal-sequel--WHEN PHARMACISTS ATTACK! kind of rage] but that's a bonderlesson learned--not everyone learns to drive in nice-guy Seattle).

I digress (so did my trip).

Today I went to Arecibo Observatory, instead! 

Here's a picture of the world's largest radio telescope. 

Now I wouldn't know, but I hear that this observatory features in a James Bond movie about gold medallions? I just looked it up--GoldenEye? I've never seen a James Bond movie, but I'm willing to bet that the villain wanted to turn this baby into one big, bad weapon. The dome reflector is 1000 feet in diameter, so it's safe to say that 007 did us all a favor by stopping him (he does, right? that's how it ends?) The floating half-sphere, suspended between three huge towers and cable rope, catches the channeled waves from space, processes them into picture, and VOILA. Science.

During the introduction video, I was pretty overwhelmed. Not just factually, but emotionally! Did you know that a sign in Puerto Rico told me that the closest star to us is the same distance between Puerto Rico and Hawaii? This is not true..but still! I want to reach out and touch it--and people are trying! Tiny, tiny people, catching huge music from the stars. Man, if I liked science, I'd be a scientist :) I also got a bit emotional at the end of the tour. Our guide asked us if we had any questions, and I asked her if their center had any connection with the search for extra-terrestrial life (because I am POSITIVE Fox Mulder visits this place at some point in the X-Files, and that's some serious shiz). She said no. Sad Alaska :( Revealed as a dork.

After getting lost quite a bit more, we made it to the caves of Camuy, too! 

And just a second ago, I was marveling at the stars.

There are some really awesome forces at work here--and they've got nothing to do with scientific techno-know-how or person-made leaps of achievement. Seeing the observatory and the Camuy Caves was a phenomenal combination--a really complementary one. I can't process it entirely yet, but I'm working on it. I am a tiny, tiny writer trying to catch big things. Reflectively.

The Camuy caves are also full of bats--and for the record, bat poop smells the worst. I tried my hardest not to catch a whiff, but no such luck. That smell will haunt me for a while. In fact, I'm gonna go shower. Right now.

I did try to catch these cats, though! Eee look at them, they ishh shoo cute! The live around the caverns. There are a lot of stray animals in Puerto Rico--and I'm pretty they've all seen their share of hardship. Speaking of catching things, and hardships and stuff, someone in my hostel caught Dengue fever from a mosquito....don't worry, its not contagious, and I was vaccinated for everything under the sun! But they're in pretty sucky shape. Thank you, hall health, for making me safe.

Here is a picture of me looking nice and healthy, to preemptively sooth all of your worries.

That is all from my end. I hope everyone is doing well! 

I have LOVED reading your comments because it makes me feel like we are together, talking over tea :) aka, if you have time, talk to me! I miss you all.

ak

Dear Mosquitoes, Please Die.

The numbers are in--18 bites and counting.
I wouldn't mind so much if this was something I was accustomed to, but in the states, I very rarely suffer mosquito bites. Apparently, I'm a prime vintage here. Thank goodness for Wallgreens and their off-brand anti-itch creams. (tangent: why is this blog trying to auto-correct "rican" to "american." Knock that crap off!)

My today was excellent. I explored a few more cities outside of San Juan, which I'm quickly growing fond of, and had my very first adventure on the Puerto Rican public transit. I mentioned this in my last post, but you should know, and this is no exaggeration: bus schedules do not exist here. I miss me a good "one bus away" app that gives me an instant play-by-play of the buses in Seattle. Instead, buses run loops, drivers take break, and people hope to Jesús that they time things just right. It costs 75 cents for a one-way ride--there are no transfers, no orca cards, and no pull cords. Instead, you get the drivers attention by waving your hands in a grandiose fashion and yelling "pare!" in hopes that they'll hear you. Pretty effective, if I do say so myself.

My hostelmates and I decided to journey our way to Piñones, a small city on the north side of the island. The city hosts a large population of people from the Dominican Republic, so a lot of the food, music, and people you'll find there have DR roots (the boats running between Puerto Rico and the DR are all under repair now, so this was as close as I could get). After two transfers, a journey through residential Puerto Rico, and a heated discussion between our bus driver and a fellow passenger (they got in an argument about which beach we should go to), we made it! And it was stunning.

