Puerto Rico!
I spent the last ten days in Puerto Rico, visiting my buddy Jimbo. He lives in Old San Juan, which I’m told is the oldest settlement in North America under the American flag. It’s a very cool old city: narrow cobblestone streets, vibrant colors, lots of neat bars and clubs, and friendly people.
Jimbo has been living in Old San Juan for about two and a half months at this point, and it sounds like he’s had a very good time. He actually moved there with his friend Kevin, who sold him on the place as follows:
“It’s cheap, and you don’t need to speak Spanish.”
Neither of these things are true. It’s true that many parts of the island are tourist destinations so you can get by with only English, but meeting people and living a full life require at least medium language skills. I don’t have any Spanish skills, or at least I didn’t. I picked up a few things, but mostly relied on Jimbo–whose Spanish has become pretty passable in the time he’s been there–and the many bilingual people I met to help me out.
As expected, I forgot my camera. I was bummed about that, but it wasn’t a huge surprise. So you’ll have to take my word for the fact that PR is a very beautiful country. It’s an island. On the edge of the Caribbean. The beaches are awesome. It also has hills and farms and forests (and rainforests) and cities. We did several whirlwind tours in our rental car which allowed us to see quite a bit of the island.
The climate there is great! Low of 70, high of 85! Every day! Sounds pretty hot, I know, but there’s air conditioning in a lot of places for sleeping and buildings are generally designed to channel the breezes through the interior, keeping it quite cool. It rained once while we were there, just in the morning, though. Because of the temperature, many places don’t have warm water available. I am about to have my first warm shower in 11 days and I’m really looking forward to it.
I realize I’m not writing that much about what I did there, so here’s a quick summary: helped put on a concert (Pink Skull), got some artists to the airport with all the crap from the art show they had been doing, drove to beaches all over Puerto Rico, went to parties, played cribbage, listened to lots of music, and more I’m forgetting already. If you want to know more about my trip contact me!
