A story I keep forgetting to tell
You know how even a piece of a song, a chord or a riff or a three note refrain, can bring the most vividly complete memories bubbling to the surface, vibrant and intact? You don't even have to know or especially like the song, it's just one that has tied itself indelibly to a moment in time, dragging that moment to the surface as clockwork reliable as anything.
Let me tell you how Jay Z's "This Town" reminds me of the night I thought I might die in Puerto Rico.
A night that was absolutely magical.
* * *
Standing there with my fingers tangled in the chain links of the fence, I read the Spanish timetable and then stared back out at the blue grey water, the deserted terminal, the empty slip.
Nothing had changed.
The ferry was still gone.
And the next one wasn't for another hour and a half.
My heart sank.
This had been a last minute addition to what had already been an adventure-filled and interesting trip, but to me it was also the most important. Having planned everything else out myself, this is the one thing I went to the rest of the family on, to gauge interest and sort out the logistics.
See, the biggest reason Puerto Rico had been on my top five list for years was to see a bioluminescent bay. They are what happens when a particular dinoflagellate half plant, half animal micro-organism finds the right set of conditions to live, reproduce, and multiply in huge quantities. There are maybe five biobays in the world, and three of them happen to be in Puerto Rico. A girl I knew had seen them in Puerto Rico, and after reading her account, I was positively desperate to see it for myself.
And here I'd lucked into a free place to stay in Puerto Rico, and I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that the one thing I'd absolutely do no matter what else happened was go see the biobay for myself at last.
But I hit a snag. There are three bays, as I said. One was on the other side of the island from where I was staying, and I'd waste more than a day trying to get there. One was much closer, but because of its convenience and proximity, it was also the most commercial/polluted, so much so that people were no longer allowed to swim in it. And that was exactly the experience I wanted to have. That left the last one...which isn't even on the Puerto Rico mainlands. It's a separate island that can only be accessed by a ferry, and you can't go and come back in the same day because the ferry stops running early in the evening. So although it was clearly my first choice, it meant checking out of our free hotel, driving out to the western coast, securing (and paying for) a hotel on the other island, arranging the tour, etc. Seemed like a lot of effort to drag the family through for something that might not even be as cool as I was hoping, but...the idea of leaving Puerto Rico without seeing it weighed heavy on me, and I was torn.
And then I went out drinking with a friend of mine from highschool who lives in Puerto Rico, and she and her husband convinced me beyond a shadow of a doubt that Vieques, complicated though it might be to arrange, was more than worth the effort.
So...I went to the family, who agreed i was worth the extra effort. I made the arrangements, handled the logistics. I studied maps and calculated distances. I consulted the GPS and read the local paper. I worked it all out, and even managed to build in a side trip to see one of the 3 largest cave systems in North America on the way out to the ferry (thereby crossing all three off my list, as I'd already seen Mammoth and Carlsbad). There should have been plenty of time. It should have worked out perfectly.
First, there were cloudy skies.
The cave apparently can't be visited when it rains, because the steep paths become wet and there's a chance of flooding. It hadn't rained, but it looked like it might, so they were holding all tours while they watched the weather. We had gotten there in plenty of time, but I hadn't thought about this. Ten minutes slipped by, twenty. I looked at my phone and consulted my maps. I declared with a sigh that if we didn't get moving in the next fifteen minutes, we were going to have to skip it. A tour was finally called, and we weren't on it. I asked the lady when the next group would get to go, and she told me twenty minutes. I said with a sigh that I would need a refund, then, because I couldn't wait that long. She frowned, chewed on her lower lip, looked around at the other impatient customers. Shifty eyed and secretive, she took my tickets, pretended I was with the first tour. She let us through.
It was worth it.
I posted pictures awhile ago.
Then, there was traffic.
The traffic was ridiculous. You wouldn't expect rural traffic to be so snarled, especially with the population so low in these areas. First it was cows and then it was construction and then god knows what it was, but whatever it was it was in the way.
I watched the minutes slip away, the numbers on the GPS stubbornly refusing to move. I hoped against irrational hope that the ferry might run on "island time", like everything else. That there was some delay, some stroke of pure luck or chance that would bail us out.
Then, it was parking.
And the ferry was gone.
Heartsick, I weighed my options. I called the tour company on Vieques, they recommended trying the local private airports. The airports were closed. I asked if there was any chance of a later, smaller tour. They said no. Out of options and resigned to failure, I called the hotel to cancel the reservation. When I explained what had happened, she was sympathetic and apologetic, and kindly offered to refund my money.
Dejected, heart heavy with disappointment, I went to tell the family that we had to head back.
And then my phone rang.