We walked about a mile in the sand, and didn't come across anyone. The beach was entirely free of people, which, considering the amazingness of it all, I just couldn't comprehend.

We did find a fancy boardwalk, though, which a fantastic view overlooking the ocean. This is a picture of Jesse and Evan, my fellow hostelmates, and partners in travel.

After our much anticipated lunch in Piñones--coconut milk and crab alcapuria (a deep fried fritter made of yucca and plantains, stuffed with with delicious seasoned crab)-- we began our journey back home to San Juan, stopping, of course, at beach #2-- in Isle Verde. Here's a picture of the coconut-aftermath. The man who sold them to us chopped off their tops with a machete and stuck in the straw. Fresh as it gets!

Isle Verde is divided in to two sections--the touristy "gringo" section, and the section where the locals hang out. I've been pretty fortunate in that I'm racially ambiguous, and more often than not, people assume I'm from Puerto Rico (on day one, my cab driver said I had a 'Puerto Rican face,' whatever that means). But, while its true that I can't guarantee this somehow gets me different treatment, I can say that the beach the locals hang out at was a) far more laid back than the gringo/hotel/resort beach and b) didn't seem to second guess my presence there. So, that was awesome. Sometimes its nice to just blend in.

This isn't the first time that I've noticed a pretty divided Puerto Rico. Even San Juan, between the Old and the New, has an extremely different feel. Old San Juan is touristy--the people speak English, the prices are higher, and the food is..well, burger king. "New" San Juan, however, is anything but--it's pastel colored buildings, empanadillas for breakfast, and tiny bars run out of people's homes. I think our bus drove through 2 or 3 pretty run down housing developments (the front desk manager at my hostel referred to them as 'projects') on the way to Isle Verde. Its been a strange experience, trying to decide where to travel to in search of an "authentic" Puerto Rico--what does that even mean? Places like "gringo-central Old San Juan"--the touristy, the flashy--ARE so integral to the way Puerto Rico is laid out, the way it functions. You can't ignore them, even if you feel like a giant pair of binoculars. Still, its just a bit jarring when the bus takes you outside the expected touristy destinations and somewhere deep inside the island--inside the residential, and the not-so-clean, where loud music pounds through coolers converted into boomboxes, and re-channels its power from the battery of an old diesel truck--a place that maybe, you're not suppose to be. A place you kind of hope you blend in to, so you don't disrupt their music.

Oh! Also. When you're swimming through 50 shades of blue (what with the water and the sky), you're more than likely to see these huge, fatty seals. Like, the fattest seals you can possible imagine (maybe they're eating burger king?) At one point, they were about 50 feet in front of me, and I had a pretty human fight-or-flight response, and racked my brain in hopes of remembering whether or not seals had some kind of weak-spot (like the equivalent of a shark's nose? Something I could karate-chop in case things got a bit dicey?). I also had these crazy "WHEN SEALS ATTACK!" newspaper titles flashing across my brain, but that's not too unusual with my overactive imagination (unlike the extreeeemely unusual fat seals that were the catalyst for said day dream). Meh. I guess if I were a seal, I'd hang out in Puerto Rico, too.

Time for bed--and I've got a hostel room all to myself :)

Mayhaps this calls for an episode of TRUE BLOOD? I think yes.
ps. don't judge me. We all have our guilty go-tos. Many misses!

ak

¿Por Que No?

Huzzah, hooray, this is happening!
I'm blogging, and just 5 days behind schedule (in typical alaska-fashion).
To be fair, this is the first place I've had reliable internet. To be unfair, I should have set this up weeks ago :) meh.

Before we get into where exactly "here" is, let me go over some pre-here stops. This is what I've been up to!  I arrived in San Juan dead tired and all kinds of sad--goodbyes are the worst. That being said, my first hostel  was absolutely beautiful! So I was slightly cheered up :)

Located in Old Town San Juan, Pasada San Francisco is surrounded by streets of old, colonial-style houses, narrow streets, and, oh yeah, a Starbucks. Also a Burger King and Wallgreens, but lets just focus on that Starbucks for a while. Mm Seattle. Before you shake your head at me, listen up! I didn't go in. I just couldn't do it. If Bonderman's about trying new things, I figured I'd rip familiarity off like a band-aid and go straight for the big kicker--my affection for pumpkin spice. I took refuge in a cafe right downstairs instead. Quite cute. Also quite bad coffee.

