From: leeper@cbnewsj.cb.att.com (mark.r.leeper)
Newsgroups: rec.travel
Subject: Puerto Rico and Dominican Republic (1 of 3)
Date: 11 Nov 92 15:54:37 GMT
Organization: AT&T








                      Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic
                          A travelogue by Mark R. Leeper
                          Copyright 1992 Mark R. Leeper



            September 7, 1992:  I begin this log on September 7, 1992, at
       3:40 PM.  And it really starts with an ending.  We have just
       finished about 96 hours at a science fiction convention in Orlando.
       Evelyn will cover the convention in her con report, so there is
       little point in me covering that part of our trip.  I will say that
       for me at least the convention ended very positively.  As we were
       waiting for the shuttle we lined up with a bunch of perfect
       strangers.  At least I thought so.  The woman ahead of us in line
       looked at me and said, "You must be Mark."  She knew Evelyn from one
       of the parties and apparently knew of us as a couple.  It turned out
       that someone else in the line had also heard of us.  He was talking
       about science fiction at AT&T and he also recognized Evelyn and me.
       On the way in, he was asking if we met through science fiction.
       (Actually, we didn't.  We met in high school when I was the top
       mathematician in the Western Massachusetts Math League and Evelyn
       was the top female mathematician.)  But I love to be recognized by
       someone who has read my film reviews or through something else I
       have written.  I remember going to a small science fiction
       convention sometime around 1975.  Somebody saw my name and said she
       thought she had heard of the Leepers before.  I told her I thought
       it was very unlikely.  These days, through my willingness to write a
       little and to say yes when someone asks for a favor, a fair circle
       of people know who we are.  I am sure Evelyn is known by more people
       than I am, but that's fine too.  And Evelyn said that at one party
       about six different people told her they liked her film reviews.
       She had a button made up saying, "No, *Mark* is the one who writes the
       film reviews."  I had a button saying, "No, Evelyn is the one who
       does the book reviews."

            Generally after a world science fiction convention when you get
       on the plane, you will see a fair number of people who very
       obviously came from the convention.  Curiously, this time I didn't.
       It's almost like nobody was flying from the science fiction
       convention to San Juan.  Can it be that there are not a lot of
       science fiction fans in Puerto Rico?

            Well, we sat waiting for the plane and watched a little girl
       with big Spanish eyes play on the floor while her mother watched
       her.  And the little girl flirted with us.

            It was tough to hear the boarding announcement since the public
       address system had burned out and announcements were being made by a
       bullhorn.  But we are now on the plane.  The Captain is making
       announcements in English and Spanish, though a little less
       enthusiastically when in English.  When we take off, the man across











       Caribbean Travel Log            1992                          Page 2



       the aisle from me crosses himself.  That is something you rarely see
       on most of the flights we take.  Puerto Rico is still strongly and
       emphatically Catholic.

            Dinner on the plane was chicken and rice (arroz con pollo).  I
       tried listening to the in-flight musical program, but there was
       something wrong with the drive mechanism on the cassette and even
       the classical channel sounded almost as bad as punk rock.  I pulled
       out one of the travel books and started reading the history of
       Puerto Rico.

            History of Puerto Rico, Part 1: Some time around the First
       Century A.D., Venezuelan Indians apparently went in canoes and found
       the island we call Puerto Rico.  Why they should travel this way has
       not been recorded, but it has been suggested that they may have
       wanted to find a shorter route to the equator.  Fortunately, there
       were no inhabitants on this island to misname.  In 1493, Columbus
       showed up to claim the island.  He had been given the island by
       Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, who didn't even know the island
       existed, but assumed it was theirs to give away whether it existed
       or not.  History records a great confusion in the alleged minds of
       Ferdinand and Isabella as to what actually belonged to them and what
       did not.  It is not clear if the Indians on the islands were the
       original Indians, but when Columbus arrived, the Indians were the
       Tainos.  From the Tainos' point of view, these were white gods who
       came ashore.  Of course, the white gods seemed to be fixated on the
       yellow jewelry that the Tainos made from the pieces of metal that
       washed up on shore.  Columbus sailed back to Spain with more
       fabulous tales for Isabella.

