Sagadahoc Stories #80: 2/22/99

It ain't easy to escape the higher latitudes in February, at least via American Airlines. Our Saturday morning flight was canceled, and each subsequent substitution got sicked out until Monday at dawn. Running late and groggy we stumbled into the seething crowds at Logan's American check-in just before flight time. Barely managed to scuttle aboard our bird to.. Dallas?

After the last flight of the day got delayed the third time, an agent announced that the movie would be free, "and there will be a two drink minimum." We cheered. Redfaced, she corrected herself, "MAXIMUM, catering is running low." We laughed. When the ramp door opened, Puerto Ricans mobbed the departure access, despite all pleas for single lines, and we sardined ourselves into a widebody winging to the sun.

My seat neighbor, Rick, was an insurance salesman from Dallas who wanted to yarn. An American brought up in "Dominica", he found his Spanish useful selling group insurance to companies in Puerto Rico. He sounded pure Texas to me. When we told him we were headed to the Copa Marina in Guanica, he was voluble in its praise. Gave us all sorts of tips, about remote beaches and local amenities. "I'm probably the only other person on the plane who's ever heard of the place," he said. "It's way out there."

It certainly is, as we discovered at 2AM when we careened around the last hairpin curve, after a white knuckle ride across the island in the resort van. Terry and Viv, our English cousins, who'd been expecting us for days, had stayed up to actually lay eyes on us, and we hugged and staggered off to bed. Welcome to Paradise.

An uproar of parrots brought us to the surface at sunrise, but we dove back down, and didn't totter into the light until the sun was high. And wonderfully hot. We got into languid resorter mode immediately. Gentle breezes. Moving the chaises to follow the shade. " An iced rum and mango, porfavor?" Peggy kept slipping back into the pool for another few laps. "Pass the lotion." You know the drill.

Parrots

Terry and Viv had been caged in this outpost for almost a week, and were eager to roam the island, but they patiently waited while we soaked and uncoiled. They'd already explored the surrounding dry forest, a UN designated world protection area, noted for its unique ecology, and found the hidden beaches Rick had promised us. And learned that the resort prices for food and drink were on the high side, as Rick had warned. They wanted to rent a car, and see some of Puerto Rico. But first, "How about the pina colata?"

Copa Marina

Utter indolence. Waving palms. Siesta at midday. Alto stratus when the sun gets too hot. A paddle in the warm Caribbean. Some kind of a February dream for hunched Mainers. Sharp stars in a warm night. Latin jazz guitar on the patio. A dry coast with no bugs. The children well-behaved. Who wrote this script, anyway?

Sitting still and being waited on are guaranteed to make me nervous, but the usual discomforts of noblesse weren't in evidence. No Ugly Americans, no puffed up ricos, no fawning staff looking for gratuities. Copa Marina is a very middleclass place. Lots of Puerto Ricans, family groups, people who looked like they'd earned their vacations and weren't putting on the snob. The resort was clean, handsome, and well run. The staff looked to be enjoying their work without classism. Quite remarkable, considering the economy outside the fence.

When we did get a rental car and retrace the hairpins into Guanica, it was a very different world. Shabby, dusty, down at heel, full of chickens, junk cars, and feral dogs. But not desperately depressed like Mississippi river towns, or looking to sell you trinkets, like the Baja. Tidy little cinderblock houses in gaudy pastels with tin roofs and iron scrollwork facades next to crumbling old cement stuccoes with rusty rebar jutting out. New Toyotas next to trashed beaters with no headlights. Gorgeous tropical flowers next to stacks of plastic water jugs. Horses staked out next to scrap metal yards. Men sitting at outdoor cantinas in the middle of the day. Schoolgirls in cotton plaid uniforms. Class boundaries were hard to decipher. Class distinctions seemed unoppressive. Maybe there were rico ricos on top of the big hills, or on the north coast, but down on the southwest fringe of the island there looked to be a rough economic equality. Just plain poor.

Paradise

Our first excursion took us to Ponce, the island's second city, sprawled over a wide valley between the mountains and the sea. The day before had been Carnival, and when we wended our way to the city center it looked like the morning after. Very Spanish. Cathedral at the center. Narrow streets radiating from the square. Lots of ironwork and crumbling facades. Stageset for La Revolution.