So, learning my bonderlessons quickly, I decided not to order coffee there again. I ordered mint tea with honey (I have fond memories of fresh mint). I should also mention that I was, and still am, quite sick--sore throat, runny nose...the works. So the tea felt juuuust right :) If you talked to me at all about the Bonderman Fellowship, I probably mentioned to you that my biggest fear about this trip is being sick alone. BOOM first day. No training wheels here, folks. Don't panic, there's a Wallgreens down the street--I have meds :)

Old San Juan also hosts some awesome Forts with great history about the occupation of Puerto Rico by, hm, well, just about every body. They saved these political cartoons and had them on display at Fort Murro. C-check it. Bad Uncle Sam and his latin omlette. I didn't feel any hostility in Old San Juan--in fact, its extremely touristy, englishy, and welcomes my money with open arms--but there are definitely neighborhoods in San Juan that aren't so forgiving about my broken-car spanish. I'm staying in a different hostel now (still in San Juan, just hopping around)--we'll see how it compares. I don't remember a great deal about the Forts, since this was the height of my sickness thus far, and I had difficulty not shaking, let alone not spacing out. I did make it up 4 flights of stairs for the view, though :) Te gusta? On the top of Fort Murro, defending Puerto Rico one killer view at a time.

San Juan isn't all! I've done a bit of traveling around the island, too. I met some really great people at my hostel (yay, friends!) and we rented a car to get down to Farjardo, a small city on the east side of the island. From there, we caught a Ferry to Culebra, a tiny island with BIG adventures. Our mission? To experience Flamenco Beach for ourselves--rated the 2nd most beautiful beach in the world by Discovery Channel, it certainly lived up to that reputation.

 I did take a walk down the small path at the edge of the beach, and stumbled across some pretty crazy signs: "WATCH FOR BOMBS." A small reminder that Culebra was once used by the US Navy for target practice. There was an old tank in the water, too. Talk about your trouble in paradise. After Culebra, we took a drive over to El Yunque, just a quick skip away from Farjardo--but with miles and miles of difference. El Yunque is a rainforest, with the most amazing natural waterfall pools.

After spending the day in the salt and sand of Flamenco, the cool (and I do mean very cool) fresh water falls felt just awesome. I've never felt more clean (though in reality, I was probably disgusting).

What else, what else? I'm flipping through my phone to jog my memory (Flu meds, people). Oh! Yes! The Bioluminescent Bay! I didn't get any pictures of this, but oh my wow--it was like stepping into Fern Gully. The bay has millions of these tiny plankton that, as a defensive mechanism, release a luminescent glow when disturbed. I dont exactly know how that helps them survive (hey, you! see me better!) but I won't question it. They're lovely.  We rented kayaks and paddled out to bay to wait for pitch-dark--only to be caught in the middle of a Puerto Rican rainstorm, in the middle of hurricane season. Imagine a soaking wet person. Now throw that person in a pool. That's...basically me, in a kayak, surrounded by glowing shrimp (excuse me, plankton). I wouldn't have changed a thing about it. When the raindrops hit the water, the ripples lit up like stardust. I was kayaking in the middle of the sky, through the stars :) When you cupped water in your hand, the water winked back at you--tiny, shiny smiles. I wish I could describe it better. It was beautiful.

Man, all the describing words! I'm getting sleepy! I switched hostels today, so things were action-packed and chaotic. I also went down to a beach in San Juan--its maintained by the huge hotels set up downtown so they're clean and endless. Literally, you look out and see nothing but blue. It makes finding a nice quiet spot to sit pretty easy--my new hostel-mates body boarded, and I did some yoga :) It's humid enough to be hot yoga, so lets just say that instead. HOT. YOGA. Needless to say, I'm thoroughly sticky. I'm going to explore the bus system tomorrow--who knows where that goes. I certainly don't know what time they come (there is no bus schedule). A truly random adventure :)

I'm not sure when I'll be able to post next, but I want to say one last thing--something pretty important. It's only day 5, but this trip has taken me by the shoulders and seriously rocked the way I think about my day. Never underestimate the power of lady luck, and the fabulous places she can take you, if you surrender a little planner. I've met some truly wonderful people that I never dreamed into my schedule, but who have made this trip what it is so far. Sometimes, the only way to schedule yourself an amazing time is to leave the schedules behind.

por que no?
much love :) ak.