The Last Spring Break.
Sat. March 17: Be Careful What You Wish For!
The flight to Puerto Rico was a play in two acts. Act 1: The flight itself was largely uneventful, which is to say, we slept. And it wasn’t even really the landing. It was more the sitting on the tarmac for 45 minutes waiting on a gate to become available while the stewardess-Nazi forcibly raised people’s seats into the up, locked, and perturbed position and made intermittent snarky comments over the PA about the inability of the plane to taxi while even the least little bit of a buckle was not securely fastened into the metal fitting. This rousing melody served as a counterpoint to the incessant yammering of the three little boys in front of us playing a game of “slap” to which I wanted to play a brief but demonstrative role. I quietly wished three things: That we would not miss our connecting flight, that it would not be populated by annoying children, and that the flight attendants would be less fascist.
After a not-so glamorous jog through the Charlotte airport, we arrived at our connecting flight just in time to sit there and wait for late arriving flights to delay ours. Wish 1 answered! And the flight attendants? In a word: Fabulous! Wish 2 under wraps. And the annoying children issue? See, now that’s were it gets complicated. If by “children” you mean humans who haven’t reached the age of majority, fine. But if you include drunken, extroverted, spiky haired, fifty year old exhibitionist trophy wives who don’t have an “indoor voice” nor know when to grow up, um, you must have been on our flight. A flight which, by the way, sat a mere 30 minutes on the tarmac waiting for a gate to come available. I feel a theme developing here.
Firmly expecting things could only get better, Wife and I set out to find our first night’s accommodations. All in all, that would have gone swimmingly but for a single letter of the alphabet: S. See, in Spanish, if you are choosing North v. South as a direction for a given highway, Sr is the abbreviation for “Sur” (i.e., South) and Nr. is the abbreviation for “Norte” (yup, you guessed it, North). Two different webs sites told us to go Sr when we shoulda gone Nr. We discovered this only after an impromptu tour of an area just South of where our reservations were.
We ate. We slept. Better days were to come.
Sunday, March 18: Something about this feels VERY familiar.
We got up early and drove South and West through the interior of PR. The island is as breathtaking as I remembered it. The northern faces of the interior mountains are lush, green, and resplendent with hillside farmlands. Then, on the ride back down the mountain, the topography changes to a more “brown” theme, cacti become the common vegetation. Wife handled the driving, I played navigator. Although the overwhelming majority of locals we have spoken with are bilingual, the road signage is not. Hence, the his and hers roles.
We arrived at the resort and within 15 minutes, I was reminded of our days in Grenada! This place looks almost just like the Coyaba on Grand Anse Beach. The low-lying architecture, the palms, the beach toys, the pools and the adjacent pool bars, even the birds. Felt a lot like coming home. Our room has a back door that opens onto a private patio which faces the garden area around the second pool and its associated tiki bar, which in turn face the Caribbean Sea. Yeah, this will do fine. We made dinner reservations, took a dip, took a nap, and awoke just in time to make our reservations.
Dinner was delicious. Seafood crepes in coconut milk and wine sauce. Some kind of cannoli I really can’t remember the ingredients of. Halibut and risotto. Filet and lobster. Flan de queso and crepes. All of which were enjoyed accompanied by the distinctly annoying tunes of children produced by parents who have no business taking them out in public. Mmmm, the dulcet tones of parental irresponsibility!
Monday, March 19: Tony and BamBam.
Breakfast was early and worth every bite. They have a serious handle on the whole dining thing here! We then set out with the dive boat. Wife, me, and one other lady were the divers. Tony was our divemaster for the day, and Bambam our boat captain. Tony is tall, thin, dark, and confident. Like so many dive instructors I’ve known, he wears enough neoprene for about two normal people. I never fell prey to that thin skinned business. Wife and I were both fine in swim suits and spandex shirts. The ocean is bath water temperature as far as I’m concerned.
Dive one was a wall dive. Now, when I say “wall” what I mean is, the ocean floor rolls along at a depth of about 70 or 80 feet, then abruptly drops off to a couple thousand feet. I mean, you look down and there’s more “blue” than indigo day at the Crayola factory. We swam down the wall to a little over 100 feet. Great sea life. Very little coral damage. These sites are virtually exclusive to this dive operation, they’ve taken great care of the ocean floor, and it shows.
Dive two was a shallower reef dive. The current was a bit more aggressive, but there were some great morays, lobsters, angel fish, trumpet fish, and few schools of smaller species. We got a few good shots with the new camera. The ride back was rough, but quick.
Lunch! Well, see, if I keep writing about the food here, I fear it’s gonna get annoying. Plantains rock. MahiMahi is yummy yummy.
