Observations of the Island, Trip to Ceiba and Survivalism in Guanica
This is the 7th Part in the Honeymoon Flashback Series. I would like to finish sharing this whole journal that we wrote on our honeymoon in 2005 before we leave to start our new Puerto Rico life adventure this fall 2013. Go here for Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4,Part 5, and Part 6.
Today we got up around 9, hung out a little and then went down to breakfast. Unfortunately we were a little late since we found out they closed breakfast at 10 and we got there around 10:30am. But they went ahead and served us. It was a good home-cooked style meal with fresh fruit for only about $8 for the two of us! And because we had been eating so much fried food here on this island, it was a much needed health booster.
Even though the US has an obesity problem, it seems that Puerto Rico has it even worse. I think it is for sure worse than Colorado which I believe is the leanest state. There is so much fried food everywhere, especially fried chicken, pollo frito!, places everywhere and many of the people look like they enjoy it a little too much!
Even the Chinese food places serve fried chicken instead of grilled chicken in the chicken and vegetable dishes, but the kicker was that they served it with both white rice AND French fries of all things which we thought was so weird. They also don’t have unsweetened iced tea. All the drinks are super sweet here. It’s also hard to get just a cup of iced tap water like we usually do when we eat-out in Colorado.
Anyhow, back to the trip. We spent some more time down at the thermal pool which is nice and relaxing. Then we packed up and headed out.
Today was a day of driving. We drove up the mountains, down the mountains, to the ocean and back again. We drove the ruta panoramica (Panoramic Route) and Highway 53, we took toll roads and back roads. We were definitely tourists taking lots of pictures everywhere we went.
We saw farmland -what looked like bananas or plantains and maybe coffee growing on the sides of steep green hills. There are some interesting plants and flowers on this side (eastern) of the island.
We went through Humacao and found a Chili’s very easily and were able to finally use our gift card! We also saw another lighthouse -we have made a little side game of trying to see and photograph all the lighthouses on the island.
Finally we arrived here at the Ceiba Country Inn and are trying to rest -again for the second time. Our first room was infested with some sort of biting bugs. So the owners moved us into another bugless room -thank goodness! The owners are nice Americans from Rhode Island. They have adopted like 3 dogs, all former strays. Poor things. Dogs and cats run around stray all over the place here and the females seem to all be pregnant or nursing.
The view from the place we stayed in Ceiba
Well, off to Vieques tomorrow!
Oh, I forgot, on the day we traveled to Guanica, when we also stopped by the Guanica Dryland Forest, we went for a hike because we saw a sign for the old Fort Capron ruins. So we decided to walk the 5 kilometers it said it was from where we could park. We got REALLY hot though and Britton took off his shirt and gave it to me to wear on my head as a type of hat. Then we kept walking and walking and hiking and walking but still we didn’t see any ruins.
Watch out for those spikes!
Finally we decided to turn around about an hour later when we saw thunder clouds and lightning. We tried to hustle to avoid the rain and I had to watch my feet to avoid tripping over the rocks. So as I was looking down I ran smack into a thorny tree branch and poked my eye. My eyelid started bleeding but at least my eyes had been closed at the time of impact!
Termite hive?
We also saw a huge nest of some sort that we can only imagine must be a termite hive. Britton developed some blisters on his shoulders from the sun and sweat. By the end of the hike we were super happy to the see the car (with A/C and water) once more.
When Cassie and I were at the Midway airport in Chicago, we saw a couple that stuck out. They didn’t ‘fit’ into the normal picture. They appeared to be an older Mexican couple. The man wore a cowboy hat and boots, the woman in a dress.
We were at the gate watching and the airline didn’t let them on the plane. They closed the door and the couple looked very confused. It was apparent that they did not speak English and were out of sorts.
Cassie went over to try and help the couple and the airline folks translate. She found out that they were actually from Guatemala and not only didn’t speak much English but were hardly literate. They were scared and lost without anyone to help them. They were on their way to New York City to visit family and had somehow gotten standby tickets, but they did not know what that meant and had felt abandoned at the airport. As standby passengers, since the plane had filled up, they didn’t get on.
This couple had more or less left directly from their finca and this was their first flight or trip out of Guatemala ever. They needed to get a hold of their family in NY and let them know that they would be on another flight (once Cassie helped them get straightened out with a confirmed ticket). I handed them my phone to use. Cassie looked at me and said something like, “Um…I think you should probably dial it for them.”