            In 1508 Ponce de Leon made a secret deal with the governor of
       the Caribbean that he would mine Puerto Rico for the governor if he
       could keep a third of what he mined.  The fly in the ointment was
       Diego Colon, son of Christopher Columbus (Cristobal Colon).
       Isabella had granted the Colon family the right to rule the New
       World.  Diego had a better idea of how to mine the island: he could
       enslave the Tainos and get them to do the work.  Telling Spain he
       would teach the Tainos Christianity, he enslaved 5500 of them and
       put them to work in mines, thereby teaching them the value of
       Christian love for all people.  He got the adult sons of the rich in
       Spain to come and become noblemen who were in reality slavemasters.
       These were nobodies who were the children of somebodies in Spain.
       They would be called "child of somebody" or "hijo de algo"--later
       shortened to "hidalgo."  This wholesale enslavement was not what
       Ponce wanted and he detested the abuse of the Tainos, but the smell
       of gold had now driven the Spanish nobility crazy.  Ethical
       treatment of the Indians would slow the gold production.  Anyway,
       the enslavement policy was really ethical because it was making
       Christians out of the Indians.  So of course Christ was on their
       side and you can't get more ethical than that, can you?  Well, can
       you?  Of course, the Spanish still let the Tainos think that the











       Caribbean Travel Log            1992                          Page 3



       white men were gods.  In 1511 the Tainos decided to test the
       hypothesis by seeing what happens if you hold a Spaniard under
       water.  Of course, the Spaniards had claimed to be immortal so what
       harm could it do to grab a Spanish boy and hold him down in the
       surf?  Unfortunately, something went awry and the immortal boy died.
       Now they'd done it.  Knowing the Spanish capacity for forgiveness,
       the Indians knew they were dead whatever they did and decided to
       revolt.  The revolt spread to the areas ruled by the hidalgos.
       However, where Ponce's kinder policies were in effect, the Indians
       did not revolt.  Ponce, however, did have to crush the revolt and he
       himself enslaved 200 Indians.

            Spain still did not accept Ponce's policies and jolly old
       Ferdinand ordered to try another land.  Ponce was sent away to
       explore a peninsula up to the northwest, a place called La Florida.
       Besides, this conflict with Colon was making Ponce old before his
       time.

            (More on this history to come.)

            There was a man sitting in the row behind me on the other side
       of the aisle who saw the travel book I was reading and wanted to
       look at the pictures and asked if he could see it.  His English was
       fine but he pointed to his eye when he said "see" just in case he
       had the vocabulary wrong.  He looked quickly at the book.  It turned
       out he was a photographer, I think.  He spent most of the flight
       taking some pictures out of a small album and putting others in.  I
       was trying to see what kind of pictures and he saw that and handed
       over one of the albums for me to see.  All I could really tell is
       that the setting was New York City and there were several photos of
       Miss Puerto Rico Tourism.

            I practiced a little of the old Espanol on Evelyn and somewhat
       surprised her that in some cases my memory for vocabulary was better
       than hers.  She is a lot better than I am at understanding Spanish,
       but surprisingly in speaking and making herself understood, the
       margin is a lot narrower.  I say that is surprising because, of
       course, her father is a native speaker.  Raphael "Ralph" Chimelis
       was born on a small farm in Puerto Rico.  The Chimelis family came
       from Spain and--as supposition based on the un-Spanishness of the
       name--presumably from Greece before that.  From some family
       upheaval, Raphael moved to the Dominican Republic.  That side of
       Evelyn's family is somewhat colorful and also may be somewhat
       cantankerous.  Evelyn glories in the story that her grandmother
       would argue so much with the minister running her church that
       eventually she was asked to leave and never come back.  There was a
       lot of behavior that was scandalous in its own day, but is now a bit
       tamer by current standards, things like people keeping mistresses or
       unmarried people living together or parents and children not
       speaking to each other.  I have never kept track of all the stories.
       I guess the family had its problems respecting conventions and











       Caribbean Travel Log            1992                          Page 4



       authority.  I admire that.