We hadn't gone 30 feet from the car when we were stopped by a couple from Brooklyn who asked if we'd fill out a party for a trolleybus ride. The driver wouldn't take just two riders, and we were the only other tourists in sight. "Sure, we'll split the fee," we said. "No, no. It's free."

More than free. Hector, our guide and driver, was a treasure. What set out to be a 40 minute tour of the city ended up as a 2 hour excursion, with Hector following up every expressed interest with an enthusiastic side trip. We had to get out and see the 800 year old tree, drive to the top of Castle Hill to get the full panorama, clamber over a fence to get seed pods as souvenirs. It was dark by the time we careened back to the city center. When we asked Hector about a good restaurant he led us down a side street to the bistro door.

Just before we got there a voice called from across the street, "Bryce?" It was Rick, our fellow air traveler, and he joined us for a beer and more tales. The plot gets more implausible all the time.

Suntan

And is hard to escape. The locals must use the roadsigns in Puerto Rico for metalwork projects, because complete directionals are few and far between. We went round and round trying to get out of Ponce. Going down one ways the wrong way. Having near misses on blind turns. Our own little Carnival. When we finally got back on the Dos headed west, even the stock car slalom driving was a relief.

Driving in Puerto Rico explains a lot about New York traffic. There's a definite island style, with two modes. Dead slow oblivious, and full tilt dodgem. You stay in whatever lane pleases you, and everyone else threads the needle around you. I immediately recognized this ordinary Puerto Rican pattern as the wild card element up in the Big Apple. And the island is thoroughly automoted. We never saw a bus, and none of the roadside pedestrianism of Mexico. It looks like you can keep anything that runs on the road, and the roads are paved and lighted to the hilltops. Coming across in the night it was strange to see streetlights figuring the hills, even where there were no houses to be seen. Rural electrification for automotion. There seem to be hefty tolls every few miles on the highways, and paving crews everywhere.

If we had a complaint, it was the lack of fresh fruit and vegetables. We'd expected all sorts of garden truck, but didn't even seen any kitchen gardens by the houses. The seafood was good, though, especially the red snapper and the conch. And the beans and rice. This part of Puerto Rico isn't touristed enough to have spawned a lot of fancy restaurants, or craft shops. In fact we didn't see any arts and crafts at all. It was very reminiscent of Newfoundland in the 70s. Subsisting on the skirts of an industrial giant. Full of junk cars. Who would want something handmade, or old, when you could get new and shiney?

Palms

Thursday we drove to Mayaguez. Or at least we set out to. But I missed the first turn after Guanica, and the road signs did the rest. Fortunately the sun was out, so we navigated by sky sign, doing loop-the-loops across southwest Puerto Rico. Winding up steep hillsides, plunging into village mazes, going through banana plantations and cattle pasturage. We were told that sugar, coffee, oranges, watermelon, and plantain were the big crops here, but we might have thought it was chickens and stray dogs. Industrial activity, when we encountered it, wore none of the cosmetic disguise we've come to take for granted. Rusting, rotting, crumbling, the factories jutted up out of the rank vegetation like an unpainted capitalist nightmare. In Guanica huge grain silos lined the waterfront, filled with imported chickenfeed. Along the Dos a forest of stacks and cracking towers marked where nylon was being made for the Hanes factory. The reek of a rum distillery wafted over Ponce airport. Mayaguez, when we finally found it, at sunset, was a grim city, roughed up by hurricane Mitch, full of false turnings and industrial alleys.

Back on the Dos it was all franchise fast food and modern malls. Like stumbling out into America. Puerto Rico is like that. Third world poor one minute with birds of prey circling overhead, mainstream US the next with neon signs. But the Puerto Ricans don't seem to mind the disparities. We were well treated everywhere, by friendly people using their schoolhouse English. Although all the signs and street talk is Spanish, almost everyone we encountered could help us in Yankee-speek. Maybe it's living where the weather is perfect, but we saw none of the ghetto despair or rural depression we've come to associate with poverty. Just people living their lives under a warm sun at their own sweet pace. Must drive the entrepreneurs nuts.

We had to head back to the nuthouse, though. Saturday morning Peggy took her last swim, we kissed the cousins, hung on while Giovanni hot rodded across the mountains, and spent fourteen hours doing the airport thing: San Juan to Miami to Logan. Put on some serious clothes in the terminal. Retrieved the Owl. Finally pulled up the frozen drive at quarter to midnight.