P.R. November 2005

Page 5 - Puerto Rican Ambience

Perhaps we should spend a little time on Puerto Rican ambience. It’s brand new for Lisa, and nearly so for me as well, so we’re keeping our eyes open and just drinking it all in.

I’ll share it with you. Or at least as well as I can, anyway.

If you’ve spent time down here then skip this if you like. You’ve already seen it.

Puerto Rico is a tropical island, and bears a passing resemblance to Hawaii, which is a place I’ve spent some not inconsiderable time in over the years, and is also a place Lisa has been to, thus giving her some perspective on what she’s seeing here.

If most of Oahu is overdone, over manicured, and over gussied up, then Puerto Rico is a nicely toned down approach to the concept of a tropical paradise.

Oahu seems to be owned and operated by Republicans. Big Money is evident everywhere you look, and the Wingtip Brigade has done their worst by way of beating things down into some kind of submissive version of “The Way Things Ought To Be.” Not all of Oahu suffers from this malady, but there’s more than enough.

Puerto Rico is a welcome breath of fresh air compared to that aspect of Oahu.

The place is just as happy as a clam to be exactly what it is and doesn’t really give a shit if Mister Bigshot and his Trophy Wife don’t approve.

As I mentioned earlier, San Juan is a big city and suffers accordingly.

Too many people. Too many cars. Too many buildings. Too many everything.

Along the coast, up on the balconies of the hotels facing the Atlantic, I’m sure that everything is just as neat and pretty as they can make it. But turn inland, and you’re faced with a sprawling mass of concrete, fumes, traffic, and all the other trappings of modern industrial civilization compressed into a space that’s not big enough to fit it all in.

Just like Miami, Honolulu, or wherever, it’s ugly and there’s not a damn thing you can do except turn your back on it and gaze out over the clear blue ocean and maybe down another stiff drink to help you forget what’s lurking everpresently behind you.

So ok, let’s get the hell out of here, ok?

And it’s off to the far end of the island you go, to where the surfers have created a little ghetto just north of the town of Rincon.

Surfers, being the poor folks they are, have by no means taken over, Republican-style, and reinvented the place in their own image.

Far from it.

Instead, they have merely stamped it with indisputable signs of their own peculiar and instantly recognizable culture.

Funny how surfing culture seems to express itself the same way, no matter where you go.

In a way, it strongly resembles the North Shore of Oahu, back in the 70’s. Kids and dogs amble along narrow roadways. It’s muddy when it rains. The smell of vegetation is always in the air. There’s a pleasantly warm breeze blowing almost continuously. Aging automobiles rattle by, surfboards on top, stickers on cracked windows, a patina of brown dust and mud covering oxidized paintjobs. It’s funky. It’s very low key. It really don’t give a shit about where you came from, what you’ve been led to believe constitutes the “right way” to do things, or what you think about it.

It is completely at peace with itself on its own terms and blast and damn you if you don’t approve.

But it’s very different from the North Shore, too. They don’t speak Spanish in Sunset Beach, but they sure the hell speak it here.

Latino culture is massively abundant everywhere you look and listen.

Rattletrap cars or pickups, with outsize speakers bolted on top of their roofs, occasionally drive by blaring incomprehensible imprecations at maximum volume with a heavy accent.

Old men shuffle along the narrow winding roadways, or simply sit outside of the “bakeries” on benches that look like they were made as bus stops, but no bus ever comes.

Inside the bakeries, you may or may not find an English speaking person behind the counter to help you get some food. They call them bakeries, and there are baked goodies to be had, but they’re much more. Little mom and pop establishments selling everything from dishsoap to cold milk. Cooked food and sandwiches are there to be had, and the sandwiches will come to you pressed and steamed if you don’t request that they refrain from doing so. A steamed pressed sandwich is a different animal from what you’re used to back in Estados Unidos, and looks pretty peculiar until you get used to it and discover that the locals are on to something with this gig.