            Anyway, so young Raphael grew up in Puerto Rico and the
       Dominican Republic.  I think it was the Puerto Rican farm he
       described one day.  It sounded small.  He described a pen where they
       kept two turkeys,  "So when you were a boy you had two turkeys?" I
       asked.  "Yes."  "Then when you grew up you did it again?"  He
       thought that was very funny.  (Apologies to Evelyn's only sibling,
       Ron Chimelis, who at one point was the youngest newspaper owner in
       the country and has since been a popular radio personality in
       Western Massachusetts and a sports writer for the Springfield
       newspapers.)  But I am getting ahead of myself.  Raphael moved back
       to Puerto Rico to finish his schooling (through eighth grade) and
       then moved to New York City.  These were hard times during the
       height of the Depression, but Raphael (now Ralph) grew up in poverty
       and claims he didn't find out until years later that there was a
       Depression.

            Ralph met and married Florence (nee Fanny) Berlin, a Jew from
       the Bronx.  I guess the relationship, coming from two so different
       cultures, strikes me as unusual.  Somehow it reminds me a bit of "I
       Love Lucy," particularly because Florence even now seems to dress
       often in the style of Lucille Ball on that program.  Both had an
       affinity for sundresses and bright red lipstick.

            When the war came, Ralph went into the Army.  When it ended, he
       left briefly but was recalled to the Air Force during the Korean War
       and eventually attained the rank of Chief Warrant Officer.  I guess
       his work was always more in logistics than in actual fighting.  He
       was ready to retire in the 1960s and go back to school when the Air
       Force cut his orders to go to Vietnam.  There he really was near
       action and was in positions that were shelled, including Bien Hoa
       and Ton Son Hut.  When he finally was discharged, he decided to make
       himself a college professor of Spanish.  He had a bachelor of
       general education from the University of Omaha that he had gotten
       during his time in the Air Force and went back to the University of
       Massachusetts to get a master's degree.  At the University of
       Massachusetts he was delighted to discover that his daughter was
       becoming associated with a gentleman with both a great mind and a
       sharp wit.  (I am modest too.)  Ralph became a Spanish professor at
       Western New England College.  One of Ralph's brothers had a Ph.D. in
       astronomy and is a professor and another one used to pick tobacco.
       Quite a lot of diversity there.

            So the purpose of this trip was for Evelyn to find her roots
       and for us to see the Spanish culture.

            Well, we got to San Juan airport and rented a car.  We got a
       black Mazda.  Actually we got two.  The first one had a brake
       warning light that would not go out.  Finally, we got going for
       real, actually moving out and seeing San Juan at night, actually











       Caribbean Travel Log            1992                          Page 5



       traveling, actually getting ourselves totally lost.  We were staying
       at a guest house called the Tres Palmas and the map they sent us was
       out and out wrong, and in addition what was right was pretty hard to
       understand.  The map from Hertz was a little better but the street
       names were in tiny type that was nearly impossible to read by the
       dome light.

            We got to Tres Palmas and found our room small and shabby but
       generally clean.  The room is just about big enough for a double bed
       with two feet on either side.  There are maybe six feet from the
       foot of the bed to the door.  There are two chests of drawers, but
       the bigger one is treacherous and I have decided it is best to
       ignore it.  The drawers have lower tracks but no upper tracks.  If
       the center of gravity gets pulled out beyond the edge of the frame,
       the drawer and its contents fall out onto the floor.  The bathroom
       is very tiny, just large enough for a toilet, a tiny sink, and a
       shower.  The only place to lay stuff for use at the sink is on the
       tank of the toilet about three feet away.  There is no hot water but
       there is slightly warm water if you are willing to sacrifice water
       pressure.  At the end of the room where the head of the bed is,
       there are tiny ants, mostly on the night stand, but also on the bed
       occasionally.  The room's best features are a small refrigerator and
       a color television with cable that gets some mainland programs, but
       also such interesting local color as cock-fighting.  The latter has
       the bloody spots edited out.  There is apparently no PRSPCA.

