Back to the homeland
So in mid-January, all the Pangeans gathered from far and wee and spent a week in Puerto Rico to celebrate the 40th anniversary of my parents' honeymoon there. Now, I've spent basically all my life misrecognized as Puertoriqueña (seriously, even when I was a tiny baby on the beach in Nueva York, all the Puerto Rican beach goers would talk to my mom in Spanish, apparently working on the presumption that anyone who produced a baby who looked like me must have the same island origins), so it was nice to finally go back to the place where it all started.
I was so busy with job-type stuff all around the trip (conference interviews in California the week before, Cactus U visit just a few days after) that I didn't have time to think all that much about what it would be like down there, but in the end it was mostly really a lot like I had expected: warm, pretty where still nature-oriented, decrepit, and seriously colonial feeling. Almost everywhere in Puerto Rico reminded me of somewhere else -- not sure why. The green area around the fort in Old San Juan weirdly felt just like the marina in Berkeley, except that the constantly-blowing wind was a balmy 78 degrees and not a nippy 50-something. And there were fewer parasail-skateboarding teens.
I think this will be the album cover for the Pangean Family Singers' upcoming release. And perhaps the one below will be for Mom's solo album.
These black grackles are almost the same as the ones in Berkeley as well, except with more pointy-uppy tails. 
The streets of the old city were kind of like Spain-meets-New Orleans,
but with more parking for appointees to the consulate of the King of Belgium,
and less room for the disabled. Seriously, once you've wheeled yourself up on this sidewalk, what can you possibly do? It's like 2 1/2 feet wide, so wheel yourself down the street with one wheel hanging over the edge? I think this is a de jure only handicapped ramp.
Many of the photos with Stovie look like they are stills from a romantico ad campaign. This beach, on the Atlantic, was in walking distance of our first rental house, just around the corner. It was filled with wavy goodness, and Stovie and I swam every day (I actually sometimes managed to go in twice a day).
The Carribean was much calmer, lending itself more easily to meditation. And brief kayak trips out to mangrove islands surrounded by wee little brightly colored and friendly tropical fishies, who swam right up to our legs and checked us out (by this point, my camera was dead, so no pictures of adorable tropical fishies, sorry).
We went hiking in the same rain forest my parents visited 40 years previously, but this time only the sprightly youngsters (who were also wearing appropriate footwear) made it up the slippery path to the viewing tower.
Up here it felt a lot like Marin, mostly because of the fog overhead and view of the blue ocean. Except with tropical rainforest below and not dry California grasslands. This made Stovie pensive.
Overall, the food wasn't all that great (with the exception of super-tasty fish empanadillas and stews), and we occasionally found ourselves seeking out alternative foodstuffs, or drinking away our culinary sorrows.
Also entertaining were the trash egrets,
imitation vinegar (39 cents as compared to real vinegar at 52 cents, and Stovie point outed -- isn't it just easier to make vinegar than to make imitation vinegar? it seems kind of insane),
and the inflatable Christmas decorations still hanging around weeks after the holiday itself (these inflatable things are Mom's worst holiday nightmare back on The Island, and she complains about them from Halloween right on through to Xmas).
However, equanimity was easily restored by Stovie-led yoga classes on our back deck overlooking the Caribbean -- the yogic effect further enhanced for me by the addition of a $1 temporary tattoo (it is, I believe, two intertwined dragons), put precisely in that yoga-chick place on the lower back. I bought 5 from the vending machine at a fish restaurant a few towns over in the hopes of getting the giant squid tattoo (it was SO cool) and just used up the last one last week. Now I'm in yoga-chick temporary tattoo withdrawal. 
I was so busy with job-type stuff all around the trip (conference interviews in California the week before, Cactus U visit just a few days after) that I didn't have time to think all that much about what it would be like down there, but in the end it was mostly really a lot like I had expected: warm, pretty where still nature-oriented, decrepit, and seriously colonial feeling. Almost everywhere in Puerto Rico reminded me of somewhere else -- not sure why. The green area around the fort in Old San Juan weirdly felt just like the marina in Berkeley, except that the constantly-blowing wind was a balmy 78 degrees and not a nippy 50-something. And there were fewer parasail-skateboarding teens.
I think this will be the album cover for the Pangean Family Singers' upcoming release. And perhaps the one below will be for Mom's solo album.
These black grackles are almost the same as the ones in Berkeley as well, except with more pointy-uppy tails. 
The streets of the old city were kind of like Spain-meets-New Orleans,
but with more parking for appointees to the consulate of the King of Belgium,
and less room for the disabled. Seriously, once you've wheeled yourself up on this sidewalk, what can you possibly do? It's like 2 1/2 feet wide, so wheel yourself down the street with one wheel hanging over the edge? I think this is a de jure only handicapped ramp.
Many of the photos with Stovie look like they are stills from a romantico ad campaign. This beach, on the Atlantic, was in walking distance of our first rental house, just around the corner. It was filled with wavy goodness, and Stovie and I swam every day (I actually sometimes managed to go in twice a day).
The Carribean was much calmer, lending itself more easily to meditation. And brief kayak trips out to mangrove islands surrounded by wee little brightly colored and friendly tropical fishies, who swam right up to our legs and checked us out (by this point, my camera was dead, so no pictures of adorable tropical fishies, sorry).
We went hiking in the same rain forest my parents visited 40 years previously, but this time only the sprightly youngsters (who were also wearing appropriate footwear) made it up the slippery path to the viewing tower.
Up here it felt a lot like Marin, mostly because of the fog overhead and view of the blue ocean. Except with tropical rainforest below and not dry California grasslands. This made Stovie pensive.
Overall, the food wasn't all that great (with the exception of super-tasty fish empanadillas and stews), and we occasionally found ourselves seeking out alternative foodstuffs, or drinking away our culinary sorrows.
Also entertaining were the trash egrets, 
imitation vinegar (39 cents as compared to real vinegar at 52 cents, and Stovie point outed -- isn't it just easier to make vinegar than to make imitation vinegar? it seems kind of insane),
and the inflatable Christmas decorations still hanging around weeks after the holiday itself (these inflatable things are Mom's worst holiday nightmare back on The Island, and she complains about them from Halloween right on through to Xmas).
However, equanimity was easily restored by Stovie-led yoga classes on our back deck overlooking the Caribbean -- the yogic effect further enhanced for me by the addition of a $1 temporary tattoo (it is, I believe, two intertwined dragons), put precisely in that yoga-chick place on the lower back. I bought 5 from the vending machine at a fish restaurant a few towns over in the hopes of getting the giant squid tattoo (it was SO cool) and just used up the last one last week. Now I'm in yoga-chick temporary tattoo withdrawal. 
posted by Pangea at 9:27 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home