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Saturday, February 14, 2009

Puerto Rico - Day Two

What a difference less than a day makes. If you could have any idea of the inner...wait, let me start over. Last night my flight got in late and my backpack didn't come at all, so there I was with nothing but an ipod, a winter hat, and a full-blown migraine.

So I settled for a cheeseburger and fries at a Buffalo Wings sports bar and a $150 room at the airport Best Western. I was so sad. Then I wrestled with my head and everything that comes along with it. I can't go into the ugly details. Basically, I had a nervous breakdown and was sick in bed for a good 15 hours. It had been a long time since I'd experienced a full-on headache without any medicine, which I had cleverly packed in my backpack, which was in freaking Newark. Hooray for pharmaceuticals, but they don't work as well from a distance.

So in the morning my backpack arrived, and although I still felt dead, I decided to give this trip one more try. After all, I technically hadn't even been out of the airport yet. So within about an hour, I had checked out of the hotel, found a tourism office, gotten a shuttle to a car rental place, and was driving a silver Suzuki down the highway. Of course, I didn't know what road I was on, where I was going, or what direction I was heading. Details, baby.

I stopped in Luquillo at the public beach there, and then went looking for a hotel. And then I found the most beautiful, magical place EVER. El Yunque Mar Hotel - it is my fantasy bed and breakfast that I've always had daydreams about. It's a great big house, with like maybe 15 or 20 rooms, a pool, a bar downstairs, and it has amazing verandah balcony things all across the back of it, which is ON THE BEACH. Look at this freaking place....so lovely.

I just sat here and looked at this view all day and all night. I want to buy it and live here forever.

I have discovered that things here cost about exactly the same as they would in the US, so this is not going to be any dirt cheap developing-world kind of deal. But I've embraced it, redefined my relationship with my credit card, and decided to travel like a rich person.

I've never done it before, but lucky for me, I've got lots of gray-haired retired baby boomers around to watch and emulate. Pick up my suitcase? Oh, pish posh. Isn't that what the teenagers with the badges are for? These folks don't even say, "Hey, man, can you carry that to the hotel shuttle for me?" They just tap and point. Tap and point.

I ponder this and other nonsense sitting here on this beautiful patio in my pink swimming suit, looking at the waves and a palm tree sticking out of the sand right in front of me. If I stood on the railing and jumped out like 10 feet, I could grab those coconuts and then I would fall down and they would land on top of me. This is the best place ever.

There are lots of cool things to do and see here that I probably won't do or see. I can come back when I'm in a more do and see kind of mood.

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