Confused, I answered it. It turned out that our intrepid hotel receptionist had taken it upon herself to help us out. She had tracked down one of the "smaller operations" on the island, and found a guy who was willing to take us out to the biobay after all if we were willing to catch the next ferry. His price was more than reasonable, and --elated-- I related the news.
We ate dinner. We caught the ferry. At long last I was on my way to Vieques.
* * *
Vieques is a tiny island, and it's full of horses. There are no regular taxis. When you come to Vieques you have three options: Rent a car or scooter, bring your own car or scooter over on the ferry, or take your chances with the publicos. A publico is a giant van --think of the church vans you see on the highways-- navigated by men with a great passion for driving twisty, windy, unmarked roads and a loose handle on road safety rules. Basically they hang around at the ferry terminal and people choose one or the other depending on where everyone else is going. You walk among them, tell the drivers where you want to go, and eventually a driver picks you, rounding you up with all the other passengers going in the same general direction, and away you go.
With a 10:30p.m. deadline ticking away, we board a publico. Naturally, we ended up being his last stop.
The hotel was really a giant house. The business office was long since closed, but the receptionist had left our two rooms unlocked. She promised us that they were some of the best rooms they had, with balconies of their own and full access to the roof garden. When we got there, they were small, with air conditioning that only kind of worked and college dorm sized refrigerators that were even less reliable. It did have beautiful balconies, though, so we hauled all of our things up three flights of stairs to the top.
It was late, we'd had a long day hauling luggage and tramping all over. My stepfather, understandably, said he was too tired, and too sore to go. Our original reservation had been for a pontoon boat, and he didn't think he could manage a kayak. My mother, torn, eventually agreed that she wasn't sure she could manage a kayak either, and she too, bowed out. Even Forrest told me he wouldn't be terribly sorry if the man with the kayaks didn't show. But me... I'd worked too hard for this, it meant too much. I'd come too far to turn back now. So I changed, and Forrest changed with me, and together we went down the stairs to wait for the man with the kayaks.
10:30 came and went, and we stood there in the driveway. The road was deserted, desolate. Not a soul in sight, not even in the nearby houses. I called the number for the front desk, I could hear the phone ring on the other side of the locked door. The recorded message gave me a number for emergencies. I called the number, got the owner.
Ten minutes later, both the owner and the man with the kayaks were in the driveway with us.
The man's name was Moses.
* * *
(...and that's all I have time for now, as I feared. So... I'm going to run away now, but maybe now that I've got this much done, I'll come back soon. Stay tuned!)
Let me tell you how Jay Z's "This Town" reminds me of the night I thought I might die in Puerto Rico.
A night that was absolutely magical.
* * *
Standing there with my fingers tangled in the chain links of the fence, I read the Spanish timetable and then stared back out at the blue grey water, the deserted terminal, the empty slip.
Nothing had changed.
The ferry was still gone.
And the next one wasn't for another hour and a half.
My heart sank.
This had been a last minute addition to what had already been an adventure-filled and interesting trip, but to me it was also the most important. Having planned everything else out myself, this is the one thing I went to the rest of the family on, to gauge interest and sort out the logistics.
See, the biggest reason Puerto Rico had been on my top five list for years was to see a bioluminescent bay. They are what happens when a particular dinoflagellate half plant, half animal micro-organism finds the right set of conditions to live, reproduce, and multiply in huge quantities. There are maybe five biobays in the world, and three of them happen to be in Puerto Rico. A girl I knew had seen them in Puerto Rico, and after reading her account, I was positively desperate to see it for myself.
And here I'd lucked into a free place to stay in Puerto Rico, and I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that the one thing I'd absolutely do no matter what else happened was go see the biobay for myself at last.
But I hit a snag. There are three bays, as I said. One was on the other side of the island from where I was staying, and I'd waste more than a day trying to get there. One was much closer, but because of its convenience and proximity, it was also the most commercial/polluted, so much so that people were no longer allowed to swim in it. And that was exactly the experience I wanted to have. That left the last one...which isn't even on the Puerto Rico mainlands. It's a separate island that can only be accessed by a ferry, and you can't go and come back in the same day because the ferry stops running early in the evening. So although it was clearly my first choice, it meant checking out of our free hotel, driving out to the western coast, securing (and paying for) a hotel on the other island, arranging the tour, etc. Seemed like a lot of effort to drag the family through for something that might not even be as cool as I was hoping, but...the idea of leaving Puerto Rico without seeing it weighed heavy on me, and I was torn.
And then I went out drinking with a friend of mine from highschool who lives in Puerto Rico, and she and her husband convinced me beyond a shadow of a doubt that Vieques, complicated though it might be to arrange, was more than worth the effort.