            The currency in Puerto Rico is the worst and most difficult to
       figure out of any country we have visited.  Usually a country will
       have two units of currency, and usually they will have a ratio of
       100 to 1.  The coins will have a numeral and the unit of currency.
       Well, they start out okay with the big unit being something called a
       "dollar" and with the bills at least having numerals to show how
       many dollars they represent.  Of course, they are all the same size,
       so it is really tough to tell them apart by feel.  I pity a blind
       Puerto Rican.

            The coins have denominations spelled out in words that are not
       even in the local language.  They say things like "one cent" or
       "five cents"; "1 cent" and "5 cents" might be better.  Now we get
       into fractions as well as words.  The big coin says "quarter
       dollar."  If I have my ratio right, and I am not sure I do, this is
       25 cents.  I also got in my change something from what must be a
       foreign currency.  It is smaller than a cent but it is silver,
       suggesting it might be more valuable than the one-cent piece.  It is
       labeled "one dime."  None of the other coins or bills say how many
       dimes they are, so I assume it came from some previous system of
       currency or some other country.  I guess it does say "United States"
       like the others, but no other coin measures its value in dimes.  I
       think what I'll have to do is ask someone to break a quarter-dollar
       and give me my change all in dimes and I'll see how many I get.  I
       can easily see how this weird currency could drive the Puerto Ricans











       Caribbean Travel Log            1992                          Page 6



       to the bughouse.

            Well, I ended the day watching a bad Hercules film on
       television and working on my log.

            September 8, 1992: I was up early writing in my log.  At 8:30
       AM we had continental breakfast.  That means coffee, coffee cake,
       doughnuts, and orange juice.  Now before I was married I would
       occasionally stay in the basement of Evelyn's parents' house.  At
       breakfast I learned to avoid the orange juice.  It had a very funny
       flavor which to me tasted as if it was mentholated.  They all tasted
       it and it tasted fine to them.  They thought I was nuts.  Flash
       forward to the early days of my marriage.  Evelyn prepared frozen
       orange juice.  One sip and "Blah, this tastes mentholated.  Evelyn,
       exactly how did you make this orange juice?"

            "The usual way."

            "Describe it exactly."

            "Well, I bought the frozen orange juice concentrate and let it
       thaw in the refrigerator for a few days to make it easier to mix.
       Then I...."

            "Does your mother thaw the orange juice?"

            "Sure, most people do to make it easier to mix."

            "I don't think most people do and I know the can doesn't say to
       thaw.  Next time let's do it exactly how it says on the can."

            Today was my first taste of mentholated orange juice since
       then.  And it was from a refrigerator pitcher that looked like it
       hadn't been washed in a while.

            Our first stop of the day was a visit to El Castillo de San
       Cristobal.  This is the largest fort in the Americas.  It
       majestically overlooks the Atlantic, though it was built more for
       land attacks than for sea attacks.  It was built at the throat of
       land that separates Old San Juan from the rest of the island.

            Now I have a bit of a problem with Spanish military history.  I
       am willing to admit that Ferdinand and Isabella needed to stop
       Moorish expansion into Spain.  They did that in 1492.  And I suspect
       that Spain may have been in the right in the Spanish-American War.
       In between those events I know of no military conflict that in which
       Spain participated for which I think of Spain as the side morally in
       the right.  If in such a conflict it is unclear who is right, I will
       generally side against Spain.  Where it is clear, Spain is always
       the villain (to my mind).