Modern Man Tool
Rethinking my action I agreed. They would have never seen many cell phones, let alone the new touch screen smart phone. I dialed the number, handed it to Miguel and he looked at it like it was an alien spaceship. The phone is enough like an actual phone so he could hold it up to his ear and talk. I think that puts him somewhere technology wise in the 1930s or 1950s. It was clear that this modern life was not comfortable in the least to this couple.
Fast forward to Cassie and my daily life….
We have been watching a lot of Survivor type shows that take place in tropical locations. The most recent we have been watching is Naked and Afraid. We started to watch them simply because they took place in the Tropics. Like most things, these shows have changed our worldview a bit in ways that we didn’t expect.
When you see people trying to survive without all the modern conveniences of society and try to live off food from the ocean, or the jungle you see that humans, for the most part are not able to live outside of society for very long. We can’t drink water, we can’t find food, fire is hard to start without matches and being wet sucks.
In the Naked and Afraid show it is surprising how even survival specialists who teach classes on the subject, fail when it comes to actually surviving in the wild!
I have been contrasting this with the life that I live in a corporate world that consists of driving, sitting in front of a computer screen working with abstract ideas and concepts, eating pre-made pre-packaged food and taking walks for exercise. I can’t help but notice that I have been completely removed from nature. I, unlike the Guatemaltecos in the airport, have been raised in American schools in order to domesticate me to the society in which I was anticipated to exist. I know how to form and stand in lines, how to type and to a lesser degree use hand writing (they have now stopped teaching cursive in a lot of schools). I understand all the various hoops one must jump through to do anything nowadays. I was trained to sit at a desk all day long and I know how to work within a diverse group to achieve a goal that has been given to me by a leader, teacher, manager or other figure of authority.
All of these modern skills are useful in my society. They are what the corporation is looking for in their resources. However these modern skills are almost useless in nature or on a finca. I can’t start a fire without matches, I don’t know what things I can eat and making a sturdy shelter without a home depot would be a challenge.
Contrasting this with the Guatemalan couple, I would bet that they would do much better on the survival shows than even the so-called survival experts. They aren’t as far removed from the natural world. I am not exactly sure if one is better than the other, I just thought that the contrast was stark.
In our move to Puerto Rico, we are looking forward to a better balance between the two worlds.
This song helps to sum it up (snippet of lyrics below):
So I wait my turn, I’m a modern man And the people behind me they can’t understand Makes me feel like…. Something don’t feel right
They say we are the chosen few but we waste it And that’s why we’re still waiting On a number from the modern man Maybe when you’re older you will understand why you don’t feel right Why you can’t sleep at night no In line for a number but you don’t understand like a modern man
I love to read. And I do have my preferred genres and favorites. One of those genres, if you can call it that, are books whose stories take place in a tropical setting (big surprise, huh 😉 ). I have already written my list of top 10 tropical books, but there are so many good ones out there that I have read since then! So here is the second installment of the best books in a tropical setting according to Cassie.
Non-Fiction: The Mapmaker’s Wifeby Robert Whitaker
While the cover and title are both misleading, this is a fascinating historical book. Isabel Godin is the one woman of the story of any significance, however her adventures surviving alone in the Amazon only takes up about 1/10th of the book. The vast majority of the book is about the scientific expedition led by La Condamine into the Equatorial Amazon in search of the answer to what the circumference of the Earth is and the implications on Newtonian science or other prevailing theories of the day.
It is very well-researched and while some parts are a little too scientific for me, it had a nice balance of the interplay of human tendencies, including a murder!, during this quest. The author does a good job of also balancing the perspectives of the various people -natives, slaves and Europeans- and how this confluence changed everything in this wild, tropical region. While Isabel Godin’s survival and search for her husband after a 20 year absence was short because of a lack of historical records, it was probably the most interesting part. I also enjoyed the photographs and old documents that were included.
Sex Lives of Cannibals and Getting Stoned with Savages by J. Maarten Troost
I wrote about Sex Lives in the previous “best of” list, and Getting Stoned with Savages is very much a follow-up to that previous book. The author’s humorist style reminds us that the discomfort we feel in traveling is part of the fun. While in Vanuatu and Fiji, he tries kava for the first time, experiences a typhoon, deals with a huge centipede and becomes a dad! Quite the adventure and in a most beautiful of settings.
