Well, I promised, so I will. Thirteen days in Puerto Rico, Manhattan, Boston and Southern Maine. Just visiting friends. No scheduled activities, no conference to attend, no papers to present, just me going places I wanted to go. The details:
June 18-19: Delta, LAX - San Juan, changing in Atlanta, to visit newpioneer.
June 23: Delta, San Juan - JFK, for dinner with the NY Kossacks June 24.
June 26: Amtrak, Penn Station to Boston, to visit commonmass
July 1: Virgin America, BOS - LAX
I'd never been on a trip like this. I could have stayed in ANY of the places I was visiting longer, and I'm considering going back because, well, friends! So now, below the Great Orange lobster trap, details, with some pictures.
Yes, friends. Brothers in grief, with three days in Manhattan between them. I could tell from newpioneer's diaries that he needed a friend, and I needed a change of scenery, and considering how much commonmass and I had shared over the last year plus without ever having met, it seemed ridiculous to be on the East Coast without finally meeting him. Beside, because I misunderstood the absolute mutability of American Airlines flights you could use your miles on, I had made arrangements with the New York Kossacks for a dinner and I had never been to Manhattan as an adult without something like a paper presentation to bring me there, who could really resist that?
Since I knew that I wanted to arrive in Puerto Rico around lunchtime, I left Los Angeles on a flight to Atlanta right before midnight June 18. I wanted to be flying on the 19th anyway, because that would have been my sixth wedding anniversary and 43rd overall. I didn't quite realize that the flight to San Juan was at the absolute opposite end of the airport, but I made it, only I didn't have time for breakfast. The flights were both fine, but a teeny bit of confusion ensued once I picked up my luggage. Nobody at the airport, I thought. Through the magic of cell phones, his friend Keiko figured out that I would be on the arrival level instead of the departure level, and she and newpioneer worked out where we were going to have lunch. One of the restaurants from Havana that found a home in San Juan in 1965, in fact, Metropol (the one in Isla Verde). I was too wiped out by the flight to take any pictures, but a pina colada restored me, and newpioneer showed up. Just like meeting pretty much every other Kossack I've met, it was as if we had been to college together and we hadn't seen each other for a few years. That natural.
So we headed off to the hills above Salinas on the other side of the mountain, after a drive through Condado Beach and a glimpse at Old Town (here's a picture of the fort taken from the car window),
in Keiko's SUV, and we found out on the way the gas gauge didn't work. It was an adventure, because we did indeed run out of gas. I honestly don't stress over things like that when it's not my car. We got enough gas from a yard crew to get to a gas station next to the freeway (there was some climbing over things while the SUV sat in the breakdown lane) so we could fill up the gas can that we had with us, and that was enough to get us to a gas station where we could fill the tank. I honestly don't remember if we dropped off my luggage before we went out shopping for food or not, but I have the impression we didn't. Our first stop was this roadside fruit stand on the way to Costco.
Pineapples, plantains, papayas, soursops, mavi juice, and I'm leaving stuff out, but all probably no more than a day from the fields. Then we shopped for the more usual stuff.
If you have been following newpioneer's diaries and comments, you know that he's actively involved in animal rescue. So when we pulled up to his house (at the top of a hill looking toward the Caribbean - San Juan is on the Atlantic side of the island), we were greeted by a chorus of I'm guessing seventeen dogs. I'm told they didn't make any more of a fuss than they do when newpioneer comes home by himself, and I'm also told that that never happens with a stranger like me.Maybe they understood I'm a dog person. I also met his two horses, mother and foal. They were a little skittish, but that's how horses are. Inside, thirteen puppies whose eyes hadn't opened yet. They didn't notice me at all.
Here's the views:
So what did we do? Thursday night, Friday and Saturday, NOTHING beside watching the World Cup and listening to some of the bizarre stuff (music) I have on my laptop, and drinking. And cooking and eating. If you've never had someone who works as a chef cook for you, find one; waking up to a breakfast of oatmeal with tropical fruits and berries strewn over the top is really the best possible way to begin a day of relaxing. Oh, we went down to the Marina on (I think) Rincon Bay for dinner Friday night to get out of the house for a change of scenery and the third restaurant we went to actually wanted us to eat there so we did (overcooked shrimp, and yes, that was the first of three times I went off my vegetarian diet; the other two, as you'll see, [only one in this diary] were more worth it). Nothing arduous, just a couple of guys being friends and not stressing about things.
Sunday, we did what tourists SHOULD do here instead of not leaving San Juan. First, we went to Guayma so I could see where his restaurant had been (whoever took it over had failed with it) and so I could see the town square. Here's the Catholic Church.
Looks like a Wedgwood building, doesn't it. Then we took a drive up to Cayey through the mountains and past the Governor's summer residence (this is the non-humid, cooler side of the island), and we came back on the Rua Gastronomica through Guavate, because newpioneer wanted to take me to a Lechonera. A what, some of you are asking? From, heaven help us, the BBC:
Early Saturday morning in the hills of Puerto Rico, local chefs along a route known as the Pork Highway gathered their marinated, 150lb swines, skewered them nose to toes and hoisted them over spits for eight hours of slow roasting. As the sun rose, they sliced plantains to prepare tostones (twice-fried green plantains) and boiled gandules (pigeon peas) with rice. By mid-afternoon, the smoke from the kitchens would clear and the strip of road along PR-184 would suddenly overflow with locals, hungry for food and live merengue music.
Hidden away in Puerto Rico’s Carite Forest, Guavate, a small town in the mountainous Cayey region, is the kind of place that makes hotel concierges say, “You want to go there?” Fifty kilometres outside of the colonial capital San Juan, Guavate is far from the island’s popular casinos and pristine sands. Escaping the crowded beaches, however, gives a grander perspective on the authentic Puerto Rican lifestyle, especially if you are looking to experience one of the island’s revered culinary traditions – eating at a lechonera, a restaurant that specializes in lechón, or whole roasted pig, open every Saturday and Sunday.
Newpioneer had a specific one in mind, but he wasn't sure where on the road it was. We stopped at this one
because it
smelled right to the chef. And OMG, was it good. Food pr0n:
Clockwise from 8:00: mashed yuca,
lechon (roast pork),
arroz con gandules (rice with pigeon peas and some lechon) and boiled green banana.
Comida puertorriqueno autentico y delicioso. This is what Puerto Ricans eat for Christmas dinner, and they go to lechoneros to buy it there. Wonderful service, family-owned and I felt like I was part of the extended family eating here. On the way home, we passed the restaurant he had in mind and it was mobbed, and
newpioneer said it wasn't any better than the place where we dined. Just an amazing day. If you're going to Puerto Rico you HAVE to get off the beaten path and do this. It was okay that dinner at home failed that night, because we had eaten enough. Incidentally, by this point the cat was sitting in my lap. That wasn't supposed to happen either.
The next day, we went into San Juan so newpioneer and Keiko could change cars, and I took a 5:30 PM flight to JFK. It wasn't enough time in Puerto Rico; next time, at least a week, more if possible. Next installment, New York, Boston and Maine.