       Caribbean Travel Log            1992                          Page 7



            Why am I so down on Spain and its policies?  I guess in the
       final analysis it comes down to religious belief.  The Spanish
       believed in an after-life that lasted for an eternity and was
       horrible to all but Catholics.  The ultimate favor you could do for
       someone was to convert that person to Catholicism, at any price.  It
       was a logical and consistent belief that sanctioned incredible
       immorality as being almost an irrelevancy.  The net result of more
       Catholics was what counted.

            My moral view is that religion and even the existence of God is
       irrelevant to morality.  No moral God would sanction any action that
       would seem to be immoral by intuition.  Any moral God would detest
       and would be debased by any immoral act done in His name.  The
       Spanish who so enthusiastically supported the Inquisition and who
       raped the New World for Gold, Glory, Gospel, and Slaves were a
       criminal nation as bad or worse than any country that is called that
       now.  The holding of Puerto Rico was a strategic necessity in
       maintaining control and continuing the rape of the Americas.  It is
       sort of in the neck of a bottle of water whose base is the Gulf of
       Mexico.  It was useful in controlling access to the whole coastline
       from Venezuela through Central America up to Florida.  Well, they
       succeeded in bringing Catholicism and impoverishing any place they
       had power.  Some of the powers who fought them for control might not
       have been a lot better, but I can't help but feel that English or
       Dutch rule of this area would have been a little more compassionate
       and less selfish.  There is little doubt in my mind that Spain was
       worse for South America than the Dutch were for South Africa.

            Well, I guess this is a good time for the second part of our
       history lesson.

            History of Puerto Rico, Part 2: As time passed, the King of
       Spain continued to allot real estate in Puerto Rico as if it really
       belonged to him.  The Indians, facing the combined forces of
       military might and European disease, were finding that staying on
       the island was only helping the Spanish by supplying them with slave
       labor, so they bid their homes farewell and retreated.  This meant
       there was a slave labor shortage.  Luckily, there was a good supply
       of non-Catholic blacks in West Africa and their souls needed saving
       really badly, so black slave labor was introduced to the island.

            About 1516, Puerto Rico built its first factories for sugar
       and, of course, rum.  Ginger also became a major product.  Then the
       King decided that Puerto Rico would be a sugar colony only and
       outlawed the cultivation of ginger.  The sons of the hidalgos
       thumbed their noses at the Crown and continued the profitable ginger
       trade.

            In the 1520s the capital was moved to San Juan and the name
       officially became Puerto Rico.  This left the capital vulnerable to
       sea attack.  The island's rich resources and strategic position











       Caribbean Travel Log            1992                          Page 8



       attracted the British, French, and Dutch.  In 1522 the Spanish
       started fortifying Old San Juan.  For years the strongest fortified
       structure was Casa Blanca, the old home of the heirs of Ponce de
       Leon.  However, its location allowed it to defend only itself, and
       after much wrangling the Crown agreed to fund a fort (El Morro) at
       the toe of the foot-shaped peninsula that is Old San Juan.  On other
       parts of the island the French invaded and got a foothold at San
       German.

            With the permission of Queen Elizabeth I of England, the pirate
       Sir Francis Drake preyed on the ships taking booty back to Spain.
       In 1585 Spain and England went to war.  In 1588 Spain sent its
       invincible navy to England to settle the matter only to have it
       vinced.

            With the Armada crippled, Francis Drake turned his sights on
       Old San Juan.  With it captured he could take Puerto Rico.  Drake
       made some serious mistakes, however.  Under cloak of night he
       attacked El Morro, setting fire to several Spanish ships.  Adios
       cloak of night.  Drake was having dinner with friend John Hawkins in
       his cabin when they were joined by a Spanish cannonball.  Feeling
       three was a crowd, Hawkins promptly died.  Drake withdrew.  Four
       years later, in 1590, George Gifford, Earl of Cumberland, tried to
       lay siege again.  The attack was well-timed since influenza had
       wiped out most of the fighting men of San Juan.  Starting eighty
       miles east of the capitol, Cumberland marched his men to San Juan.
       Cumberland actually captured the fort of El Morro.  Just one
       problem: remember the influenza?  Six weeks later Cumberland had
       four hundred fewer men.  Not long after, he also had one fewer fort.
       Rather than seizing Puerto Rico he contented himself with burning a
       couple of plantations and headed home.