Driving over Lemons by Chris Stewart
This one is probably about the furthest stretch from “tropical” on the list as you can get since it takes place in Spain. But the way I see it, anywhere that they will be driving over lemons is pretty darn warm. The author and his wife move from the UK to southern Spain where they buy a dilapidated old farm and house complete with the former owner who doesn’t want to move! They have to contend with a variety of issues including flooding rivers that leave them stranded, no running water or electricity. And as soon as they sort out all of these issues, they become pregnant with their first child. What I really liked about the book was the author’s ability to integrate with his new home country and its people and roll with the -often hilarious- punches.
In this same general genre of Mediterranean transplants I would have to also recommend A Year in Provence by Peter Mayle as well as Under the Tuscan Sun by Frances Mayes. (And if I may make an aside, I must say that the movie Under the Tuscan Sun was a HUGE stretch from the book.)
All three of these books are about moving to the Mediterranean (Spain in Stewart’s book, France in Mayle’s book, and Italy for Mayes) and fixing up a property there with varying degrees of difficulty. I related the most to Driving Over Lemons as they were closer to my age and weren’t retiring after a long life of doing something else, but rather starting from scratch like we will be doing.
A Trip to the Beach by Melinda and Robert Blanchard
Melinda and Robert Blanchard were successful businesspeople in Vermont when they decided to up and leave and start up a new business: a restaurant on the beach of a small Caribbean island. They have a few problems getting set up, but overall, it is a fun, easy read and the characters of their restaurant are lovable. While the Blanchards seem to have a bubble of money that separates them from the “real” Anguilla of most residents, it is none-the-less an inspiring story. I had never heard of Anguilla, the flat little Caribbean island, until I read A Trip to the Beach and now I can’t wait to visit and perhaps stop at the Blanchard’s restaurant!
An Embarrassment of Mangoes by Ann Vanderhoof
This book is fun because its setting is constantly changing; they are on a sailboat! I know next to nothing about sailing, so this book really opened my eyes to what it would really entail to live in a confined area with limited showers, limited fresh food (except at some spots where there was too many as the title implies), and dangerous night crossings. It is light reading about a fun adventure of leaving the cold Canadian landscape for tropical locales all around the Caribbean. A perfect book for lounging and reading at…the beach!
Kook by Peter Heller
I recently read Kook after receiving a recommendation to do so. I also know next to nothing about surfing so it was a real eye-opener from the perspective of a novice surfer AKA a kook who wants to get good enough to ride “the big wave”. Peter and his bride-to-be, Kim, set out on an adventure down the coast of Baja Mexico and beyond with a few side adventures to help the cause of dolphins in Japan. I learned a lot about different boards, surf etiquette as well as the plight of many marine animals. Surviving Paradise: One Year on a Disappearing Island by Peter Rudiak-Gould
A more serious exploration of life on remote pacific tropical atolls (in the Marshall Islands) than Troost’s take, there are still quite a few funny moments. Peter (seems to be a common author name here!) is fresh out of college and out for an adventure teaching English to children on a tiny island without much of any creature comforts most industrialized people come to expect. All alone, he experiences a huge amount of culture shock and has a hard time adjusting to his new life. While he eventually comes to appreciate his experience and learns and shares a lot of what he knows about the history and tenuous future (given global warming, tsunamis and dwindling global aid), he is definitely ready to return to the US after his 1 year gig is up.
Fiction:
La Isla Bajo el Mar by Isabel Allende I read this one in Spanish, but I think it is translated into English as well. Told from the perspective of Zarite, a slave in Haiti that lives through the Haitian slave uprising and later in New Orleans, it is a well-researched yet reaching piece that fills you with the dichotomy of humanity that was inherent in such an ugly practice as slavery. I also learned about Francois Mackandal, a slave rebel, and one of the most intriguing historical figures in the book. In many ways this book reminded me of Conquistadora but La Isla Bajo el Mar is from the slave perspective and Conquistadora from that of the landowner/slave master. I love nearly anything by Allende but also recommend her most famous: La Casa de Los Espiritus.
Mambo Kings and Beautiful Maria of my Soul– Oscar Hijuelos
I have already written about these great books here, so check it out!