Signs in Spanish, everywhere you look. A beautiful girl holds a pack of Camel cigarettes, and the words that surround her make no sense. I’m sure that “sabor” is something mighty fine, and I’m pretty sure that the Camel folks down here want me to believe that there’s more of it in their cigarette than anybody else’s, but damned if I can tell you what it is.

Roadsigns are NOT in English, so you’d better start learning what the hell they’re trying to tell you. I’m pretty sure that “PARE” means stop, ‘cause it’s right there in the middle of a fire-engine red octagon sign, right where the word “STOP” would appear back home. “LOMO” on a little rectangular yellow roadsign is a bit more problematic. So far, me and the LOMO’s have managed to keep out of trouble together, but I need to learn what it is that they’re trying to tell me.

I’m doing my best to learn how to habla in español, and it seems as if the mere effort, made sincerely, counts for a lot with most folks.

Helpful and friendly doesn’t even begin to describe most people around here.

They’re relaxed and confident in themselves and their home, and as long as you don’t come across like a high-handed jerk they will go to every effort to assist you and make you feel welcome.

Lisa is amazed and delighted with the graciousness of everyone she meets, and is sadly lamenting the absence of said same back home. And never forget, boys and girls, that “back home,” Florida, is considered one of the more mellow of the fifty states of the union.

The geography of the place is delightful. It’s hilly, right down to the edge of the sea. A narrow strip of nearly level land right at the water’s edge gives way to slopes of varying steepness, some of them more than just a little alarming to Lisa’s Florida Flatlander expectations of what the ground underfoot is supposed to look and feel like.

The driveway to Rob’s is a case in point, and she’s having trouble getting used to going up such a ridiculously steep incline in a car. Nevermind that the driveway is no more than seventy-five feet in total length, it’s STEEP. I drive up and down it with aplomb, and Lisa is just having to readjust, which she is. By degrees. And, just as if the slope of the driveway isn’t enough, there’s the matter of the way it enters the narrow pavement of 413. In a nutshell, you can come in and leave one way, but not the other. Entry from the west side necessitates going beyond the driveway a ways, finding a suitable turn-off point, and then turning the car around and coming back at the driveway from the east. You cannot make the turn into the driveway from the west. Departing, we just sort of pull out into the roadway, pray that someone doesn’t come around the nearby corners at high speed, and do a sort of Y-turn to get ourselves out into westbound traffic. Takes a little getting used to for folks who have never had to deal with such a thing before.

Large trucks and school busses sometimes honk their horns before coming around narrow curves in the road, the better to warn any oncoming motorists that the pavement may not be wide enough for the both of them while the large vehicle negotiates the curve. Road shoulders are narrow to nonexistent, and a mistake could get your car cliffed, ditched, or hammered.

Tropical foliage abounds, and anyone who has never visited this kind of place would have trouble imagining the size, thickness, and abundance of the greenery. Trees, shrubs, and grass grow in wild profusion and seek to expand into every available space, including spaces already claimed by other vegetation.

Towns are tossed together, with shops and businesses all cheek by jowl along roads that twist and turn to suit the local lay of the land. Narrow roads are crowded with cars parked on either side and driving along them with inches to spare on either side at times.

Rob’s place is on the top of a ridge, a little over eight hundred and fifty feet above sea level. The elevation gives just a bit of cool to the air and even on the sunniest day it’s never too hot. Out front, there’s a welter of homes and alleys, with 413 leading directly down toward Maria’s and Dome’s leftbound, and toward the interior rightbound. Over those houses right across 413, off in the distance, you can see the Wilderness area around what used to be Ramey Air Force Base, right on the very northwest corner of Puerto Rico. If there’s a swell, white water is evident out there. Closer by, a notch allows you to see waves just down from Parking Lot’s, and if it’s big enough, whitewater lines moving shoreward. Nice setup for a quick surf check, and a pair of binoculars removes any and all lingering doubts as to the details of what’s going on out there.