The flight to Puerto Rico was a play in two acts. Act 1: The flight itself was largely uneventful, which is to say, we slept. And it wasn’t even really the landing. It was more the sitting on the tarmac for 45 minutes waiting on a gate to become available while the stewardess-Nazi forcibly raised people’s seats into the up, locked, and perturbed position and made intermittent snarky comments over the PA about the inability of the plane to taxi while even the least little bit of a buckle was not securely fastened into the metal fitting. This rousing melody served as a counterpoint to the incessant yammering of the three little boys in front of us playing a game of “slap” to which I wanted to play a brief but demonstrative role. I quietly wished three things: That we would not miss our connecting flight, that it would not be populated by annoying children, and that the flight attendants would be less fascist.
After a not-so glamorous jog through the Charlotte airport, we arrived at our connecting flight just in time to sit there and wait for late arriving flights to delay ours. Wish 1 answered! And the flight attendants? In a word: Fabulous! Wish 2 under wraps. And the annoying children issue? See, now that’s were it gets complicated. If by “children” you mean humans who haven’t reached the age of majority, fine. But if you include drunken, extroverted, spiky haired, fifty year old exhibitionist trophy wives who don’t have an “indoor voice” nor know when to grow up, um, you must have been on our flight. A flight which, by the way, sat a mere 30 minutes on the tarmac waiting for a gate to come available. I feel a theme developing here.
Firmly expecting things could only get better, Wife and I set out to find our first night’s accommodations. All in all, that would have gone swimmingly but for a single letter of the alphabet: S. See, in Spanish, if you are choosing North v. South as a direction for a given highway, Sr is the abbreviation for “Sur” (i.e., South) and Nr. is the abbreviation for “Norte” (yup, you guessed it, North). Two different webs sites told us to go Sr when we shoulda gone Nr. We discovered this only after an impromptu tour of an area just South of where our reservations were.
We ate. We slept. Better days were to come.
Sunday, March 18: Something about this feels VERY familiar.
We got up early and drove South and West through the interior of PR. The island is as breathtaking as I remembered it. The northern faces of the interior mountains are lush, green, and resplendent with hillside farmlands. Then, on the ride back down the mountain, the topography changes to a more “brown” theme, cacti become the common vegetation. Wife handled the driving, I played navigator. Although the overwhelming majority of locals we have spoken with are bilingual, the road signage is not. Hence, the his and hers roles.
We arrived at the resort and within 15 minutes, I was reminded of our days in Grenada! This place looks almost just like the Coyaba on Grand Anse Beach. The low-lying architecture, the palms, the beach toys, the pools and the adjacent pool bars, even the birds. Felt a lot like coming home. Our room has a back door that opens onto a private patio which faces the garden area around the second pool and its associated tiki bar, which in turn face the Caribbean Sea. Yeah, this will do fine. We made dinner reservations, took a dip, took a nap, and awoke just in time to make our reservations.
Dinner was delicious. Seafood crepes in coconut milk and wine sauce. Some kind of cannoli I really can’t remember the ingredients of. Halibut and risotto. Filet and lobster. Flan de queso and crepes. All of which were enjoyed accompanied by the distinctly annoying tunes of children produced by parents who have no business taking them out in public. Mmmm, the dulcet tones of parental irresponsibility!
Monday, March 19: Tony and BamBam.
Breakfast was early and worth every bite. They have a serious handle on the whole dining thing here! We then set out with the dive boat. Wife, me, and one other lady were the divers. Tony was our divemaster for the day, and Bambam our boat captain. Tony is tall, thin, dark, and confident. Like so many dive instructors I’ve known, he wears enough neoprene for about two normal people. I never fell prey to that thin skinned business. Wife and I were both fine in swim suits and spandex shirts. The ocean is bath water temperature as far as I’m concerned.
Dive one was a wall dive. Now, when I say “wall” what I mean is, the ocean floor rolls along at a depth of about 70 or 80 feet, then abruptly drops off to a couple thousand feet. I mean, you look down and there’s more “blue” than indigo day at the Crayola factory. We swam down the wall to a little over 100 feet. Great sea life. Very little coral damage. These sites are virtually exclusive to this dive operation, they’ve taken great care of the ocean floor, and it shows.
Dive two was a shallower reef dive. The current was a bit more aggressive, but there were some great morays, lobsters, angel fish, trumpet fish, and few schools of smaller species. We got a few good shots with the new camera. The ride back was rough, but quick.
Lunch! Well, see, if I keep writing about the food here, I fear it’s gonna get annoying. Plantains rock. MahiMahi is yummy yummy.
posted by graysandpeas | 5:03 PM
1 Comments:
This is surreal; I think we were running in opposite directions at the Charlotte airport at the Same Time (woooooo). Of course you didn't have babies with traveler's diarrhea to contend with.
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