On the Island by Tracey Garvis-Graves
This book is a cross between the stories of Castaway and Blue Lagoon with a taboo love story thrown in so how could I resist?! Ana is a school teacher who is ready for a break and in an unfulfilling relationship while TJ is the teenager she is charged with tutoring in order to catch him up after recovering from a serious illness. On the way to the Maldives where TJs parents’ are vacationing, their plane crashes in the water and they must swim to finally land on a deserted island where they must scramble to survive and eventually start a whole new life.
What I think is so cool about this book is that it was originally self-published by Garvis-Graves but was so popular that a major publishing house picked it up and it’s also in the process of becoming a movie! Talk about a meteoric rise! A reminder to not dismiss self-published books out of hand.
Molokai by Alan Brennert
Like Honolulu, this book is a period piece set in Hawaii. Molokai explores the life of young Rachel Kalama and the inhabitants of Kalaupapa, the quarantined leper colony of the late 1800s. Interesting read for both the drama that unfolds throughout Rachel’s life, but also historically exploring the devastating effects of leprosy in separating families and changing lives forever.
Also, this book reminded Britton and I that we want to learn this song (Molokai Slide) on guitar:
Don’t Stop the Carnival by Herman Wouk
I absolutely love this book! It is one of the first I will recommend if someone says they are looking for a fun, easy read. Absolutely awesomely hilarious and set on a fictional Caribbean island. Read my full post on it here.
Hot House Flower and the Nine Plants of Desireby Margot Berwin
I read this book a while ago and I am surprised I missed it in the first list because it is such a fun book, especially for people like me who love plants almost as much as I love the tropics in general. Life for thirty-something Lila Nova changes dramatically from the cold sanitary minimalistic box-like lifestyle in Manhattan when she meets a charming and charismatic plant-vender. Soon she finds herself in a magic realism world of shaman, panthers and tropical plants throughout the Yucatan Peninsula. Will she find all 9 plants before their power falls into the wrong hands? Will she find love? Will she live to find out? In between the magic and story-line you will also learn some interesting things about a variety of plants. Especially creepy is mandrake.
Did you notice something missing? I have left off some of my favorite reads from and about Puerto Rico. Don’t despair! It is in the works! 🙂
Am I missing any that you have read? I would love to check them out!
Man, it seems that this winter has been going on a little longer than usual. Every time we think we are done with the snow and cold and have a nice 80 degree day, the forecast shows that another cold front will be working its way down bringing wind and snow. Tomorrow, the first of May, is supposed to have a high of only 39 with 4 to 7 inches of snow.
Maybe we get this extended winter to remind us of how great an endless summer will be when we move to Puerto Rico…a…long…drawn…out…goodbye…to Colorado winters.
So this weekend even though we were pretty sure it wasn’t quite the end of winter, yet, we just couldn’t help ourselves from kicking off the fun of summer, kicking off the type of lifestyle we will live in Puerto Rico nearly every day.
We started up the grill and ate tropical-style food outside a few times.
Woosh. Starting up the coal grill for the first time this year
Yum! Grilled chicken, grilled pineapple, black beans, salad and grapes.
We bought plants for the flowerpots out front (that will have to be taken inside tonight since it sounds like we will have a pretty hard frost).
Sad old pot that had been sitting on our front porch all winter
Trunk full of flowers for the pots
Working on the pots. I love the insta-beauty and have always enjoyed this type of easy “gardening”
We took long, sunny walks. We remembered HOW MUCH we love nice weather.
A lot of people ask us if we will appreciate nice weather less if we don’t have the contrast of winter. And honestly, I don’t know. There is a certain quality and feeling from a cozy winter house watching movies, reading, sitting by the fire drinking hot tea and looking at the sparkling snowy wonderland outside.
But I also know that I feel so much more alive in the summer. How I want to be outside. How I want to be with other people. How I want to grow plants and raise baby chicks and start new projects. I feel like all winter I have been hibernating and spring is time to wake up. Will that be different in the tropics? Probably. Because there is no winter to shake off and bolt off into summer, it will probably be a slower fizz, a constant brewing undercurrent, instead of a jolt into life. A lazy, languid, and warm “island time” sort of feeling instead of the rush to get everything done, everything planted, “hurry, hurry, hurry, take advantage of this nice weather because winter will be here before you know it” feeling.
While I can’t know the future too far down the line, I know I have lived over 30 years with some pretty harsh winters, so at least a few years without them will be fine by me. Yes, I am sure of it.
UPDATE: The snow came down hard and cold and more than likely killing all the fruit tree blossoms. Let’s cross our fingers that they rebloom soon.