So...I went to the family, who agreed i was worth the extra effort. I made the arrangements, handled the logistics. I studied maps and calculated distances. I consulted the GPS and read the local paper. I worked it all out, and even managed to build in a side trip to see one of the 3 largest cave systems in North America on the way out to the ferry (thereby crossing all three off my list, as I'd already seen Mammoth and Carlsbad). There should have been plenty of time. It should have worked out perfectly.
First, there were cloudy skies.
The cave apparently can't be visited when it rains, because the steep paths become wet and there's a chance of flooding. It hadn't rained, but it looked like it might, so they were holding all tours while they watched the weather. We had gotten there in plenty of time, but I hadn't thought about this. Ten minutes slipped by, twenty. I looked at my phone and consulted my maps. I declared with a sigh that if we didn't get moving in the next fifteen minutes, we were going to have to skip it. A tour was finally called, and we weren't on it. I asked the lady when the next group would get to go, and she told me twenty minutes. I said with a sigh that I would need a refund, then, because I couldn't wait that long. She frowned, chewed on her lower lip, looked around at the other impatient customers. Shifty eyed and secretive, she took my tickets, pretended I was with the first tour. She let us through.
It was worth it.
I posted pictures awhile ago.
Then, there was traffic.
The traffic was ridiculous. You wouldn't expect rural traffic to be so snarled, especially with the population so low in these areas. First it was cows and then it was construction and then god knows what it was, but whatever it was it was in the way.
I watched the minutes slip away, the numbers on the GPS stubbornly refusing to move. I hoped against irrational hope that the ferry might run on "island time", like everything else. That there was some delay, some stroke of pure luck or chance that would bail us out.
Then, it was parking.
And the ferry was gone.
Heartsick, I weighed my options. I called the tour company on Vieques, they recommended trying the local private airports. The airports were closed. I asked if there was any chance of a later, smaller tour. They said no. Out of options and resigned to failure, I called the hotel to cancel the reservation. When I explained what had happened, she was sympathetic and apologetic, and kindly offered to refund my money.
Dejected, heart heavy with disappointment, I went to tell the family that we had to head back.
And then my phone rang.
Confused, I answered it. It turned out that our intrepid hotel receptionist had taken it upon herself to help us out. She had tracked down one of the "smaller operations" on the island, and found a guy who was willing to take us out to the biobay after all if we were willing to catch the next ferry. His price was more than reasonable, and --elated-- I related the news.
We ate dinner. We caught the ferry. At long last I was on my way to Vieques.
* * *
Vieques is a tiny island, and it's full of horses. There are no regular taxis. When you come to Vieques you have three options: Rent a car or scooter, bring your own car or scooter over on the ferry, or take your chances with the publicos. A publico is a giant van --think of the church vans you see on the highways-- navigated by men with a great passion for driving twisty, windy, unmarked roads and a loose handle on road safety rules. Basically they hang around at the ferry terminal and people choose one or the other depending on where everyone else is going. You walk among them, tell the drivers where you want to go, and eventually a driver picks you, rounding you up with all the other passengers going in the same general direction, and away you go.
With a 10:30p.m. deadline ticking away, we board a publico. Naturally, we ended up being his last stop.
The hotel was really a giant house. The business office was long since closed, but the receptionist had left our two rooms unlocked. She promised us that they were some of the best rooms they had, with balconies of their own and full access to the roof garden. When we got there, they were small, with air conditioning that only kind of worked and college dorm sized refrigerators that were even less reliable. It did have beautiful balconies, though, so we hauled all of our things up three flights of stairs to the top.
It was late, we'd had a long day hauling luggage and tramping all over. My stepfather, understandably, said he was too tired, and too sore to go. Our original reservation had been for a pontoon boat, and he didn't think he could manage a kayak. My mother, torn, eventually agreed that she wasn't sure she could manage a kayak either, and she too, bowed out. Even Forrest told me he wouldn't be terribly sorry if the man with the kayaks didn't show. But me... I'd worked too hard for this, it meant too much. I'd come too far to turn back now. So I changed, and Forrest changed with me, and together we went down the stairs to wait for the man with the kayaks.
10:30 came and went, and we stood there in the driveway. The road was deserted, desolate. Not a soul in sight, not even in the nearby houses. I called the number for the front desk, I could hear the phone ring on the other side of the locked door. The recorded message gave me a number for emergencies. I called the number, got the owner.
Ten minutes later, both the owner and the man with the kayaks were in the driveway with us.
The man's name was Moses.
* * *
(...and that's all I have time for now, as I feared. So... I'm going to run away now, but maybe now that I've got this much done, I'll come back soon. Stay tuned!)