evan

I'm in the extremely pleasant balcony hallway of the awesome Hotel Melia in Ponce, Puerto Rico. Everyone's getting ready to go for a trip to the west of the island, so I thought I'd take a few moments to blog about the last few days.

We had the kickoff lunch a few days ago in Old San Juan, at La Bombonera diner on Calle San Francisco. We waited for Sapphire to show up at our hotel so we could all ride over together, but after 2 hours we gave up and cabbed in. The food at La Bombonera was great -- gutsy Puerto Rican food with lots of crab, shrimp, and mofongo, the mashed-plantain dish that has captured our group's taste buds and imagination.

Maj gave out some schwag for the event -- IB had t-shirts made, and we had picked up some real-life barnstars in an antique shop in Galveston. We were tucking into our food when Sapphire showed up -- with a harrowing public-transportation story I'm sure he'd rather tell himself.

After lunch we wandered the streets of Old San Juan. The houses are typically Latin and colonial -- I was reminded of Cinqueterre, New Orleans, and Lisbon. The narrow streets are lined with plastered houses painted in bright colors and lead to shady squares with cafés and stages and fountains.

We found our way out to the Castillo El Morro, the Spanish colonial fort that gives the old city its distinctive profile. Amita loved running up and down the stone ramps of the fort (to the detriment of her palms and knees, which got pretty scraped), and we all liked the views of the city and the ocean.

The next day, we visited the Fort San Cristobàl and had lunch at the Parrot Café. There's a nice little restaurant district in that part of Old San Juan -- I saw a tourist brochure calling it SoFo, but I think that's a bit of a stretch. The Parrot had a good brunch, great fruity cocktails, and very friendly staff.

The prices, however, were pretty steep. Wherever we've gone in PR, we've been seeing $10-20 entrées as the norm -- whether at shacks or at fancy restaurants. I'm not sure what to make of it.

Sunday afternoon Sapphire and I picked up a rental van and then took the Bacardi Distillery Tour, which had a) no charge and b) two rum drinks included free. It was fairly informative about the rum production process, although most of the tour was relegated to a dedicated Bacardi museum on the grounds.

That night, we drove out to Pinones, a cluster of food shacks east of San Juan's airport. Pinones is the local foodie's "comfort food" emporium -- a great place to get seafood and down-home cooking. We had a rotten time getting into town, due to incredible traffic and a complete dearth of parking. Once traffic let up, we realized we were through the middle of town, on our way out -- with a huge line-up in the opposite lane. We were looking for El Pulpo Loco, a shack recommended by my friend Biella that Sapphire thought he'd seen well out of town. But we missed it, so we had to turn around, get back into line, and drive through rotten traffic back into town again. Total driving time: 2-1/2 hours!

Our dinner at Playa 79 made us forget about it, though. We had huge bowls of mofongo relleno stuffed with shrimp and crabmeat, a few rounds of Medalla (the local beer), and were serenaded by a local salsa band at terrific volume. I shook off my driver's anxiety when they broke into an awesome salsa version of Numa Numa.

Yesterday we tripped out to Arecibo, the western city on the Atlantic Coast. We had a nice lunch of fresh fish at Salitre, a restaurant on the rocks just east of the Arecibo lighthouse. It was a little pricey, but the fish was fresh out of the water, and the mofongo was quite good, too. Then up some harrowing mountain roads to the Arecibo Observatory, where we toured about. Back onto smaller roads, then down the on-again-off-again highway 10 into Ponce last night.

It's been a busy week, and we've just turned a big page. We're going to see more of Ponce today, plus visit nearby San German and beaches on the southwest coast. I haven't ever seen the Caribbean Sea with my own eyes before, so this will be pretty fun for me.