In his back yard, there’s a nice level grassy area (no sandspurs, just a carpet of golf-green grass that’s been allowed to deepen up into a nice soft cushion) for parking cars, and off to one side, a couple of tall avocado trees just across the fence in his neighbor’s yard, but overhanging to where delicious avocados can fall on his side of the fence. A bean tree is in the middle of the back yard, complete with lavender blossoms and hummingbirds flitting here and there among them. Just beyond the bean tree, a great gash in the land opens up a vista that allows you to see homes, way downhill and off in the distance. Farther beyond, you can see the ocean and Isla Desecheo in the distance. Through the notch where you can see the ocean, you can glimpse large waves breaking at Tres Palmes, although I’ve never been lucky enough to be here when that’s happened. Yet.

There are a few mosquitoes, but not unendurably so. Hidden in the greenery, there’s little frogs that peep a sweet two-note tone that sounds something like “ko-kee” which is spelled “coqui” around here. To my ears they don’t quite sound that way, but it’s the agreed upon conception and who am I to argue with the locals about what their little frogs are saying? It sounds very pleasant no matter what you choose to call it.

Palms of all kinds, everywhere you look.

Rob was a graphic designer in a former life back on the mainland, and he still works with paints, doing signs for people in a clean, colorful, and meticulous style. His back porch is given over to the work and a jumble of tools, equipment, and materiel crowds under the roof that’s open on two sides. Surfboards dwell on racks overhead and on the support posts holding the roof of the porch up.

One of the closed sides of the porch is his house, the other is the room I’m in right this minute. It’s ‘L’ shaped and contains a couple of beds, bathroom with shower, kitchen area with sink, counterspace and a hotplate along with a full size refrigerator. All in all, a most pleasant little hideaway, attached to the main house, but completely separate from it with two entrances from outside but none into the main house.

Inside Rob’s house it’s a bachelor pad jumble with dogs, a drum set in a back room (Rob’s also a musician and plays well for a local band, The Supertones), tables strewn with anything and everything, and most of the sorts of things you might expect to see in a house owned by someone who years ago bailed out on the rat race and decided to go on permanent leave to Puerto Rico for surfing, relaxation, and just general getting away from people and things that seek to order his life around for him. He is a Good Person.

Things around here are just nice, I guess. That’s really about all you can say about it. No pretensions whatsoever. All of the phony gloss you see on things back in the States just didn’t seem to make it down here.

I’ve heard more than my share from people who complain about this lack of polish in Puerto Rico, and the more I think about it, the more I pity the superficial fools who spout such nonsense.

We don’t need to shine things up to suit your bogus expectations, bucko. We’re happy just the way we are and certainly will never look to your kind for any sort of guidance at all, despite your own self-assured belief that it’s you who’s right and all others who are wrong. We are here to live, not to put on airs.

Furthermore, the rough edges on things are doing a bang up job of repelling those who set themselves up as final arbiter of what looks right and what looks wrong.

Those fuckwits autoselect themselves right out of the picture every time, and as a result, the picture remains pleasant, livable, and tension-free. No liver-spotted fat guys in golf carts anywhere to be seen. Neither can you find the loathsome women that always seem to be attached to those jackoffs. All in all, a most pleasant arrangement.

Too bad this doesn’t work in Cocoa Beach. Before it’s over, rely on the jackoffs and their loathsome women to completely take the place over. Maybe we should start setting fire to their two story designer homes?

Down at the foot of the hill, there’s a bar right next to where you park to go surf Maria’s. The Calypso is a bit of a funky, touristy-looking place, but it’s not so overdone that you’d think Disney had a hand in its layout or design. And, with a parking area that’s mostly dirt with an occasional horse tied to a tree, there’s only so much pretension that you can get away with in the first place. Me, being me, and Lisa, being Lisa, neither of us ever set foot inside the place. We’d both prefer a quite evening together to any contrived environment that a saloon keeper might concoct. Let the revelers revel. The later they stay up, and the more intoxicants they ingest, the less likely we’ll be to see them in the waves next morning. Fine with me all the way around.

Ok then, enough of that kind of crap for now. I can only hope that it’s been of the least use and that you’re beginning to get the picture. There’s waves in the ocean and we’re going to be riding them in the morning.