            In 1625 it was the Dutch who tried to take Puerto Rico.  In
       September they tried a land assault on Old San Juan.  They forced
       the Spanish to retreat to El Morro and besieged the fort for a month
       unsuccessfully.  In late October the Spanish staged surprise
       counter-attacks and the Dutch were forced to retreat.

            Philip IV of Spain ordered a bigger fort, San Cristobal, to be
       built at the ankle of the foot-shaped peninsula to guard against
       land or sea attack.  The two forts were connected by a stone wall,
       making the strongest Presidio in the Indies.

            Here endeth the history of Puerto Rico, part two.

            So it is Wednesday morning and we have set out to see Old San
       Juan.  The part we drove through was pretty run-down.  I guess most
       cities have run-down areas but San Juan is mostly run-down.
       Ironically, Old San Juan is probably cleaner than the new part of
       the city.  We parked in the lot of the castle of San Cristobal.  The
       castle has a beautiful view of the ocean.  It stands at the top of a











       Caribbean Travel Log            1992                          Page 9



       cliff adding maybe sixty feet to the height of the cliff.  The
       design is supposed to exemplify subtle military architecture of the
       17th Century.  Actually, it seems to be about four levels with ramps
       going up at odd points and angles.  When we got in, there was a tour
       that had just started.  They run them hourly and the first person
       requesting a tour gets to choose if it is to be in Spanish or
       English.  The tour we'd just missed was in Spanish, so instead they
       showed us a videotape telling the history of the defense of San Juan
       from 1493 on.  How far we don't know because when the tape got to
       about 1610, it stopped mid-sentence.  Probably some technical flaw.
       We reported the problem, then walked around.  The ground level is
       fairly uninteresting rooms.  After a short walk around, I went up to
       a much more interesting second level.  Parts of this level are out
       in the open.  There are cannon emplacements facing the city and the
       sea.  In one corner there is a narrow passage to a look-out point.
       The views of the sea are, of course, majestic.

            The tour takes you into the tunnels under the fort.  Some of
       the tunnels presumably go down to the beach.  Another tunnel went
       down to the listening room.  Actually, the listening room was not
       for listening.  It was for watching a dish of mercury.  Anyone
       trying to tunnel under the fort would create visible vibrations in
       the mercury.

            There is also a dungeon to be seen, very tiny but there.  One
       Captain Luna led a strike for Spanish soldiers in Puerto Rico to
       work the same number of hours as soldiers in Spain.  Luna was put in
       the dungeon with ten followers and later executed.

            Following the tour we tried to get to El Morro, but detours on
       the road would not let us get anywhere near.  The roads of Old San
       Juan are very narrow, about two car widths including parking.  This
       causes monstrous traffic jams for the most trivial of reasons.  If a
       car stops to read an address or try to park, traffic can stop for a
       block or two very quickly.  Driving can be a very frustrating
       experience.  Parking can be worse.  There is no parking anywhere
       near anything you want to go to.  We found one parking place near
       the center of the old city and then discovered it was a taxi stand
       once we were parked.  Eventually we decided that parking would be
       impossible.  We quickly modified our plans to go to El Yunque today
       and hit Old San Juan when we could take public transit.

            First we had some errands to run.  We wanted to find a hardware
       store, a grocery, and lunch.  The hardware store was because I
       wanted to find a multiple plug, since there were not enough outlets
       in the room.  There is exactly one classical radio station in San
       Juan or anywhere around.  It is at 91.3.  I needed a place to plug
       in my Walkman.  Using modular parts centered on my Walkman, I can
       set up a fairly portable sound system in my hotel room when I
       travel.  I have a Walkman, an AC adapter with a cord, a decent pair
       of Walkman speakers, a pair of earphones that roll up into a











       Caribbean Travel Log            1992                         Page 10



       cassette-shaped carrier (so you store the earphones inside the
       Walkman), and a case with ten cassettes.  The Walkman was a really
       good value from Panasonic that has digital tuning with eight FM and
       five AM stations programmable.  That makes it almost as useful as my
       receiver at home, yet it fits into a large shirt pocket.  More than
       half the space of the sound system is the ten cassettes.  It is
       fairly important to have a good sound system when I travel, since a
       lot of my time is spent log-writing.

            The grocery was necessary because I desperately needed fruit
       juice. I was coming down with a cold and a cold hits me very hard if
       untreated.  And it lasts me three months before the coughing stops.
       Usually if I take large doses of vitamin C the cold will turn out to
       be mild.  Without the vitamin, I *never* have a mild cold.  We bought
       many cans of Goya fruit juices in serving-sized cans and a big
       bottle of Tropicana orange juice, also some cookies and two mangos.

            There is a story about mangos.  I have had them before and
       never was too impressed.  They were hard to eat and the flavor was
       okay, but nothing special.  An (Asian) Indian friend bought some
       Mexican mangos and gave us two.  I politely thanked him and after a
       week or so got around to the messy task of eating one.  This was the
       most luscious piece of fruit I have ever tasted.  The flavor was
       akin to Concord grape, but much richer.  It was a real mess to eat
       since it was so juicy.  The first thing I told Evelyn, who was
       reticent to try the difficult fruit, was that I would take her mango
       off her hands and that she shouldn't give it another thought.  (Yes,
       I told her it was good.  I wasn't going to cheat her.)  According to
       my friend, Mexican mangos are better than American ones, and Indian
       mangos are better than Mexican ones.  I myself am perfectly
       satisfied with the Mexican variety.  Anyway, the mangos we got in
       the grocery must have been underripe or something.  They were more
       like the mangos I was used to.

            For a quick meal we ate lunch at Church's Fried Chicken.  It is
       pretty good and comes with a Jalapeno pepper.  Supposedly spicy food
       strobes the endorphins in the brain.  Just like you get a mild high
       from exercise, scientists now think you get a mild high from spicy
       food.  And here I thought that I had no endorphins.  Now I realize I
       am a spicy food junkie.

            After that we went back to the room to put the juice in the
       refrigerator and to freshen up a bit.  Then we headed out to El
       Yunque.  It took about ninety minutes on the road.  The roads look a
       bit like roads you might see in Florida.  On the major roads you see
       little of the poverty you see in San Juan.  You do see a lot of
       vendors set up to sell in the streets to passing cars.  In the
       cities you also see a lot of people jumping out at cars to clean
       windshields for pocket change, just like in Manhattan.













       Caribbean Travel Log            1992                         Page 11



            Gradually the look of what surrounded the roads became more
       rural and then we turned off to climb the hills to the National
       Forest.

            El Yunque is a rain forest with a lot of plants with big broad
       leaves to collect the moisture.  Bright flowers are common,
       particularly a red one that may be hibiscus and the white flower of
       the ginger plant.  You follow a winding road up the side of a
       mountain through the forest.  There are also places to stop and take
       nature trails into the forest.

            We thought we were pretty well by ourselves when we passed a
       nice waterfall.  We parked the car and took out the cameras.  By
       this point a taxi had stopped and four women had beaten us to the
       falls.  We got what pictures we could but were waiting for them to
       leave when a whole tour bus stopped.  A few minutes ago, there was
       nobody at this waterfall.  Now we couldn't get pictures due to the
       hordes of tourists.

            A little further up the hill there is a tower to be climbed by
       a circular stair.  The tower gave a commanding view of the forest
       around including a valley and in fact a view out to the ocean.  Of
       course, there were tourists mobbing here also.  Apparently these
       were all from a cruise ship that had pulled into the harbor.  Most
       had taken buses to El Yunque, but one group took a taxi.  Finally we
       found an empty area and took a path to see another waterfall.  I was
       a little concerned about this since I was feeling a little under the
       influence of the first day of this cold.  I was not really anxious
       for a long trek in the woods.  Evelyn is persuasive, however, and I
       went.  It took us about forty minutes to reach the falls.  But what
       concerned me was that it had been mostly been downhill.  The trip
       back I set the pace and I over-estimated the distance.  It took us
       about twenty minutes to get back, but it was a lot of climbing.
       Both of us were breathing pretty hard by the time we were back and
       were considerably lighter for the perspiration.

            I had left one can of the Goya juice in the car.  It was peach
       nectar--warm peach nectar.  But in our dehydrated state, it went
       down very nicely, thank you.

            It took us a couple of hours to get back to San Juan.  One
       reason is that routes are very poorly marked in Puerto Rico.  At
       times a route will turn a corner in San Juan, and there will be no
       warning, just the route signs will be on the new stretch of road.
       Also, most corners in the city have no street signs.  It makes
       things pretty tough on newcomers.

            Back at the room I wrote in my log.  Dinner was most of a
       bottle of orange juice.  The combination of getting fluids back and
       getting vitamin C proved irresistible.  (I am pretty sure that the C
       helped with the cold, incidentally.)  Evelyn contacted her half-











       Caribbean Travel Log            1992                         Page 12



       uncle and made arrangements for Wednesday night.

            September 9, 1992:  This was our day for seeing the interior of
       the island.  After breakfast we set out by car for Ponce, the second
       largest city on the island.  (What do you call Puerto Rico?  It
       isn't a territory; it isn't a state.  Evelyn claims that
       commonwealth is not accurate.  Apparently it is something akin to a
       commonwealth.  The technical term is that it is a "Free Associated
       State," a term which was, I believe, coined by Sigmund Freud.  Yes,
       it's true: Puerto Rico is a state of mind.  The commonwealth motto
       is--get this--"John is his name."  By a margin of better than two to
       one, Puerto Ricans prefer this motto to "Tuesday there will be
       doughnuts.")

            Once we got out of San Juan, the topography started looking a
       little nicer with rolling hills of green.  The predominant colors
       are green, white, and blue.  We stopped to look at a monument to the
       peasants who built the island.  It is of recent vintage, not
       surprisingly.

            Ponce is known for its very pleasant climate.  It is located in
       something called a rain shadow.  I guess that means it does not
       rain.

            The most photographed building in Puerto Rico is the striking
       fire house in Ponce.  It is painted in two-foot-wide horizontal
       stripes alternating bright read and (not-so-bright) black.

            We did some souvenir shopping.  (For those who follow such
       things, this was our traditional tchatchka-search.  If you don't
       know what that means, don't worry.)

            We found a good place to stop for lunch at a cafeteria.  Good
       local food.  I had pastel and platano.  Pastel is a lot like Mexican
       tamale.  It comes wrapped in a banana leaf.  Then there was white
       rice and fried sweet plantain which is indistinguishable to me from
       fried banana.  We also shared an avocado salad that had lots of
       avocado.  Avocado is a taste I picked up from Evelyn.  It's the sort
       of thing I wouldn't haven't wanted even to taste as a kid.  But now
       I know that at one point in our prehistoric past there were only
       nutritious vegetables.  Most of the dinosaurs ate ferns and things.
       Try eating some fern sometime.  You'll know why the dinosaurs died
       out.  Some got fed up with eating ferns and hence we got carnivores.
       Eventually some cosmic ray hit some plant and it started mutating
       off fun foods like avocados, bananas, and Mexican mangos.  These are
       easily distinguished from asparagus, squash, and yes, President
       Bush, broccoli.

            In fact, I wonder if avocados and mangos may not be close
       relatives.  Both look like big green eggs and have large stones.
       But I am digressing.  (And I hope people realize that the above is